Pet Apparel Now Available On Zazzle!

This morning I opened up my Zazzle newsletter to find that they have now added pet shirts to their line of products. I think my initial response was something like, “oooOOOOoooo. Cool.” So, I trundled on over to my shop to check it out.

I discovered that Zazzle is offering two styles: a ringer t-shirt and a tank top (no sleeves). The sizes range from 0-3 lbs all the way up to 56 lbs. The t-shirt comes in two colors, pink and blue, while the tank top offers a wider variety. Being a dog owner myself, I couldn’t resist trying one out. So, I used a design I originally created for a baby shirt and made this: 

Get it? I’m acute-t-pi? Ok, so it’s a bad pun. But it usually gets chuckle…and the baby shirt has even sold a few times (Yea!)

I’m not the only one to try out the new dog sweaters. Here are a few of my favorites:

And if you’re in the mood for a matched set for you and your furry friend, check out Pet Shirts. They’ve got products for both people and pets featuring a range of breeds. Their designs come in two distinct styles, a beautifully realistic protrait of the dog, and a cute “I love (insert dog breed)” with a black silhouette.

Resolution Review

Well, it’s February. Yep, a whole month has gone by since I posted my New Year’s resolutions for my online income. So, I figured a review was due. How am I doing? Eh, so-so. Here’s a breakdown of the original resolutions and how I’ve done for each one.

1. Make a Squidoo Lens a Month. Check! I published a Valentine’s Day themed knitting lens called Knit with Love: Free Patterns for Valentine’s Day.

2. Create two new designs for Zazzle each month. I bombed this one. I thought of the 32bit design in January, but didn’t complete it until just a couple of days ago.

3. Do a little more research on Triond, or look into other ways of getting paid to write articles.This one has been swimming around in my head for the past month. Triond is a consistent, but low, earner. But, I think I can incorporate writing articles about my new network marketing business into this. Hopefully this will pull up my views, increasing the income earned.

4. Get organized when it comes to money. I didn’t do a dang thing about this in January. But, just a few hours ago I set up that spread sheet. Here’s a screen shot of it.

Ok, prepare yourself. You are about to learn more than you ever wanted to know about the way I’m organizing this thing:

In My Documents there now lives a folder labelled “Income Sources.” In that folder, there is a subfolder named “Feb.” (Short for February.) In that subfolder there is an Excel workbook named 8-14, as in February 8th through the 14th. Within that workbook there is an individual sheet for each day of the week, simply labelled with the date. So, whenever I work on one of my income sources, or whenever I receive a payment it gets recorded on that day’s sheet. At the end of the week, I’ll create a summary sheet with all of my totals. At the end of the month, I’ll create a sheet with my monthly totals. And, finally, at the end of the year I’ll create a document to total it all up. Whew. (Who knew that summer working as the front desk of a massage therapy school would ever pay off so well?)

So, in summary: I’m working on keeping my resolutions, and not letting the fact that I didn’t accomplish all of them in January from keeping me from accomplishing them at all. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life,” may be a cheesy cliche, but it’s also true. I’m definitely learning that you shouldn’t dwell on past mistakes. Learn from them, then move on to achieving your goals!

No Grayscale Dreams for Me…

Here’s a brand spankin’ new design inspired by a conversation I had with my mother about how many people dream in color v/s in black and white. Apparently most people dream in color, but if you grew up watching a black and white TV you have a greater chance of dreaming in monochrome. Weird, huh? I say it’s proof that television really does rot your brain. ;-)

 It’s available on nine fully customizable items, including:

That last one is a baby shirt…because even little ones have bright, colorful dreams. :-)

Ode to the Zazzle Quick Create Many Products Link

Ode to the Zazzle Quick Create Many Products Link

Oh, Quick Create Many Products link
How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways…
One: You allow me to easily expand my gallery by creating many products quickly.
Two: Something I created by clicking on you just sold.
Three: Um, I think that’s about it.

Whoo, my poetic juices are flowing, huh? Ya, baby!

Bad poetry aside (my sincerest apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning) that little link in the top left corner of the My Products page is revolutionizing how I create products for my gallery. I blogged about it when it was first introduced, and have been playing around with it a bit since then. Most of my designs, though, are words rather than images. So, it still takes a bit of time to customize each product. But, it’s a heck of a lot faster than selecting each product individually because I can apply the same description and tags to all of them at once.

Previously, the “snort laugh” design had existed as just one lonely button. But, through the magic of the bulk product wizard I was able to quickly expand the range of products on which it appeared. Apparently, someone liked the idea because they purchased the magnet! So, if you haven’t tried the Quick Create Many Products link, I suggest you give it a try. Who knows, it may even inspire you to write bad poetry. It’s happened before. ;)

Duel Blog Post: Squidoo Lens Building and Zazzle Sale!

Squidoo Lens Building

The last couple of days have been super fun in the “making money creatively” world. I published the Squidoo lens that I swooshed off to finish two posts ago. It’s a holiday themed lens, so I really wanted to get it done soon: Knit With Love: Free Patterns for Valentine’s Day.

I’m also happy to announce that my most popular lenses are getting the bulk of their hits through google! How did I do that? Heck, I dunno. Well, that’s not completely true. At first, I was just trying to make honest lenses based around subjects that I cared passionately about. I started to get some feedback (mostly encouraging) so, I stated hanging out at SquidU (the Squidoo forums), hoping to soak up some knowledge to help make them better.

It turns out that there is a subgroup of Squids that make lens all about how to make lenses. It’s fabulous! So, want to know how to attract google’s attention? Check out this lens by one of my favorite lensmasters: SEO for squidoo - getting found in google: search engine optimization.

Zazzle Sale!

I’ve noticed that some gallery owners place a nice “Thank You” comment under a product when it sells. It seemed like a good way to show your thanks (as you don’t get any contact info on your customers [to protect their privacy and prevent spam, I assume]) and to bring attention to the fact that your gallery is actually generating sales. So, I decided to give it a go.

Guess what? It worked! I sold a pack of business cards yesterday, and noticed on the royalty report that the customer’s name was Catherine. So, I posted a comment on the product page giving her a little shout out. When I woke up this morning, there was a congratulatory comment on that product from another designer! The comment actually attracted some attention. I will definitely continue this practice in the future. For sure.

[EDIT] Oops, it looks like my comment on the product page wasn’t the attention grabber I thought it was. I just checked my twitter @ replies and noticed that the the other designer actually found out about the sale through my celebratory tweet. But, hey, that means that twitter is helping spread the word about my zazzle gallery. Yea twitter! [END EDIT]

Oh, want to see what the business cards look like? Here ya go:

Can’t Keep a Good Man Down

He’s gone and done it again. My dad has opened another zazzle gallery!

You may remember that he recently opened a beautiful gallery full of his nature photography, called Simply Nature. Being mostly trees, it has a lovely, relaxing theme. See?

Now, he’s launched a gallery with a different theme: spirituality. This gallery, called The Point is full of his unique style of graphics and philosophy. I don’t even know how to describe it (other than to say it’s beautiful and worth a look-see), so I’ll just give you an example.

Or, if you prefer something more simple:

I’m so glad that I stumbled across zazzle in that squidooblog last year. Who knew it would become a family endeavor? :D

Oh, if you want to make your own zazzle gallery, click here to get started!

Motivation Gets a Shot in the Arm!

My last post was all about how to perk up my motivation, so that I can stay on track with my New Year’s resolutions. Unknown to me, motivation was waiting right around the bend.

I was checking out the stats on my Squidoo lenses and noticed that one of my knitting lenses (Intarsia and Stranded Knitting: Two Ways To Add Color To Your Knitting) was getting more hits lately. So, I took a closer look and discovered that someone bought a book from Amazon after clicking through my lens! Yea!

So, thanks, mystery shopper. I appreciate the vote of confidence. Now, I’m off to finish that lens in progress! Swoosh!

(Want to make your own lens? Click here to get started!)

Lack of Motivation Needs a Plan of Action

Well, my New Year’s “I’m gonna organize my business within an inch of its life” high has worn off. Have I kept a weekly dashboard? Nope. Have I made my little chart to keep track of my time and money? Nope again. Have I designed items for Zazzle? Yes, but not as many as I want. Have I made a Squidoo lens? I’ve got one in progress, but I’m not sure it’s going to work out. In summary: blech.

So, what am I going to do about it? I could make excuses, sure. A lot of my focus is towards my health goals right now, etc, etc. But, instead of whining and moaning and feeling all useless, I’m going to take action! Hoo-ra! (That was my motivational shout. Nice, huh?)

So, what am I going to do? Let’s take a look at my two main problems and what I’m doing about them:

Problem: I have an idea, but procrastinate instead of jumping on it right away. Then I forget the idea or I have other ideas and feel overwhelmed because I’ll never be able to get all of this stuff done by the time I want it done, so I just give up and none of them get done. (Um, read that last run-on sentence with an ever increasing level of anxiety for the full effect.)

Answer: Write the idea down immediately when it comes to me. Keep a working list of the ideas I have, in order of importance. This way I’ll always be able to see what needs to be done by what date (such as holiday-themed ideas) and I won’t feel like I must do everything at once.

Problem:I feel like I’m wasting a lot of my time online. I get distracted in the middle of a project by an e-mail alert, or get sucked into some random YouTube video and before I know it, an hour has gone by and I haven’t gotten anything done.

Answer: Schedule work time. I was doing something like this last year with the dashboards. I kept track of the time I worked on specific projects, so I was less tempted to wander off into cyberspace while in the middle of something. So, this year I am going to actually schedule (as is “write in my planner”) when I will spend time working online. That way I know what is play time and what is work time without question.

Oh, I just thought of something else: I’ve got to remember that I actually enjoy this stuff! I love making lenses and thinking of funny sayings for zazzle shirts. Why would I want to put off something I enjoy? (That was a rhetorical question. Please don’t leave a comment with the words “self sabotage” in it. I may cry.)

Anyway, if you’ve got the “middle of January” slump in motivation, I hope this gives you some ideas to help you get back on track. :)

Spidey Fans Check it Out: Obama to be “nerd-in-chief”

I love those little “news of the weird” headlines that pop up when I swing by my MyYahoo Page. One of them caught my eye this morning because it contained the words “Obama” and “nerd” in the same sentence. I thought, “OK, so maybe he’s a bit tall and lanky, and his ears stick out a bit…but a nerd? I dunno about that.”

I clicked through to read the article and discovered that the president elect not only collects Spider-Man comics, but that he is going to appear on the cover of one! How cool is that?

So, as a token of kinship from one nerd to another, President Elect Obama, I present you with this special edition, commemorative button:

I Heart Zazzle (Getting ready for Valentine’s Day)

Another widely celebrated holiday is coming around the bend. Yup, the one day of the year set aside for love will be here in a little over a month: Valentine’s Day. So, I thought I’d spruce up the old Featured Products on my Zazzle gallery to showcase my products associated with romance.

Ok, to be honest, I don’t got much. Just a design linking matters of the heart with an infinate number (pi), a heart-shaped goofy photo of Einstein, and some shirts declaring that your better half thinks that you look hot in your glasses. But, I’m making the best of it. I used these designs in the top six spots in my gallery:

 and I also added the keywords “love” and “valentine” to their tags. So, hopefully they’ll attract some attention.

Oh, and on the Squidoo front, I’m in the process of creating a knitting lens devoted to free online patterns appropriate for Valentine’s Day. It should be done this weekend. I’ll post a link here when it’s ready.