how to make more sales at greeting card universe

First things first, a little background for those not in the know: Greeting Card Universe is an on-line greeting card retailer (that's real paper greeting cards, folks, not ecards) which prints cards as they're ordered by the buyer (yep, a POD business) so it's more environmentally friendly. Artists can open a free store, upload their designs, and receive a commission on sales. More information can be found at GCU's website HERE.

I joined GCU two years ago when it was just getting started, and while I'm not yet ready to retire on my millions (hah!) I do earn a nice quarterly commission. How nice? Sorry, I won't reveal the actual number, but my sales have shown steady growth, and I am one of GCU's top sellers. What's my secret? Lots of hard work, actually. I have stores at other POD sites, and I've been at the "making a living on-line" thing a while, so you could say I'm experienced. Want to see?

CorrieWeb at GCU
CorrieWeb at Zazzle
CorrieWeb at Red Bubble
CorrieWeb at CafePress

Why have I made this lens? Well, GCU has an active and friendly forum that welcomes questions from newcomers. Some of the top questions asked by many newbies are: "how do I promote my store?" and "how do I get more visits and clicks on my cards?" Everyone wants to be noticed, of course. Traffic equals potential sales. That's an equation we all understand.

So you have a GCU store and you want to earn more money by selling more cards, which means you want to drive more traffic to that store, right? Okay, let's get the most important thing out of the way. Please repeat after me: there is no magic solution. There is no easy, effortless, 100% guaranteed method of getting visitors to come to your GCU store and unload their wallets into your pocket, and anybody who tells you otherwise is... well, let's say they might be a trifle deluded, and leave it at that.

The only way you're going to make more sales is to work hard at it. Put elbow grease and brain power to work. Treat your on-line business like a job, not a hobby. Learn some effective ways of promoting your cards, and work, work, work. Anyone who has been successfully selling their merchandise through POD businesses like Zazzle will tell you the same thing.

What do you do? Here are 7 tips to help you promote your GCU store that have worked for me. Incorporate some or all of them into your regular routine. Experiment to find out what works for you and what doesn't. And good luck selling your cards! Oh, and if you earn a million dollars, don't forget who gave you the advice! :-)

1STUDY THE MARKETPLACE With so many artists (2700+ as of this writing) and so many greeting cards (close to 200,000 and rising every day), your cards need to stand out from the herd to be seen by potential customers. Be selective. A badly cropped, out-of-focus picture of your Great-Aunt Gertrude isn't going to appeal to anyone except your relatives. Make cards with a purpose. GCU has given artists really great tools like the top on-site searches for the last 30 days. Study that list. What are buyers looking for? Check the other cards in popular categories. You don't want to plagiarize, but this will give you a good idea about what designs are sellable and what's not. Finally, study the category list. Are there categories that don't have a lot of cards in them? Design a card to fit.

2UPDATE FREQUENTLY Don't make the mistake of thinking that putting in 10 cards, sitting back and waiting for the sales to roll in will make you an overnight millionaire. That attitude isn't going to earn you much, if anything. Apart from other self-promotion (more on that below) you need to add new cards to your store as often as possible. I try to put in new designs every week.

3PICK A NICHE General birthday and other general occasion cards or blank note cards don't get a huge amount of attention from buyers on GCU. In fact, the catch-all "blank cards' is one of the biggest and least traveled categories on the site. I repeat, design cards with a purpose. One of GCU's strengths is the ability to offer very specialized cards (like age specific birthday cards from 1 to 110, or a plethora of "will you be my bridesmaid" etc. wedding party cards). Decide what your niche is going to be, and make cards for that niche. Specialization can be rewarding. For example, after doing some research, I identified a need for greeting cards designed for cancer patients. I created cards to fill that niche, and I've had more success promoting those specific cards than my shop in general.

4START A BLOG A blog just about your greeting cards isn't very interesting to visitors, so you need to up your game. What can you blog about that will tie in with your cards? Well, suppose you're a photographer who has made cards with pictures of plants and critters in your garden. You could make a blog about your personal experiences as a gardener or wild-life photographer. A blog updated daily will get more attention than something that is indifferently updated once every blue moon. Get into the habit of spending five minutes a day updating your blog. You can post links to interesting on-line articles, too, or Squidoo lenses that relate to your topic. And a few times a week, include a picture and link to one of your cards. There are plenty of free blog sites out there, so you don't have to spend a dime. In addition, every time you update your blog, use a free blog pinging service like Pingoat, Pingates or BlogBlip (I'm sure there are others as well). What the heck is pinging? I'm going to point you to Wikipedia for that one.

5SQUIDOO LENSES FOR PROMOTION
Best advice I can give: don't create a Squidoo lens just to promote your greeting cards, and nothing else. Family and friends might cruise by if you give them a heads-up, but other potential visitors will likely take a pass if all they see is self-promotion. By all means, go ahead and promote yourself (hey, some day you may be famous!) but also create Squidoo lenses about a topic that ties in with a product line you're promoting. Remember I talked about cards for cancer patients? I've got Squidoo lenses on a number of topics relating to cancer which are "sponsored" by my product line. At the bottom of each article (or sometimes at the top, it depends on the information I'm presenting) I've got a nice picture of some of my cards and a link to click to find these cards on GCU. Don't forget you can cross-promote, too. Post a link to your blog on your Squidoo lens, and you can post a link on your blog to the lens if applicable. The more backlinks, the better your page ranking on some search engines.

6BUILD MICRO-PAGES Like Squidoo, there are other places where you can build a free quickie webpage about your niche or your greeting cards, and get more backlinks as well as the added opportunity for traffic. Choices include Squidoo (naturally), BlinkWeb, Weebly, Jimdo, etc. Be sure to include graphics of your cards, links to the niche you're promoting on GCU, links to your website, your GCU store, your other POD stores, and your blog. The point is, get your name out there. Get your links out there. Provide interesting, informative content. Don't plagiarize, though! Don't fall into the cut-and-paste trap. Search engines won't reward naughty behavior, so be smart and write your own copy.

7AND FINALLY... Suppose you want to link to a particular set of search terms on GCU, for example "corrie kuipers cancer." Why would you do this? Because when you create cards, you give them unique keywords. If you want to promote a certain line of cards you've created, make sure every card in that line carries the same unique keywords so you can create a search string that will bring up a page (or pages) of just those cards. If you do a search on GCU, you don't get a usable URL you can link to that has the search terms in it. Don't panic! There's a way around that limitation.

First do your search. When you have your page of cards up, change the URL to this:
http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/shopping/cb.asp?keyword=

After the equal sign, put in your search terms separated by %20 if there's more than one. So in the example I gave above, a search for "corrie kuipers cancer" will yield this URL:

http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/shopping/cb.asp?keyword=corrie%20kuipers%20cancer

A FEW BONUS TIPS
include your shop, blog, etc. URL in your email signature; purchase your own cards (registered GCU artists get a discount) and send them out on every occasion (because your personal logo and store URL is on the back of every card; and above all, be patient! Rome wasn't built in a day. Just keep plugging, keep making quality cards, keep studying your market, and you'll no doubt do well.

Now you're armed with the knowledge you need to go forth and conquer the world - or at least, sell more greeting cards to the adoring public you've gained!