Selling On The Internet As A Beginner

After I had only sold one shirt on Cafepress in a month I realized I was doing something wrong. So I went to the community of other shopkeepers to find out what they were doing. Everyone said it over and over, the least favorite phrase used on those message boards (and apparently the most meaningful)... it takes time. Ok, I've got time. I can wait this out.

Two months later, I had a few sales. But still nothing that was going to help me live the internet commerce dream. Back to the message boards I went. Oh what, by time they meant months and possibly over a year!? Ok, ok.. it's time to start marketing this better.

I love my Cafepress store, I really do! It's all comprised of designs that I love and I'm proud of. I'm a stay at home mom and a prior military wife so that's what the focus of my designs are. But how in the world was I going to even get people to LOOK at my store??

I started simple, with business cards. I thought, I'll just leave them everywhere! Good idea, no traffic to the site though.

I put a link and graphic at the bottom of my signature on the message boards that I'm a part of. That pulled in some traffic, but very few sales.

I put a link and graphic on my myspace page hoping that my friends would head on over to the store. Again, a few sales, but then I realized (I know, I'm a little slow) my friends are not exactly a big market of buyers. They are just a few people in this big world. I needed to go bigger!

So again I was on the message boards over at Cafepress. I kept on reading about people who were suggesting writing lenses on Squidoo. WHAT?? Lenses? Squidoo? So I headed here to check it out.

I checked out some other lenses and I got a feel for what was going on. It seemed so perfect! I could write lenses on all the things that interest me and I'll just throw a few links in to get to my store. I spent a whole day working on two lenses. One of them went right up, the other still has that mean grey mark next to it meaning it's a work in progress. Sigh, ok at least one of them is up!

And then, two clicks. And nothing else. So I headed over to the message boards on SquidU.com. Wait a minute, now I need to promote my lenses??? But I thought my lenses were supposed to promote my CAFEPRESS STORE!!!

Where does it all end?

I'm starting to feel like a parrot. I see the logo for All My Loves in my dreams. My whole life has been devoted to a store that sells a shirt maybe every other day. But it's growing, slowly. And I'm learning, slowly.

Once I really get over the embarrasment of telling everyone and their mother about my store then I've got a few more things to still try. I'll update this lens as I try new things and either succeed, or fail. I know it's possible to do this, but like I've heard over and over, it takes time. I feel like saying "Rome wasn't built in a day." but that seems so cheesy.

Oh and before you go, LOOK AT MY STORE!! It's right below this. See, you can see it can't you. It's right there. Just click on it! PLEASE! (Shameless, I know.)