Are You Struggling in Your Scrapbook Business?

You’re a mom and an entrepreneur. Often there’s a fine line between the two and the back and forth juggle from one to the other can make it difficult to stay motivated. Here are a few tips to help savvy mompreneurs stay focused and motivated.

#1 – Set a schedule. One of the best ways to stay productive when working from home is to separate work from home. By setting work hours you say to the world and to yourself “I’m now working and can only deal with work.” Once your work hours are finished you can then move on to other tasks. This is exactly what you would do if you worked outside the home.

Being strict with yourself and setting a work schedule means that you not only get more done but you keep motivation at an all time high. It’s very demoralizing to fall behind on your work and this can really send any motivation you have into a nose dive. Avoid this trap by working to a set schedule.

If Your Business Is Not Unique, It Is Dead.

Imagine this: You live in a world where almost all consumer goods are the same, the products all look alike, restaurants serve similar food and pretty much everything looks the same.

It would be a boring and problematic world, because consumers would have lots of choices, but all of which look the same and fulfill the same purpose.

Successful brands are inevitably linked to their respective niches, e.g Coke is famous for its cola, Mcdonalds is known for burgers and so on.

What you need is top notch branding that makes you stand head and shoulders above your noisy competitors who are simply using price- slashing techniques or hard sell.

The question is, do you have the mega budgets of companies like Mcdonalds or Coke to spend on branding? Probably not.

But is it possible to brand your business so effectively that people identify it with the niche it is involved with?

Yes, and in fact right now I am going to recommend you a unique eCourse that contains powerful branding strategies you can use to transform your business into a force to be reckoned with in your niche!

This is a rare opportunity to get a “real” PAID report at
zero charge to you. (This isn’t one of those deals where
someone is giving something away that never was to be
sold in the first place, but they pretend it was.)

Jimmy D. Brown is about to shut down his Small Reports
Zone site permanently. He’s “retiring” ALL of his current
products and services, beginning with this site.

As he was making preparations to shut the site down, he
realized that there were several small reports that Nicole
and he had planned on adding to the site but never got
around to doing it.

In fact, Nicole had a download page and the files prepped for one great report entitled, “The Ultimate Free Traffic Model“. It was originally part of one of Jimmy’s larger products and they had extracted it to sell on the site for $15 along with the other reports.

While he easily COULD have sold hundreds (really thousands) of copies of the report this week as part of his retirement, he decided to give away complimentary copies of this paid report.

Name of the Product: The Upsell Report:  How To Get Customers To Spend More Money

Product Description: The report shares proven techniques that will help you increase your profits by showing you how to get your existing customers to spend more.

Who This Product is Intended For: People that write and/or sell products or services and would like to increase their income.

Uses: This report reveals several ways to offer additional products to your customers to increase your earnings. You’ll learn how simply asking for a sale is sometimes the easiest way to get it. No matter what you sell, you can always sell more and upselling makes it so simple.

Pros: This report is short and easy to follow. A quick read, it includes step-by-step instructions on when, where and why to use the upsell technique. You’ll find several ideas to help you understand how upselling works. The examples, hints and tips found inside will make it easy for you to apply it to your own product or service. You’ll even discover how NOT to do an upsell. Yes, it can be done wrong and the techniques will not work if you do it this way.

The money is in the list, but growing that list, especially when you’re first starting out, isn’t all that easy. Let’s look at your options.

1)You can buy traffic via google adwords or by buying ezine ads
2)You can work on SEO to get people to your signup list via search engines
3)You can write and distribute a bunch of articles which each will result in a few signups

Do you see a common theme here? You either have to spend a lot of time or a nice chunk of change to build your list. Neither of which is a good option in my opinion.  I used to do all three of these and while they all work, having to spend all that money or time get’s old pretty quick.

I was about ready to give up on this whole list thing when I came across this report by one of my favorite Internet Marketers - Jimmy D. Brown. The report is called “How To Drive Free Traffic To Your List Page With Ezine Articles” and you can get your copy here.

Name of the Product:

Homepreneur Habits:  How To Run A Successful Home Business
By Jimmy D. Brown

Product Description: A Standard Operating Procedures Manual for Home Business Owners

Who This Product is Intended For:  Anyone that wants to run a successful home-based business but is overwhelmed by where to start and how to run a business effectively.

Uses: This report shares ways to set up and operate your office so you can more easily maintain your business.  It will also help you establish a workable schedule. You’ll learn how to you implement systems that work for your individual business.

In this report, you’ll also find photos of Jimmy D. Brown’s office which I found fascinating. I now know what his desk looks like, what kind of white board he uses, and what tools he finds essential to running an almost 7 figure business online.

Pros: It includes easy-to-understand language and uses photos to illustrate points.  You’ll find systems that can easily be tailored to specific situations and implemented with ease.  Jimmy shares real-world examples as well as includes a bonus FAQ section.

Cons: None I could identify.

As an entrepreneur you may hear a lot about networking and wonder what all the hubbub is about. Networking, both online and off, is a wonderful way to build connections in your industry. It’s a great way to increase awareness for your business and to build your customer base and ultimately your profits. You probably know that already. What you may not know is networking is also a great way to motivate yourself.

Networking exposes you to other business leaders, entrepreneurs and motivated individuals. Even if you don’t have a single competitive bone in your body, when you network online and offline, you’re going to be inspired by the energy, ideas and productivity you see in those around you. It’s actually a great reality check. It gives you the unique ability to mingle with like-minded individuals who may have a different perspective, a different experience or a different story than you do and have achieved success.

It is easy for time to get away from us.  We can get bogged down in the details.  When it comes to your home business, losing track of time is crucial.  Find out where your time is going and how to rectify the situation.

One way to see where you are losing time is with a time log.  We stress “where” instead of “if” because everyone loses track of time.  It becomes a problem when that loss of time leads to burning the midnight oil to meet client deadlines, or stress because one or more activities coincide with each other.

Stress is one likely result of lost time.  Consistently finding yourself in stressful situations can affect your entire life and your health.  Avoid all of that with a few simple experiments.

One is using a time log which was mentioned earlier.  A time log can be as simple as a spreadsheet document that you can fill out with the names of activities you did during each day of the week.  A time log is like a food diary.  It tracks your current time management habits for later evaluation.

How to Let Go of Negative Thoughts and Unlock Your Business Potential

Mired by negative thoughts? They can hold you back from achieving all you’re capable of. Negative thinking can be considered as habit, created by lifelong limiting beliefs, comparing yourself to others and some is just plain old procrastination. When you learn the cause for your negative thoughts you can release them and unlock your business potential. Here are a few ideas to help you get started.

Start by catching yourself whenever you have a negative thought. It’ll probably contain the words,

• “I can’t”
• “I’m not good at”
• “I’m afraid”
• “I never have”

You get the picture, right? It’ll be negative. When you’re first starting on this road to letting go of your negative thoughts, don’t judge yourself. Simply recognize when you have negative thoughts and what they are. You may even want to write them down. Keeping a journal of your negative thoughts for a couple of days will help you analyze where they’re coming from.

Today’s talk is with Maura Perry from Craft Sassy.  Learn more about Maura, why she started her custom scrapbook business as well as some success tips she learned along the way on her scrapbook business journey.

Tell us about your scrapbook business?

CraftSassy is a custom scrapbook paper printing business that allows both retail and wholesale customers to design and print their own unique custom papers by the sheet or in smaller quantities than usual for wholesale contracts- respectively. This is “real” acid/lignin free scrapbook paper, we do not use photo paper. Our papers are printed using environmentally friendly inks.

Why did you decide to start your scrapbook business creating custom papers?

It was a bit of a fluke. I was not working at the time and doing a lot of scrapbooking. I was frustrated because I wanted specific papers and couldn’t find them. My husband’s company had recently started offering their customers web-to-print and digital printing, and I was able to print my own papers. I figured that I couldn’t be alone in wanting this type of custom service.

How did you first get started in your scrapbooking business?

More than likely, you will reach various times when you do not have the appropriate expertise to accomplish something.  This is the time collaboration and/or networking is valuable.  These relationships can help you answer questions, provide guidance, and provide the ongoing support and encouragement you will need.

“Teamwork divides the task and multiplies the success.” - Author Unknown

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” – King Solomon

Well, FREE for one person that is. I’m putting the finishing touches on a Client Attraction Guide for your scrapbook business.

To be eligible for the free copy, simply leave a comment below stating your biggest ‘client attraction’ question.

A winner will be chosen at random and announced Sunday.