Custom Post-its R Us!

New Wedding Program Fan Styles

2008-05-21T15:33:00.000-07:00

Carlson Craft just this week released its new fan programs brochure, with some brand new wedding program fan styles, including one on recycled paper. They will be retiring the old brochures soon, as the new one has all the most popular styles in it plus a few new ones. The only bad news is that they have quadrupled the fee for having them assemble the fans. I used to charge $45 for 100, now they charge $45 for 25! I guess a lot more people will be assembling their own fans. It isn't hard to do, just a bit tedious. Here are some of the new styles. Our wedding fan program samples page continues to be popular, I had to demand a few sites take down images stolen from it they were using to sell their own homemade (laser printed) fan programs. Why they would try to sell their programs based on our artwork is beyond me, they don't have the same library of motifs and monograms that Carlson Craft has access to for us.

Changing Hosts for our Website

2007-04-05T14:26:00.000-07:00

This weekend we are moving the whole website to a new internet host, Rackspace, which promises no downtime and 24/7 support. I have been really impressed with them so far.

We have tested the new site using the numerical URL (http://72.3.135.168) and it seems to be working, thanks to some help from a terrific programmer, Katie Grogan, who has helped me with my shopping cart over the years. Now we just have to swap out the numbers for the name throughout the site, and change the nameservers at the registrar, and hopefully it will be a smooth transition. We are doing it on Friday afternoon, to give us the weekend to fix anything that comes up.

This became necessary when we had 3 full days of time OFF LINE in March due to our current host, 1and1, which is terrible and I don't recommend to anyone. The only thing I can say about it is that it was cheap, but we have outgrown it. Rackspace is more than we really need, but I couldn't find a hosting provider in between in terms of price that could give me the uptime and service responsiveness that I need in order to sleep at night. So hopefully it will be a quiet weekend with no news to report as everything will go smoothly!

New napkin colors

2007-03-08T15:21:00.000-08:00

We have new wedding napkin colors! Finally, an aqua is back! I was so excited to get the two new albums with new colors. Aqua, Marine (turquoise, basically), Mango, Magenta, Bay (a medium blue)--all brand new colors. Peach is not in any current album but they are still filling my orders for it, so we will see if it is soon discontinued. Below is our new bay color.

Survived the Move

2007-03-08T15:14:00.000-08:00

Well we moved our family and thus this business from New Jersey to Maryland due to my husband's promotion to an inside-the-beltway job with the federal government. Thanks to my Cingular wireless on my handheld computer, I was able to keep up with my email and orders from Antonia Rose Printing for the week we were without high speed internet access. The wedding season has begun and orders are starting to pick up, especially for the fan programs. Our new house is in a rural part of Maryland along the Chesapeake Bay and we have a big yard for the kids. Best of all, there are other kids their age just down the road, no small thing when you are out in the country.

The latest excitement was when our website was down all day yesterday due to a server hardware problem. I was very unhappy that my host, 1and1.com, did not move it to a backup server but just left us offline for 10 hours until it was fixed. That was not a happy day! But we are good to go now.

Wedding Fan Programs still hot for 2007

2007-03-08T14:22:00.000-08:00

Our wedding fan programs are still our hottest program format for the 2007 wedding season, with more photo ones being sold this year.

We are seeing a lot of creativity with color, too. On the photo wedding fan programs you can print the text in two different colors, so between the colors and the fonts you can really make a unique design.

Our prices are still below retail, though we have to limit it to one free proof now. The proofs are taking up to 3 days to turnaround, so many people don't have time for more than one proof anyway, not a big change for most customers.

Search engine placement work paying off!

2006-09-08T09:33:00.000-07:00

What a busy summer! Our traffic is nearly triple that of last summer, so this one-woman shop has been hustling. Last winter we put up pages for regular wedding programs (in addition to the popular wedding fan programs we had been selling) and more content for printed napkins, and both those pages have taken off. We are top 5 for our target keywords in Yahoo and MSN and just broke top 10 for printed wedding programs in Google; wedding napkins is still at 12 or so. Neither existed a year ago, or were so far down I couldn't find them.

I haven't done much with our wedding planning sites, www.idoinmn.com and www.idoinnj.com, but I updated them a little bit this summer. I also added some content pages to the weddings area of my main site, new info on wedding invitation etiquette, writing your wedding programs, and save the date cards. There is a dearth of good information out there on these topics; most of the search results are just lists of sites where you can buy the stuff, not actual information. I think that is why our sample pages (for programs and program fans) are so popular--people want to see what others have done to get ideas.

As for Post-its, after slipping a bit in the rankings on Google for our main keywords (custom Post-its and personalized Post-its), we are back in the top five. Fewer people search for custom Post-its than for custom Post-it notes, but those who do, find us! The majority of the search results for either term are big companies that don't sell fewer than 500 pads anyway. (Those companies contract directly with 3M as their supplier, but 3M doesn't deal with the small orders themselves.) So our challenge is to help people find us. We plan on reworking the Post-its section some more this winter, as the wedding season slows down.

Post-it Note Business Cards are Getting Hot!

2006-07-28T10:24:00.000-07:00

As the summer wears on we are selling more and more of the business card Post-it notes that were introduced this spring. They are a convenient size for coupons and of course perfect for business cards. I have been using them to attach a business card to a brochure I send out with samples, and they work great for that, no paperclips. Our

Busy Summer

2006-07-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

Over a month since I've posted! We went to visit family for 3 weeks and I ran everything from the laptop at my brother's house, and it went just fine. The only problem was sending out samples, which I couldn't do for a few weeks. We just got back last weekend and it's been our busiest week ever.

Wedding programs continue to be hot for us, and I finally have worked out with my press a better way of getting the orders to them than faxing (copy comes out too light so they can't read it well) or their online ordering system (which for some unknown and mysterious reason takes 3 days longer than faxing). I got a real person's email address to just send in orders that way! What a relief for us, as the delay in getting proofs was really a problem.

Wedding Programs are taking off

2006-06-10T16:44:00.000-07:00

We just started offering wedding programs (not wedding fan programs, but the regular kind)this springl and they are taking off fast. Most printers of wedding invitations don't have a large line of programs, and most people who carry the Regency programs (as we do), have them on a Regency affiliate site, not on their "regular" website, so they don't get indexed with the search engines and customers don't find them. I am really happy to say we have worked out some of the kinks of our new relationship with Regency and are getting a faster response to our orders, proof approvals and so on.

Valerie program, Tiffany program, Stephanie wedding program

On a different note, I discovered that Carlson Craft has another color of napkins we hadn't been offering. Antonia Rose Printing is a vacuum cleaner for personalization options on Carlson Craft items, offering more different monograms, motifs and fonts than anyone else we can find online. Every time we find something new in an album or online (on a competitor's site) that is an option, we add it to our site. In browsing competitor sites I saw peach printed napkins from Carlson Craft, so I called Carlson Craft and sure enough, they still offer them. They aren't in any of the 8 albums we have! But they are on our site now and we have already sold them twice in the 2 weeks they have been up!

Wedding Post-it Notes!

2006-05-28T11:58:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a long time, its been so busy around here. Our traffic is three times what it was this time last year, between the custom Post-its and the wedding program fans and now other wedding items as well. The business card Post-it notes are starting to take off too as people are hearing about them more. The business card size is a great size for coupons as well. And I continue to be amazed with what people can do with the little 2x3 pads. Custom Post-its have not come close to their market saturation level. This time of year the product that meshes our two areas of specialty is the wedding favor Post-it note, which continues to be popular when a pad is used as a favor/placecard.

Super Sticky Post-it Notes Are Here!

2006-05-09T12:08:00.000-07:00

Yippee! We finally have some Super Sticky Post-it notes we can print on, in 4x3 and 4x6 sizes. The new custom Post-it notes brochure and pricing just came out and it includes Super Stickys. Only in large quantities (over 500 pads), and only in white, but some is better than none!

We also now have 4x4 and 6x8 pads in small quantities for both personalized Post-it notes and custom graphics, so I am pleased to be offering more options again than anywhere else. The pricing hardly went up for the small quantities, but there is now less of a discount as you buy larger quantities. All of our prices are still 15% below retail.

Swamped with Wedding Program Fans!

2006-05-06T11:46:00.000-07:00

I am appreciating the good service I am getting as part of Carlson Craft's Gold Group this past week as we are being inundated with orders for wedding program fans. It is the start of the busy wedding season (through September) and we have better pricing and way more options for personalization than most companies offering them, so we are busy. They take up quite a bit of time, too, as most of them go through several proofs before printing, so this turns into a full time job for a few months here. I'm not complaining! I appreciate being able to get through to customer service right away when I call now, though, instead of being put on hold or having someone call me back hours later. This shell wedding fan program is a new style for 2006.

Carlson Craft's Gold Group

2006-04-28T06:20:00.000-07:00

I just got an email Tuesday that Antonia Rose Printing is now a member of Carlson Craft's Gold Group, based on sales volume. This is for the social and wedding printing side of the company, which has split off its business printing into basically a separate company, Carlson Craft Business Solutions. Anyway, that means we have a special email address, phone number and fax number to use to access customer service. We'll see if it improves the response time we get. The people on the other end are very nice but the proof is in the pudding. It is nice to be recognized, though.
The wedding orders have been coming in fast and furious as the season kicks into high gear, particularly wedding napkins and wedding program fans. Our wedding invitation sales have been up this year from last year, but still are a small piece of total sales.

Here is a particularly pretty wedding fan program we printed. I like the look of the reverse printed monogram, which is unique to Antonia Rose Printing's fan programs.

Printed Wedding Napkins

2006-04-13T15:10:00.000-07:00

Despite the fact that our wedding napkins page is nowhere to be found in Google (it is less than 6 months old), we show up on Froogle results at the top of the Google results if you search for wedding napkins, and we are getting a lot of postive feedback. I did some research today, looking at the sites that are first page Google results for wedding napkins. They really ARE all the same thing, as a customer just told me yesterday! They offer the same napkin and ink colors as we do, maybe a few less, but many, many fewer motifs, none or one or two monograms, no option for sideways (corner) placement instead of the traditional layout, at prices that are about the same as ours!

I knew we offered more, but I didn't realize how much more until I did this research. Carlson Craft would print their entire line of monograms and motifs for these other dealers (as would Regency, the other most common source of the napkins I found), but the dealers just don't go to the trouble of offering it. Maybe they are scared off by the $10 die charge, I don't know. But when people find ours, they are thrilled. It is a replay of our successful custom Post-it notes strategy of offering more options. Now I just have to hope that Google sees the value in our web page before much longer, so I can't count on the fact that few of my competitors have Froogle feeds of their products!

We are listed in the Open Directory Project!

2006-04-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

Yippee! Antonia Rose Printing is listed at www.dmoz.org, after a year's wait! We are under Business, Marketing, Advertising, Promotional Products.

What the heck does that mean, you ask? Well, the Open Directory Project (dmoz) is the largest human-edited directory on the web, and it is the source for hundreds of other directories and search engines, including the Google Directory. So being listed there gets you in to all the other listings.

It also makes you an "authority" site in the eyes of the search engines, improving your results placement and your Google Page Rank. They figure if you are listed in ODP, you must be a legit site with something to offer.

Many sites apply to be listed and never are. And you aren't told when you are listed or denied listing. So I have been checking the ODP for the last year to see if we got listed, and lo and behold the first week of April we were listed! We are celebrating, even though it is hard to explain why to most people.

(If you search ODP for Post-it notes you get only 10 sites, for custom Post-it notes only 2!)

No April Fool's Joke: Custom Printed 4x4 Post-it Notes Are Here!

2006-04-01T17:08:00.000-08:00

I just got around to looking at a quote I received Friday and lo and behold, we now have 4x4 custom Post-it notes available for custom graphics at the same pricing as 4x6 Post-its. Yeah! I knew this was coming but didn't know when. I have been told 6x8 small quantity custom Post-its will be coming soon as well, but I don't have pricing on them yet.

These are the ones sold plain or lined as "Post-it Big Notes" and they are a great size for many things. We are the only place online right now you can get them with custom graphics in small quantities, though I am sure the other guys will catch up at some point. They won't beat our low minimum custom Post-its pricing, though! Our custom Post-its sales in general keep going up and up as more people discover ways to use them and that they are available.

Photo Address Labels?

2006-03-24T12:04:00.000-08:00

This is a new product since right before Christmas--you can put a photo on address labels or To/From labels. I have done nothing to promote it, and they are only on our Carlson Craft catalog, but I am starting to sell them. So, following what has worked so far, now I need to promote them! It is a cool idea, you just upload your photo when you order and they are pretty cheap--$13.50 or so retail for 240, so 15% less from us. I think they will be especially popular with the brides-to-be who order from us, as they like to personalize everything as much as possible! New parents would probably also like them, if I could figure out how to reach them.

Custom Post-it Note Holders!

2006-03-24T11:09:00.000-08:00

Yeah! Carlson Craft has vinyl imprinted Post-it note holders again! When we started this business two years ago, they were in the promotional products book, but were removed within a few months. They haven't been available until now, when they are in the new Presentation Essentials book (along with binders, folders, padfolios, etc.) AND they are in 26 different colors: brights and more traditional business colors. I am already figuring out how many to order to send to my preferred customers, probably in grey, along with a pad of my personalized Post-it notes.

Carlson Craft Distinguished Dealer Award

2006-03-18T14:50:00.000-08:00

For the second year now, Antonia Rose Printing has been awarded the Carlson Craft Distinguished Dealer Award. Well, that is what it was called in 2004. Now they are splitting their Social Division and Business Solutions section into completely separate businesses, so we got two awards, one from each side. Few dealers work with both sides of the business as much as we do. Anyway, for a business that was just an idea in 12/03, not even two and a half years ago, we are doing pretty good.

Wedding Fan Programs

2006-03-14T10:19:00.000-08:00

Our wedding program fans are hot again this year, the trendy program format for 2006. We are sending out samples right and left and starting to get orders in for April and May weddings for the Carlson Craft wedding fan programs we started offering a year and a half ago.

We are also now offering a different style of wedding fan program, from Regency, as they are also popular. Did you know Regency and Carlson Craft are both Taylor Corp. companies, with the same ownership even though they compete against each other? Kind of odd.
There is more competition with the wedding fan programs this year as well, although the retailer who comes up number one in the search engines for these, printedexpressions.com, is actually marking them up, selling them for MORE than retail! Maybe we shouldn't be discounting them...Business with these is just going to grow as more people see them and hear about them, so there will be plenty to go around, esp. as we are at the top of MSN and Yahoo and on the first page of Google about half the time for these keywords.

Broadband users vs. dial-up users

2006-03-14T09:50:00.000-08:00

I have been struggling lately with trying to optimize my site for two groups of computer users, those with broadband and those without. If you have a fast connection, you want good quality graphics and lots of them if you are considering buying something. I want to see what it looks like in detail before I buy. I also get annoyed having to click through lots of pages to get to what I want. It is estimated now that 50% of computer users have broadband at home or work, and 61% of active internet users have it.

But that still leaves an awful lot of people with slow dial-up connections. I have been looking at the percent of my site visitors who leave in less than 30 seconds, and I know a good portion of them are dial-up users who get tired of waiting. I have been trying to trim my web pages as much as possible, but for some it is nearly impossible to get them under the recommended 100k, which is the magic size beyond which most dial-up users won't wait.

I have got my home page and main category pages down there. But I don't see how to do that with my wedding fan programs page, which shows a small picture of each style available. I have trimmed the picture size and optimized them as much as possible while still leaving them visible, but I can't get it under 167k. And forget about my motif and font selection pages! They are huge. I just hope people understand that if they are choosing a motif from a large selection, that selection will take a while to load.

I guess I hope that among Internet users, people buying online are younger and more tech savvy and therefore more likely to have broadband. And the numbers keep going up, esp as the price goes down for DSL

Still waiting for the magic answer here.

Wedding Programs, not the fan kind

2006-02-16T13:28:00.000-08:00

We have been receiving so much traffic from the wedding fan programs that I decided to see how it goes with regular format wedding programs, and I added around 70 to the site over the past few days. I especially like the photo wedding programs and the ones tied with ribbons.

I also got delivery of some sample wedding fan programs I ordered so I could give them out as samples. I think the mocha ink on the pink paper is lovely. I've already sent out 9 samples of the pink fan programs.

Signature Line Personalized Post-it Notes

2006-02-12T13:58:00.000-08:00

We have a new category of Post-it notes online, our Signature Line personalized Post-it notes. Based on customer orders and my dh's insistence, we are offering post-it notes with a two line quote or saying at the top and your name at the bottom. You could always do this with our Design Your Own Personalized section, but putting them off by themselves helps people find them and get the idea better. I have had several orders a month for these, with people putting their favorite quotations or sayings on them. You hardly get an email anymore that doesn't have a signature quote or saying attached to it. So the time is ripe. Get them while they're hot!

New Wedding Fan Programs, cont.

2006-02-06T11:48:00.000-08:00

My dear friend Theresa, owner of www.littlebridalshop.com, scanned the fan wedding programs brochure she got Friday for me, so they are up on the site already! When I get my own brochures today, I will scan them and get better images up, though my internet is down today. (We have cable internet and both TV and internet went out this morning. They are working on it down the street. Thank heavens one of our neighbors has DSL and an unsecured wireless network within range, or I would be panicking about being offline all day.) Here is an image of the colored fans, though the green looks like yellow here, not sage, the red is too brown and the pink is too light. I need to order a set and scan them as samples for my site.

Colored stock wedding fan programs in sage, pink and red.

New Fan Wedding Programs Designs!

2006-02-02T05:52:00.000-08:00

Carlson Craft just came out yesterday with a new fan wedding programs brochure, which I will have in hand on Monday after UPS gets here. So the new designs should be on my site by Monday night! I don't know any more than I can tell from the picture to the left, but that shows a shell-shaped wedding program fan, a full-color picture on a fan, and a light pink stock.

I put together my own pdf wedding fan programs brochure for these fan programs because people keep asking for a brochure on them and the Carlson Craft one (the old ones, two versions actually) do not include all available designs. I anticipate the same problem with this one, as it is the size of the other two so will not have room for all the designs. Between the brochure and free samples I will mail out, my customers should get all the info they need.

This product is really an exciting one for us as it was SOOO popular last spring, the first spring and summer it was available. We anticipate even more sales in this area this year, so we are anxious to offer everything we can. There are not many other people offering these online, although more now than last spring, and most are not discounting as much as we are. Nobody has as many options posted as we do, including all the monograms and motifs, etc. And most are charging extra for a proof (or at least a second proof), colored ink, and so on. Overall we offer the best service and options on these at the lowest price, so we are expecting a booming business in them as the wedding season progresses. We have already sent out hundreds of samples and a few orders are starting to come in.

Post-it Note Business Cards

2006-01-19T14:51:00.000-08:00

I just sent out a newsletter to my customer list announcing this product, and within 10 minutes I had my first order for Post-it Note Business Cards! Same day I put it on the website!

Business Card Post-it Notes Are Here!

2006-01-19T14:40:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I got a flyer in the mail from Carlson Craft with a note from the Post-it Notes product manager that they were coming out with a new product - Business Card Post-it notes, in the standard business card size of 2.5 by 3. She sent me the info so I could put them up on my site before they are officially unveiled in a month or two.

So here they are! Colors for the paper are white, cream, light grey and canary yellow. Ink colors are black, blue and red, and two color printing is available. I think these are going to be really popular as people hear about them. I'll post more pictures later. I think these are really cool. I'm going to order some for myself!

History of Post-its

2006-01-07T14:23:00.001-08:00

I found a good article on The Rake about the history of Post-it notes that goes beyond the usual 3M promotional stuff. Our sales of personalized Post-its and custom graphics Post-its have been doubling every six months or so. The more people have them, the more they want them. This article puts them in the cultural context.

Happy New Year!

2006-01-03T04:58:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! Christmas was a big success for Antonia Rose Printing! We had more than twice as many visitors to the website as last December, although down a bit from this November: over 7000 unique visits!

The conversion rate to sales is low but not bad from my understanding of online web sales in general. Almost all of the Christmas sales were of personalized Post-it notes. The motif on the one to the left is from our Just For Fun postits line.

Almost the day after Christmas, the wedding stuff started picking up, with requests for samples of wedding program fans and orders for wedding napkins and monogram cake toppers. So it looks like an early spring for wedding items.

Stealing my website!

2005-12-21T10:51:00.000-08:00

Well, I found out through some of my regular Google research that a woman from FL with a website copied my entire Wedding Program Fans page last summer, around July, and put it up on her website as her own. (I have tweaked it since then.) All of the text was mine, I did not use the wording in the Carlson Craft wedding program fans brochure. She even copied my order form! I was so mad. I am still considering have a good friend who is an attorney send a letter, as my email to her did not get a satisfactory response.

My main consolation is that my page was indexed by Google first, so hers should be treated as duplicate content and not show up in search results. (I found her through her pay per click advertising on Google. She is under allspecialoccasion.com.) Her website is full of grammatical errors, broken links, etc., so it is not like she is real competition. It sure makes me angry though, to see my hard work appropriated by someone else. And get this--she even has a copyright statement on HER site, under her legal notice link, warning about others doing this to her! Grrrrrr.

We are still at the top of Froogle for wedding program fans and we expect the orders to pick up around March, when it warms up down south. The southern brides come first, then everyone else follows for June weddings. This is only the second spring these have been available, so I expect them to be HOT.

Check out some of our sample program fans--you can do a lot with them!

Custom Post-it Notes for Attorneys

2005-11-23T17:09:00.000-08:00

Martin Lerner is a very smart New York attorney who has created some custom Post-it note designs that any attorney's office could use. Aside from using personalized Post-it notes in-house and as client giveaways, custom Post-it notes work wonderfully as routine office forms.

Most popular gift ideas so far

2005-11-13T11:09:00.000-08:00

The Christmas orders are coming in daily! So far the two most popular options are: 10 personalized Post-it note pads in an acrylic holder ($15.73 plus $7 for the holder, total: $22.73 before shipping); and 2 cubes of personalized Post-its ($22.48 before shipping). Most people order one of the preformatted Post-it note designs, and most people order more than one set; six sets is the most common number. So go with the flow and get your order in! Speaking of which, I need to get my orders done as well.

Holiday cards are not flying out the door, but orders are slowly coming in, mostly for fall themed ones so far, and all business customers so far. I don't think most people are even thinking of buying holiday cards yet.

Wedding napkins continue to sell, and we did our first order for holiday ones as well. (Great for the company party!) The wedding program fans have really died down and I expect we will only sell a very few until next spring. Hopefully our listing spots on Google and Froogle will stay high for them through the winter, so people find us again come spring. On MSN we have great placement, but Google is more variable.

You have about a month to order and get your stuff by Christmas, so don't wait too long!

Wedding Program Fans as Hospital Giveaways!

2005-10-28T07:42:00.000-07:00

Kaiser Permanente in California is ordering what we sell as wedding program fans to give to new mothers, printed with their corporate logo and various phone numbers, etc. on them. If they like the first batch, it will be an ongoing order! These are really classy fans, printed by thermography so they look like fine stationery. There are other fans out there geared to corporate giveaways--Carlson Craft just started offering some--but they are not as nice in quality. They found us because one of the people in charge of this project went to the wedding of one of my customers. Very cool!

OQO Model 01 - The Worlds Smallest Notebook Computer (pics)

2005-10-26T07:41:00.000-07:00

Okay, I really want this cute little computer, the OQO! When the wedding program fans pick up again in the spring, I might have to get it. It would fit in my purse! It is the size of a blackberry, but heavier and runs Windows XP. I could port it to a monitor and keyboard at home and take it with me out and about. I could run Excel, Word, Photoshop, Acrobat, Illustrator--I'd be all set in or out of the office. AND the kids could have my old computer, so they wouldn't always be nagging me for a turn on it when I'm trying to work. And fitting in my purse, I figure it is less likely to get stolen or lost than a regular small notebook.

Maybe I could get it sooner if Christmas is big for us. Come on now, you know everyone on your list would LOVE personalized Post-it notes!

Christmas Gifts Already!

2005-10-21T12:48:00.000-07:00

I am already seeing Christmas gift orders of personalized Post-it notes! In the last week I have had 3 orders of more than 3 sets, all with different names, two of them with the pad holders we now offer as well. Personalized Post-it notes really are awesome gifts for almost everyone at work and at home, and it seems the word is finally getting out!

Our holiday card mailing goes out in two weeks and I am almost finished addressing and stuffing the cards. Last year I sent out 500 cards in November; this year it will be almost 1400!

Our holiday card selection keeps growing online, and now we have some really nice photo cards, too. The internet people at Carlson Craft are still adding more cards through the end of this month.

More gift ideas coming soon!

Gmail panic, wedding napkins and wedding Post-it notes

2005-08-31T13:05:00.000-07:00

Gmail went down for about 5 hours yesterday and sent us into a panic. We have our primary email address forwarded to gmail along with the postits gmail address, so we were stuck. I love the webmail service, the huge storage and the searching , but that was not fun. I apologize to anyone who had to wait for an answer and a proof due to the problems. I think the benefits of gmail outweigh the disadvantages, though. I love being able to log on, search and find artwork used six months ago for another project.

We just added wedding napkins to our wedding items, and they are already selling quickly. We are offering monograms and additional fonts that require a custom die so most napkin retailers don't offer that. The cost isn't much higher and I love being able to offer more choices. The monograms really make for classy (and modern, depending on the choice) wedding napkins.

Wedding Post-it notes continue to be a hot seller for our wedding items. Many, many people have never heard of using personalized Post-it notes as wedding favors, of course, but the more we are exposing to the idea, the more orders we get. I would rather get a pad of Post-its than a few Jordan almonds in a tulle bag, wouldn't you?

Just Post-It: The Approved Post-It Notes Fan Listing

2005-08-08T18:18:00.000-07:00

You can find ANYTHING online! Even a website for fans of Post-it notes! I had to join; I bore everyone I know with ideas for how to use personalized Post-it notes.

Just Post-It: The Approved Post-It Notes Fan Listing

Search Engine Optimization and Christmas Cards

2005-07-26T08:16:00.000-07:00

For the past three or four months I have been taking free online classes from "Cricket" to learn more about search engine optimization, css, marketing and now photography for online sistes. Her main site is here:

GNC WEB CREATIONS

Before taking her classes, for half of my keywords for custom Post-it notes and personalized Post-it notes keywords I was in the top five, but for the other half I was in the hundreds. Google burped and I went down in all of them, but since the last adjustment I have been in the top 3 for the first batch and up to 30-40 for the other half. Not great, but a vast improvement. And I have used what I have learned to market some of my wedding items as well; my monogram cake toppers and fan wedding programs are top 3 in Froogle. So if you have any kind of online business or a website you want to draw people into, check her out. She is amazing.

Finally, we are getting our Christmas cards up on the cceasy shopping cart. There are some of the really cool "Something Different" ones up as well. I have chosen the Thanksgiving-type ones, a Courage Card style, I will send for business (I ordered 1400 this year! compared to last year when I sent 500!), but I haven't decided on our personal ones yet. More are going up almost every day.

Back from vacation!

2005-07-18T20:38:00.000-07:00

Well I survived being away from my home office for 3 weeks! The kids and I went out to visit family for three weeks and I was working from my cell phone and my brother's computer. I had to save a few projects for when I got back, as I had artwork on my home computer, but otherwise I was able to manage pretty well. The experience did convince me that I need to go more paperless with my recordkeeping and I am working out just how to do that now, at least for most customers. Using gmail to access all of my email accounts and then the online shopping cart access allowed me to process orders. I emailed myself a copy of my Excel invoice program so I could use that as well. I did miss my Photoshop and had to make do with Steve's Paint Shop Pro, which is probably a fine program but I am not familiar with it. It has been 2 18 hour days since we got back getting caught up. I apologize to everyone who had to wait for a return email or phone call during the 3 day drive back!

What is hot this summer, besides wedding program fans, is "handwritten" custom Post-it notes. I am getting an order a day for just this type. Nonprofits and real estate companies seem to be the biggest user of them. When I get a scanned version of actual handwriting and print it in blue on canary yellow Post-it notes, it looks so real you can't tell the difference except that the custom Post-it notes won't smear!

Family reunion Post-it notes

2005-06-07T18:16:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite things about this job is seeing the ideas customers come up with for personalized Post-it notes. I am so fortunate in being able to offer an almost limitless number of options with motifs and then the hundreds of fonts, besides the standard paper and ink colors. Thank you, Carlson Craft!! Lately I have been getting a rush of family reunion Post-it note orders, and people have chosen motifs ranging from a tree to the US capitol (for a Washington, DC reunion). One lovely couple in CO chose a cabin in the mountains as the motif for their anniversary party/reunion favors.

This business is just exploding on several fronts, and it is very exciting to be in the midst of. However, I am getting a little nervous about how I will manage being out of my home office for 3 weeks during our family vacation. I should be able to do everything except paperwork on borrowed computers, but we'll see how that goes. I wont' be able to do all of the artwork manipulation I do now for a few weeks, and that may be a challenge. But we are looking forward to vacation time, especially the kids!

Cool designs for Personalized Post-it notes

2005-05-25T16:57:00.000-07:00

For those of you a bit hipper than I am and wanting some very modern personalized Post-it notes, first check out some of our Just For Fun Post-it Note motifs.

If none of those does it for you, check out Lysa Goodman Poore's designs. We actually print the personalized Post-it notes for her; she is a very talenting up and coming graphic artist with a line of personalized Post-it notes (and other stationery) on her site, InkwellCollection.com.

You won't find cooler personalized Post-it notes anywhere!

Are you so cool you have an idea for a personalized Post-it note that nobody has thought of before? Let us know and we can print it for you on our Design Your Own Personalized Post-it Notes!

Selling on Ebay

2005-05-06T04:03:00.000-07:00

I put up the Ebay store mainly for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes, to get some good links back to a few pages on the site and show up in more Froogle and other shopping engine listings. I didn't think I would sell many custom Post-it notes, as I had noted several other companies trying to sell them on Ebay in the past without any luck. But I am actually making sales, especially of the value pack/ensemble personalized Post-it notes. I guess Ebayers like a good deal! I have a selection of preformatted personalized Post-it notes listed in the store and then have a few things on auction starting below my standard price, so check it out. I have noticed my ebay listings coming up on Google, so hopefully I'm getting the SEO benefits as well.

Lots of new Post-it note Designs!

2005-04-29T21:42:00.000-07:00

My press, Carlson Craft, has come out with new custom Post-it note pricing, so some of our prices have changed. I've tried hard to keep them down, and am discounting my smaller quantities even more than 15% to keep them affordable. That's the bad news. The good news is that they have a LOT more designs in the preformatted personalized Post-it notes and in the personalized Post-its value packs. These are bargains and the new designs are very cool. I am waiting on samples to get better images of some of them up; the brochure they printed does not have great pictures in it, but I scanned and put them up the best I can.

The best news is that I can still use custom graphics at personalized Post-it note pricing in my Design Your Own category, within the same limitations as before in terms of complexity, size and formatting. So the options for my customers have really increased, with only a small price increase.

One puzzling thing to me is that the new brochure does not contain pricing for large quantity custom Post-it notes in the odd sizes, like 2-3/4 x 3, 6x8, etc. So every time I get a request for those I have to get a quote from them. Wouldn't it be easier for them to just print it up one time? Oh well. Those prices have not gone up much anyway.

We have an Ebay Store!

2005-04-10T20:06:00.000-07:00

Last night we created an Ebay Store for Antonia Rose Printing! We did it in part to catch the attention of the inveterate Ebay shoppers who seldom search for items outside of Ebay, in part to assist with our search engine optimization campaign (by creating more relevant links) and in part as an easy way to have specials, sell discontinued items, etc. So go check it out! We will generally have at least one item up for auction at less than retail price (right now 10 pads of formatted personalized Post-it notes) and eventually several specials each month listed as Buy it Now.

There are a few of our most popular wedding items listed as well. The wedding items are more of a sideline for us, but we do offer the full range of printed wedding items and accessories from Carlson Craft, all at a discount. We offer some things not generally available online and rarely if ever discounted, like our wedding program fans. So if you or anyone you know is getting married, you might want to check out our prices and service--they are excellent on these items as well. Though honestly it is easier to deal with custom Post-it note customers than with brides...

Interview at Free from 9 to 5

2005-04-02T20:23:00.000-08:00

Check out Eric's interview with me over at Free from 9 to 5. He found Antonia Rose Printing online when looking for custom Post-its and his interest in my company was piqued by a family picture on my contact page. I am certainly glad that I am free from 9 to 5 work, and I hope I always will be!

I am already getting some sales of my Breast Cancer Support Post-it notes, mostly not personalized, though they can be personalized with a line or two at the top at no extra charge. My sister-in-law's Stage IV breast cancer is not looking good at all; we were over there at Easter and she feels fine, but all the test results are very discouraging. I'm donating $4 from each set of 10 sold to the Susan G. Koman Breast Cancer Foundation.

Finally, I don't know much about this company, Quiksilver, out of CA, but any company that first gets its employees personalized Post-it notes for Christmas and then gets a whole bunch of the below design as a promotion for the Quiksilver Boardrider's Club, must be a cool place to work, huh?

Wedding favor Post-it notes

2005-03-25T18:04:00.000-08:00

Should I be mad or flattered or both? My press, Carlson Craft, has been so impressed with the number of personalized wedding favor Post-it notes I sell, and the variety offered on my website, that they are coming out with a new brochure next week to help other Carlson Craft dealers market Post-it notes as wedding favors. I haven't seen it yet, but it is my understanding that they are very basic designs with just names and dates on them. Until now they had not done a very good job marketing their personalized Post-it notes as favors or as much at all on the "social printing" end of the business. For the last four months or so they offered some plain white with black print and a verse personalized Post-it notes in their wedding album, but almost nobody orders those when they see the other options available on my site. These are the only wedding Post-it notes you can find on Google, besides mine.

Their printed Post-it note marketing person called me six months ago to chat about my custom Post-its site and say how impressed she was with my marketing and all the ideas for using printed Post-it notes I had. Now I know what she's done with it...

Whatever ideas they give other dealers, nobody will be able to match our design options, selection, and most of all our service and our ability to use custom graphics at "standard format" Post-it note pricing. So I guess I shouldn't worry too much...for now."

press releases and uses for handwritten Post-it notes

2005-03-06T17:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.theopenpress.com/index.php has a few of our press releases, as does http://prweb.com. Interesting to see if anything comes of it.

Customer uses for Post-its constantly amaze and amuse me. I just had an inquiry from a sorority girl wanting to get some with an elephant on them for her roommate. Hmmm, not sure I would want to live with her...

The handwritten Post-it notes are really taking off, in both blue and red ink. It is amazing how realistically handwritten they look. There was an ad campaign in Sweden of all places that used actual handwritten Post-it notes placed on public phones and mailboxes all over to advertise scuba lessons; they should have had us print their handwriting on Post-its and saved a lot of time! Most of the handwritten ones we sell are either for real estate people wanting to get potential customer's attention or for advertising/fundraising campaigns.

Fun Post-it Note Designs, etc.

2005-02-20T05:51:00.000-08:00

At the urging of my brother and husband, I am working on a page of "Fun Post-it Note Designs" aimed toward the younger, hipper set.

Seeing as I am at the advanced age of 40 and besides being the queen of Custom Post-it Notes and a Domestic Goddess, as far from hip as it gets, this is a bit of a challenge. Any ideas are welcome--email me!

In response to my press releases about my Post-it note business, I got an email from the Washington County (MN) bulletin asking for a picture. Even if I don't get any sales as a result of an article, my niece and nephew will think I'm famous. (Of course, if you are on TV in a panned crowd scene at a game, they think you are famous...) That press release angle was Park High grad in work at home business, from work at home family (mentioned mom and brother's businesses.

Personalized Post-it Notes for Father's Day

2005-02-13T06:21:00.000-08:00

Hey! I'm working on a really good press release, with a Mompack member who is a freelance writer, Jeanne Yacoubou, in return for a swap of personalized Post-it notes. The focus is personalized Post-it notes for Father's Day gifts, as many lifestyle sections and magazines work 3-4 months ahead.

I haven't done press releases before this month. I just sent some off to three local papers here in NJ and one to my hometown paper in MN--we'll see what happens. It certainly is cheap--like, free!--and there are some newsworthy twists--work at home mom from a work at home family, the Carlson Craft Distinguished Dealer award I just got, etc.

for Father's Day, think about it--do you know a man who would not use personalized 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...)

I even put up a page just for Father's Day gifts--check it out!

Custom Postits R Us!

2005-02-07T17:12:00.000-08:00

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!