Building a successful home scrapbooking business, like any other business, is to some extent a numbers game.

If you can get your scrapbooking business in front of more people you stand a better chance of making a sale, right? Stands to reason.

But testing the best method of doing that can be expensive online. Pay per click advertising can be very effective but there are dozens of books about the subject and a lot to learn. Quite frankly, it’s not what most scrapbookers want to be spending their time doing.

They’d rather be making scrapbooks!

The other popular method with people new to building a scrapbook business on the internet is paying someone to submit to lots of different sites or search engines. I’m sorry if you’ve gone down that route and I’m sure you now know what a waste of time that is. There are only three places that you really need to submit your site Google, Yahoo and MSN (maybe Bing now) and you can do that yourself for free.

To attract more people to your scrapbooking I recommend two things. If you’ve been here a while you’ll know that blogging is one of them. There’s already stuff here about blogs so I won’t go into that now (if you need one-to-one help check here)

The second is article marketing.

1. You’ll like it because it’s free,
2. It’s easy because you’re just telling people about the stuff you love,
3. It’s powerful because the search engines love the article sites and as a consequence your articles will shoot up the ranking.
4. So more people see your scrapbooking offers and you make more money!

Well that can’t be right, can it? I mean if that was true, everyone would be doing it wouldn’t they?

Well don’t ask me why they’re not, but they’re not! The upshot is that if you do it, you can expect to get great results.

In a nutshell, you write an article. A bit like a blog post. You then submit it to an article directory. They publish it and it appears in Google (or whoever), usually within a few days. At the bottom of the article is a link to your scrapbooking blog or website. Some of the people reading that article will click your link and visit you. Publish one article, a few people will visit. Publish twenty articles and it’s likely that hundreds of new potential customers will come to your site.

They will. Believe me, this works. I never, ever spend money on advertising. Every visitor to this blog has come either through a link from another blog or via article marketing. I have another blog that I’ve started recently that’s had several hundred new visitors in the last couple of weeks from a few articles I wrote.

How would you like hundreds of new customers for no cost?

Anyone can – and should – do this to increase exposure for their scrapbooking business online. I mean why wouldn’t you? It’s free!

Well actually I’m going to suggest it’ll cost you a whole huge $7.00 – because that’s what you need to pay for this ebook, The Art of Article Marketing which details exactly how to do it. Websites to use, screen shots so submission is a piece of cake, everything.

This is the way I do it, what more can I say?

You don’t need to buy it, you can probably find everything you need to know by searching online. Should only take you a couple of weeks. Or you could do it the easy way After all, isn’t it worth $7.oo to get hundreds of potential customers to look at your crafts? Order here now for immediate download. You could be using these great tactics in your scrapbooking business in five minutes!

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When you are setting up your digital scrapbooking business, using freebies can greatly increase your chances of drawing in the visitors.

Digital scrapbook freebies often take the form of templates, backgrounds, embellishments or brushes – things which are used for creating digital scrapbooks – but that’s only part of the story.

What about a sample digital scrapbook as a freebie? Something people can download. Use it to show off your abilities as a scrapbook designer. Very reassuring for your potential client if they’re new to the whole digital and downloading thing.

Set it up so you ask for their email (so you can send them a copy) and you’ve got an excuse to get back to them and add them to your mailing list. A mailing list can be can be an extremely valuable asset and it’s remarkably cheap to have a specialist company manage this for you (I use GetResponse).

Other digital scrapbook freebies? Well what about the aforementioned templates, backgrounds and such. Who said your digital scrapbooking business had to be selling finished scrapbooks? What about designing and selling digital scrapbook supplies?

If you’re going to do that, what better way to show off your skills and your products than with a freebie? Again, put in place a means of gathering visitor details and you’ve got another potentially very profitable business.

Do you like to share your scrapbook knowledge? What about teaching via an online course? A bit more complicated to set up maybe, but very do-able. Your freebie here could be the first lesson. This removes any fear of what people will get for their money.

The clever way to set up your scrapbook tuition is via automated payments (it’s called “continuity” in marketing parlance). This way your “student” has to actively cancel and so is actually more likely to continue. Emphasize the “first lesson free, cancel any time” and watch the money roll in!

Don’t want the work involved in managing a scrapbooking course? OK, write it as an ebook. Once the initial writing is done you can self publish your scrapbooking masterpiece and then it’s virtually a hands-free business. You really will earn money while you sleep! There’s an excellent book available that teaches all the ins and outs of self publishing called “Complete Craft Book Publishing“, I highly recommend it if you’re thinking of looking at that route.

I only have one proviso when you’re creating your digital scrapbook freebie. Make sure it’s high quality. Don’t be tempted to take short cuts because it’s being given away. Remember it’s a reflection on your business and do the very best you can with it.

Your digital scrapbooking business can take on any one, or perhaps a combination of the above disciplines. Write a scrapbooking ebook, follow it up with the advanced tuition. Write an ebook on how to use Adobe Photoshop Elements to create digital scrapbook supplies. The possibilities are almost endless and everyone is hooked by a good freebie!

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If you are considering your own digital scrapbooking business as a way to get out of the rat race and make a good living working from home then I’m about to give you the 5 minute secret to your success.

That’s about how long it will take you to read this piece – possibly less – and in a nutshell it contains everything you need to know to take your scrapbook business to any level you like.

Oh, and it’ll cost you less than fifty dollars to start.

Ready?

OK, first thing you’re going to need is to get yourself on the internet. Go get a proper dot com domain name so you look like a pro. Under ten dollars for a whole year. I use Namecheap.com

Next you need some hosting for a blog or website. Get professional hosting, not free. This is a digital scrapbooking business you’re running – emphasis on the word business. You don’t want to look like an amateur. Depending on the deal this can cost you between six and nine dollars a month. I use Hostgator, have done for years, what more can I say.

I’d recommend a blog rather than a traditional website and I’d recommend Wordpress. It gets in the search engines quicker, it’s easier to run and more customer friendly. Wordpress is free and has a huge number of themes so you can customize its appearance and plug-ins to extend it’s abilities. It can do virtually anything your scrapbook business needs. If you get hosting with Hostgator it’s a simple install – just a couple of clicks.

If you don’t have Word or a page-layout program get a copy of OpenOffice (free) so you can create sample digital scrapbooks. Save them as PDF format so that you can offer them as free downloads from your blog.

Now subscribe to a mailing list / autoresponder management service so that you can collect names and email addresses of visitors to your blog. I use GetResponse. This is absolutely vital and can dramatically increase your income. Your free digital scrapbook download should be offered in exchange for their details. This will cost you just under twenty dollars a month and will repay that investment over and over again.

Depending on your precise scrapbooking business model, find a couple of affiliate programs that you can promote alongside your own business for additional income. Any reputable scrapbook affiliate program will be free to join.

Finally promote your  digital scrapbooking business via your blog posts and article marketing. Both free and extremely effective.

Is our five minutes up?

OK, you might think this article is a bit tongue in cheek, and clearly there’s a lot more flesh to put on these bones, but the above really is all you need to create the framework for your own digital scrapbooking business. Building it from part-time pennies to substantial full-time money is just a question of putting in a bit of effort. Over the next few weeks I’ll be expanding on each element to give you the bigger picture, and I would be more than happy to answer any questions you have.

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