BlackOwl lodge

I had actually finished writing and gone over to improving one of my stores in order for it to rank better in the search engines. As I got a second where I had nothing to do than wait for the page to refresh – I went looking for email.

And I found one of the best applications for “todays best spam comment” I have ever seen.
I guess that spam comments can count as “private property” and are protected by copyright, so I’m only going to share a small snippet of it with you here claiming it’s fair use if they return and complain about it. I actually find the comment quite amusing. I bet that the persons sending out this message to random blogs through the internet have paid good money for the software or for the book teaching them to do so. Maybe even, gasp, with PLR license. I did not pay them a visit.

I were going to quote all of it and add it here – but then I remembered good old google. Google read your pages, your posts and make up it’s mind about your pages or posts without knowing if you wrote the darn thing, or if you are only making fun of it.

– so to sum the spam comment up very briefly – they promised me an insane amount of backlinks from forums, and that it would skyrocket the targeted traffic to my blog, and (drumroll) I would “get instant traffic and massive increase in seo rankings just after few days or week”. How about that!

I am amazed they forget to tell you that – yes, they can post your marketing post up to … forums worlwide and also make your customers shy away from your store or service next time they spot your name. Maybe this is just an extra bonus, and they want you to discover it yourself. I can not imagine how I have managed to run a business without this, can you?

Just forget to look for the comment field – it’s closed. No comments allowed. Want to talk about spam or other things that POD people have to deal with when they blog about their business – visit the Zazzle Talk group at Facebook or one of the other groups for POD people at Facebook. You are not alone fighting and dealing with spam. I do not know any better way to deal with spam than close the option to comment at the blog but maybe somebody else can give you a different view on spam.

I’m on a quest to double my online income in 2012 by using what I have learned while running and designing for different online stores. If you want to follow me to find out if I manage to do so – welcome
Earlier I have talked about Goals and Plans VS Dreams and The importance of Networking for POD people. You may also want to read Making a Roadmap for your business

Today I am going to publish a bit about my Goals. What I want, and how I am going to make this happen.

What I want for 2012
Double my aff. income and POD income in 2012.

How am I going to do it.
Aff. income. I have spent a bit of my time testing different aff. programs in 2011, mostly at Squidoo and on my other blogs – and I now know what program I want to work with and aprox. how much time and efforts I need to spend in order to make it happen. I’m going to focus on the Zazzle affiliate program, and Cafepress Partner Program – and maybe Amazon when needed. And I am going to do it using blogs hosted and web pages hosted on my own domains, as well as on Squidoo. Tomorrow I will write a little something about why and how I use Squidoo for backlinks, as a keyword tool, to earn affiliate income and for fun.

POD (Zazzle and Cafepress)
I got several niche stores at Zazzle, and in 2011 I re-opened a few of my niche stores at Cafepress.
Zazzle and Cafepress are so different that it’s not fair to compare them directly with each other, but the way the Cafepress stores are set up/designed I find it easier to increase their search engine visibility. And I know there is something brewing regarding the affiliate program so cleaning up the stores and adding new products, titles, text can be worth a lot. At Zazzle I will clean up my tags and work on descriptions, but this I will do as time permits for the next month, and switch over to it in full force in March.

I am going to redesign my POD dotcom so shoppers easily can find just the items they came looking for, and I will also make banners and info page about how affiliates can promote my products and earn aff. income if they sell… Started the process yesterday.

At CP you can not earn money promoting your own products using their aff. program – and I think that is fair – so if I want the extra traffic and customers sent by affiliates for my stores I have to keep it clean, filled with aff. worthy designs and make it easy for affiliates to send traffic directly to the store. As an affiliate I prefer to send traffic directly to a store since customers can find similar designs, and niche designs – because it more often lead to multiple items orders than marketplace customers.
If a store got few products, or a whole sleeve of unrelated products, products with badly fitted images, links that go somewhere else and … I prefer the marketplace. So I need to clean up my stores. Affiliates can help me reach my goal in less time than if I try to work alone.

I must work on the intro, the section descriptions, the titles of each product. I am not going to use much time on product descriptions as I want the keyword rich and descriptive text to be on the page where they can view more products with the same design. I want them to find the section where the design is shown on a lot of products and not on a random tee or button. If they land on a section page they got more options visible instantly and can easily spot more products with the same design – and add extra items in their cart. I must also work on getting backlinks.

This blog are also a part of the plan. I will try to keep it updated on regular basis so I can go back next year in January and find out if I made my goals or not. One part of the goal making are to evaluate what you have achieved and find out what worked or not and there is where this blog will be handy.

As for now it seems like I will get better “paid” for working on my Cafepress stores so I will focus on that for the next month.

Fun. We must not forget to have a little bit of fun. Since I do not play online games at all my kind of fun is to design new quirky, weird, and unusual designs. So the next month my plan for what to do at Zazzle will be adding random designs when I got them ready, on just the products I want – and add them to a Squidoo lens or a FB photo album. Just for fun.

Yesterday I talked about setting goals and making plans.

I think that at some point in your quest to earn an income online you need to create a roadmap for your venture.

I am at that point now, and you are welcome to follow me while I try achieve the goals I have set for myself and my online business for 2012. Maybe you get ideas you can use to grow your own business.

I have been running an brick-an-mortar POD store since 1995 and I have been online since 1995.
When I ventured into the online POD world I did not have a plan for it at all I just did it to help one of our customers who lived in USA. I did not want to create a plan and did not have to. I just reported the extra income and that was it.

I have always loved a challenge and love to compete with myself. I have tested out almost everything, and yes – most of it were only time wasted – while other things I learned a lot of valuable information from. I used to be a beta tester of almost every kind of internet ventures and services I thought were useful – if I could do it without having to get involved in a “chat with other people” kind of time wasting. No forums, no chat, no social connections at all. But I tested and registered at different places just to find out what it was, I’m an dedicated “readmefirst.txt” and TOS reader, and to secure my name I … later I have discovered the value of connecting with other POD people to avoid getting burned out while working at my own at home.

I know what I wanted to do – I just had not created a plan I wanted to follow. In fact I did not have a goal other than competing with myself, but this have now changed.

Why creating a plan now after so many years without one?
Because I can. Because I want to. Because I love to challenge myself. Because I need the extra money.
Many do not set up a plan unless they need to do so, and I am no different than most other people.

My Grandmother always said ” be careful about what you wish for as those who got strong wishes are likely to get their wishes fulfilled only to find out that it was not what they wanted. ” What she meant was that when you wish strongly for something to happen you set your mind on making it happen, and often you manage to do so. Focusing on a goal can trigger events that again can help you reach your goal. Your mind focus and you do things you need to do, you go places you are more likely to meet people that can help you, you talk more freely about your goals and dreams – and can get help from people who love to help making your wish come true.

- AND?
I have now found out that I need extra money if I want to turn my dream of visiting USA with my camera before I get to old. 3 months traveling around visiting places I have read about in Squidoo lenses and elsewere, meeting people from the POD world, visit the manufacturers of the products I earn a living designing for/allowing me to offer my designs on products at. So my goal this year are to double my online POD income, and my aff. income.

I have set up stores at almost all the major PODs and a few of the smaller PODs. Today I have limited it to 3, and I am going to make that only 2 during this year. Later I will share what I know about the different PODs, a few of the tools I use (like Squidoo), but for now I’m going to stick with my daily plan : Make a roadmap for my online business.

Road map.
Some of us prefer not to set detailed plans for our life and our business online as we know we will not follow them due to many reasons, and maybe feel like we failed or that the plan restricts us – if we created a list with goals we know we will not follow completely. Other people get motivated by a long list broken down in details, a sort of roadmap of what to do and when to do it. We all have to do what we know works for us. And others get motivated and manage to stay on track with the chores they need to do in order to achieve their goals by just adding a postcard to their wall or a magnet to their fridge. They use visuals to keep their minds on track.

I envy those who manage to stay organized without creating a detailed plan – a roadmap that show you how to get where you want to be – it would have saved me a few hours

For me a plan where I set goals for what I want to achieve does not have to be highly detailed, but detailed enough to guide me in what I need to do. Creating a Business Roadmap can involve different things to different people.

Setting realistic goals.
When you dream only your imagination limits your possibilities , but when you make a plan with goals to reach – you have to be realistic and honest. Honest? Yes, if you want a plan that have a chance of getting you where you want to go it needs to be realistic and you have to be honest with yourself about a lot of things.

Asking yourself questions can help you find out what you need to do. It can help playing a game where you view yourself and your business as a stranger asking all the awkward questions.

Not sure where I’m going?
I needed to ask myself a few questions and one of them were “Doubling my online income, realistic or not?”
As I have been online so many years working on my PODs, I got a fairly realistic view on what I can do, how much time it takes to do it, what tools I want and need to do what I need to do, and that I got the time to do whatever it takes. I have always tracked my income for tax purposes so I know how much I earn and where I earn the money from. This data helped me when I had to figure out where to focus. Until now I have tested a lot of aff. programs, and found the ones I need to use in order to double my aff. income – and ditch the rest. If I am going to double my income this year I do not want to spend time reading information about programs I do not want to promote now. Later maybe, but I believe it’s wise to stick to something as it take time and efforts to find out what works best for my business.

I have asked questions to the different affiliate managers, found out the ups and downs – and made my choice.

What’s this have to do with creating a roadmap for your business? What’s in it for you?
If you have read this far down the page I guess that you really want to make an extra income working online.
A little kick in the butt, reading how other people do things – can help you figure out what you need to do.
You can also use the list you find in the navigation bar — > POD Stuff and find places where you meet other POD people.

Let us say you dream about earning an full income online selling your art at PODs because a friend does this.
- You may want to ask yourself about how realistic is this for you? How much do you know about how much work is involved, how much do you know about running a business, how much a full time-income is for you (how much do you need – and how much does your friend find is enough as full time income), how much time have he or she spent to create the income, how much do you need to learn in order to manage this, and a lot of other questions. How soon do you need the money, is it possible to earn that kind of money in the time frame you have set, do you need to learn new skills in order to make the money, how much time do you have available for you to use.

And then you find a forum or group where you can ASK, ASK, READ, ASK and ASK to find out if this really are something you want to do. One group where I spend some time right now are Zazzle Talk.

IMPORTANT
You have to evaluate the advice you get and make up your own mind as it’s going to be your business and whatever you do or do not do will always be something you have to take responsibility for. So do not rely on one source of information or one persons advice when you make up your mind – whatever you do – it’s always your responsibility to figure out if the information are legit and correct.

Full-Time Income
I asked about the full-time income question in a FB group I am a member of – and the answer depends on who defines full-time income.
What I need and think is perfect for me – can be far less than you need to make a living. Think about that when you read and hear about those who claim that they earn a full-time living online. Those who only work online at PODs to earn extra money to spend also got different ways of measuring success than those who depend on the money to earn a living.

Facebook Groups where you can talk, ask, have fun:
Zazzle talk
GreatGear
Zazzlers Uncensored

I did not know what title to use for us who work online designing for different Print-On-Demand companies so I will just refer to us as POD people. POD -Print-On-Demand – a company who offer artists and or writers to upload their designs/text/images for sale on products they (the PODs) provide together with customer service, shipping and more.

PODs attract a lot of different people from the whole world. Some of us only use the services PODs offer to earn a little bit extra and does not rely on the income at all, while other people might need the income and got it as their only income. The importance of networking might not be as important to all, but it surely does not hurt you.

I Do Not Want To Help My Competitors by networking with them.
They can steal my ideas. Yes they can, and so can all the people who search google images, visitors to your store or web site. It’s illegal. Pro or Semi-pro POD artists/designers know this and would probably be among your best friends when they spot your designs somewhere they know they are not supposed to be. They also know how time consuming it is to create designs, and are actually more often customers willing to pay a fair price than those who think “it’s only done on a computer”.  They also know how time consuming it is to promote the products, that the work is not done when you have got the design uploaded and placed on a product. They are more likely to share things they like – pay it forward if you and when you can.

Sharing your products, ideas and let fellow help you can be one of the things to put on your TO-Do list this year.  One of the things to keep in mind when networking with POD people is that not all of them got English as their mother tongue so messages can seem harsh, out of line or confusing – so be kind, ask rather than… it might just be that they could not find the right words to use.

I do not have the time to waste being social with fellow POD people!
A truth with many answers. Networking with other  POD people can save time, save you from doing big mistakes, get your products promoted for free (if they like them – and you) – and you can benefit when they tell about tools they use, places to promote… and more.
Each of the PODs got their own forum you can visit.
Search the forum, hang around a while before you post – the chance that somebody have answered your question already are huge.

Facebook:
At the top of this page you will find a list of POD people with business pages at Zazzle and Cafepress. I will also list a few of the FB groups where you can talk shop and designs.

Other places you can promote your business.
There are a lot of different places where you can share your designs, get the word out about your store and meet other people who also run an POD business. Later I will make a list of those I know and include a short summary of what I know about them – so stay tuned

Turning Dreams into Goals
If you are a designer running one or several stores, or you got a brick-and-mortar store you depend on a lot of things to make money. One of the most important tools in my opinion are a detailed business plan.

Have you made yourself a business plan this year?
When you want to go on a vacation – you most likely make a plan where you find out where you want to go, what to see, what to buy,  what clothes to bring with you, and a lot of other details. You read reviews, ask friends and family, search internet for more information.

This way you are sure to get a return on your investment and a nice vacation. I got a question for fellow Zazzlers and Cafepress shopkeepers – do you Dream about making an income by selling your art on different PODs, or have you made it a Goal to earn money selling your art. Voice your plans and opinions when you join us in the Zazzle Talk group at Facebook. Don’t let the name fool you – you can freely talk about CP and Z in this group.

1. Goal = A Dream with a plan on how to get there and a timeline.

 When creating your business plan, turning your dreams into goals, don’t be afraid of writing down whatever you desire. A business plan are no less or no more than a TO-Do list  

When you only Dream about something, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and actually your dream can stop you from getting the results you want.  Eager to try whatever that work for someone else you jump from one thing to another not knowing what actually worked for you or not, you spend endless hours on things that only consumes time – and do not help you reach what you dream about. Maybe they do it as a part of their plan and it suits them perfect, but it might not work at all for you.

A business plan does not have to be carved in stone, but serve as a guide for yourself when you find a shiny object you rather want to test out because others have done so. With a business plan handy you can evaluate if this new tool fit into your plan or if you will be better off doing something else and let the other “kids” play with their new tools alone for a minute or two.

• A Dream

I hope to double my online income this year so I can afford to pay my bills.

• A Goal

Double my online income this year.
To double my online income this year I need to focus on driving traffic to my…

 I am not great at setting goals myself, but this year I am going to write them down. We all got different ways to set goals, you have to do what’s best for you. I need mine broken down in details. Main goal – smaller goals – how to achive my goals. I may or may not follow the plans I make, but if I do not write them down I just wander around in circles.

Nice reading – about setting goals:

• Setting SMART Personal Goals

I have turned off the commenting on this post. Please visit and join us at Zazzle Talk at Facebook.