Open Your Own Online Shop

by Marian Cates

Ever thought of opening your own online shop?

Perhaps the idea appeals to you, but you wonder,

1. Do I have enough time to devote to it?
2. How much can I earn?
   
3. How will I get customers?
4. What company should I go with?
   

I have 6 online shops on Zazzle.com. I've opened them gradually over the past 3 years.

Zazzle is a company that prints your artwork, photos and designs onto their products. For a full listing of online-shop companies, please see my e-zine Art-Online.

If you create artwork, photographs or designs that you want to put onto ready-made products, you need a Print-On-Demand (POD) company. POD means the ability to print one item at a time.The company provides the products and you provide what goes onto them.

You upload your images onto the company's site and, using their product-design programs, place the images onto the products.

The company takes care of customer payment and shipping. When your customers have had sufficient time to return the products, the company sends you payment for your product sales.

You can put your images onto a variety of products (tees, mugs, mousepads, etc.) or onto paper or canvas (posters, prints, canvases, cards, etc.). Each POD company has its own set of products. Zazzle.com is a POD companies.

What you earn is the markup you set on your products. The company sets the base price of each of the products. Then you set the markup amount.

Some shopkeepers select a markup percentage for their shops. Others set percentages for each individual product. At some PODs, you can also set a dollar amount as your markup, either overall or for individual products, instead of using a percentage figure.

Zazzle.com allows you to set your markup in percentage. You can charge 10 to 99 percent over the basic cost of the product.

Another large POD company, Cafepress.com has, more or less, limited the amount that you can make on any products that customers find through a search on their marketplace, that is, their home page. (See Cafepress.com's Terms of Service for details of their pricing and markup policies.)

Of course you want to make as large a markup as you can. However, you may want to start out by pricing your products either lower than the average or at the average, so that you can attract customers.

Zazzle.com recently added a sort option for "lower to higher price," which gives new shopkeepers a good way to reach customers by pricing below the average.

You can change your markup for any new sales any time you want to. So you can experiment and see what works best for you.

If you make handmade products, there are a number of companies you will want to consider. The two companies I'm most familiar with are Etsy.com and Artfire.com (see my e-zine Art-Online for a full list of handmade-shop companies).

Etsy and Artfire are low-cost companies. Etsy charges per item listed in your shop, while Artfire charges a monthly fee. Both companies provide an active community of sellers.

To open your own shop, you need to

• open an account
• create a shop banner
• create a shop logo, aka avatar

You upload the banner and logo to the site. Then your shop is ready to stock.

With a handmade shop, you must take photographs of your products. This is perhaps the most challenging aspect of the online handmade shop. You will need to:

• learn how to create good photos yourself
• hire a photographer or
• hire a service to enhance your photos.

(You may want to check out my HubPages article Brighten & Bring Out The Color In Your Photos to learn of simple photo enhancement techniques that you can use to improve your product products, using the computer programs Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office Picture Manager.)

Uploading your photos is fairly simple and straightforward. With both Etsy and Artfire, you set your own prices and package and ship your products. The companies process the financial end of things and send you a paycheck for those items that are charged. If you have a Paypal account, Paypal will send you your earnings. If you accept checks or money orders, your customers will send them directly to you.

A fun and simple way to create a stylish banner for your online shop is to use digital paper, which you can purchase online.

When you're shopping for digital paper, be sure to read the shop policies concerning what you may do with the paper. You want to be able to:

• use the paper to create your banner
• publish your banner online
• create designs with the digital paper
  
• sell those designs in your shop.

I've found that most digital paper sellers won't allow these uses, but a few will. I've gotten most of my digital paper from the Etsy shop hellolovetoo.

To create a digital-paper banner in Adobe Photoshop:

• Create a new picture file of the correct proportions with a transparent or white background (sized for your site)
• Place the digital paper over the new picture file and adjust it to suit your taste
• Merge your layers
  
• Create a thin rectangle of color in the center of your banner and create borders above and below it
• Add your shop name in the center of this rectangular color block
• Save your file.

To add more dimension to your banner, add another layer:

• increase the length and width of the banner by 50 pixels
  
• Paint over the banner with the color you'd like to use for your border -- for instance, one of the colors in your digital paper
• Then place the banner file you previously saved onto this new rectangle of color, creating a 50 pixel border on all sides
  
• Bevel the top layer slightly and then merge the layers.
• Then slightly bevel the border again.
• As a last step, re-size the banner to its correct proportions and save.

Following these easy steps, you can create a shop banner that is both stylish and memorable. (See the Marian Cates Designs shop banner below.)

Of course, your first priority is to create an attractive shop and stock it with appealing products. Then you can explore your company's opportunities for joining its community and interacting with other sellers.

Once your shop is fairly well established, you will want to inform the world of your shop's arrival on the scene. There is always the option of paid advertising. But you can also use cost-free means to make your shop known. These include:

1. Social networking (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
2. Starting a shop-related blog
   
3. Publishing articles about your shops
4. Joining the fan clubs of sellers at your company
5. Exploring the shops at your company and leaving nice comments
   
6. Offering free gifts or drawings for free gifts
7. Following your company's forums and blogs
8. Joining teams at your company
   
9. Entering contests at your company
10. If allowed by your company, following up with your customers
11. If allowed by your company, sending out newsletters to customers
12. Opening a Flickr Studio and posting images of your products there
13. Joining groups that are interested in the type of products you sell
    

This sounds like a lot to do, and it is. But remember that you don't have to do everything at once. You can start with what feels the most comfortable. And then, step by step, you can add on to your marketing efforts. Gradually, you'll find that marketing activities become a natural part of having an online shop.

One simple marketing tool is to add a signature line to your e-mails. Using hyperlinks, you can offer your e-mail recipients a link to your online shop. If they're curious, they will click on your link to see what your shop is like. If you plan to market using your personal facebook page, you can also offer a link to it (see illustration to the right).

Is an online shop a good idea for you, something that you're capable of doing right now? You can only find out by giving it a try.

Your individual situation will determine your approach to your shop. You may have only a small amount of time and energy to devote to it, due to other responsibilities and duties. Or you may be able to focus most of your time and energy on it.

There are only so many hours in the day. If you have a full-time job, you will only be able to work on your shop during the time you're not at your job. Friends and family have to be taken into account, too. Relationships and the responsibilities that come with them also require time and energy.

Your individual priorities and responsibilities will determine the shape of your shop. Each online shop is unique. There is no ideal shop with rigid rules. You set up your own rules and determine for yourself how much time you'll spend on it.

Your shop can be a hobby, a creative outlet. It can be a part-time job. Or it can be a full-time occupation.

What will make your shop a success is not its size or even the income it brings in. Its success derives from your happiness in creating and running it. Only by giving it a try will you find out if an online shop is the right venture for you.

So why not give it a try?