If you want to start your own business from home selling things you make, here are your best options:
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| {Go for it!} |
1 Start your blog first. If you have the time cushion to start blogging before you start selling your products, I think this is the best plan. Blog about what you’re interested in, the subject area your products fall under {ie: if you’re selling pillows, talk about décor and home improvement; if party supplies is your thing, blog about diy projects you’ve been doing}, your life. Lifestyle blogs are a big deal these days, mostly because they’re fun and easy to read. If you start your blog first, you’ll hopefully have an established readership that trusts you and likes you because of what they’ve seen {well, read, really} so far and will be interested in what you have to sell. This makes promoting your products simpler.
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| {Read & Respond} |
2 Speaking of promoting your products/business, make sure you spend time reading other blogs and commenting. This sounds almost counter-productive since you’re spending time reading what other people have to say and not writing about yourself, but in actuality, it’s a fantastic marketing tool because many bloggers respond personally to comments. If you’re really articulate and what you have to say is of value to them, you may have just started up a dialogue between you and them that will help you both later on.
For instance, the other blogger may be more willing to host a giveaway on their blog of your product once you get going with your business. Or vice versa. Not only does this get your name out there, but it increases web traffic to both your site and theirs.
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| {Just for you} |
3 Host your own giveaway. If you already have your own blog and you think you might have enough people reading to make it worth your while, having a giveaway can only help you. You might be surprised over how many people actually read your blog when the comments start coming in.
This is also an easy way to get enough likes on Facebook to rename the url so that people can find your page. {Sidenote: If you create a page on Facebook for your business, the url is a massive jumble of letters, numbers, and symbols until you reach 25 Likes. After you reach that number, Facebook allows you to go in and edit the url so that it can say something like… “fb.com/PaperLanternLane” instead of “fb.com/fncs/w&9e8723/fcsdfw&jfdisoetc”}.
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| {Oh, the things you can think...} |
4 Write simply. Because your products are your creations and a part of you, it’s easier to communicate to others the passion and joy behind them if you just write from your thoughts, not calculating the benefits of posting about one thing over another. I found that writing with my own voice and with my own style is hard to do when you’re staring at the little box Blogger has for you to write your posts in, so I started writing out my posts on a WordDoc first and then just copy-and-pasting it over to the itty-bitty Blogger box. {If you’re using some other blogging platform, I’m not sure how they work, so things may vary a bit}. Just start writing and stop worrying.
Now if I could only learn to take my own advice, yah? *grins*
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For the moment, this is all I’ve thought of for blogging for/about your own creative business. Simple, little things that should hopefully make your life easier as you think about how to navigate this strange bloggy world. I’ll definitely have an update if something mindblowing comes to the brain.
I really hope this helped and that it brought up some new ideas for you to use! Let me know in the comments about your motto/blueprint for blogging; we can work on Pt 2 {read & comment} together! *laughs*
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