Hello September and National Stamping Month!!

I am sooo excited about September!  I don't even know where to begin!  Our new CTMH Idea Book goes live today.  It's National Stamping Month and I love, love, love the September SOTM!

Let's start with the SOTM because I am planning to share cool samples all month long.  This is definitely a stamp set you are going to want to add to your collection.

Here's a beautiful sample made by the artists at the Home Office.  I love how they made it look like watercolor!

Next Up:  Three fun stamp sets to celebrate National Stamping Month!!

September is National Stamping Month, and this year Close To My Heart has something to help every kind of papercrafter say a big “hello” to life! Available only during the month of September, these exclusive C-size My Acrylix^® Hello, Life! stamp sets can be purchased for $13.95 USD / $16.50 CAD each! Or, for an even better deal, you can purchase all three for only $34.95 USD / 41.50 CAD—a savings of $6.90 USD / $8 CAD! Each stamp set is designed to fit with a specific type of papercrafting, whether that’s scrapbooking, cardmaking, or pocket scrapbooking. However, all the stamp sets coordinate with each other and can be used together to create dynamic artwork. These stamp sets also coordinate with shapes from the new Cricut^® Artistry collection to help expand your artwork options even further. Remember, these stamp sets are available for one month only, so get your orders in for one stamp set—or all three—before these gorgeous stamps disappear! Make certain to follow Close To My Heart’s blog, Instagram, and Facebook page for artwork inspiration featuring these lively stamp sets all month long. You can post your own artwork to your social media channels using the hashtag #ctmhHelloLife.

Dates: Offer valid September 1, 2015 (9:00 am MDT)–September 30, 2015 (11:59 pm MDT).

Shop here to get yours today!

But wait - Did I say NEW IDEA BOOK?

Not only is the NEW idea book live today, but our Fall Seasonal Supplement is too!!  If you're like me, your wish list will be HUGE!!  Don't worry though!  I'm always here to help you get the most for your hard earned dollars.  You can order a little bit each month to fit your budget or... you can host a party and get some of it FREE and even earn 1/2 off items too.

Woo Hoo for Woo Rank!!!

This week we ran our websites through Woorank to find areas where we can improve and optimize our sites so that we can improve our ranking and online visibility.  This was probably my favorite assignment of the semester!  Why?  Because I feel like I have a handle on most of the items, but I miss the mark when I forget to incorporate all the different tasks.

For instance - I always include alternate text when posting pics at work, yet somehow I missed it on my website.  It might have just been an oversight when I posted the picture, or it might be that the place I enter that information wasn't obvious and I have to research how to do it on that system.

Another area that I have to improve on is my meta tags.  I felt like I was being too "wordy" when I added mine.  Turns out, I was too brief and I need to add more.

I appreciated how quickly woorank gave me the results and now I have a nice little checklist of things to improve.  I love checklists so that works for me!

Power of social media

This week real life, my job and my school all coordinated together!  It was time to study social media for my class, I have been working hard to be more consistent and develop my social media presence and I am currently at a convention where we talked about...social media.  It was like a little in depth social media education for me this week.

I am super grateful that we learned about google adwords and analytics and everything else we have studied this semester, but I truly feel like social media is the place where I can truly impact my business.

My goal is to continue to post consistently on facebook and to expand my postings on instagram and pinterest.  In addition, I want to make sure I am promoting my products.  While I think there should be a good blend of posts that just provide information, with promotional type posts... I think that sometimes I just post info and I don't really ask for the sale....

In a weird coincidence, I also saw the power of social media this week.  While we were at convention my buddy Gail and I decided to post a few videos about our experience to our team page.  Well after just one or two silly one minute videos, we suddenly had a following.  Even people here at the convention had seen them and asked if we would doing more.  We even had people volunteer to be "special guests" on our" show.  I posted all these videos on our private team page, but I am definitely trying to figure out a way to capture that same enthusiasm so I can do something as rewarding to promote my website.

Landing Page Optimization and SEO

This week we spent some time analyzing our landing pages to make sure that they contain the information that users are looking for and that they match our ads.  It can be frustrating for a site visitor to follow an ad to your site, looking for the promotion from the ad, but not see it right away.  If they don't find the information quickly, they will typically jump right back off your site, making the money you spent, worthless.  Therefore it's important to protect your investment and make the experience better for your visitors.

We also spent some time studying SEO.  Once again, this was just a little look and it will definitely require more study.  I discovered that I will need to spend some time getting some backlinks to my site, in order to increase my rankings.  I believe I have set up my meta tags correctly, but now I more fully understand why and how they work.

Sharing what I've learned

I think this week ended up being about sharing what I've learned....

We added Google Analytics to our sites this week and worked on our Adwords campaigns.

I added analytics to my blog a few years (?) ago.  As with all things, I go through phases when I work hard to learn and implement new skills, then I slack off, then I work hard... Kind of sounds like those Nephites hanging out in the wilderness, doesn't it.  (There are more than a few things in my life where I see that pattern rear it's ugly head....) Anyway, I added analytics a while back and periodically I'll go and check to see how people find my blog, which posts/links they are clicking on, how many hits I get, etc., but I haven't done much else with it.

Now that I am moving along on my web design/development education, I am looking at all of these things more thoroughly and attempting to understand them better.  As part of the discussion for class I was able to share some of the things that I found interesting in the stats for my blog. 

And then...

Today, I met a friend at Starbucks to chat about our businesses and blogging and instagram and periscope... and I was able to discuss affiliate marketing and adwords and analytics.  Not only was it great to be able to share what I've learned, but it helped me to realize what I have taken away from all the things we have been studying. 

I know that I've just scratched the surface on these topics and I'll have to continue to study them and implement them in order to gain a better understanding, but it looks like I have a new "geeky" friend to chat about it with.

Ads that work

This week we worked on creating our google ads.  It was interesting to think about how to say what we want to say in just a few characters.  I really enjoyed reading my classmates ads and getting their feedback.  It was interesting to see how different our perspectives are.  It was a great reminder that everyone sees things differently.  We might think our message is very clear, but often, it isn't.

I tested a couple of my ad ideas with my classmates and they gave them top marks, so now it will be interesting to see if they generate hits for my site.

Speaking of my site.... I love it!!!!!  I am having so much fun finishing it up.  I have so much content to add, that I am sure I will be working on it for a long time, but it's really starting to look the way I want it to.  This weekend, I'm taking photos and adding a few more things to my for sale pages, but really...it's pretty much ready to go.

I gave one of my customer groups a sneak peek and they loved it!  They were excited to see that I was incorporating some of the things they had asked for.

Keywords...Keywords...Keywords....

It's time to start advertising our websites.  I am hoping to learn some techniques to help me drive the "right" kind of traffic to my site.

In the stamping and scrapbooking industry it is easy to get tons of hits.  You simply have to post cute projects, participate in blog hops and share on social media.  The problem is, lots of hits doesn't actually equate to better sales.  Many of those hits are from people looking for ideas on how to promote the products to their own customers.

As I move away from a blogging site and focus more on promoting my business, I hope to discover the keywords that will attract customers to my site.

This week we learned

• Think like a customer when building keyword lists
• Good keywords that are short phrases perform best (2-3 words)
• Determine whether general keywords or specific keywords suit your topic better
• Group keywords by themes

I made a huge list of keywords and researched how they performed.  At this point I'm planning to manually manage my budget so that I can adjust where I spend my money, depending on what performs the best.

Licenses and Taxes - Oh My!

This week was all about legal structure, licenses and taxes.  The stumbling blocks of every entrepreneur.  For me, it is fun to think about how I want to grow my business, what products are selling and what classes I should teach.  It's not as much fun to decide whether my business should be a sole proprietorship, a corporation or a partnership.  And it's definitely not fun to talk about taxes!  However, I spent the whole week doing just that, and it wasn't so bad.  It actually felt good to be somewhat knowledgeable about one of our topics, instead of trying to cram as much as I can into a quick 48 hour study period. 

I researched to make sure that I have the proper legal structure in place, applied for my seller's permit and read up on the sales tax laws that pertain to my type of business and the online sales. 

While it's not really a "fun" topic, it feels good to know that I've got all the right pieces in place and I can keep moving forward on my website.

We're getting close to launch date!

This week was all about site design and credit card payments.  I spent a great deal of time revisiting some websites.  While I found a couple that inspired me, mostly I was reminded of what I didn't like and where I thought I could improve upon what others are doing.  That sounds much more egotistical than I really mean.  I am not the ultimate web guru.  I think I've just outgrown the typical "blog style" website and I am hoping to create something a little bit different.

As always, I am great at brainstorming and coming up with the ideas, I just need to continue to develop my skills so I can implement them! 

I got off to a bit of a rocky start with building my site and I still have one little item that is driving me crazy (I can't figure out how to change the name that displays on the web browser tab), but I am finally starting to understand how to change the fonts, backgrounds, etc.  I definitely think this will be the last website I build, using a site builder!  While it's quick and easy once you get going, there are pieces and parts that you either can't change at all, or have very limited options.

My other little stumbling block is...  I have a ton of content I want to put on the site.  I'm hoping I can find the time to really do it the way I want it.

Site Builders and Hosting...Oh My!

Another week of research and I got a little confused along the way....

This week we researched the options we have for building our site.  We can use drag and drop site builders( Weebly, Webstarts, etc.), sites like Wordpress that give you a bit more control or even build it from scratch, writing our own code.

Since I'm really new to learning html, I immediately knew that I wasn't quite ready to build a site by writing my own html and css and have it ready in a little over two weeks so I decided to focus on the drag and drop options. 

And here is where I got a bit confused...

1.  For some reason I thought that the fees I was going to pay to the site builder included hosting.
2.  When I figured out that I would also have to buy hosting, I couldn't figure out how to know whether the hosting site would work with the site builder I chose.
3.  I felt like I was getting married and trying to find the perfect husband...but I kept finding out my potential spouse had some kind of major flaw that I wasn't sure I could live with.

Well it turns out that....

1. Some site builders DO include hosting.
2. Of course it might be difficult to see if my potential hosting company will support my site builder if there isn't any info about it because of #1 ....the site builder uses it own hosting....
3. Sure wish I could take a few on a date to get to know them better before I get"engaged" ....

Thankfully I'm in a class with many other diligent students that are researching the same subject and are sharing what they have discovered.  I still haven't picked my perfect site building/hosting mate yet...but I have a couple of options I'm leaning towards.... so stay tuned...

So many choices

This week we researched brokers, manufacturers and wholesalers as well as affiliate marketing and drop-shipping.  It was a great introduction to all of those items, but I know I will have to go back and spend quite a bit of time on each of the subjects to really become knowledgeable about it.  At least now I have a general understanding about them.

I was actually kind of surprised at how easy it would be to secure product to sell.  Our assignment was to research sunglasses.  As I was looking at all of the options available on AliBaba, I kept thinking about all the vendors at the swap meet in Hawaii.  It was a huge swap meet, but we saw the same products over and over again.  I bet most of them bought it from someplace like AliBaba.  I could see how you could easily start a business based on purchasing product from a site like that and then reselling it.

While I enjoyed researching the brokers, manufacturers and wholesalers and I am sure I will use the information in the future.... I was SUPER excited to study affiliate marketing and drop-shipping.  As someone who blogs and loves reading and following blogs, I have seen a great deal of affiliate marketing.  There was a point when I contemplated trying to make money from my blog, but I wasn't sure how to get started and I wanted to make sure that I could control what products or companies were promoted on my site.  I was absolutely shocked at how easy it would be to get started and by how many choices their are.  The more I studied, the more ideas that popped into my head about people I know that might be interested in pursuing it.

New Semester - New Focus - Online Business

It's a new semester and I am excited to be taking classes related to my degree.  I have had a ton of homework, but it's fun stuff that I would be interested in researching anyway. 

This semester I plan to use this blog to document what I'm learning for my Web Business class. 

So far we have been studying the different types of business models that can be used for a web business.  I was familiar with many of them, but wouldn't have been able to identify and classify them by business model before I studied the list.  We also spent some time experimenting with google adwords.  Not only did I find it interesting to work on our assignment and compare the competition and demand for different products, but I immediately saw the benefit of researching some keywords for my existing business.  After seeing how competitive some of the keywords are, I have found that I am pondering and brainstorming how to set myself apart so that I can increase my web traffic and find new customers.

As part of our research we have also been debating whether it is more beneficial to choose a business model first or select a product first when developing an online business.  While I believe that you should choose your product first, I have to admit that if you're simply looking to build a business, you could probably be successful doing it either way.  Many of my classmates made a good case for choosing the business model first.  They felt that you could then choose a business model that suits your job skills and the business goals you have and then find a business/product that suited the business model.