As with many other businesses, it is important that you know your target market well, even when it comes to having a scrapbooking business.  Let’s face it, there are literally thousands of possibilities of things to scrapbook, resulting in various styles and possibilities for not only the scrapbooking supplies you may carry in your business but also for the types of clients you will target with your services.

This is why you should from the very beginning choose a very specific niche that you will focus on with your scrapbooking business, or maybe you will want to choose two or three, related niches.

As previously stated the possibilities might seem endless, from sports to weddings, from babies to racecar enthusiasts.  There are quite a few options, but the decision ultimately is yours to make.  Think about it, what do you yourself enjoy scrapbooking?  This will help you in your decision making process because, honestly it will be much easier to provide the service or get excited about the products and supplies if they are in the niche which you yourself enjoy.

Therefore, if you’re all about the cute baby supplies that scrapbooking provides and the cutesy layouts that you can create for those precious bundles of joy, then targeting that niche may be a great idea. However, if you are more a sports nut and have a love for racing, football or all of the major sports combined then a sports niche may be more suited for you.

A targeted niche for your business will open up more possibilities for you than targeting too broad of a group of people resulting in frustrations for you and for those who you may be attempting to provide services. They can easy see that you are not excited about this particular area, and therefore may result in a lack of confidence in you.  You never want this to be a concern of your clients; you can ensure this is never an issue by having a specific target niche.

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Most of us love to learn something new, once we have learned it and get excited about it, we want to share that excitement with others.  So, why not share your love for and excitement about scrapbooking with others through workshops in your home or church.

This is a great way to take your love of scrapbooking to a new level and begin to create an income for yourself doing something you love.  Workshops are one fun and un-intimidating way that you can share your scrapbooking skills with others.

Workshops will allow you to not only share the fun of scrapbooking but also showcase the skills that you have learned and your talents and abilities.  In turn, people will realize that you are serious about scrapbooking and may come to you for advice, for products, or even for services, wanting you to do theirs for them, rather than having you teach them.

Whatever happens holding the workshops is a great place to start when attempting to create your scrapbooking business.  Getting the workshops going is relatively easy as well.  Simply ask a few friends or associates if they would be interested in getting together to scrapbook.  If they are a little hesitant, assure them that you will be there to help and share your excitement and expertise with them.

Help them to feel comfortable by offering to provide everything that they will need in order to begin, minus the pictures of course.  Set up a time that is good for everyone and then work your magic before them, showing them what you love about scrapbooking and your skill for it as well.

You may want to make the initial workshop free, with the understanding that future workshops will be held for a fee.  You will want to be sure and cover the cost of your supplies, your travel expense (if any) and your time.  This after all will be how you will profit from the workshops.

Once you get started, you will begin to understand just how well workshops can work in growing your scrapbooking business.

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Business marketing is one of the most important parts of any business.  Therefore, when beginning your scrapbooking business you will want to be sure to determine some marketing strategies.

Creating a marketing plan is always a good idea.  This plan will establish which avenues you will use to market your business.  Some suggested ways are through the use of business cards, flyers and brochures, by word of mouth, via a website, or even through paid advertising.

Though all of these options are good, you will have to make your decisions based upon your budget and go from there.  Business cards are an inexpensive route to take and can even be made yourself, or you can purchase them from a local print company or off the Internet.  Business cards give you something tangible that you can leave with a potential client or customer as a reminder to contact you.  You can also leave them in public places for people to pick up and as a result get in touch with you.

Brochures and flyers can also work in this way and can be distributed in public places, pinned up on bulletin boards, and shared with potential clients and customers by your current clients.  They too are inexpensive to have printed or can be printed at home with your own computer.

Word of mouth is a great marketing tool and is something that will just occur naturally if you are providing good quality services and products to your clients.  It can also be done per your request, you can easily ask your current clients to refer others to you and may even want to offer some type of reward to them for doing so.

A website is another tool that can be used to market your business.  Though a bit more time consuming to create or have created it is not necessarily a more expensive option as web hosting, domains and even design is becoming increasingly affordable.  However, the website itself will need to be further marketed in order to achieve the desired results.

Lastly, paid advertising is a marketing option that of course will come at a price.  As with many other expenses in business this will be a matter of what you can afford, but always remember the saying, “You get what you pay for.”  Therefore, you will want to keep that in mind when determining whether to purchase advertising and to ensure that your monies spent on advertising are going to really help you in your quest to gain clients.

Using any of these possible marketing tools is a giant step in the right direction when it comes to beginning to market your scrapbooking business.

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I can’t believe it’s that time of year again for Mommy Fest. It’s the 5th Annual Fest and by far this one from what I can tell is the biggest turnout yet. I’m the last speaker for the event and it was great to get together and chat once again with Marie Ynami.

We discussed bringing your business to the internet.

You can listen to the interview here.

Here are the questions she asked me…

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As a scrapbooking enthusiast the love for scrapbooking may run through your veins and as a result, you have decided to pursue scrapbooking as a business.  This is a win-win situation but can be challenging as well.  One of the challenges you may face is growing your client base.  So, what do you do?

One of the ways that you can increase your client base is through home parties.  What could be more fun than getting together with a group of people who share your love for scrapbooking or introducing scrapbooking to a group who have never done it before?  Either way, it is a wonderful opportunity for you to gain more clients.

The setup is simple you find someone who is willing to host the party in their home, business, church or elsewhere and you set up a time with them to hold the party.  They then invite family, friends, coworkers and others who they feel would be interested in scrapbooking to come.  At the party, you give them a sampling of what scrapbooking is, and allow them to complete one scrapbooking page or project to get them interested.  You might also want to have some completed scrapbooks of your own to show them to peak their interest.

You will in the end have the goal of selling them scrapbooking supplies or your services as a professional scrapbooker, where they would pay you to do their scrapbooks for them.  Either way, you can stand to gain clients and make some money at the same time.  You will also want to ask guests to book their own parties and invite others who they know that might be interested in scrapbooking as well.  It will take a ripple effect and you will in turn fill your calendar with parties and your client list with customers.

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Sometimes it is ok to toot your own horn; in fact, it may be down right necessary.  When beginning a business, any type of business really, you may have to do a little shameless self-promotion in order to get it started on the right track.  Once you have made it past this step, others will most likely take up the slack and begin promoting you as well, by word of mouth.

Word of mouth is a wonderful way to promote your scrapbooking business.  After all, people talk, and if you are doing a fabulous job with your scrapbooking services or have some really cool products and supplies others can use to create their own scrapbooking creations then they will tell others about it.

Then there is the notion of referrals.  There is simply nothing wrong with asking your clients and customers to refer their friends to you for their scrapbooking supply needs or services.  Plus, you can ask for referrals of people they specifically know who might enjoy the products or need your services and then you can get in touch with them yourself.

If a client is particularly helpful you might even want to reward them with a referral reward of say a percentage off their next order or throw in a freebie with their next order.  It is always a good policy to say thank you in some way.

This in turn will most likely get you more word of mouth promotion, which after all is what you are aiming for and want the most.  Above all, you want to provide the products and services, as well as customer service that will have others itching to tell someone else about the exceptional deals or service that they received from you.

So, in order to insure that you do obtain the word of mouth promotion from your clients that you want in order to gain more clients, you will want to provide outstanding service to those clients.

As a result you will begin to see your hard work and initial promotion of self begin to pay off and you will be astounded at the number of referrals that will come to you, by word of mouth.

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Kelly and I were twittering together last week and she asked if I was available to chat for an interview regarding my business journey offline and online.

This chat goes through from owning 5 retail stores to selling everything off and pursuing my dreams in the online world. From living in a day to day stress to living my life to the fullest and enjoying my life with my family.

Thanks Kelly for having me on, it was a really great time.

You can listen to our interview here.

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For me I know that I love these things. I love instant messaging, I love things like twitter, and video games. Yes, I play video games and I always beat the kids and hubby at Mario Kart, my all time favorite. Especially DK Mountain, that rocks!

But lately I’ve been a slight bit addicted to twitter. I have spent too much time on it this week and realize that I will have to be more strict on myself for next week. There’s just so much for me to do and I cannot play until I’ve done my work.

But you know what? Twitter has been a really great business tool as well. I’ve managed to connect with online business friends, but also more importantly been available to a wider audience of people. Just yesterday my friend Kelly and I were twittering, she realized I had some free time so we jumped on an interview for her show.

That show will be published on Monday April 21st, and I’m really looking forward to hearing it. I know she said we chatted for 45 minutes.

But you know, if I wasn’t on twitter she may not have thought to ask me, or she would have emailed me later on. The key here is that we were both available and I was able to jump on a chance for more exposure for my business.

How cool is that?

I’ve always been enjoying the conversation I’m having lately with other friends, as well as finding new friends and resources that I can access.

Neat stuff.

So if you haven’t joined yet, I encourage you to go for it. You can reach me at http://www.twitter.com/veraraposo.

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Honestly I wasn’t thinking I’d put a deadline on this but the response has been HUGE and I have alot of people right now in the process of reviewing the new Scrap Venture Start Up Report.

All who have emailed me up to this point will receive a copy for review.  If you don’t have your copy by Monday then shoot me a little email. It will take me a bit to catch up but I know I can by tomorrow.

I’m really looking forward to the feedback I’ll receive so I can make it better and then it will be available as a free download shortly.

I’m quite excited to offer this all in one resource for those who want to start their online scrapbook business.

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I just emailed this out to all of my subscribers but thought I should post it here as well.

“I just finished Scrap Venture Start Up and I’m having some cool newgraphics you can use on your website to promote it.  In the meantime, I’m getting the home page live hopefully today and have already sent a preview copy out to those who asked for it.

If you would like your own preview copy, I’ll personally send it to you, just email me at

vera @ veraraposo.com (without the spaces)  for your free copy.

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