free marketing

Now that you have your site up and running it's time to advertise yourself! Let's start with the free marketing options that are out there! The great thing about most of them is that they are all connected and you can often post on one medium and have it show up on multiple sites. 

Some of the major free marketing websites:

FACEBOOK - www.facebook.com - on facebook you can create a separate page for your business. It is important to keep your personal life and your work life separate. You can use the same image as your banner for your "cover photo" and such. It's a good idea to keep it looking consistent with your website. You can even add things like "shop", "pinterest", etc to your facebook page to easily navigate to your shop. 

Example:

Blogger - www.blogger.com - blogger is a website powered by google that allows you to have your own blog. Having your own blog is a great way to advertise yourself. Depending on what you sell will depict what kinds of things you should post about. Make sure it's always related to your product. So if you make clothing you can have "upcoming stock", "just in", "editorial shoots", "how it's made", etc. 

Example:

Tumblr - www.tumblr.com - If you'd rather just post pictures with very little wording this is another great blogging site. You can also put a link to your website / shop site with all of your work so when people see it or re-post is they can always know where it came from!

Twitter - www.twitter.com - Twitter is a site devoted to updating statuses basically. So it's words only but you can post links to photos or web pages. Twitter is a great social networking site that helps you connect with like minded people as well as customers. This is where you can tell people about your upcoming sales, you new products, or your future plans for the shop!

Instagram - www.instagram.com - most people use this as an app on their phone. You can take pictures of the things you are doing and post them on your account. You can then write a little description and hashtag it with related words to find more followers. 
Example:

Pinterest - www.pinterest.com - this is a site full of images of anything and everything. You build folders called "boards" and pin images to it. In this regard you can post the images from your store with links to your shop when they click on the image. Then hopefully you'll get you image re-pinned and it will start to float around the internet! 

An important key to using all of these sites is being part of the community. You can't just start one of these sites and expect to have a million followers. You must post on other people's blogs, or posts. You must start following them yourself and show that you are interested in what other people are doing as well. 

Now there are many other useful free marketing sites but these are the most popular ones currently. I will go through these one by one on how to actually set them up and use them to their fullest potential! :) 

listing on etsy

Luckily etsy pretty simple to navigate through! To start off, click on the upper right corner where it says your shop name. A drop menu will come down and I want you to click on "add new item"

Next there are a lot of drop down selection boxes. This is to help narrow down people's searches. 

1) who made it? what is it? when was it made?

2) what is it? what type? what type? (it's good to fill in as much as you can!)

3) variations - this is if you are selling a product with different variations. 

4) here is where you upload those photos you took!

Make sure the title has an accurate and simple description of what the item is. In the description it can be helpful to have a little "form" to fill out every time. Something you can copy paste. Just make sure to include a good description of the item, the size, and condition. Most of all don't forget to add your item to a specific section in your shop!! 

 You can also fill in "recipient" or "occasion" or "style" which just helps narrow searches! The most important thing to fill in is "tags". These are the key words that help your item show up on searches. 

 Next put a quantity amount. Do you have multiple of something? Or is it a one off!? Next you are going to fill in where you are willing to ship to as well as how much it's going to be to ship to those places. Going to your post office and getting an estimate is a good way to start until you have a definite idea of cost. 

Once you're done you can "save as draft" if you're unsure or you can review your item and keep editing it until you are happy with it. Otherwise click the official "publish"! Etsy will charge you .20$ for that listing that you will have to pay at the end of the month. 

Once your item is listed you can let every one know by posting it to your facebook page and your twitter account. We will go over how to set those up soon! But they are a great way of doing free marketing! 

Ebay Set Up

Alright! Today is the quick tutorial on how to register an account on ebay and then list your first item! 

This page will show up and you will do exactly what it says, fill it out as accurately as possible! When it comes to creating your user ID, try to create the same or at least similar to your brand name. 

Now let's list your first item!

At the top right corner you will choose "sell" - "sell an item"!

First fill in the item's title! Make sure the first part of title has the most important part of the description! If it's vintage, make sure you say it's vintage, if it's hand made, make sure your say it's hand made!

Pick an accurate category for your item so that it is easier to search for!

Choose a currency based on where you are located in the world! Then fill in the title of your item. Give an accurate "condition" of the garment as well. 

There is lots to fill in so try to fill as much of it out as possible, as accurately as you can. It makes it easier for people to find your items! 

Lastly, you are going to upload some of those great photos you took and then you are going to give a detailed description of what you are selling! You will then post it! There are lots of options of how to sell. You will have to choose based on your preferences. You can also set minimum reserves so that you will never get less than that minimum value and so on. 

Next we will list some items on Etsy!

Banner's and Profile Pictures

To get started I'd like to give some pointers along with examples of great banners and shop appearances. It is truly important for the images to be relevant to what you are selling, and they must also correspond with how your listings appear.

Take a look at how nicely all of the colors and themes match so perfectly. The use of green and the outdoors for an eco friendly product is smart!

This banner is for a vintage shop. It is nice and simple with a hint of vintage. It is simplistic yet pleasing to the eye with the juxtaposition between the vintage garment and the name of the shop. Note how the background also matches the color tone of her listings.

Another great example of simplicity would be this banner. It has a nice splash of color and it clearly states what the shop sells. 

This one is one of my favorites. In this the seller has used one of their photographs as the background and put their shop info overtop. It also has a nice color tone that looks good with the rest of their photographs.

Lastly, this banner is so much fun! It clearly shows off the kind of artwork sold in the shop!

Ready to start yours? Good! Remember, you can change it later if you make a better one! But you have to start somewhere! :D

Now it’s time to pick out the images you want to use in your banner. Grab a few to play with! Maybe you’ll use just one image in the background, or a couple around the sides, it doesn’t matter, just grab a few to start!

**ALSO PLEASE ONLY USE YOUR OWN IMAGES! Do not take other images from other people unless you have permission!!**

 Now if you have photoshop, chances are you know how to use it. Just make sure your banner size fits within 760px by 100px and is no larger than 2MB. Also make sure it is in a .jpg, .gif, or .png format.

For those of you who are not photoshop savvy, nor have the means of accessing it, I have a solution! 

http://pixlr.com/editor/

The best thing about this website is that it is free! Now to sit here and try to explain how to use this program would get very difficult. Especially since everyone is going to want to do something completely different with their banners. Instead I will get you started and then you can search my list of helpful links for more information! 

Let's start by opening a new file!

Then I want you to fill in a name (1) that you can find later like “Banner” or “Etsy Banner”. Believe me when I say it’s no fun when you forget to label something nicely and can’t search for it later. You are then going to fill in the measurements (2) “760” in width and “100” in height.

At this point you should start bringing in the images you would like to play with for your banner by clicking "file" --> "upload an image".

Once that’s uploaded if you want to go back and forth between your banner template and your image click on the little arrow on the top right hand side and it will give you an option to which screen you would like to work on.

Okay, so from here you are on your own! Here are some helpful links that will point you in the right direction!

http://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/Tech/Web-Team/Sitecore-Training/Editing-Images.aspx

http://www.wikihow.com/Use-the-Pixlr-Online-Image-Editor

http://support.pixlr.com/pixlr

http://blog.pixlr.com/

Next post: Ebay set up!