Let the Holiday Shopping Season Begin

As I sit here sipping coffee this morning here in Cleveland, Ohio on a frigid, windy morning, I am trying to work out some last minute kinks in my Lake Erie Artists Gallery website that I didn't realize were there until an order wouldn't go through earlier this week.

For those of you who don't realize it, tonight is the first night of Chanukah, which my family celebrates and my husband and I just started shopping for holiday gifts yesterday. This is the mindset that I believe many Americans and global citizens are in, either because they are so busy or because of budgetary constraints, waiting until the last possible moment to purchase their holiday gifts for their own family, and friends and acquaintances. I have talked to many customers who are just buying presents as needed before they see the people that they are visiting.

With many online vendors offering free shipping or reduced rates on overnight shipping, don't be surprised to see a lot of last minute purchases that are scheduled to arrive at people's homes on December 24th. UPS ships right up to the holidays, and continues shipping the days between Christmas and New Year, and so does the US Post Office. What I am trying to say is to not be discouraged if your customers do not seem to be buying yet.

On another note, I recently finished a lens about using Zazzle images on your lenses to help yourself and your fellow lensmasters sell Zazzle items. It is a win-win situation for everyone because you can become a Zazzle affiliate without making anything, and both you and the designer will make money on any purchase. To read more about this, follow this link.

You can follow the Howling Squid Review directly from Twitter.

Making the Most Out of Your Zazzle Gallery

Ohio Birds Organic Grocery Bag by lakeerieartists
Create a custom bags using Zazzle

Another way to earn money online is by either creating a Zazzle gallery or by becoming a Zazzle affiliate and promoting other people's galleries. Zazzle fits well with Squidoo, and the two sites can be synergistic.

Zazzle allows you to set up a gallery for free to sell your own designs which they print on several types of products including t-shirts, cards, and photo sculptures as well as many other products. It is an easy site to navigate and build. You can also sign up as an affiliate through Zazzle to sell other people's designs which earns you 15% of whatever sells from your links.

So how do you promote sales on the Zazzle site?

Just like anything else online, Zazzle is not an immediate windfall, however if you build traffic, you will also build sales. Building traffic works just like sending traffic to lenses, hubs, or any other webpage you have online.

Here are some ideas of how to send traffic to your Zazzle gallery.

1. Make your Zazzle gallery a niche gallery.  Tightly focus the type of products sold.
2. Bookmark the gallery and individual items in the gallery on social bookmarking sites.
3. Create a blog to talk about your designs and Zazzle items.
4. Make an RSS feed to feed to Twitter and other places of your new products.
5. Make flyers and business cards to hand out to people about your Zazzle business.
6. Link to your Zazzle business from other online ventures.
7. Make a Squidoo lens about your Zazzle gallery, designs or products or topics related to them.
8. Write an article online that talks about your Zazzle gallery and put your link in the signature.
9. Research keywords on your topics and use them for the titles and descriptions of your products.
   

This is a great start to how to promote your gallery.  I am sure that you can think of more ideas.  You can also choose other galleries to promote in the same ways, and earn money from their sales.

You can follow the Howling Squid Review directly from Twitter.

Introducing the New Caption Module

Squidoo has introduced a new module called the "caption module" which creates all kinds of possibilities for interacting with your readers via your images. To try it out, I just completed a lens called Wall of Fire: Symbols and Meanings to advertise my Zazzle gallery and a photograph by one of the artists in my brick and mortar gallery.

I was looking for a way to incorporate the module with a way to earn money off the lens, and make it a thoughtful, not humorous lens. There are a lot of funny ways to use this module, but I wanted to try to create something different. This is a great way to publicize your images for sale in a Zazzle or other gallery while allowing your visitors to interact. See what you think.

You can follow the Howling Squid Review directly from Twitter.

Repetition

I am finding that when one thing works on Squidoo, it is worth my time to repeat it over and over again.

For instance, my best affiliate right now is CafePress. The reason for that, I believe, is that I have so many lenses that feature CafePress items. Therefore I need to do the same with other affiliates to get them to produce the way CafePress is.

I decided to focus on Zazzle where I can earn money as an affiliate, and as a creator of items. Over the next few weeks you will see me publish several lenses featuring Zazzle products.

I just finished two of them. Custom Design Your Own Organic T-shirts with Lake Erie Artists Gallery | Organic Tees from Zazzle and Celebrate Earth Day Everyday | Cool Organic T-Shirts for Any Occasion | Be Eco-Chic and Socially Responsible with EDUN Live. I am obviously featuring the organic shirts in these although I will feature other items later.

Squidoo is a Great Place to Showcase Your Online Store

Squidoo is a terrific place to showcase your online store whether it is your own website, Zazzle store, CafePress store, Etsy store, Ecrater store, Ebay store, or any other kind of online store.

There are many fine examples of this kind of showcasing on Squidoo. I am going to just highlight two of them for you to take a look at:

The first one is to showcase Jaguar Julie's Ecrater store:
JaguarJulieBuys eCrater Store -- Everything Must Go--Depending on the type of store you are highlighting, you can use the Squidoo modules in several ways. Many of the online stores have RSS feeds, or direct linking abilities. In this lens, Julie adds other modules that relate to her store's merchandise like the flickr slide show.

The second example is a showcase of Noadi's art on Etsy:
Noadi's Art on Etsy--This lens makes use of Squidoo's Etsy, flickr, and Youtube modules to highlight Noadi's work.

Some of the sites are already affiliated with Squidoo so they have selling modules like CafePress, Zazzle, Etsy, and Ebay. But don't let that hem you in. There are so many creative ways to create a selling showcase.