So you want to sell online.... #1: Getting Started

This is wonderful, Bill.
First of all, congrats on your business success!! Not everyone sticks with it, waiting out the beginning stages.

Secondly, this will be very helpful for those who are considering going professional! Thanks for the input and I’m looking forward to chapter 2.

-- "Functional WoodArt" by Debbie, Canada (http://www.execulink.com/~yohan)

Hi Cajunpen, I found your blog on ‘online selling’ to be very interesting reading, for several reasons, firstly… you’ve been a police officer for longer than I have been alive, I just thought that was pretty impressive, not too many people have stuck with the one form of employment for that many years.
Secondly, for a police officer you seem to have acquired quite an amount of knowledge about Web Sites and their workings, do you work in the IT area of the police department or something similar to that? Just curious is all – if you don’t, maybe you should! I’m not sure about the rest of the world, but the websites for the Australian Police departments really are quite poor, in design as well as information and the ability to find it.

I too have looked into the online selling issues over the years, and now that I make my main income from Designing and Developing Websites, this is something I have studied carefully over that time. Everything you’ve mentioned about having a only a website online not being enough to sell products if people don’t find the site easily and before they find your competitors is correct, and obviously you’ve also done some hard yards in researching this area, however, I really don’t feel that it is necessary that you spend $3,000 per year for a site submission service – while yes it is true that there are guidelines for being submitted to search engines, it is also helpful to know a little about how search engines work. I could sit here and go into great detail about how they work and what they look for when indexing sites and information, but that would be pointless, even though this is something I’ve studied greatly there is still a hell of a lot about it that I don’t know. I guess if you are satisfied and happy that your $3,000 is working for you and you’re making a good earn from your site then by all means continue to use it.

The point of my comment is this; I have a full knowledge of HTML programming, and although now I mostly create “Flash” websites rather than full HTML pages, I still use the HTML element to make search engines find websites. For instance if you search www.google.com for ‘skinna’ you will see that it finds me before 48,300 other sites that have the word ‘skinna’ in their keywords, title, or content, or otherwise listed in their site somewhere. If you look down the page maybe 6 or 7 results down you will see a search result from right here at lumberjocks.com. This is there because the lumberjocks.com site has quite a high level of visitors, and high traffic is a part of how search engines base their listings and who shows up at the top of the list. Basically by studying how the search engines and in particular Google works, I’ve managed to find that yes, search engines can drop you without warning for not adhering to their guidelines, but the most common reason for search engines dropping your site is ‘over-submitting’ or basically submitting your site too often or rapidly. One of the most important rules of submitting your site is to have patience, it may take a month or even several months before a search engine finds your site. Submit once only to each search engine, otherwise the search engines can mistake your site for something similar to ‘spam’ (or think that your site is being submitted by a computer or software program and therefore possibly classed in the same category as spam) and we know how we all hate spam. The guideline for this is submit once to google for instance www.google.com/addurl and then be patient. I mean REALLY patient. in 6 months, submit ONCE again. Take some time, maybe a few hours or possibly even more, search Google for your ‘product’ or ‘main keyword that you think people might search for’ eg: Turned Bowls… go through page by page of results until you find your site. It may be 20 pages down the list of results, it may be 100 pages, depending on the popularity of the particular words you searched for (your product). When you find your site, click on it and visit your site.
THEN delete your browser cookies, and open Google in a new page, and search for the same thing again.
AGAIN go through page by page until you find your site, and click on it again.
Repeat this process as many times as you have time for (as I said, take a few hours if you can)and then the next day, Repeat the process again. Keep doing this as often as possible – one of the ways in which search engines index sites is by how often they are visited in relation to the search phrase used.

NEXT STEP-
SOMETHING ELSE THAT IS VERY IMPORTANT IS THE POWER OF LINKS – put a link to your site using correct html WHEREVER YOU CAN WITHOUT PUSHING IT SO FAR PEOPLE THINK THAT YOU’RE A SPAMMER – even put links to your site on your competitors sites if they have a free link section – but this will help their search engine ratings AS WELL AS YOURS! Put links on your friends’ sites – on your friends ‘myspace’ sites, put links on free links sites – there are plenty out there – put links in your ebay listings (EBAY gets a LOT of traffic and search engines LOVE the traffic factor) put links wherever you possibly can.
THEN go visit the sites of those who have kindly donated their link space to you – and CLICK ON YOUR LINK and visit your site.
THEN delete your browser cookies and click on your link in their site again and visit your site.
THEN search Google for the site who has your link – scan through page by page until you find their site. THEN CLICK ON THEIR SITE and visit their site. THEN CLICK on YOUR LINK in their site and visit your site.

MAKE this step a process you repeat as often as you have time for – it will greatly improve your search engine rankings -

although – NONE OF THE ABOVE is any good at all without the correct use of Keywords in your site’s META tags. Search Engines recommend the use of no more than 255 characters in META tags, although its only a recommendation and NOT a necessity. Use keywords that describe NOT ONLY YOUR PRODUCTS, but try to think of other things that visitors might search for that are similar to your product, for instance if your main product was a toilet roll holder, your main keywords would obviously be toiler roll holder, but it would also be beneficial to include words such as toilet paper, toilet tissues etc – not that people are going to be searching for toilet tissues online very often, but this is just for the point of information, I’m sure you are clever enough to adjust this information to suit your own business and products. It’s a general misconception that search engines may drop or block you due to ‘over-use’ of keywords or using the one keyword too often within the 255 characters. My view on this is to use your MAIN keyword(s) definitely more than once, but there is no need to over-do it and use it 50 times. 5-10 is probably well and truly sufficient.

I know all this information is probably a lot to digest, but that’s why people pay so much for site submission tools and services. Basically all I’m saying here, is if you have time, then there’s probably no need to spend all that money for something you can more or less take care of yourself.

If you have any questions or if you don’t understand anything I’ve mentioned here, please feel free to email me and I’ll be happy to help as much as I can. Hopefully this information can and will save you $3000 a year!

Good Luck!!

-- Skinna - Australia... I won't stop at murder if that's what is necessary to get the job done

this is definitely a great blog! Thank you; thank you ( Cajunpen AND Skinna AND whomever is also going to add their tidbits of wisdom).

-- "Functional WoodArt" by Debbie, Canada (http://www.execulink.com/~yohan)

good stuff Bill and Skinna.

Debbie, I doubt I will add “wisdom,” but maybe some support of what they are saying.

Bill, I’m trying not to steal your thread, but I wanted to support what you are saying, and add a few things that that I wouldn’t want the public to see so blantantly stated in my own blog.

Here it goes:
I’ve had a website for several years now, maybe about 5 or 6, I forget exactly. I do remember remember one number though, it is “2” which represents the two orders that I can surely say came because people found me on the website. I still had to work hard to close the SALE with emails back and forth, but the MARKETING on those 2 orders was done only with the Website. But, it has been just “TWO” which is an easy number to remember.

I remember the first Saturday morning I was “launching” the website. I was filled with giddy excitement, sort of like a 6 year old girl getting ready to leave for a birthday party. For the big “launch”, I scheduled to show my work at a great juried show in Kansas City that weekend, and so I passed out business cards with my website name printed on them like I was passing out free movie tickets. I even made up a cool carved sign with a moosehead on it with the website name carved in wood.

People at the show would stand there and read the cards, or the sign, and say, ”wow, you have a website….wow, hey Marge, this guy has a website, look at this…..”

Marge would then come over, and she would say, ”_wow…..Ethel, get over here, you gotta see this, this guy has a website…...”

I’m not really exaggerating, just changed the names to protect the innocent.

In those days, in a show of about 100 artists, there were only a handful of us that had a website. We were a novelty then, and people would “buzz” about it. That was then.

People at a show that I meet now find that my having a website, “is no big deal.” People don’t even comment on it anymore. We have been so bombarded with website names in every form of advertising, that it has no meaning to people in the “image” category now. I see now where the advertisers don’t even worry about printing the “www” before the name anymore, we all know it. It didn’t used to be that way.

I was so thrilled by the public response that first “launch” weekend, that I figured I would be quitting my day job the next week. As things worked, nobody ordered anything, and I don’t know if anyone actually looked at the website or not, as I didn’t have statcounter then. In those days, I couldn’t tell who, or what they were visiting.

But, I do know this, I didn’t get any emails, or phone calls, not even for quotes on my work. I pridefully figured it wasn’t my “work” that was the problem, but the publicity of my website that was the problem. So, I spent more money get to more exposure.

And it is funny, in a sick and sad way, that from the $7,000 I spent lat Fall going to the Western Design Conference, I have gotten ”2” orders from that also. Seems I’m stuck on two’s.

I hear what you are saying Skinna. But, I for one, will not be sitting at the computer following my own links back and forth. Not that I don’t believe it will help, I believe you.

But, I just would rather be making things in the shop, I know that time will be profitable. If my kids were older, I would pay them to do the link jumping for me, sit on the computer and follow links for an hour after school each night….....no, maybe not, I don’t want them seeing the stuff I bump into on the internet, it’s bad for me, and I know better.

The only form of marketing that has worked for me has been word-of-mouth. Despite prestiguous national shows, expensive national magazine ads, and a professionally developed website, I seem to be only selling to people that know me, and people they tell about me.

Happened again this past two weeks. New order from an old customer, and a new order from an interior designer who met one of my past customers. However, don’t stop reading, I have more to say on the use of my website below.

I blogged several months back about how lumberjocks was helping me with the flow of traffic to my website.
Here is the link to that blog: http://lumberjocks.com/jocks/decoustudio/blog/144
Not that my blog was a great read then, but it is still true this morning, some 8 months later.

I’m wondering now, if I really need the www.decoustudio.com website. What if lumberjocks could become my only “webpage” for my business? It gets more traffic for sure.

Hmm, I’ve been wondering about it for several months now, maybe a year since Martin and I first started emailing about it. If Martin could do the credit card secure ordering stuff, and I ship the item to the home address he provides me, and then he transfers the “money” to my paypal account, less his commission, maybe I don’t need the “decoustudio” website anymore. It hasn’t produced much for orders anyway. I could spend my money and time on something else besides my website, juried shows, and magazine ads…..maybe I could buy some new tools I need badly to help get my labor costs down. Hmmm. I spent about $10Grand on marketing last year, that would surely buy me some great Grizzly tools I need. Hmmm.

I get about 10-20 unique visitors a day to my website. I follow it through statcounter every day. I had my third highest day since May 2006, this week with 70 unique visitors on Tuesday. I tried to figure out what happened, but I couldn’t, just more people following the same paths that others before them have followed. The next day, it was back to 10 visitors. For the rest of this week it is back to normal, 10-20 unique visitors, with “no” orders.

I used to excitedly tell my wife about the daily traffic, assuring her that all my work was worth it. She is so skeptical nowadays, that I don’t even tell her unless someone is coming to visit, or I get an order. She is patient with me, but I’m sure there are times she wondered “what” she married. I used to wear a suit, carry a briefcase, drove a classic Corvette, made good money, had health insurance, a 401K, and showered every morning. None of those exist anymore, but she does get to see me now everyday, something she used to only reserve for 1-2 days a week in the old days. Some weeks I think she likes it, other times, I think she wishes I was taking a “trip” somewhere. I’m trying to be funny. There is more of that story here: http://lumberjocks.com/projects/46

Daily, I watch the key words that people are using to stumble onto my website, and how they find my site. This week I saw a “hit” from a person that used the key words “scrimshaw powder horn” and they had a “2nd Page” google path. WOW, a year ago, I could type “DeCou Powder Horn” and not even find my own website in the list. Nowadays, you don’t even need the “DeCou” and you get a 2nd page hit. As Skinna says, it just takes “time.”

I get a lot of requests for shared links. For the most part, I don’t do that unless it is an actual artist asking me for the swap. I don’t list any of the Mega Listing Websites that ask me to post their link on my links page. If they want to list me, I’ll take the time to do that, but I don’t share those links. Maybe I should. For instance, a few times, those Mega Listing Websites had pornography listed with their links, and I don’t want to publicize that on my own site.

I get every week a unique visitor or two, from Sawdust’s, or Tony Ward, or ScottB’s blog. They work, a few people follow them each week. Nobody has ordered anything, but I have gotten some “hits”.

I have had a lot of Arts & Crafts work on my website, and a lot on lumberjocks. Still, to this day, not a single visitor to my website has ever come with a Key Words related to the Arts & Crafts movement. I wish they would, it would really help me sell some more stuff, I think.

I spent a wad of money and put an ad in American Bungalow magazine last year. They assured me that I would be beating customers off with a stick. The stick is still sitting with dust on it in the corner of my office.

Just two weeks ago, I got my first response from that magazine ad, a lady from Wichita called to ask me about building her a Morris Chair set. http://lumberjocks.com/projects/57
This lady that called said that she has held on to my magazine ad for over a year, and finally called that day. I’m hoping we can do business now, but so far she hasn’t placed the order. The Marketing was done with the Magazine, the Sales is up to me and the customer.

The salesperson at the magazine promised me that people would keep my ad for years. She told me when I was considering the ad, that unlike other magazines, people do not throw away their issues of the American Bungalow, but rather go back through them looking for ideas and artists when they are ready to do something. I was sold on that concept, and wrote out the check. Well, actually after the “wife” agreed that I could write the check. We are in this “thing” together in all aspects, as she doesn’t work outside of the home. Eventhough she works hard at our home, I don’t pay her for it…...I couldn’t afford it.

So, I’ve been struggling with how to sell more work, and actually gave up a couple of years ago that a WEBSITE would be the one silver bullet I needed. What I have learned is that a website is just part of the package. It is like having a business card.

Sure, it does help “my ego” to have 10-20 people a day get introduced to my work, but that doesn’t mean that any of them are standing in line to pay me $10Grand for a piece of my work. The bottom line for me is that “hits do not equal sales.” I realize that the concept doesn’t sell books, or how-to pamplets, but it is what I have experienced.

I think if I was selling less expensive things, the impulse decision buying process would kick in more. People used to say that an impulse decision needed to be in the $20 range. I think for Americans it is higher now. I still think it is under $100, but it sure isn’t several thousand dollars. Those decisions take time for people to make, and it should take them time. I decided several years ago that I was not going to appeal to the impulse buying factors, and that I wanted people to invest in me, my work, and do it for many years repetitvely.

So, I purposely have not built small things that I could sell on eBay. Well, not since I tried that once with a walking cane, just to give it a shot. I sold a walnut twisted cane with a tiger stripe maple sculpted handle for $40 bucks on eBay. A cane that regularly sells at a store in Wichita for $120. I’ve haven’t tried eBay since.

To be honest, I’m not really looking for a lot more customers, as I can only do just so much work in a year. But I am looking for a couple of new customers a year that are passionate about functional-art. On the other hand, I am searching for a handful of people that will let me spend whatever time it takes to make whatever I want, and pay me for it handsomely. I can have a dream, can’t I? After all, my local banker believes in me so much that he says I can borrow whatever I want to…....as long as I have the collateral to cover it.

Right now, I am limited by the customer budget each time to the point that most of my creative and artistic efforts on my projects go without being paid for. They can afford to pay me to build the furniture, but not the carving and artistic part of my work. I do that almost for free each time. I’ve been doing it because I wanted to, and I knew that if I was ever going to get paid for it, I had to be seen doing it, and have pictures of what I have done. Now, after several years of this process, people are asking for carved pieces of furniture. 3-4 years ago, I had to beg for permission to do it, now they are asking for it.

Here is a key thing about a business:
Just getting someone to look at your website, is analagous to having someone walk into your store. They may be inside enjoying the air conditioned air and background music, but if all they do is finger through the racks and turn over price tags and then walk out, what good is it? Not any good, especially if their kids leave smudges on the merchandise and spill their juice boxes on the carpet. Not to mention the shoplifters (spammers).

I can assuredly tell you this:
“If you have a website, you will get a lot of SPAM, and too many opportunities to have your website maximized-for-google by companies that say that doing that is their specialty.”

What I have discovered is a key principle that my professors were trying to tell me years ago when I took MBA classes, and didn’t listen well.

Getting people to look, doesn’t make a profit. Selling to people who look, doesn’t mean that you will make a profit. Making a profit from things you sell, is what you are in business for. Demand creates sales. Profit is made by selling the item above the cost to produce the object. My input costs have no bearing on Sales Price, only Demand determines Sales Price. Seems simple, but it has taken me 20 years to really “understand” it.

However, the time may not have come yet for my efforts to reap a return.

Just this week a guy from Los Angeles found my Maloof-Rocking chair on lumberjocks (it isn’t posted on my own website) and emailed me to say that he wants to come and visit me when he is in Kansas in late-September. WOW, the power of lumberjocks.

I had decided to try two experiments in the summer of 2006. I decided to build two pieces of furniture in the style of woodworking Icons Maloof, and Nakashima. I decided that I was going to post them on lumberjocks with the Icon’s name in the title of the project, and NOT post them on my own website. Just to see what would happen.

My theory that I am testing is that my efforts on lumberjocks is much more profitable than doing it on my own website. Why? The lumberjock synergy of getting us all together in one place, selling, sharing, talking, the Traffic Wizards, must love it.

This guy from LA is an example. He wouldn’t buy a $10Grand rocking chair from me off of a website and photograph, but he is going to take time out of his schedule to come and see me. What more could a guy ask for from a website?

If he orders a rocking chair, or something else will depend on our visit together, not the website. However, the “marketing” was done with the lumberjocks.

What I have been telling people lately that want to sell their woodworking, is to get on lumberjocks, and develop a great personal page. Martin has recently upgraded these personal pages. He says that we can also attach his page to our domain name, so that when someone types in our domain name, they get redirected to the lumberjocks page. I like that concept. So, I have been telling folks to spend their time on lumberjocks. Then, at least if they want their own website later, the content will already have been typed up. Sitting at a computer typing is not always easy for woodworkers, and paying someone else to do it is expensive.

Ok, to sum it up, I’ve said it before, but will repeat it here again:

Marketing: getting people to look at your work, and remember your name, and something about you.

Sales: getting people to stop looking and to buy something.

Profits: are made by selling something for less than it costs to make it.

Sales Price: is a sole function of Demand, not production costs.

I feel that in today’s world, a professional woodworker should consider having a website, just as they must have great photographs of past work, business cards, & brochures. I am not one that will tell you that you can quit your day job because you started up a website.

The Furniture Society website has articles on this subject as well. I was quite surprised this summer to see articles there from a few years ago that said the same thing…..If only I had read them then, I might have saved a lot of key strokes and dollars.

I’m still up in the air on whether juried national shows, and national magazine ads are of any help. They are hugely expensive for a small mom-and-pop operation like this one. Time will tell.

I’ve come to the conclusion that having the website gives me some exposure, but that word-of-mouth is the best form of marketing, and the only profitable method I have discovered.

Thanks Canjunpen and Skinna for posting this information, there will be a lot of us lumberjocks that will learn from it.

Thanks,
Mark

-- Mark DeCou - Kansas Flint Hill's Artisan

Thanks everyone. Mark that has pretty much been my experience.

-- http://www.woodsongsfurniture.com

it sounds like different types of projects benefit from different types of marketing. People shop for different things, in different places. So another good point to make is to know your customer before they know you—where would these people be looking for products such as your own and then target that area.

-- "Functional WoodArt" by Debbie, Canada (http://www.execulink.com/~yohan)

Debbie:
I think you are very wise in that observation. People that buy pens might also buy furniture, and vice versa, but the market for pen buyers is significantly different than for furniture buyers, and signficantly again different from functional-art buyers.

Where they shop, what they buy, what they will spend, the amount of buyer trust they need to make a purchase, etc. are all different than from what I am doing.

Strategy must match the research and the target market. The research must be based on facts, not gut-feels. I’ve learned that the hard way also. Also, there is a lot of “mystery” involved with a mom-pop operation. We often don’t have any idea whether something will work. The nice thing about the word-of-mouth marketing is that I get to learn what people like, want, and will pay for. I learn that from personal one-on-one communication.

In the 28,000 hits to my website in the past 15 months, I may have gotten feedback from a dozen people on what they thought of my work. I learn those things first hand with customers, and also from shows where the hallway is filled with “opinions.” Also, I’ve never met a person that thought they had bad taste for decorating. But, I have met a lot of folks that think that other people don’t know how to decorate. Funny, how humans are to each other. However, the feedback is crucial, and for that one reason alone, I think a new woodworker needs to be at shows often. That immediate feedback and customer response is critical to flushing out the “gut-feels” truth from fiction. But, if you do it, wear your thick-skin and big-smile that day of the show, you will need it at least a couple of times, if not more.

Loved having you down at the DeCou Picnic!! I’m not sure why you wore your winter coat when it was 104 degrees that day. ha.

You gotta love a guy that spends 28 years doing anything, much less protecting the rest of us. You go Bill!

-- Mark DeCou - Kansas Flint Hill's Artisan

Maybe it’s just like Carleen says,”all those that walk by with out looking are just part of the 499 we have to get past to find that 500th one who will buy. We are building the website now to hook it into the Homeshow Daily display and then see what else we need to do. I think part of what is going on right now has to do with the economy and the fact that the media started the election year a year early.Thanks Bill, Skinna, and Mark

-- Thos. Angle, Owyhee Design, Oregon

Thanks for getting this started Bill, and for Skinna and Mark for their thoughts as well. There is a lot of information and experience behind what is said here. I appreciate all of you taking the time to write this down.

I am in the middle of deciding what I want to do for a shopping cart on my web site. If Martin has that available, I would be willing to have him collect the money, take a commission, and then forward the funds. That could be a great alternative compared to paying for my own shopping cart, a merchant account, and their usual monthly fees and commission rates. Depending on what Martin could set up, his rates could be lower than the alternative, and still make money for both of us.

In the meantime, I keep adding items to my web site, such as new photos and such. I found that one of the main traffic drivers for me (besides Lumberjocks), is my monthly newsletter. I write this to update folks on what I am doing each month, plans for future projects, and the like. I think they enjoy reading it, because I do get quite a few hits from email links. Right now, I am trying to get more people to sign up for my newsletter. The more hits I have on my web site, the more likely it will appear in the various search engines. That is the start, to at least get the word out. Now I need to take a more local approach as well, like Mark suggested. If I get local people to know me and my work, then I can get more customers and orders.

Nice work Bill. I am looking forward to your next installment of your online sales guide. I am also looking forward to more thoughts from Skinna, Mark, and others too. Isn’t it great how the Lumberjocks can share this information rather than each one having to learn it themselves the hard way?

-- Bill, Turlock California, http://www.brookswoodworks.com

thanks Bill and everyone. This is a great topic. Will check back often.

-- ..... art for lifes sake ... danwalters@lumberjocks.com

Thos., I heard that once when someone was talking about their rejections. He said that he’d get excited because if 1 out of every hundred was a yes, then he just got another “no” out of the way!! :) (Exactly what you said).
I guess the rejections are “research”, rather than seeing them as rejections, use them to fine-tune your sales strategies.

-- "Functional WoodArt" by Debbie, Canada (http://www.execulink.com/~yohan)

Skinna and Mark have both made valid arguments. Skinna I know all about the relevance of reciprocal links and search engine submissions. I used to do it all myself, but after turning it over to Main Street Hosting, my hits more than doubled as well as my sales. If you are trying to run a small “mom & pop” website it is feasible to manage this all yourself. My site averages 2,750 individual hits a day – 250,034 hits from May 1 – July 31 of this year. I’m not bragging, because a lot of the major players’ sites have over a million hits a month. What I guess all of this means for us, as woodworkers, is that unless you have a lot of product to offer, it’s going to be tough to justify the expense and work that it takes to successfully manage an on line presence.

Mark struck on a brilliant concept! If Martin, or someone else, would be willing to form a co-op web site and allow interested woodworkers the opportunity of posting their wares for sale – that might work. The idea of LJ using their Merchant Account to process the credit card orders would solve everyone’s problem. If anyone has any interest in Mark’s idea – I’d be more than happy to help as much as I can to put it together.

One thing that anyone thinking about an on line store needs to think about is – how much product can you realistically turn out for sale? How much do you need to have in sales (income) to make it worthwhile? Can you keep up with production and still have time for your “regular” clients? One of the things that made me rethink my objectives was an order just 3 weeks before Christmas (several years ago). I was turning pens and having a fair amount of success selling them on line – I’d average 10-15 pens a month, which was great for me. Then the day came that a customer called and asked if I could produce 500 pens – and have them laser engraved – before Christmas, they wanted to give them to clients and employees. I did back flips (ok, it was only in my head) and ran inside all excited to tell my wife. She looked at me like I was crazy and said that I had better get back in the shop and start turning! What I failed to realize in my excited frenzy was that i did not have 500 kits in stock, nor the blanks to turn that many. The customer wanted all of them turned in Paduck. I ended up filling the order, but I had to take 2 weeks vacation and turned and assembled pens almost non-stop – then I had a friend in the engraving business laser engrave them and we shipped them. The money was great – but I did not have a spare minute for anything else and swore that that would never happen again! My hobby had just become a job that I did not like.

Hopefully Skinna, Mark and I have given you guys and gals thinking about a web site something to think about. It may not be what you hope it will be. If you still want to give it a shot, let me know and i will try to help.

-- Bill - "Suit yourself and let the rest be pleased." http://www.cajunpen.com/

In addition to submitting your site for indexing on search engines, you can also pay search engines for keyword based ad placement. A few woodworkers seem to be doing this (Try searching for “custom woodworking” and you’ll see the sponsored link ads). You can be very specific about which keywords or specific combinations of keywords will trigger your ad. You can also prevent your ad from being displayed when your keywords are used in combinaion with words like “cheap” or “low cost”. At least with the big search engines, you basically only pay when someone clicks on an ad that goes to your web site.

Mark – maybe you could try paying for keywords like “custom arts and crafts” and I’d bet you’d get some hits.

I’m not sure how this would translate to a woodworking business, but several years ago, my wife and I set up a web based shopping cart type business selling children’s books and we had -some- success with this sort of advertising. We probably spent about $100 on adwords, went from zero to about 500 visitors from it, which we thought was pretty cool, and sold about $70 in books to 3 customers as a result of it. That’s a “customer aquisition cost” of $33 each which we thought was pretty good, as we expected some repeat business and perhaps some additional customers from word of mouth if we maintained communication with them. We really never found out.. long story short, we were too busy with other things and decided to close the site, but it was fun.

-- Matt - Syracuse, NY

Ah, websites;

I got a message from my friend Thos Angle, to check out this blog. Some interesting and relevent things have been pointed out here.

I don’t subscribe to the idea of paying $ 3,000.00 dollars a year on a marketing or site submission program, for most woodworkers. But I wll admit that I dont get the amount of hits that Bill is getting. But again, I’m not selling anything other than myself.

I use my website as a tool to establish credibility with potential clients. When I visit a potential client, I suggest they check out my website, prior to my appointment with them. If they haven’t checked it out, I have them do it while I’m there. It saves me from having to “sweet talk ” them into doing business with me. The can see I know what I’m doing. They also don’t normally try to talk the price down. They feel it would be futile, and they’re right. I don’t try to talk the quality down, so I won’t let them talk the price down.

With my other website, the one designed to sell ezee-feed systems, as Ms Debbie so accurately pointed out, knowing what your customer wants is key to sales.

I can promote ezee-feed systems all I want, but if a person doesn’t have a need for it, they won’t buy it. This is another reason for the prowoodworking tips site. It establishes me as somebody who just might know what could help woodworkers, in their everyday efforts to make their work easier. After all, it’s what I do for a living.

In a round about way, prowoodworking tips introduces woodworkers to my product in a very non threatening manner. If someone see’s it, and want’s it, they will buy it. I don’t need to stand on a hill and scream that I have something for sale.

When I was first trying to sell this product, I was renting four booths a woodworking shows, at a pretty high price, and demonstrating the system. People looked at me like I was a used car salesmen or one of those guys at a carnival, trying to lure people into their booth. They would watch me demonstrate the system, and still think it was some kind of smoke and mirror trick.

It wasn’t until they looked at my porfolio, and realised I am a professional woodworker, did they consider that the product might be a good one. Then they would want to see the demonstration again. This time they weren’t looking for the trick, they were looking at the product.

I have since stopped doing those shows, and sell exclusively on my website. And with better results.

And as Mark pointed out, advertising in a publication can be both extremely expensive, and very ineffective for alot of us. We can’t afford to commit to a long term advertising program, in a major magazine. And, without a long term commitment, it’s throwing money away. Advertising is a program, not a hit and miss deal. Repeated exposure is the only way for a magazine ad to help us. A minimum would be seven exposures, according to marketing professionals.

The same rings true for websites. Unless, as Mark said, you have impulse priced items for sale, without repeated exposure to the potential client, you won’t sell anything. You need a way to keep them coming back to your site, in order for them to make a large purchase, and even then, it has to be something very special for them to order it from someone far from them.

Word of mouth is by far the cheapest form of advertising, and probably the most effective. The potential client knows something about you even before they meet you.

Many client’s say that I am expensive, but good. When they tell that to a friend, the friend is expecting a high price, but a good job. I have no problem with the good part, because I don’t equate a certain level of quality with the client. I equate an extremely high level of quality, as something that I must do, even if it were for free. I can’t allow less from myself, just as most, if not all of the lumberjocks here require from themselves.

After all if it weren’t a search for higher levels of quality, and knowledge to produce higher levels, none of us would be here.

For MOST woodworkers, a website is a tool, not a saviour. Unless you have an already recognizable name, it won’t generate enough sales to cover the cost of producing, and maintaining it.

Just another point of view.

Lee

-- by Lee A. Jesberger http://www.prowoodworkingtips.com http://www.ezee-feed.com

WOW! This woodworker/woodcarver is just taking this all in and sorting thru it.

I like the idea of Martin being the middleman or go to person. I think that there are so many of us LJ’s that don’t want to mess with all of that tech stuff. I would rather pay someone like Martin a reasonably amount to take care of that computer crap.

As I have said in the past all of what I sell is by word-of-mouth and for me that’s OK for now because it is still just a hobby but if it were to become my main source of income I would have to market it such as you all have described.

I want to thank Bill and all the rest of you for giving me and LJ’s very good info.

-- " All Things At First Appear Difficult"

Cajunpen, Skinna, Mark, and others.

Thank you for a great well thought out thread and essay on your experiments and experiences.

Mine mirror very close to your experiences, with one major exception.

When I did professional wood working for “a living” that is exactly what I was found that I was doing. I was working hard at trying to make a living. I had to cover payroll and expenses in addition to covering the overhead that goes with owning your own business.

I worked very hard running my woodworking business. The only thing that was certain was that the payroll dates and bill due dates didn’t change. Only the cash flow did and the number of commissions that had been sold at anyone time.

There are a lot of peaks and valleys.

For anyone who ever has been in business you soon find one of the many truths to owning and running a business. That is, to keep from expanding to much during flush times and in turn surviving the lean times. It is a known fact that most businesses fail after over expansion and increased over head that greatly contributes to the failure of the business.

It is a constant type rope that a business owner walks.

Even though I did well with my business and was profitable I choose not to continue doing it as my primary source of income.

For me what I had found was it was becoming “just” a job.

The biggest SINGLE reason I gave up on doing woodworking for my primary living was I found I was loosing my passion for doing woodworking. Although an enjoyable job, it pretty much became that, just a job.

I also wasn’t able to retain as much artistic freedom as I wanted because I had to cater to the customer’s desires and choices.

I needed something more.

I decided to reinvented my self and try something new and went back to school.

I studied stained glass under several master stained glass artists for two and a half years.

While I was studying I only did enough commissions in woodworking to keep my shop open and the wolves away. Most of the work was handled by employees or other colleagues of mine.

Something interesting happened to me. (When time permits I plan on bloging in detail about this. For now, I will just give the highlights about the experience.)

Because of the intensity of my stained glass training and other factors I had really stopped “looking for work” or commissions in woodworking and really cut back on my marketing. I also choose not to renew my contract – to supply an upscale consignment shop – I had basically stopped seeking orders – and trying to “market” my work in woodworking.

One of my biggest fears was I would be unable to fill the commissions and the quality of my work would suffer. I simply didn’t have the time and was not willing to “just fill the order” and ship it out.

I wanted there to be passion and excitement not just another order to fill.

My decision also was made easier for me when my right hand helper landed another job teaching after almost a two year absence. Teaching was his passion.

I also had underestimated how difficult and challenging stained glass work was going to be.

In short I was over my head.

I digress and will save the rest of the story for my planed new blog series tentatively titled “Unglued”, a blog about how not to do remodeling, build custom furniture, stained glass commissions and run a woodworking business.

Lessons learned the hard way.

Today my experiences are very different.

The passion has returned. I stopped all my marketing. I haven’t updated my web page for months and removed all references to ‘selling or doing commissions”. My new web page will simply be a historical prospective and documentary about “This Old Crack House” along with my furniture building and stained glass work.

One quick side note about my web page experiences which mirrored a lot of the same ones as my fellow Lumberjocks have reported in this thread. After HGTV came and filmed my stained glass ceiling and DIY segments that ran in Europe on there DIY network they warned me that I would have to upgrade my web page or risk it crashing The said it would experience about 300,000 hits a day ever time the TV show ran.

This turned out to be true and weren’t kidding.
I was in no way prepared for this, nor did I want this exposure. I wasn’t prepared for the possibility of this exposure to leading to several commissions. I knew I wouldn’t be able to fill these orders or commissions because of my intense schedule and training I was undergoing studying stained glass.

My work had just been featured in full feature front page article in the Home and Garden section in the Minneapolis and Star and Tribune, Minnesota’s largest newspaper. That article turned out to be there most read and requested article in the Home and Garden section. As far as I know that is still true to this day because I have stayed in touch with the author and photographer and they have passed this on to me several times.

Many of you know I was featured in Popular Mechanics July 2007 article. I was the only woodworker in America to be featured. I didn’t seek this attention. I was very humble about being chosen and still am. Again my web page was over whelmed. I still don’t have my web page posted and long ago stopped promoting my web page.

Many of the readers of this article found there way to my web page. I simply am and was not able to respond to all of the requests, e-mails, and questions.

Not to mention all the spam and bombardment of commercial advertisements.

Of which several are not the type I welcome. Enough said.

My point simply is, there is a place for web pages and they can be a powerful tool. I have found it was only when other factors such as a major newspaper, TV program or magazine drove visitors to my web site would be cost effective and worth all the effort and money it takes to maintains the web site. This is only my personal opinion and experience.

Don’t get me wrong, I think web sites are an important tool and can be effective. I simply don’t believe they are “the magic bullet” or the, be all end all, and answer to all of your sales or orders.

I have noticed that in today’s market it seems it has become a necessary to have one. That is, some how it is assumed that if you don’t have one, your potential customer comes to the conclusion that your absence of a web sight makes you suspect.

I as a sole proprietor neither had the time; nor expertise; or could really afford to maintain my web site the way it should have been.

My point; I had prepared my web page and removed all references and make it clear and insisted that they stated in the articles that I didn’t do woodworking for a living and wouldn’t accept any commissions. My web page was averaging over 50,000 hits per hour the day the article came out. I still received over 500 hundred requests to do commissions. I had already pulled my web page from “service” and stopped posting it long ago not only on the Lumberjocks web site but other sites I had used also.

Over a year prior to the HGTV Program, several prominent newspaper articles and magazine articles I had chosen to give up woodworking as a full time business.

I have never looked back.

My passion has returned.

I limit my craft to only 6 commissions a year of my choosing. These choices are at random, and are based only on my interest in the projects and connection with the person who requests the commission.

There are no time lines or due dates to these projects.

I do not charge for these commissions other than expenses. I suggest and ask those who commissions I choose to build, make a donation equal to what I would of charged, and make a donation to a charity of there choice. I also offer one that I started and have tied it in to my annual tours of “This Old Crack House”. All the proceeds go to a local food shelf.

Again I am leaving a lot out at this point but I have to save some of the story for my blog after all winters in Minnesota are long and cold.

After averaging over 50 plus commissions a year and then cutting down to less than 25 for a couple of years then about a dozen the first year I returned to school to learn stained glass I discovered something very interesting.

After I cut my overhead to almost nothing and limited the number of commissions along with some other changes my net profit was greater than when I was doing far more volume.

Not only had my passion returned, I was sleeping better at nights.

Today I am overwhelmed with requests for my woodworking, stained glass commissions, and special staining process I use in finishing my mission woodworking pieces.

I turn down all but six commissions.

Period.

No exceptions.

I have been so blessed and am so grateful for the chance to practice my crafts with passion and enthusiasm again.

Today I work to live, not live to work.

-- Dusty

Lots of great information here, thanks for starting this Bill and thanks everybody for the input. I’d like to add my 2 cents to this discussions on some issues:

Search engines

You should not need to submit your site to search engines. SEs like google are using “spiders” to crawl the web automatically. These spiders are following links so you just need to have few links pointing to your website and they will find you. To get those first few initial links you may consider submitting your website to web directories like yahoo (paid one), DMOZ or others. So basically – you’re submitting the website to web directories to help search engines to find your websites. Once they find your website they will add it to their index.

Search engine optimization

As Bill mentioned there are lots of companies offering Search engine optimization services.. and yes they are quite expensive. To do as much as possible in-house you need to understand 2 core facts – search engines are indexing words and are treating links to your webpages as votes. So it’s all about the quantity and quality of your content plus the quantity and quality of links pointing to you. That’s the reason why it makes sense to use LumberJocks to create and develop your online woodworking image if you love to write. You have easy tools to write about your projects and woodworking experience in the projects and blog plus LumberJocks is getting more and more popular in the eyes of search engines resulting in more links power for you. Tip.. you can easily check the number of pages indexed by google by typing “site:anywebsite.com”. Here is the sample search for LumberJocks – as you can see there are already 200k LJ.com pages indexed in Google.

Know your target market

I can’t agree more. You need to know your market even when trying to market your business online. It is also important to mention that you can use your online presence to pre-sell, instead of just marketing your product or services. This can be again done here on LumberJocks elegantly. For example, Mark would like to sell more art&crafts commission work. As MattD stated it’d make great sense for Mark to use Google AdWords to bid on “custom arts and crafts” keywords in the Google’s paid listings. It’s great way to test the waters and you have lots of control using this program (you can set your daily budget, your bids on keywords etc.). The assumption is right – if somebody is searching for “custom arts and crafts” there is quite high probability that he belongs to your target market. Now to relate this to the SE Optimization tactics I mentioned above, I’d suggest Mark to start new Blog series on LumberJocks titled “Custom Arts and Crafts”. In this series you could write about history of arts and crafts, your past arts and crafts clients/work and anything else that should be of interest to the people wanting to buy (not to do/build) custom arts and crafts furniture. As this series grows you’re getting excellent keywords coverage in search engines (and keywords in page titles are always the most important ones so you’re targeting phrase “custom arts and crafts” heavily thanks to its presence in each series part’s title). So your chances to become listed on first page in google for this phrase are increasing down the road as you continue to write in this series. And when people from your target market will start to hit this series they’d become educated and your pre-sell process would kick in. They must get hooked and interested to read about your experience with custom arts and crafts. Once they will respect you as the authority in this area thanks to following your writings they will eventually want to contact you. This all can be of course done on a standalone website or standalone blog but why not use the synergy of all LumberJocks content for free ;)

Shopping zone on LumberJocks

Thanks for reminding me of this folks. I’d personally love to start working on this feature as soon as possible but it requires lots of research and work in the commissions, shipping, legal issues area. Plus LumberJocks are now mostly targeting other woodworkers instead of your potential customers. But as we stated above people interested in buying woodworking items are also landing on our pages and this number is growing each month. So it’s all about the time I can devote to LumberJocks these days since this is only my side-project for now. Together with Debbie we’re now working hard on our online advertising brochure that we will be able to use as a handout to ww companies’ representatives. New flyers and banners are also in production to make it easier for all of you to promote LumberJocks even more. So the highest priority right now is to get first few advertisers to generate steady revenue each month. That would of course allow me to spend even more time on our site.

If you have any questions about LumberJocks, search engines, online marketing and related topics feel free to ask and continue discussion.

Hope you will continue adding to this series, Bill ;)

-- Martin, http://lumberjocks.com | My Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Martin_Sojka/1357216976

Another great set of information from our community. A large number of things to consider for all of us. I think it all depends on your particular situation and needs. For Bill, the search engine optimization works well for his needs. Mark and Lee have found what works for their circumstances. Dusty has made the long journey and found his place as well. Skinna and Martin have a lot of great insight and information into the workings of the web.

I am working my way along the same path like Dusty, Mark, Lee, Bill, and others as well. Having all this information is a big help in various decisions to make. And, like several have mentioned, I have to decide what I want my business to be. Will it be furniture, or small items. or what? Right now I am trying a lot of things. This allows me to build my skills, learn the business, and eventually decide on where I want to concentrate my efforts. My leanings are towards furniture right now, but that can always change.

I want to thank everyone for their submissions on this. I hope we did not hijack your blog Bill, but there was just so much great information here from everyone. I am looking forward to seeing how this topic moves forward. Would it be better as a forum instead ? That might be a good idea too. Anyway, I hope it does continue to grow.

-- Bill, Turlock California, http://www.brookswoodworks.com

Hi again.

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post, is the fact I ended by saying that without an already recognizable name, the site won’t cover the cost of producing and maintaining it. The more your site is visited, the more name recognition you will receive. This will lead to positive things, but is a process that needs to be worked on, in the way of site development and promotion. It takes some time and effort.

What I should have added, and as Martin pointed out, the more posts you make both on lumberjocks, and on your own website, in the way of articles, you are adding to the strength of your site.

In my site code, I can keep track of the search term, or keywords used to bring people to my site.

Already, a number of my posts on lumberjocks is driving traffic to my site.

I also have several hundred terms that bring my site up on page one of google. This includes “long tail search terms”, which while only searched a few times each, add up to about 83% of my visitors.

Again, as Martin said, Google and the other search engine’s robot’s, return regularly, which I am also able to track, without me submitting the site to them.

Lee

-- by Lee A. Jesberger http://www.prowoodworkingtips.com http://www.ezee-feed.com

I guess I’ll jump back in,

I have been trying to market my art work since the winter of ‘65-’66 when I walked up Central Avenue in Phoenix with an arm load of drawings under my arm. It was a long walk from Southern Avenue in a pair of high heeled cowboy boots, especially since I was used to riding a horse everywhere. All I knew was that a bunch of cowboys who drew and painted had formed something called The Cowboy Artists of America. I was so green and ignorant that I thought all I had to do was show up with genuine Cowboy art and I was on my way. After all, I was a real cowboy, wasn’t I? I was so ignorant I not only didn’t have the answers, I didn’t even know what the questions were. As you can imagine, all I got for my tour of Phoenix was a set of very memorable blisters. I knew I had better not sell my saddle yet. I kept working at it and was selling some. In the winter of ‘72 I flew into Phoenix from Cody, Wyoming with a big boxe of paintings. I started making the rounds of the Galleries in Scottsdale. I met one of my heros, Johnny Hampton, one of the founders of the Cowboy Artists. I still remember two things he told me that day as he looked over my paintings. Johnny said,” The trouble with this business that you have to be sensitive enough to do it and tough enough to take the consequences.” The other thing he said has rung true to me ‘til this day,” The cowboys call us artists and the artists call us cowboys.” I could sell everyting I make if it was priced where a $1500/month cowboy could afford it. Johnny owned his own gallery but I wasn’t up to his level yet. In those days I sold more in the bars than anywhere else. On the second trip to Arizona I managed to sell one painting. I got enough to pay my fare back to Cody. In 1975 I was invited to exhibit at the first George Phippen Memorial Art Show on the square in Prescott Arizona. At the time, I was doing illustrations for the Prescott Courier weekend magazine and mostly starving to death. Still no luck.
By the ‘80’s I gave up on art and switched to building saddles and tack. I had loyal customers but never enough of them. I finally just gave it up and went back to ranching. Carleen and I bought a ranch in 1990 and ran the saddle shop on the side. I built furniture for us and kept the ranch growing. By then the internet was out there but I knew nothing about it. When we sold the ranch in 2005 we decided to combine the wood and leather. After 2 years we have decided we must have a web presence. Not so much to sell as to exihibit my work to prospective buyers much as Lee described. In the last two years, I have had a feature article in the local newpaper, An article in Cowboy Magazine, Spent quite a bunch on advertiseing and have the display at HomeShow Daily. All of that has produced $450. I have sold enough to make a living by word of mouth. True,I’m still fixing and cleaning the local buckaroos’ saddles and occasionally selling a new one.
Carleen was in the retail business for 17 years. She had a western store, a lady’s boutique and a shoe store. Thankfully that is all over. In this day of Walmart and Target they wouldn’t have a chance.

What I’m trying to say here is that I wish there was this much information available before I made that walk down central avenue over 40 years ago. I’m still going to do the web site. But I already know 10 times more than I did a couple weeks ago. Thanks to the LumberJocks.

I, as well, wish there was a co-op available. There is such a deal; look up Northwest Fine Woodworking.com. Perhaps we could model our selves after their guild. They do have a physical gallery in Seattle, Washington. I also ran into a really good looking gallery on line but it didn’t strike me as a good deal. They had nothing but a website and wanted 40-50% commision and the artist doing custom work and drop shipping. I told him that sounded pretty exorbitant when he didn’t have a real gallery for us to show in. I never heard from him again.

The drought in this part of the country is having it’s toll. The ranchers are weaning their calves early, I can hear cows bellering for their calves through my office window. A good friend and rancher looked at the things I do and asked,” Wth all the things you can do, why have you been buckarooin’ fer a living?” I had to tell him the truth,” Because it’s easier!”

Again Thanks for all the information but most of all the friendship and comradery.

Tom

-- Thos. Angle, Owyhee Design, Oregon

Wow – looks like I started a rather lengthy debate on websites. I don’t know for sure what is the right way or wrong way to run a web site – I only know for sure that My site works for me. I am lucky enough to have a product that virtually everyone needs at one time or another, even LumberJocks :-)) Most of the pens that I sell are on the high end side – I don’t really sell the cheaper brands, because you can go to any Office Supply store, or even WalMart and pick up an ink pen or pencil. You can’t go to these stores and buy a $410.00 Pelikan Fountain Pen – that is where cajunpen.com and my competitors come in.

After reading all of the interesting posts to this blog, I am not sure that a web site would be the best way alternative for a woodworker to sell their products. The Internet is a Global Marketing Tool. I’ve shipped pens and accessories to every State in the United States as well as Most of the countries that the U.S. allows us to do business with. My typical product weighs a pound or less and is easily packaged and shipped. As woodworkers our products will not typically be easy to ship – especially if your product is furniture.

I think that a web presence is an excellent tool for the guys like Mark, Lee, Dusty and the others that just want to provide a place for their prospective clients to view their work. For that type of usage – you would not need to worry about the Search Engines – you will be telling the client where to find your site. For the guys hoping to sell their products on the web – I’m not sure that it would work. I think that I’ve added all I can to this subject – but if you have a question I can answer, don’t hesitate to ask.

-- Bill - "Suit yourself and let the rest be pleased." http://www.cajunpen.com/

Good points, Bill. I’d like to add that when you sell high-priced custom work you can use Web to build and leverage your credibility.. in other words you can develop and enhance your professional image – your brand name – this way. It is similar to publishing books or starring in industry related TV shows.

-- Martin, http://lumberjocks.com | My Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Martin_Sojka/1357216976

You guys have any experience with online galleries?

I recently found http://www.boundlessgallery.com. I haven’t set up an account yet but I’m interested.

They have the website, shopping cart, and merchant account. You upload your images, produce and deliver the product and pay them a 25% commission.

May not be a great deal but seems like a quick easy way to get started.

-- Leon -- Houston, TX - " I create all my own designs and it looks like it "

Dusty pointed out that I miss spoke on how profits are made. You’d think that after writing and proofreading for 2 hours, I wouldn’t have messed up that one.

Profit: what money is made after the input costs are deducted from the sale price. DUH.

It is funny though, how many people don’t have this concept down. That is why I keep repeating it. You wouldn’t believe how many folks I run into that are angry because people won’t pay a “decent” profit for a woodworking project. I hear woodworkers say, “don’t people realize how much work it takes to build something…...”

-- Mark DeCou - Kansas Flint Hill's Artisan

WOW when I replied to this topic I was wondering if anyone other than possibly Bill was ever going to see it, and then I was thinking maybe even Bill won’t see it and I’m totally wasting my time here by explaining in fairly minor detail things that I’ve taken a long time to learn ‘the hard way’. I AM TOTALLY BLOWN AWAY by the response to this topic. Over the next night or 2 I will read all replies in detail as time permits.

Thanks all for your feedback so far – much appreciated!
I especially liked the idea of paying your kids to do the all the link jumping, while giving me more time to spend in the shop – I have a 13 yr old who would be just the shot for that and I never thought of it myself – but then again, 13yr olds may tend to get easily side-tracked on the big old internet, and therefore I may not get my money’s worth!
Maybe 1c per click is a fair rate!

I did a website a few years ago for a hiphop/rap artist – and he was disappointed when he had to search 44 pages into google before he found his site after a month or 2, then I told him to spend some time doing the ‘link jumping’ thing – posting it on blogs and forums as well etc, and within a week of this he was at number 1 spot when anyone searched for ‘Australian HipHop’ although results for such a search change rapidly he didn’t stay there for more than about 2 months – and now doesn’t even have a website anymore, he relies totally on ‘myspace’ to showcase his music – but the ‘link jumping’ was definitely a success for him at the time, and he said he’d spent a total of 3 hours doing it.

Will come back and read more of your replies as time permits, right now it’s almost 4am and it’s time to go back into the house and get some rest. Tomorrow is always a big day in the shop.

-- Skinna - Australia... I won't stop at murder if that's what is necessary to get the job done

Too much good stuff here to read online (the eyes get tired too fast). Is there a way to print this discussion for a more attentive reading and future reference?

-- When you give someone a chance it may well be their last.

When I was learning about Search Engine workings I obtained a document – I don’t know how legal it is, but apparently it was written by one of the original inventors/programmers who created Google, it has about 300 pages of information…. LJ admin (Martin I guess?) is there somewhere here at this LJ site I can upload it to for the readers of this topic to download and view if they like? If not, when I find it I will post it on one of my sites and put a link here to it – it is a MSWORD document, and now that I’ve mentioned it, damn I hope I’m able to find it before my next reply!!!

-- Skinna - Australia... I won't stop at murder if that's what is necessary to get the job done

Leon
I checked out the link to www.boundlessgallery.com and it looks like a pretty easy way to get started.

25% sounds like alot, but not really. Regular brick and mortor galleries usually give a 50-50 or 60-40 split.

Another website to consider is www.guild.com , similar idea, but more developed and possibly higher end.
Regards
DAN

-- ..... art for lifes sake ... danwalters@lumberjocks.com