Well, I have a personal blog to keep relatives updated, but I thought I would start a work-related blog, to communicate with friends about my adventures as a business owner/webmistress/graphic artist/etc.
In 10/03, I decided to start an online printing retailing business,
www.AntoniaRosePrinting.com. I thought
I would sell mainly wedding invitations, as I got into it through the encouragement of my friend, Theresa Scott, who runs
www.LittleBridalShop.com. I had never created a website or anything online before, never used a graphics program, and never run a retail business. It has been quite an adventure!
To complement the wedding sales area, I created
www.IDoinMN.com with Theresa's help, learning
Front Page as I went. That is an online wedding planning advice site, not a sales site. We wrote a book's worth of content to help brides plan their wedding. Then we decided to put the info into a PDF they could download, and eventually we printed it and sell it in a comb-bound form for $10 (which just covers our printing costs.)
I got a
Carlson Craft (my press) cookie-cutter site with their most popular products on it, also known as a cceasy site. That is
www.antoniaroseprinting.cceasy.com. I can control the text on the main category pages and the home page, and I can control the discount I offer, but that is about all I can control about that site. I found it limiting, especially as I started getting more and more personalized Post-it note orders.
I decided to create my own site to piggyback on that site, hence
www.AntoniaRosePrinting.com. Initially I just used it to lead people into the cceasy site, but then I started to follow my customers' lead and focus on what they were ordering, namely Post-it notes! I found Carlson Craft is one of the nation's largest printers of Post-it notes and that they offered a lot more than was on the cceasy site. So I expanded my offering, initially using Front Page to build my site.
After about 4 months, I got frustrated by the limitations of Front Page and decided
to invest in Dreamweaver. My brother Steve Wilmes, a big-time web developer (
www.swconsulting.com) said that was really the way to go and he assured me I could learn it.
So I rebuilt my printing site with Dreamweaver, using a template I bought from
PixelMill.com. Of course, I messed it up so the pages are not tied to the template; when I change one thing on the navigation or something, I have to change all the 150 plus pages! Live and learn!
Now I offer all the Post-it note products Carlson Craft offers. I have a big line of
wedding favor Post-it notes plus gift ideas, aside from the more common business uses. Plus I've expanded into personal stationery for adults and kids, again following customer interest. I've become quite competent at Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator as well. I do basic layouts and file conversions for my customers for free, something very few printers will do.
My first sale was around 12/03, so we've been actually in business just over a year. We are top 5 on Google for half of our key words, and working on the other ones. (We went from 500s to 30-40 on those, but now are back down to 100--the mysteries of the algorithms!) We tried pay per click advertising and it got us business, but the cost for
Google was too high. We still do a bit of it with
Overture, but mostly rely on our Google placement, external links and offline advertising to pull buyers in.
I started working with the
Mompack.com people in the last 4 months, exchanging advertising material that we pass on to customers. That has spread my name around at a low cost. My latest adventure is creating and releasing some press releases. My first 4 went out today; we'll see what happens!
Stay tuned for more adventures in online business!
Post-it notes? Face it, if he cares about ties, he would rather buy them himself. If he doesn't care, he doesn't care. Give him something he uses every day (if he works in an office), can use to promote his business or thank his customers (if he is self-employed), can use to make lists or record golf scores (every man has a hobby, sports interest or some such...), even to make grocery lists if he is so inclined! He will think of you every time he sees a Post-it note. Plus, they are cheaper than a nice tie and way cheaper than a new drill! (Starting at $15.73 plus shipping for 10 50-sheet pads...)