Friday, October 19, 2007

Three Ways To Get FREE Advertising This Holiday Season!

I'm so happy to announce that Cinna-Minnies and Friends is in the process of creating their second annual "Holiday 2007 Specials E-Book" featuring holiday ideas, family traditions, recipes, and holiday discounts from many of our vendor friends.The theme for this year is three-fold and centers around traditions.

In exchange for FREE ad space within the eBook we are looking for one of the following: 1) "How You Decorate For The Holiday Season", 2) "A Family & Holiday Tradition of Yours", or 3) "A Tried and True Family Holiday Recipe." So if you're looking for FREE advertising this holiday season and are willing to offer a "holiday special" to readers of the eBook all you have to do is contribute one of the three spotlighted "holiday tradition ideas."

The holiday season is filled with so many holiday traditions. We thought it would be fun to spotlight three "Holiday Tradition Ideas" and they are as follows: "Decorating Ideas", "Family & Holiday Traditions", and "Tried and True Recipes".

Our E-Book is distributed based upon the Viral Marketing Theory which involves the sharing and promoting of the E-Book. So, If you would like to participate as a vendor shown below is what you need to do once the E-Book is published:

1 - Put the E-Book .PDF download link and our E-Book graphic on the home page of your website and/or blog.

2 - Send a personal email to members of your mailing list, to members of any groups you belong to, to your blog subscribers via a blog post, and everyone you can think of inviting them to download their own copy of the E-Book on your website or blog. Sample E-mails will be provided, if need be.

When each of us sends an invite to the aforementioned the impact for sales can be tremendous. For example, half of my holiday sales last year were a direct result of the ad I placed in our first E-Book. I have a mailing list of close to 1800 which grows each day by 5 to 10 new members per day.

3 - Within your email invitation you will need to include the following text except you would replace your website name and URL where "Cinna-Minnies website http://www.cinna-minnies.com/
is in the example below:

Pick Up Your FREE Cinna-Minnies and Friends 2007 Holidays Special E-Book
at our Cinna-Minnies website at http://www.cinna-minnies.com/


Whatever else you wish to include in your email invitation is up to you.

As we don't not want to overwhelm the E-Book with vendor specials we are limiting our ads to 20 vendors. To date we have received 5 "Holiday Tradition Ideas." We will be accepting 15 more.

If you are willing to offer a "special holiday discount" to readers of the E-Book and contribute either "How You Decorate For The Holiday Season", "A Family & Holiday Tradition of Yours", or "A Tried and True Family Holiday Recipe" then we would love to include you.

AD DEADLINE DATE - October 28, 2007 as we need to have the E-Book ready to send no later than the end of October.

SAMPLE "Holiday Discount Ad" -

Please visit Cinna-Minnies at for http://www.cinna-minnies.com/ for our Holiday 2007 Special Offer

When you place an order for one pound of our Cinnamon Clay,
you will receive a FREE bottle of our cinnamon oil and a cookie cutter.
Holiday Discount good until December 20, 2007
.

Neenee is in charge of collecting your decorating ideas, family & holiday tradition ideas, and recipes so please email these to her. Please type Cinna-Minnies Holiday 2007 in the subject line.


Use the same heading as shown above, but substitute your own website name and link where http://www.cinna-minnies.com/
is shown, and include your e-mail address accordingly.

If you are interested in participating as a vendor in Cinna-Minnies Holiday 2007 Specials E-Book please email Rochelle.

We hope you decide to participate in what is the second of what we hope to be an annual tradition.

Thanks from

Rochelle of http://www.cinna-minnies.com/

Neenee of http://www.kklprimitives.com/
Linda of http://www.lindawalshoriginals.com/
Nancie of http://www.craftenewsletters.com/





Monday, October 8, 2007

Website Design from a Consumer's View

There is a lot of talk about website design and I thought that I would share my thoughts on design from a consumer point of view. Yes, I design websites, but I also do most of my shopping on-line. I definitely have some likes and dislikes when I visit a website and I thought that I would share them with you. Again this is my personal likes and dislikes ~ but remember that I am not alone.

What I like to see and what a site must have to keep me around to do some shopping:

Your website must be easy to navigate ~ I don’t want to spend my time searching the site to find what I am looking for. I want to see an easy navigation system. Not too cluttered ~ too many graphics, banners, or information in a haphazard style. Put your banners and advertisement on a separate page. Keep them to a minimum on your home page. Remember why you want consumers on your site. Do you want to steer them to someone else’s site?

Easy to read ~ Keep the different font styles to no more than 3 throughout the entire site. Make sure that you can read the font against your background color, your font style is easy to read, and that the font size is a size that is comfortable for the consumer to read. I don’t like to strain to read a webpage.

Consistent throughout ~ graphics and style should be the same throughout your entire site. You should not have different graphics on each page. Consumers want to see consistency.

Do Not have music playing on your site ~ When I visit a website I do not want to hear music. I already have music playing and I will immediately leave a website that plays music on it.

Falling snowflakes ~ I find falling or trailing cursors irritating and will leave a site when I come across these. If you like these, put them on a personal site, but not on a business site.

Keep your navigation hierarchy to a minimum ~ I don’t like to have to click through several different pages just to find one of an item. Example:

Furniture
Outdoor Furniture
Benches
Iron Benches

Then you find a photo of one bench. There is nothing to look at on the first four links, but links. Think about how many times a consumer has to click on links before they get to see a photo of something that they may want to purchase. Will they stick around to click on several furniture links to find the one thing that they are looking for?

Contact information ~ make sure that your contact information is easily available. If the consumer has a question you want to make sure that they can easily email or call you.

Policies ~ make sure you spell out your policies including return, shipping, payment, guarantee, and privacy.

Keep your website content and graphics fresh. I don’t want to go out to a site in February or later and see Christmas graphics on the site. I would be hesitant to purchase something from this site.

Again, this is just my personal opinion. But I hope that I have given you some food for thought as far as what a consumer is looking for in a website, and remember more and more of us are shopping on-line. There are a lot of places to shop on-line ~ make yours one that is comfortable to spend time on.

If you have any questions or comments please send me an email and I will be happy to answer them.

Copyright © 2007 — Nancie Dumdi — All Rights Reserved

How I keep my creative juices flowing


Yes, there are times that my creative juices quit flowing. Is it because I am tired? Bored of the
projects I am working on? I am not really sure. But I do know that we all need to take time and rejuvenate ourselves and get our creative juices flowing again, or just to get ourselves
motivated again. Below is a sampling of what works for me.

Take some quiet time at a bookstore. Sit in a nice comfy chair with your favorite drink and thumb through your favorite books and magazines. Have you been thinking about taking up a new craft? If so, this is a great time to research the craft. And the best thing is that all it costs is some time and the cost of a drink or two.

I like to wonder through local antique stores. For me looking at antiques and vintage linens is such a rush. Take a look at some of the items in there and think about what you could use them for in your crafts. Wonder through local craft shows. See what other crafters are making, see what is selling and for how much. I also like to wonder through fabric shops. I love looking at fabric and ribbons, while I think about what I could use them for, or just to increase my stash. =)


Don’t tell Mark!

I like to get up early and sit outside on the patio drinking coffee and listening to the birds sing. Sometimes this is difficult as the dogs see me and start barking, which leads to the next item. I go outside and play with the dogs and puppies. Take some time just watching them play. We currently have four border collie pups that are about 12 weeks old and they are such fun to play with.

Oh yea, I almost forgot ~ selling. This really gets me motivated. =)

In closing, I guess that one of the things that I want to stress is take some time for yourself and your family. If we’re tired, stressed out our creative juices don’t flow like we want them to. Taking time for you reduces stress and gets those juices flowing again. It is especially important now that school is out and the kids are home for the summer.

I would love to hear works for you. If you have suggestions that I haven’t mentioned above, please me an
email.

Copyright © 2007—All Rights Reserved — Nancie Dumdi