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• Selling Greeting Cards Through Stores
  by Jo O'Brien

  Recently the topic of selling greeting cards out in the real world has come up in the forums...

  Recently the topic of selling greeting cards out in the real world has come up in the forums Having sold greeting cards before through shops and at markets, my humble opinion and experience may be of interest. I’ve got a lot to say on this one so I’ll use headings :) / mren’s ‘somewhere in fitzroy’ Be a Business- Not Just an Artist / What I mean by this is consider yourself a business supplier and demonstrate a level of professionality. Yes it is great if you promote the artistic merits of your work but greeting cards are a very common product and so being organised with an ABN, professional looking invoices, online ordering facilities, fast turn around etc will put you ahead of the (always growing) pack. Like all good businesses, know your strengths and show them off. Provide Good Quality Products / It might sound obvious (I hope it does) but when people are starting out in business they tend to cut corners. In the greeting card business quality is a big deal. This is where RedBubble becomes a huge advantage because the quality of the card printing is so exceptional. Packaging is Important / Have you considered what your cards will look like after 20 or so customers have handled them? Some people like the ‘no plastic’ look and who am I to tell them otherwise. I always individually wrap my cards and make sure that if the packaging prevents the card being openned, that “Blank Card” is printed either on the individual packaging or nearby signage. If you put together gift packs, wrap them beautifully and make sure people know what images they are getting in the pack. / My little tip: leave one copy of each card unwrapped on display and when you check up with the store, see which ones are the grubbiest to identify the favourites Displaying your wares / The things people want to see are the images, the quality and the price. Where possible I use clear perspex stands that do not cover the front of the card. By leaving a few sample cards out of their packaging people can pick them up and feel them to check the quality. I also make sure each card has a visible price on it, on the back, on a removable sticker. Some hints would be not to have too many of a particular card out on display at once. Keep a box of ‘top up’ cards out of sight. If you have a series that belongs together, display them together and perhaps highlight them with different packaging or a small separate display rack. Cards should be displayed with the image facing the right way up where possible. Always put your name and contact details on your card stands- so often they ‘magically disappear.’ And if you are providing your own stands, try to ‘claim’ the space so that other people’s cards don’t get put in over the top of yours. This can be hard to police but for example, having “Cards by Artist ABC” on your stand makes it harder for the retailer to stick any old stuff in there. / ‘legs’ by itsactustus Get Your Pricing Right / Like all things business, a lot of small shops will heckle with you over money and prices. My advice to you? Know what price you want and stick to it. Think about it in perspective, in a typical shop, greeting cards will be close to the cheapest item in there. If the business can’t fork out $30 to try 10 cards then you don’t want to be doing business with them! But also think realistically about your prices. Most retailers will start saying ‘no thanks’ at about $3 a card so to make RedBubble cards (with a base price of up to $3) a financailly viable option you need to sell them as premium art cards worth that extra dollar or two. Considering the quality of them, I believe this is possible. Depending on where you sell them, you could get $4 to $8 or even more per card. It will depend on the clientelle for that particular store. / Common Mistake: Too many people give their cards different prices when in the eye of the customer they all look pretty much the same. If you want to have a premium range, make it obvious Profite Margins / I should add as a separate but related point, most stores will want to mark up by about 100% on greeting cards. Most people sell there cards for a set wholesale price and then let the store charge whatever they like. The only time in my opinion, you should intervene is if you seriously believe they have overpriced them to such a point that nthey are not affordable. But think about it before setting your price. If you ask for $4 per card, can the store onsell them for $7.95? How to actually get them into stores / Here’s an idea for you- send them a card! Of course a rigorous follow up would be required. I would ‘door to door’ with a small sample or my stuff and it worked really well. I also had a bit of a tactic. I’d show a selection of cards worth $20 total. Then when they fell in love with a couple I’d say. “How about you buy this $20 worth from me right now and you keep that one you like for yourself, I’ll replace it with this one” Then I’d pull some other random card out of my bag and add it to the pile. Worked 9 out of 10 times. The other thing I did was band together with a fellow card maker (she did printed ones, I did handmade) so that we could show a greater range and cut our door knocking time in half. Can I also suggest not interrupting businesses during busy periods such as weekends or lunch hours. That happens to me in the gallery all the time and it’s a real pain. Also, if you’re talking to staff and their phone rings or a customer comes in, invite them to deal with the more important thing first and come back to you. Rotate Your Stock / Basically, if it isn’t selling, get rid of it yourself before the store owner decides to get rid of you! I’m exaggerating but the point it still valid. People will stop looking if your display always looks the same so keep it chaging. Make a fuss. If you have a new range, stick a sign up saying “New Farm Yard Range On Sale Now.” And remember, what works well in one store may go really badly in another so if it’s not selling, try somewhere else rather then giving up and throwing the lot in the bin! Consignment / This is particularly just my opinion but I’m against consignment on cards. Especially if you give a choice of what is ordered. Seriously, cards cost so little compared to other things, if a store can’t find $50 somewhere to buy some outright, there is something suss about that right away. It might be good to offer consignment on your first batch which will encourage the store to stock your stuff but don’t get into a habit of it. I would drop off say 50 cards and get someone to sign a consignment form saying how many they were given. Then after a few weeks I would go back, count them up and invoice for however many were missing. Then I’d also give them the choice of buying the remaining ones, or me taking them back. Most would swap a few that they didn’t like and then buy up. Payments / Again I hope this sounds obvious but ask to be paid. So many people get lost in a world of politeness and assume that eventually someone will do the right thing, Most small businesses using MYOB or QuickBooks accounting software will automatically lodge your invoices to be paid within 30 days. Agree on your terms and then chase up late payments. No need to be mean or nasty but a follow up letter and then a follow up phone call is fair enough. Also, be flexible in how you can be paid. Some businesses do everything with a cheque (or for you Americans, a “check”), others will rely on Direct Debit. So know how the business wants to pay you and don’t make it hard for them! Promote your Cards / The beauty of RedBubble cards is they have the URL of your portfolio on the back which shows off all of your work. But also remember to promote your cards out in the real world. Recently I bought a bunch of RedBubble cards and gave them all to friends. The response was amazing. They all got online to find more! Next step for me is to buy a bunch of my own cards and find excuses to give them to people. webgrrl had this awesome idea too. The cards really do speak for themselves so get them into circulation. - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - So if anyone is still breathing after reading all that, I hope you found it useful! / I do tend to ramble when it comes to retail related things- it’s my passion in life. / ‘Tashom III’ by FireRabbit

• RedBubble Post Card - November Free Shipping Deal and more ...
  by RedBubble

  Well October was a busy month. Here’s a few interesting stats from the last month: - 1,981 sales notifications sent; / - 7,812 items o…

  Well October was a busy month. Here’s a few interesting stats from the last month: - 1,981 sales notifications sent; / - 7,812 items of art ordered; / - 90,000 new works uploaded; / - 5,000 new members; and / - 350,000 comments. But stats don’t tell you everything. We’ve continued to receive feedback from people on how the RedBubble community is helping individuals rediscover their creative passion – and this is awesome! Your encouraging and supportive comments are powerful. And a short note on comments – the longer and more meaningful comments are the ones that people have found most encouraging. It makes people feel that others have taken the time to really study and consider their work – a sign of respect and a huge compliment! We’ve also received lots of feedback on how people would like to see RedBubble evolve – and we’re listening to this feedback. We’re not always able to act on all suggestions and even the suggestions we want to act on often take a while to make it out the door. So please be patient with us. Our philosophy is to listen and adapt. We often always launch things at a very early stage and then listen to your feedback to evolve the feature. Groups is a good example of this. We launched a very early version of groups and we knew it wasn’t the final destination. We will evolve groups over the next three months. A lot. If you want to know what’s on the road map for the next few weeks Justin’s written a good post here and if you want to understand what’s behind the RedBubble team more generally Pilgrim’s written a great post here . And finally we’re very keen to avoid a late rush of Christmas orders which will stress out our production folks – so we’re running a couple of promotions in November (hint: please place any Christmas orders in November). Here’s a free shipping coupon that you can all use as many times as you like: ‘Novembershipping’. Just enter this coupon during the checkout process to receive the free shipping offer. For all orders over US$100 (AU$110, GBP50, EUR70) we’ll also e-mail you a coupon after the order to the value of 10% of the transaction for your next purchase on RB. - Peter

• RedBubble Post Card - Everyone's an artist
  by RedBubble

  Hello fellow bubblers, I thought it might be useful if we tried to give you an insight into the ‘mind of RedBubble’ – every now and th…

  Hello fellow bubblers, I thought it might be useful if we tried to give you an insight into the ‘mind of RedBubble’ – every now and then. To give you an understanding of what makes us tick. One of the key ideas underpinning RedBubble is that ‘everyone’s an artist’. Let me restate part of our very first journal post “People are inherently creative. Deep down, most of us love to come up with new ideas, express who we are, or take a different perspective on the world around us. This is particularly true of children. Remember chalk on the footpath, crayon on the walls, or a painting stuck proudly to the fridge with a magnet. Kids love stories, they love learning about new things, they ask obvious yet somehow overlooked questions. So why don’t many of us focus on our creative interests as adults? Is there something about the process of growing up that changes us, that convinces us to be serious and sensible? Do we lose the ability to be creative? Or does it just get buried amidst the responsibilities, worries and priorities of adult life? Look closer, though, and you’ll see sparks of creativity in adults everywhere. Since starting our RedBubble journey, we’ve been amazed at how many of our close friends have “confessed” to a secret creative hobby, a little spark of creativity that few else know about. Look at the statistics and the picture is clearer still. Over 2.5 million Australians regularly take part in some sort of creative or cultural activity. Almost 90% do this entirely for free, for the simple enjoyment of it. A fortunate few earn a living from it, but most keep their creative spark alive in their own time and without sharing it with the world. RedBubble was founded with a burning desire to improve this situation. And there are some major social and technological trends helping us out.“ We openly want to embrace a wide variety of material on RedBubble, from a wide variety of people – from professional artists to emerging artists to people just discovering their artistic side. We don’t want to place more limits or barriers in the way of people – life has enough barriers – so we’ve tried to keep RedBubble as open as possible. This is why we haven’t placed any upload limits on the site and why we don’t vet content before it’s published. We’ve recently received feedback from the community that such an open approach has meant people might be encouraged to post ‘anything’ to RedBubble. Our thinking is that RedBubble should be the place for your best work and over the next short while we’re looking to update the site to further encourage this behaviour. But we don’t want RedBubble to become an elite only site – we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. - Peter

• RedBubble Post Card - The roadmap
  by RedBubble

  Hello all, Thought you might be interested in a sneak preview of what’s in the RedBubble road map for the next two to eight weeks. An…

  Hello all, Thought you might be interested in a sneak preview of what’s in the RedBubble road map for the next two to eight weeks. And a caveat to start with – things change – so please don’t take this as a rock solid guarantee. Groups First up we’re looking to introduce an early version of ‘groups’ this Thursday. The group functionality will evolve a lot over the next six months – so what you’ll see on Thursday is just the first step. Our thinking on groups is that they will allow people to immerse themselves more fully in their areas of interest. For example, we could have a landscape photography group or a street photography group. At the moment RedBubble has 15,000 members – and it can be hard to engage with a collection of 15,000 people. Groups will allow us all to engage with smaller collections of people – with a shared interest. T-shirts On 4 October we’ll switch all our t-shirt manufacturing the US (using a technology that can print white inks). We’ll also be adding a new style and new colour. Again this isn’t the final destination for t-shirts … just another small step. Tools for buyers Over the next month or two we’ll update the site to make it easier for buyers to find what they are looking for. This has yet to be finalized but could include such things as a buyer path through the site and improved search functionality. Tools for artists Over the next month or two we’ll also look to provide artists with more tools to promote their work – widgets and fingers crossed a ‘private’ version of RedBubble: e.g. peter.redbubble.com which could serve as a ‘shop front’ for any traffic I’d like to direct to RedBubble (i.e. it wouldn’t include comments, it would only include my images and wouldn’t link to the rest of RedBubble). Other new products and features Gift certificates, an updated canvas product, larger wall art products, integrating payment into the website, and a few features to encourage people to use RedBubble for their best work (e.g. an updated upload process and the studio idea that we’ve previously written about here). Competitions A competition for writers and visual artists – our writers haven’t been feeling as much love over the last little while and we want to start addressing this. And there’s probably a whole bunch of stuff I’ve forgotten about (and there’s a few things that we’re working on that are not quite ready to go in the road map) but this should give you a sense of what’s in the pipe works for the next couple of months. - Peter

• Giving Birth to Greeting Cards
  by RedBubble

  Another birthing story today – Greeting Cards. Like the mounted prints...

  Another birthing story today – Greeting Cards. Like the mounted prints – we start with a big box of Kodak Endura paper like this: As per usual, we fire the big ‘laser’ at it: After that it gets processed, It’s pretty dark inside the machine… You’re just going to have to use your imagination abit here – lots of rollers and developer: Next (one of my personal favorite machines) the 600 ft roll of paper goes into this cutting machine: Which spits out individual card prints at the other end, really really fast: Now we have a big stack of card prints: The next bit, is our trade secret, so no explinations – just a few pictures: / / / / And finally after a quick trip through the folder we get a finished card like this: To be honest I forgot to take a picture of the packing process, so you’re just going to have to imagine about a thousand cards being sleeved with B6 envelopes and sent out to bubblers all around the world – It should be no surprise we make way more of these than anything else. Update: By special request … Testing: / James

• Greeting Cards
  by thickblackoutline

  / Just wanted to share, my cards arrived today and I couldn’t be happier! The quality of …

  / Just wanted to share, my cards arrived today and I couldn’t be happier! The quality of them is beyond my expectations…. I knew they would be good… but these are stunning!! These ones are Alice’s Friend and More Everything! / I especially like the little thumbnail on the back….. most excited by that – that’s just me ;) / Dragon Chef and Oriental Coffee here / I urge everyone to get some cards… even of their own work, maybe some of mine ;) They would be fantastic framed also! Love The Bub’s stuff, as always! /

• RedBubble Post Card - The RB view of the Universe
  by RedBubble

  In today’s post card I’d like to share with you my thoughts on the relationship between RedBubble and the members of the site. The w…

  In today’s post card I’d like to share with you my thoughts on the relationship between RedBubble and the members of the site. The way I view the relationship is that RedBubble’s here to act as a catalyst and facilitator. RedBubble is not about ‘RedBubble’ – it’s about all the people that are part of the site. RedBubble shouldn’t become the centre of attention. RedBubble’s job is to take care of all the background stuff. The website. Production and logistics. Payment. Solving problems. Listening. RedBubble’s job is to lower barriers – to make things easier. But I don’t want RedBubble to do everything. Two things we always want to leave up to you: being creative and sharing your creativity. For example, if you’re interested in selling your work I’m a firm beliver that the the very best person to share / market your work is you! Why? Because we’re all relational creatures – we value a sense of connectedness. I’d much rather buy a t-shirt from Ed then someone I don’t know because each time I put it on it reminds me of his crazed English demeanor. And he’s pretty cool (but don’t tell him). Am I on the right track? I’d be interested in your thoughts. Ciao for now, Peter

• Our Book is Published!!!!!
  by Karin Taylor

  / !http://www…

  / / She Sells Sea Cards by the Sea Shore / A short story by iAN Derrick with illustrations by Karin Taylor (me)!! Karin’s storefront iAN’s storefront This has been an amazing experience to be a part of….an enormous thank you to Matt Mawson who has tirelessly and generously worked over the past 2 days to bring this little book into being….. I could never have done it without you Matt! And of course a huge thank you to the amazing writer and friend of mine, one of those great Aussie characters that just keeps on keeping on, keeps on getting better with age…. that is iAN Derrick I first met iAN through a journal Matt wrote about one of iAN’s books, and since that day, we sorta hit it off….. I talked to iAN about my father and he also was inspired to write another short story called Understanding Harry and correct me if i’m wrong, but i think he may have been inspired to write a story that reflected some of the goings on with Matt’s four legged friend also. One day I got an email from the amazing iAN, saying although he thought my father should be the one to tell and publish his own stories, he’d had a little idea and brought it to life in Understanding Harry and not long after this i received a second email saying that he’d done it again, but i would have to wait til the morning when he loaded the story to red bubble, and he and I and hubby all savoured the moment….....waiting with baited breath, until upon waking in the morning two days ago, I was thrilled to discover this wonderful story had been written. A story about my characters…involved a certain Mrs T….but i will tell you no more, as it’s a must read…and you can read it over here She Sells Sea Cards by the Sea Shore Thank you iAN and Thank you Matt i am eternally grateful

• TUTORIAL: Adding Examples (Card, Laminated, Matted, etc) To Your Profile
  by Patricia Montgomery

  _I recommend printing these instructions so that you have them handy for reference. It is easier than switching back and forth to this s…

  I recommend printing these instructions so that you have them handy for reference. It is easier than switching back and forth to this screen. Click on “my bubble”. Click on “art” (on the 2nd row of links – not the top one). You should see “My Art” page – this is the page where you can edit your pics. Choose your photo and click on “Show Public View”. Click “Buy/Preview”. (Note: You won’t actually be buying, only previewing) Choose the card or frame of your choice. Make your mat or color selections, etc. When the image of your framed photo appears on the screen, right click on the photo. A pop-up box will appear. Right click on the photo. In the pop-up box, click on “properties” (at the bottom). The “Properties” box will pop up – highlight the address (URL) . {Click & drag will highlight the entire address} IMPORTANT: Be sure to highlight the entire address – only two lines will be visible, but if a third line of the address hidden, be sure you drag down to highlight all lines of the address. Next copy the URL address. Press Ctrl-C (press the control key and the “C” key at the same time). You won’t see anything happen on the screen, but that is fine. Click OK to close the “Properties” box. Open your profile or a bubblemail (or any other location in RB where you want your image to be visible). Press Ctrl-V (press control key and the “V” key at the same time). You should see the URL address. Put an exclamation point ( ! ) in front of the URL address and another one at the end of the URL address. It should be similar to this example, but without the spaces: ! http://images-0.redbubble.com/img/art/cropped/size:xsmall/view:main/993259-1-yellowstone-in-winter.jpg ! Remember, NO SPACES before or after the exclamation point (!) – the beginning of the URL should look like this: !http:// The end of the URL address should look like this: winter.jpg! NOTE: These will be full-size copies of the images. If you would like to have smaller images (see my profile for examples) that don’t take up so much room, see my other tutorial on how to resize the images. Have a blessed day! / Patricia OTHER TUTORIALS BY PATRICIA Add Buttons To Your Profile Page Making Links How to make a calendar Add photos to your profile description How to downsize example photos on your profile page

• About my rats
  by Ellen

  Around july a publisher (Avanti) bought 2 of my rat photo’s. One of them is “The Band” / They made a Card of it. They did change the backg…

  Around july a publisher (Avanti) bought 2 of my rat photo’s. One of them is “The Band” / They made a Card of it. They did change the background. / So if you ever see my rats in the shops…..let me know! / I was very happy, yesterday i saw the cards for the first time. (they send me 100) / Sandy (Budrfli) saw them in a Restaurant already. / As far as i know most of the cards were sold in America. / I thought i would let you know….Its what i always wanted and i am so happy:) / Thank you all for your support from the last year! / Ellen.

• RedBubble Post Card - January Thinking
  by RedBubble

  Hello! Well I think we’re finally catching our breath after a mad couple of months. There was a free shipping promotion in November…

  Hello! Well I think we’re finally catching our breath after a mad couple of months. There was a free shipping promotion in November that ‘took off’ and a few of the production folks ended up working 24 hours a day to get everything out in time for Christmas. On top of the big influx of orders our t-shirt printer broke down in the last week of November – with gave poor old Ed about a month of heartache. Thanks Ed for carrying RedBubble through all the t-shirt troubles. We’re spending most of January in thinking mode … much of last year was a supreme rush to listen and get things built. You can do this for only so long before needing a break to think. So that’s what we’re doing. Lots of good thinking about what to do next. We’ve been listening to your feedback in this process – and we hope to address many of your requests and suggestions over the next few months. Please be patient with us – there are only three people building the core website and they can only work so fast … (we’ll be recruiting a few more web developers in the next month or two). For those of you who are statistically minded, here’s a few stats from the last couple of months: In November: / - 3,584 sales notifications sent; / - 16,153 items of art ordered; / - 111,356 new works uploaded; / - 6345 new members; and / - 460,796 comments. In December: / - 2,075 sales notifications sent; / - 6,837 items of art ordered (38% of all sales were to non RedBubble members); / - 96,245 new works uploaded; / - 5772 new members; and / - 442,387 comments - Peter

• RedBubble Post Card - Sales and Comments
  by RedBubble

  RedBubble is about much more than selling your creative work – but I know this is an important issue for many people. And it’s been very…

  RedBubble is about much more than selling your creative work – but I know this is an important issue for many people. And it’s been very interesting to see what work sells on RedBubble – the diversity of content is enormous. It should come as no surprise to anyone – but we all have very different taste! Between 1 September and 5:30 pm on 26 September RedBubble has sent out 1250 sales notification e-mails. This excludes all self purchases – and many of these notifications represented a multiple item sale. What’s also been interesting is to observe the relationship between the sales and a person’s level of activity on RedBubble. I’ve included a graph (below) that shows the top 15 sellers on RedBubble by number of items sold (x-axis) versus their comments on the site (y-axis). Some of the best sellers on the site are very active (9000 comments) but some are not active (2 comments). My interpretation of this data is that you don’t have to win any popularity contents to sell work on RedBubble. Comments are a wonderful way to provide encouragement and support on RedBubble (please use the critique forum for constructive criticism) – and please continue to use them for this purpose. In fact the encouragement we can provide each other on our ‘creative journey’ is one of the most special and important things about RedBubble. - Peter

• Hurray and Thank you!
  by Craig Goldsmith

  Just got back to lunch to find that I have sold my first framed print and it’s now my second sale to the US! Yippee, I did a victory lap …

  Just got back to lunch to find that I have sold my first framed print and it’s now my second sale to the US! Yippee, I did a victory lap around the office, only a handful of people in it at the time, and I’m really chuffed. The piece was Parisian Bike / / I’m really rapt, and really hope the nice person that bought it really can enjoy it. I’ve also got to thank those that have bought Front Row Seats, Parisian Bike and Eilean Donan as cards these are now some of my best sellers, and I thank you all. Yay!

• I Sold Two More Cards of the "Cardinal"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  by Vonnie Murfin

  Thank you turningj…

  Thank you turningjapanese for buying two cards of “Cardinal”!! You made my day!!

• It's My LUCKY LUCKY Day!!! 2 Card Sales!!!
  by naturelover

  / Clive – the Host of Extreme Close-Ups has firstly pu…

  / Clive – the Host of Extreme Close-Ups has firstly purchased the card ‘Maple Leaf’ for being the 1000th entry into this new group- and has also bought ‘Swanderful’- so I am doing the happy dance- (think that’s what it’s called lol) thankyou very much Clive and also this new fabulous group. 1000th entry. Clives Choice.

• Ways to sell your art
  by selling

  Empower Others To Sell your work It can be emotionally difficult to talk yourself up and sell your own work directly to a customer. ...

  Empower Others To Sell your work It can be emotionally difficult to talk yourself up and sell your own work directly to a customer. But it’s easy for other people who like and believe in what you do to tell customers how great your art is. Give family and friends a portfolio of your work and make it easy for them to sell your work for you, including handling payment. Give them order forms, show them how to buy your work from RedBubble, give them information on you and your art to give away, make sure they have really good photos of what the products look like or physical samples. Remember, these people are doing you a favor so make sure they are not under pressure to sell. Of course a financial incentive to close a sale never goes astray and gives people an incentive. LayBy / LayAway There are many customers out there who really want to make a purchase but are still a few days away from pay day or need some time to save up enough money. Offering to LayAway your work means that these people are not excluded from buying. Always always always document your layaway terms and conditions and make sure a copy is signed. Most countries have rules about layaway/layby so make sure you are abiding by them. For example, almost all layaways will require a cancellation agreement. Tip: Order the print once the base price has been paid for so you are never out of pocket. Deposit + Balance Probably one of the more common methods for accepting payment. A customer pays a deposit to secure the product and then pays the balance upon collecting the item. Deposits can range from 10% to 50% of the total cost. Make sure you give receipts with outstanding balances recorded (and always keep a copy for yourself). If you can cover your expenses in the deposit amount, that is great. If not, why not include a 3 week production and delivery time so you are never out of pocket. (you can order the print after being paid) Accept Different Payment Methods RedBubble has the advantage of an online checkout where credit cards and paypal can be used. Of course when you are selling your work face to face, sending someone to a website doesn’t really make sense when they have their wallet right now. Creditcards, Debit Cards & Eftpos: Most banks will allow you to accept credit or debit transaction into a business account. Depending on the frequency of these transactions, you may use the telephone to authorize payments, or a machine. Cash: Many people like to use cash. Just make sure you keep it somewhere safe until you can deposit it, and always keep copies of receipts. A Way Out / Give people a cooling off period in which to cancel a sale, have an exit clause in your layaway agreements, and document a returns policy. A customer who doesn’t feel locked in is more likely to buy from you, and a customer who has a good experience when returning something is more likely to buy from you in the future. It’s relatively common practice for deposits to be not refundable, or for canceled layaways to have a cancellation fee. These measures protect you, but still give your customer freedom to back out without feeling like they have lost everything. Offering to exchange items means you still get the sale, and the appreciation of the customer. Jo Images used with permission. Thank you Helen, James, John and Rebecca If you have an idea for an article or question about selling, drop me a bubblemail

• Formatting Images For Greeting Cards
  by prbimages

  A few people have asked me about my method for reformatting images for greeting cards (see my previous journal entry...

  A few people have asked me about my method for reformatting images for greeting cards (see my previous journal entry), so here is an explanation of what I do. This is not the only approach, nor is it probably the best, but it seems to work OK for me. You need to be willing to do a bit of arithmetic (a calculator is useful!), and you need some image-editing software for resizing your image, and for adding borders (I use Photoshop). BACKGROUND INFORMATION In this old forum thread Justin French explains the basic details of card sizing. The main points we need to know are: Cards are C6 size, 114 mm by 162 mm (4.49 inches by 6.38 inches). Cards are printed at 200 dots-per-inch resolution. One inch is equal to 25.4 mm. A little bit, 1-2 mm, gets trimmed from three sides of the image when printed. The fourth side which is the “spine” of the card does not get trimmed. DESIGN PROCESS First, you need to decide how you want to “frame” your image on the card. This will vary depending on the shape and content of your original image, and what kind of effect you are looking for. As an example, for this photo I decided on a centered framing with a thin white line around the photo and then a thicker black border extending to the edge of the card: For this photo, the image is centered horizontally but is higher than center vertically, and it has a black outline then a wide white border: The borders can, of course, be any colour you like, they can be thick or thin or patterned or whatever, the only thing to remember is that a small amount will get trimmed when printing, so don’t put anything important too close to the edges of your final design. THE DETAILS My aim is to produce an image that is exactly the right size for a card when printed at 200 dots-per-inch (DPI). I find it easiest to work in pixels, so let’s restate the card size in pixels: 114 mm is 4.49 inches which is 898 pixels (at 200 pixels-per-inch). 162 mm is 6.38 inches which is 1276 pixels (at 200 pixels-per-inch). So we want our image to be arranged appropriately within a “box” sized 898 by 1276 pixels. If we take Justin French’s post at face value, we would then add an extra 1-2 mm (13-25 pixels) around three edges, with the expectation that this extra portion will be trimmed during printing. However, I have found that doing so does not quite work as expected – it tends to produce an image which is just slightly off-center. Instead, I have found that it works better to arrange the image within a box sized 910 pixels by 1276 pixels, and then to add 12 pixels to the short dimension and 24 pixels to each side in the long dimension. The final image will end up being 922 pixels by 1324 pixels. This sounds complicated in words, so here is a diagram: In the diagram above, I have resized the image to an appropriate small size, added a thin border, then added white space to each side and to top and bottom so that the overall size is 910 pixels by 1276 pixels. Then finally I have added another 24 pixels of white space to the top and bottom, and 12 pixels to the right hand side. (I’m saying “white space” but it could well be “black space” or any other colour, of course.) I have found that a good size for a thin border is three pixels, and a good offset from the edge of the card is 100 pixels (which is half an inch, or 12.7 mm). Of course, you can use different numbers if you like in order to achieve a different end result. AN EXAMPLE To make this a bit clearer (I hope) here’s what I did with Tulip Glow: This starts off as a square image, and I want it centered horizontally on the card. I decide on a three-pixel thin black border, and I want it offset from the edges of the card by 100 pixels on the left and right, so thats 2×3 + 2×100 = 206 total pixels of border. The target card width is 910 pixels, so my image must be resized to 910 – 206 = 704 pixels wide. Using Photoshop, I go to Image -> Image Size and set 704 pixels as the width, making sure that “Constrain Proportions” is ticked. I click “OK”. My core image is now the right size, 704 pixels square. Next, I add a three-pixel black border by going to Image -> Canvas Size, tick the “Relative” box, and enter “6 pixels” into the Width and Height boxes. Make sure the “Anchor” is set to the center so that the six extra pixels are added equally on all sides, giving a three-pixel border. Set the “Canvas extension color” to Black and click “OK”. The thin border is done, and our image is now 710 pixels square. OK, next we want to extend the canvas out to the edges of the card, using White this time. Again, go to Image -> Canvas Size and enter 200 into the Width box. This will add 100 pixels of white on both the left and right sides. Set the “Canvas extension color” to White and click “OK”. The total width of the image is now 910 pixels, as desired. Now we want to add more white to the top and bottom, but this time we want more white at the bottom than at the top, to give a pleasing balanced design to the card. Our image is currently 710 pixels in height, but our target height is 1276 pixels. So we have to add 1276 – 710 = 566 pixels. We might choose to add, say, 200 pixels to the top and 366 pixels to the bottom. We do this by using Image -> Canvas Size twice more. First, put 200 pixels in the Height box, and set the “Anchor” to the bottom square to force the newly added pixels to appear on top of the image. Then repeat, putting 366 pixels in the Height box and setting the “Anchor” to the top square, forcing the new pixels to appear at the bottom of the image. We now have our nicely formatted card image … sized at 910 pixels by 1276 pixels. To finish off, we need to add a little bit more to the top, bottom, and right sides, which will mostly be trimmed off during printing. So, using Image -> Canvas Size twice more, add 24 white pixels to the top and bottom, and 12 pixels to the right, and it’s all done! Get the card printed, and everything should be nicely centered and professional-looking. DISCLAIMER There is one thing that Justin mentions in his forum post that I linked to at the beginning of this Journal, and that is that RedBubble could, at any time, decide to change the way the cards are printed. If they do that, then of course it is possible that the way the cards are sized and trimmed will be different, and these instructions may no longer work well. Anyway, I hope this is understandable and helps in some way, Yours, prbimages.

• RedBubble Update - Greeting Cards !
  by RedBubble

  Cards Cards Cards / The big news this week is the launch of Greeting Cards – Nearly any image can be sold as a greeting card on RedBubbl…

  Cards Cards Cards / The big news this week is the launch of Greeting Cards – Nearly any image can be sold as a greeting card on RedBubble, any file of about 1Mpix or larger ! The product itself is beautiful, photographically printed, bonded with high grade paper and folded. Here’s what it looks like – Just click the card icon at the top. / / Please make your work avaliable as cards – RedBubble is all about artists choice, you need to tick the box to sell cards. / / / Updates to the Watermarks / So we pushed these out a few weeks ago and had a heap of feedback from confused buyers, not sure if the watermark would be on the final product. / / In response we’ve changed the way we are doing this. There isn’t a water mark on the smaller image so buyers can see it clean, on the larger image we are still displaying the watermark – we’ve tried to make it subtle and explain it a little better while still protecting your images.

• CARD SALES
  by Vic Cross

  WOW – I sold 2 cards overnight .. one of Gazania and another of “Christm…

  WOW – I sold 2 cards overnight .. one of Gazania and another of Christmas Wishes … Thank you to the kind buyer – and thank you to all who support and comment!!

• I sold three cards thanks very much to the buyer
  by Sorin Reck

  I sold three cards thanks very much to the buyer

  I sold three cards thanks very much to the buyer

• “Thinking of you...” featured in "Primate Art"
  by Gili Orr

  ...

  I am very honored and grateful!!

• TIME TO SIGN THE BIRTHDAY CARD - CONGRATULATIONS FA!!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY
  by Karin Taylor

  / !http://images-1.redbubble.com/img/art/size:small/view:main/1186428-...

  / baby fa – isn’t she cute!! Dear Friends, it is frozenfa’s special BIG BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION day today!!!! Please SIGN the birthday card for fa….HOW????..... read on…. Please wish her a VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY by SIGNING THE CARD by LEAVING A COMMENT for her here…..please address your good wishes to Fa only, i will be redirecting her to this journal later when she wakes up and visits the bubble today!! Front Page of Birthday Card reads….... / / Inside of Birthday Card reads …... / PS* Please don’t say ‘fa hug’ too quickly, as it may develop into something else!! lol / PLEASE EVERYONE HELP ME TO HELP FA…..TO BLOW OUT THE CANDLES ON HER BIRTHDAY CAKE!!

• My very first sale!!!
  by Jean Hildebrant

  Thank you to Susi Lawson, for purchasing a card of “Reflections of Sasha”!!! My very first sale! Thanks so much!

  Thank you to Susi Lawson, for purchasing a card of “Reflections of Sasha”!!! My very first sale! Thanks so much!

• Sorry to be boring!!
  by Pamela Jayne Smith

  BUT another feature today – yay!!! AND a card SOLD how happy am I ?? Firstly a really big Thank you to Jayview for making my day and b…

  BUT another feature today – yay!!! AND a card SOLD how happy am I ?? Firstly a really big Thank you to Jayview for making my day and buying one of my favourite shots…..it always reminds me of the last weekend of summer holidays and a quick trip to the coast for a plate of mussels – yum :) and then another thank you to the lovely hosts over at Bokeh for featuring / / There are some total stunners in this group so to be featured along with them is a an honour I have to say :)) Happy Tuesday it is …... really another big smile :}} sorry to keep adding to the journal but it is such a lovely feeling and I hope that I never take the fact that the hosts have a very hard job choosing for granted!!