I hope you find my scrapbooking business posts useful, but I realize they’re short chunks of information rather than a complete roadmap.

So I’m going to create a series of reports designed to help you in each and every aspect of building your own successful digital scrapbooking business.

But why digital scrapbooking in particular and not scrapbook business in general?

Well if you want to run a traditional scrapbooking business, the market is already pretty well covered. Dawn Segall’s “ScrapVentures” course is excellent and if you feel that’s not quite what you’re looking for, Richard Mann’s book, “Scrapbooking – A Profitable Business”, is a great alternative for those with a lower initial budget.

Digital scrapbooking is a bit different though, and although there are plenty of tutorials out there about how to use digital scrapbooking software, there’s little or no good, in-depth business advice.

Hence the new series of ebooks dedicated to making it fast and easy for you to get started, and then to help you build your success to whatever level you want.

So if you’ve got a burning question or two, now’s the time to ask. What are the things that you’d like help with? Which aspects of putting a business together are you struggling with?Are you concerned about starting your own blog or website?

Just leave a comment and I’ll make sure your question is answered in the upcoming fact files.

I thought it would be a bit of a laugh to call them “Scrap Reports”. The content, of course, will be anything but!

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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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A digital scrapbooking business requires little investment, is relatively easy to learn and has huge income potential. The only area where things get a little tricky and where you need to be just a little bit cautious is when you’re using other people’s digital scrapbook templates or supplies because this is where you run into those dreaded copyright issues.

Image courtesy of Step-By-Step Digital Scrapbooking

You might think you’ll design all your digital scrapbook layouts and embellishments yourself. OK, but there are already thousands of page layouts, digital scrapbook papers, you name it, available from a wide range of suppliers for just a couple of dollars. You might like designing, I certainly do, but often you’ve got to ask yourself if it’s worth the time to create your own with such a wealth of supplies available?

However, you do have to be just a little bit careful. Lots of online scrapbook stores offer digital scrapbook freebies as samples to entice you to buy. Nothing wrong with that, it’s nice to see the quality of work before you commit. Be careful about using these freebies in anything but personal scrapbooks though.

Sometimes they’ll say that they are OK for commercial use but this is rare. If you want to use them for your digital scrapbooking business, and sell the completed scrapbook, you usually have to pay. At just a couple of bucks a time, why not? You can make dozens of times your money back so why not support the industry you are working in?

This is where we come to those strange letters. What exactly do S4H and S4O mean?

Well they’re pretty similar really. S4H is “scrap 4 hire” and S4O is “scrapping for others” (or scrapbooking for others), both of which essentially mean whether you’re getting paid or not you’re using the digital scrapbook supplies to make scrapbooks for other people.

Occasionally they’ll just make it easy on you and say that you can use the layouts or templates to make and sell digital scrapbooks – but every business likes it’s little codes and acronyms, doesn’t it!

The real point here is that your digital scrapbook business will take a bit of time and effort to build a reputation and arguments over copyright can do you no end of damage. The internet might seem an endless place but once the gossip starts in any particular industry it can spread quickly. Your valuable reputation can be tarnished fast, so when you buy your digital scrapbook supplies make sure you can use them as you want. If it’s not clear, just ask.

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A digital scrapbooking business overcomes the one drawback of making a living from traditional scrapbooking, that of geographical reach. What I mean is, however successful your scrapbooking business is there’s a limit to the distance you’ll be prepared to travel to find new customers.

For many people that won’t be a problem. As we’ve already seen, there are ample ways to diversify how you make money from scrapbooking. For some though, the customer-facing aspect is too much of a challenge. For those people, digital scrapbooking is definitely the answer!

Think about the benefits. Even if you have no experience at the moment, you already have a lot of what you need. You have a computer and a connection to the internet so that’s the two most important digital scrapbook “tools” sorted. You might need a little extra software (Adobe Elements is the recommended choice) and you’ll need a blog or website to promote yourself, but both of those require remarkably low investment.

I know what a lot of you will say, “but what about learning the software”?

People can, understandably, have a bit of a phobia about how difficult a new program can be to learn and it is kind of necessary for your digital scrapbooking business! The good news is, not only is the software well known but a number of websites and blogs offer some degree of free tuition like that at Two Peas in a Bucket. If you need more help, for just a few dollars a week there is also full and comprehensive training course available from Step-by-Step Digital Scrapbooking which even includes online videos so you can actually see what you need to do.

But is it really worth the trouble learning digital scrapbooking software?

Well if you want that whole world of opportunities mentioned in the title, yes. A digital scrapbooking business has no geographical boundaries. You can make scrapbooks for people in the next town, the next state, or the other side of the world. There are no travel expenses to hold you back so your creative ability can just as easily be sold in Arkansas, Aberdeen or Australia!

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