ASKCP is going to be different than a lot of the other Squidoo Groups out there for shopkeepers on cafepress. I, any of my friends, nor any other shopkeeper will not reap the benefits of membership more than any other member of the group.

Exposure is the key! Squidoo and sites like it are great ways to drive traffic to your shop. There are a lot of cafepress groups in the communities and much invaluable information for new and experienced SKs to learn from, however the lensmasters that publish that information are benefitting the most (in many circumstances) through the increased rankings and visits to their lenses and sites. This increased exposure, in turn, will place them higher in most search engine rankings, generating more hits on their shops.

What we are trying to do here is level the playing field. No one Squidoo lens or cafepress shop will be put above another. There will be no Plexo voting that rewards the sites that have been on the longest. Featured Lenses and Lensmasters will be rotated on a weekly basis.

How are we going to pull this off? Fairly simply I think.

ASKCP Membership will not be denied. Every shopkeeper will have one Suidoo lens accepted- whether you have been selling for three days or two and a half years. In return, you will be asked to visit every current members Squidoo lens and Favorite It, and post it to Twitter, del.icio,us, StumbleUpon and Digg (or any of the services you are registered with). In addition, you are asked to visit and post the member's CP shop itself and any CP related blogs linked to the Squidoo lens.

All of this should be completed in a reasonable amount of time and in return I, personally, will will do the same to you. You, as a member in good standing, then will need to return to the group's Website and "return the favor" for any new member that should have done the same to you as an existing member when they joined. Again, in a reasonable amount of time.

It all sounds a little to simple? Well... I think it is, but I think it is all legal and should benefit everyone equally as long as no one tries to take unfair advantage of everyone else. I'm sure it is going to take a certain amount of trust and I will try to keep an eye on things, but I really hope everyone follows the simple rules and no one gets the boot from the group.

So what are you waiting for? You scratch my back...

Hey members,

There are a couple of posts of interest on the cafepress forums. This one explains a little more about Link Exchanges which I think would be very easy to accomplish with members of our group: http://forums.cafepress.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/722104/m/9071013

The second is a thread discussing the formation of crossover blogging to help drive business directly to your shop: http://forums.cafepress.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/722104/m/400100352

As with this ASKCP Group, I don't know for sure if our efforts will actually result in any additional sales but it, certainly, can't hurt. You never know when your next sale is coming from!

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