Selling a “green” product demonstrates to consumers your company cares about the planet, and that means you care about them.

A Green Product

Your new clean, green company image starts with your product. Consumers searching for earth-friendly goods are extremely well-informed, so you don’t want to pull a fast one on them by offering a “Green” product that isn’t 100% . You need to research, test, and have your products certified by environmental bodies your buyers trust.

Part of creating effective green products is solving problems in an ‘earth-friendly’ manner. For instance, many of us shop at the supermarket or farmers markets, but we don’t want to keep using plastic bags. Solution: the cloth shopping bag. Now create your own unique cloth shopping bag – voila, a green product!

Problem: your customer has just had a baby, and they need a new diaper bag but don’t want one of the plastic ones. Solution: a “green” diaper bag, made of recycled fabric OR recycled bottles OR recycled inner tube tires (yes, I’ve seen it done, and they look fab!)

Designing green products means focusing on durability. Customers want something they can buy ONCE, than give to a friend when they no longer need it. Anything you need to replace means more junk lining the landfills.

Be very, VERY careful labelling your products. I’ve noticed on Etsy and other online sites, many sellers don’t understand the meaning of ‘vegan’, and label bath and beauty or food products ‘vegan’ which contain goats milk or eggs. If you label food as ‘vegan’ or ‘free range’ or ‘organic’, you’d better know what those words mean!

Green Packaging

No matter the product you sell, you’ll probably need to package it in something, especially if you need to mail it out to buyers. It’s all well and good selling eco-friendly handbags, but if you’re shipping your bags out in plastic packaging with styrofoam peanuts, you’re not “exactly” doing the earth any favors, are you?

Green Marketing

Now that you’ve created your eco product and sourced earth-friendly packaging, you need to get the word out to potential customers. Once again, the opportunity to practise green business presents itself. While some advertisements in print publications are unavoidable, forego expensive mailout and brochure campaigns in favor of … the internet!

Utilize this massive (and paper-free) hive of concerned, informed individuals for marketing your green products. Advertise on awareness blogs, shopping websites. Hell, you can start your own company blog (or hire me to do it for you!)

When you create green products you tap in to a growing market of concerned consumers, who need and want products, but don’t want to be burdoned by more junk they’ll just throw away. Provide a solution, and you’ve earnt a customer.

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Many of my Etsy clients are concerned about the amount of time they spend promoting and managing their shops verses the amount of sales they actually make. One girl said “currently, I’m putting in 50 hours work for every sale.” She’s selling handmade bracelets that sell for under $10.

So I’ve put my head to the task and come up with three excellent tips for scaling back your time managing and promoting your etsy shop (giving you more time to craft those beautiful things!) If you’re not an Etsy seller, don’t look away, you can apply these tips to any small business or non profit!

Create a Plan (and STICK TO IT)

Divide your business activities into four sections – Creating inventory, packaging and shipping inventory, marketing and promotion, and shop maintenance. Decide how much time you are to spend on each of those activities each week - 5 hours on inventory, 2 on marketing, 1 on shop maintenance and 2 on packaging, for example.

As soon as you’ve used your allotted time, move onto the next activity. Keeping yourself locked into time constraints like this is an excellent motivator to work productively.

Use Templates for Conversations

A lot of a seller’s time is spent answering emails and Etsy conversations. To save time, I keep a word document on my desk with all the ’standard’ replys I send out “Your item has been shipped and is winging it’s way across the Atlantic as I type…”

I cut and paste as the need arises and add name of customers and items. I know everything I send off sounds professional and is properly spell-checked. This saves me so much time.

Market Smarter, Not Harder

Forums, chatrooms, blogging, twitter, facebook, bookmarking…all the different online promotion tools can feel overwhelming, especially when it seems like you put in hours of time for not much reward.

The answer is not to market harder, but to market smarter. Instead of trying ALL these things – try one or two. Do you get more conversions from you blog readers or your facebook friends? How about Twitter? Drop the promotion activities that give you the fewest sales and focus your attention on improving your efforts in the others.

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I’m a firm believer that the business practises that fail during an economic downturn are the practises that weren’t so hot to begin with. In a booming economy, bad business practises go unnoticed, but when things get tough, shareholders get tough, and the crackdown begins.

The key to succeeding in a small business is targeted niche marketing. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read on for five steps to brand your business for a target market.

Step One: Know Your Target Market

Part of my job as a copywriter is to evaluate your customers. I need to know who your target customers are so I can write copy that speaks to them. If you don’t know who your target market is, we’re both in trouble.

Write a profile of a target customer? Are they female or male? A teenager, a 20-something or a retiree? Are they well-off or struggling? Do they work for themselves? What are they interested in? What are their hobbies? Do they have kids? Are they from a certian area? Do they own their own home? Do they need to relax more, organize their life or lose weight?

Knowing your target market is the KEY to success during the recession.

Step Two: Research your Market’s Needs

If you’ve completed step 1 above, you . With the economy slowing and more people losing jobs, your target market’s needs are changing. You need to meet those needs.

Is your target market trying to save money? Are they cutting back on non-essentials? Are they trying to stay healthy or help the environment? What effect does the economy have on your target customer?

Don’t just sit at home and ponder your market – get out amongst them. Go to the places they hang out and ASK them about their lives – what do they want and need? What are their hopes and dreams? The best market research is done by engaging directly with the market itself.

Have you brainstormed a few ideas? Good. Now we move on to step three.

Step Three: Assess Your Business Against your target market

Assessing your own business with a critical eye can be difficult, but you need to do it if you want to succeed. If a target customer showed up at your store or found your website online, what would they see? How would they feel? What items or services would they be drawn too? What items or services would they find useless?

For example, you run a gothic clothing store. Your target market is older goths with families/jobs/responsibilities. You’re selling a lot of business clothes with gothic twists – lace here, a little Victorian detail there. You also sell a line of clubbwear, but that doesn’t do very well, because it doesn’t really sit with your target market.

Step Four: Use downtime to refocus your business

Now is the perfect time to reassess your business practises. First, focus on your inventory. Are there any products (such as the clubbwear above) that don’t fit with your target market? Could you perhaps get rid of these products and replace them with more appropriate items? Use your target market research as a jumping-off point to brainstorm new product lines.

Next, look at your branding and image. Does your shop graphics and colours mesh with your products? Do you have a uniform branding? Are you targeting your niche market? Now you have the opportunity to rethink, rebrand, refurbish.

Step Five: Market Smarter, Not Harder

You’ve got your target audience sussed. Now how do your market your newly refurbished business? You need to focus your advertising where your target market hangs out? Are they on the internet? Are they reading blogs? Are they on facebook? Are they at the local market, or the grocery store, or the antique shop? Are they in school? Do they work at home? Where do they eat out? Where do they go to relax and unwind? The answers to these questions are where you should focus your marketing efforts.

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“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“According to the powersuits upstairs, our section’s run up a massive debt over the last six months. They’re letting one, probably two people go.”

“Are you worried one of them will be you?”

He shakes his head. “I’m indispensible. It will be B— (a friend of ours), since he doesn’t do any work.”

My husband works in a lab with eight other people. This meeting put everyone at his office in a somber mood. Our flatmate has informed us he’s moving out to live with his parents for awhile. He can no longer afford the rent since his archaeological work has dried up completly.

The title of this post isn’t ‘why there’s no such thing as a recession’ because the evidence surrounds us. This post is not about ‘why the recession doesn’t matter’ because I for one am bothered that people I care about are facing redundancy and debt. This post is about why I, personally, am not worried about the recession.

A long time ago, I gave up watching television. My husband has yet to say goodbye to his beloved Top Gear and we have recently begun watching Grand Designs, but apart from those two programmes, our black box remains silent. During the day we work, and in the evenings we cook, tend the garden, bake bread, play music, meet friends, talk, laugh, and read to each other.

Over the last six months we challenged ourselves to half our petrol bill and our trash output. We’ve stopped eating out, but enjoy cooking at home for ourselves and for friends. We walk or bus to work (I can’t cycle because of my eyesight) and we plan our weekend trips carefully to maximize fuel efficiency.

What does all this have to do with the recession? If you read the advice given by financial experts during these tough times, you’ll notice the words ‘cut back’, ’simplify’ and ‘consume less’ appear quite frequently. But it’s more than simply depriving youself of stuff you want.

Just like the key to losing weight is not a diet but a lifestyle change, the key to surviving the recession is to change your lifestyle.

Simply put, if you don’t need a TV, then you don’t care that you can’t afford one. If you don’t need takeout five days a week, then you don’t care that you have to eat at home instead.

If you embrace cheap entertainment that engages relationships with people, rather than passively watching entertainment, you’ll discover that true happiness comes from connecting with others. If you give someone a hug every time you want a BigMac, you’ll spread happiness rahter than suck it away.

If you make yourself an enthusiastic, dilligent worker who’s pleasent to be around, then your company won’t need to fire you. If you offer up cost-cutting inititive – like taking a voluntary day-off each fortnight – you become an indispensible agent of  positive change.

If you realise that no job is beneath you, you’ll find plenty of work that needs to be done. If you cherish and nurture your practical skills, you’ll put yourself in good stead against other job seekers. If you realise that money in and of itself has no real value, you’ll derive your own value from bartering your skills with others.

If you encourage simplicity, audacity and earth-friendly living, you realise the joys of tasks you once thought onerous. If you grow your own vegetables or buy them fresh from a local farmers market, you rediscover how delicious food really can be. If you concentrate your efforts on slowing down and enjoying every moment, rather than pushing ahead – always wanting more – you’ll realise an entire week can pass by without spending a single cent. If you live on less, you save more.

We’re not worried about the recession. It will pass us by, because we can live with what we have and a whole lot less, if necessary, and we’ll be happy and healthy and free.

I promise, after today, no more hippy posts. Stay tuned for my next post:  Five Special Recession-Busting Tips for Small Business Owners.

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Hence why I talk about blogging, a LOT. I believe it’s important for my clients and other businesses to understand why blogging has become important in the online world. When new work arrives on my desk, I see the same mistakes again and again – no blog, not updating a blog, a stale, badly written blog, the list goes on – and I want to help.

I started blogging only two years ago – and since then my skills . Everything I know about writing and online media I have self-taught, by reading books, ebooks and other blogs, and by trial-and-error. I haven’t always got things right, but every is a piece of knowledge I can pass on to my clients. And today, I’m passing a few tips on to you.

So, please don’t laugh too much, but here are a few blogging mistakes I’ve made:

Starting a Professional Blog on Blogger

 
My first two professional blogs were on the blogger platform. I made those blogs because a prominent copywriter recommended blogger for professional blogs. They were exceptionally easy to set up and publish posts, but after awhile I realised I was falling short of my SEO capabilities. I should have been much higher in the search engines than what I was. After a little research, I realised why.

Because it strives for simplicity (a very noble goal, t’be sure) blogger doesn’t allow customization aside from a few small changes. Making the changes I needed involved complex html cracks that were well above my skill level. So I hunted around for an alternative, and I found Wordpress. Yaay Wordpress!

Starting my business blogs on blogger meant I lost a LOT of linkjuice when I made the changeover from blogger to wordpress. Not to mention the time it took me to import the old blog, change the html, setup and optimize my wordpress and edit the existing posts.

Insulting a Fellow Blogger

I once wrote a post which mentioned offhand how I was not a fan of another person’s blog. And it was true – I wasn’t. I didn’t attack the blog owner or anything, I just mentioned that although I wasn’t a fan, he had something on his blog that might be of interest to my readers.

Lo and behold, the power of pingbacks sent my post straight to the blogowner, who promptly commented on my blog, with one of the most pleasent and well-constructed comments I’d ever seen. He explained how I’d misinterpreted the purpose of his blog (which I had) and turned me into a fan (his is now a blog I read regularly).

Even though my comment was inoffensive, I felt awful. I’m REALLY careful about what I blog now – you’ll never catch me saying a negative thing like that again.

Forgot to Market

I brainstorm blog posts on the bus. I carry a notebook around with me, slowly filling it with lists of post ideas, guest blogs, outlines, and comment responses. I love writing my blogs. So much in fact I get so caught up in the writing part I’m apt to forget the marketing part.

An un-marketed blog is as good as baking a cake for yourself. Sure you’ve gone to all that effort, and it smells great and all, but you can’t eat a whole cake by yourself. What’s the point of baking a cake if no one else will enjoy it? Don’t you miss people complimenting you on your wonderful cooking?

The best blog marketing doesn’t cost money – guest blogging, pinging your posts, and commenting on other blogs. A little each day keeps your blog ticking away. Forget blog marketing at your peril! You have been warned.

So what about you guys, aye? Have any of you made any disasterous blogging mistakes you’d like to share?

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So what IS your website doing for your business? Think about this very carefully. Is your website your primary means of interaction with your customers – ie, an online shop. Does your website bring in new business via search engine traffic? Or does it serve as an information source for customer who’ve already brought with you – offering product advice, software updates or networking resources?

Within seconds of visiting your website your visitors gain an impression of who you are, your credibility and whether or not they want to do business with you. One click and they’re gone. You have only SECONDS to show your visitors that your website fulfils their needs.

Experts estimate that around 90% of a website’s budget is wasted on design features and additions that make no difference whatsoever to the customer’s decision to contact you. If you’re hiring a designer to create your business website, you’re going to get a finished product heavy on design features.

If you want a website that fulfils it’s purpose for your business, you need a copywriter on board.

Look at it this way. How often do you visit a website and think “Hmmm, well, I’m waiting for the front page to load the website – I THINK that’s a silhouette of a vacuum cleaner, but I can’t be certian till it loads…Oh, here they are! They have such pretty graphics and I love the way their menu folds down like a paper fan. But where’s the shop? It’s under the ‘Collections’ menu. Wow, what artistically designed titles! I’ll be purchasing a vacuum cleaner off them for sure.” I certianly don’t think like that, but maybe I’m unusual

I look at a website and think “Does this business fulfil my needs? I’m looking for a vacuum cleaner, do they sell them? Oh, yes, there they are, right on the first page. Now, do they ship to me? Yes, I can find that information under the ‘Shipping’ menu. Oh look, they have a blog about maximising the efficiency of your vacuum cleaner. That’s really useful. I think I’ll buy with these guys.”

Do you notice the difference? The first website focused on pretty graphics and design features. They directed the browser to a splash page with a large graphic rather than a homepage telling the browser what they actually sold. By using odd menu titles – like ‘collections’ instead of ’shop’ – they made their products difficult to find.

The second website focused on answering the users questions – do we sell what you’re looking for? Can you buy it? How can we help you use our product to the best of its efficiency? They used straight-forward language and a sensible layout to direct the customer around the website.

Guess which website cost more? Guess which website employed a copywriter?

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Sadly, I see this all too often. A business owner will start a blog with every good intention, but unfortunately, not everyone is a born blog writer. Most business owners have better things to do with their time than worry about feed subscribers and fresh blog content. If that sounds like you, it’s high time I suggest you hired a copywriter.

But what if you’re happy running your blog yourself? Perhaps you’re really enjoying blogging about your business, but you feel like you’ve run out of things to say. Well, for all you perservering amateur bloggers out there, I offer five post ideas to stimulate a boring blog.

Guest Blog

If you’re having trouble thinking up blog posts, get someone else to do it! Ask contributors from industry blogs if they’d consider a guest post – you can offer your own post in return. Multiple voices and opinions on your blog encourage discussion and you’ll get an extra boost from the traffic your guest brings over.

Top Ten Lists

Everyone loves a good top ten list, and you’ll love the chance to experiment with a new posting format. Make it irreverent, humourous or downright obscure. Make it persuasive or controversial. Make it something your readers want to repost and link to. Ask you commenters to add their own items.

Interview

Find someone to interview – an industry professional, a client, a hobo off the street – and corner them or email them a list of probing and humorous questions. As with guest posts, interviews allow someone else’s voice to refresh your blog and give you a boost in traffic as the interviewee encourages their readers to check out the review.

What NOT to do

Some of the highest traffic blog posts are about what bloggers do WRONG. ‘How NOT to decorate a vintage hat’ immediately interest browsers as it offers something different from the hundreds of ‘how to decorate vintage hat’ sites. A what NOT to do blog post should be humorous and informative – be careful not to make yourself look like TOO much of an idiot though. If it backfires you could lose readers

Review

Whenever you’re stuck for blog post ideas, look around you for products to review. New software, books, movies, websites, conferences, suppliers…you name it, you can review it, and when searchers browse for that product, they’ll find your review and might stay to read the rest of your blog!

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A Great Client has a Plan

When you go into business, or start up your non-profit, the VERY first thing you should do is not buy your domain name or throw a party, but draw up a business plan. Your business plan then becomes the backbone of every business decision you make.

The client with a plan is the client who comes to me and says “I need to website to fulfill this specific purpose. I want this information included. I need a blog that targets this specific audience and attracts new clients to my business. Go to it.” This client is a joy to work with because they understand what a copywriter needs to produce successful website content.

The client without a plan says “I need a website, with some articles and probably a blog.” They don’t understand the purpose for their website, their target market, or the goals they’re working towards by setting up online. These clients are difficult to work with as they don’t know what they want to achieve, so the copywriter can’t target their content accordingly.

A Great Client is Excited about their business

My favourite people to work with are those enthusiastic, ultra-driven people. You know the ones – they ooze passion from every pore. They’re the plumbers passionate about drain-laying, the gothic clothing designers passionate about Victorian lace, the seed-growers passionate about organic compost. Their enthusiasm is infactions, and before long I discover I’M passionate about drain laying, victorian lace and organic compost, and my passion comes across in the words I write.

Inspire passion in those around you, and you’re business will thrive.

A Great Client knows when to Leave you To It

Some clients are so concerned you don’t understand the needs of their project, they’ll ring you countless times to ‘go over the details’ or drag you in for meeting after meeting.

Great Clients understand that all these interruptions break your flow and result in a disjointed focus on the project. Great Clients trust you as the expert to deliever your best work based on their detailed brief.

A Great Client Asks for the Best

Sometimes – for whatever reason – you don’t get things quite right the first time. Maybe the focus for some of your articles is a bit off, or you’ve touched on a controversial point your client would rather avoid.

A Great Client gives you detailed feedback on the areas they want improved and allows you to rectify these areas.

Some clients simply take the content and make do, or attempt to edit it themselves. A Great Client understands you want only your best work to enter the world and will allow you the opportunity to improve your content.

A Great Client Pays on Time

Every freelancer has a tale of ‘the Client that Didn’t Pay’. My worst was an editor who didn’t sent a check for four months. The check never arrived (not the editor’s fault, mind you) so they told me they would write another check and send it right away. Two weeks later, a check arrived – not the new check, but the FIRST check, now reversed. The new check arrived three months later – seven months after I was due payment.

It’s easy to forget the writers have to eat too, and pay our bills, and buy our husband’s chocolate. Great Clients pay promptly, and if there’s any problem with payment, they rectify it forthwith.

Do you have any more definitions of great clients? Perhaps you have a story of a great or not-so-great client you’d like to share in the comments?

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Think of your client pool like a vegetable patch. You only have so much space (my vege patch is 1m by 1m square!) for vegetables. This space represents the total amount of work you’re able to do without expanding.

Now, you might choose to plant your entire patch with rows of carrots. That’s great – carrots are really yummy. You water them every day, and after twelve weeks you pull up an entire garden of carrots. You eat carrots three times a day, every day, for a week – carrot juice, carrot soup, carrot bread, carrot cake, glazed carrots, baked carrots, honeyed carrots, roasted carrots …

Then you plant the garden full of another type of vegetable and wait 12 weeks for THAT to grow. In the meantime, you’re back to baked beans on toast. You’ve eaten all the carrots.

For a writer, this is like having one big client. You drop all other work to finish this clients’ project, and at the end, you recieve a fat cheque. But now you have no work again – you don’t have anything left in your garden.

Instead, why not plant a 1/4 of your garden with carrots, and, two weeks later, plant another 1/4 with parsnip, and two weeks later, another 1/4 with lettuce, and two weeks later plant the final quarter with courgettes.

When you pull up your carrots, replace them with another vegetable. Even though that vegetable will take a long time to grow, in the meantime, you’ll have carrots and parsnip and courgettes to feast on.

Can you see where I’m going with this?

While you’re working away on those massive jobs, remember when you finish the job you need to have more work to continue with. Don’t neglect your other potential clients – promote and market yourself as though you have no work on at all. Don’t fill your whole garden full of carrots, because when the carrots are gone, you’re back to baked beans.

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I know, I know, it’s been far too long since my last post. Please forgive?

I’ve been super busy working on wonderful projects, finishing my novel and writing a couple of new ebooks! Both ebooks are currently only available from my Etsy shop, but I’ll soon have them up in the blog shop, too. I promise

Freelance Success: Writing Articles for Magazines

I’ve gone from a hobby writer to supporting my family from my writing. Even with the economy in tatters and publications downsizing left, right and centre, I’m still earning money and landing high-paying gigs. And I did it in less than two years. I’ve written the Freelance Writing Success Ebook to help you achieve the same success. Writing transformed my life, and I’m willing to bet it will transform yours too.

Blog Your Etsy Shop – how-to ebook for successful business blogging

A blog is an excellent tool for driving traffic to your etsy shop. My main source of promotion for our Etsy store, www.weddingskulls.etsy.com is my Wedding Skulls blog. Neither myself nor my partner Amy advertise in magazines, nor twitter, nor facebook, nor any of that other social networking bling; we concentrate our efforts on generating quality traffic through our blog.

How do we do it? Well, I wrote this ebook to tell you. I’ve been a professional business blogger for the last three years. I write blog posts and set up blogs for small business owners and non profit organizations looking to maximize their search engine traffic. I’ve had over 150 sales so far through my blog, and it’s been active less than six months.

***

There you go – two new ebooks to whet your appetite. Although I’ve got plans written out for my next ebooks, reports, and even a course, I won’t be releasing anything else for awhile. In 62 days, I’m going on my OE to Europe, and my time between today and then is devoted to finishing my current client projects, finalizing trip details and deciding which heavy metal t-shirts to pack.

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