Sunday, October 18, 2009

Selling Patterns Online

We've had some discussions on how to sell your stitching patterns online, instead of trying to sell them to a publishers.

I thought this would make a good post for this blog. These are a few things to consider when investigating hosting services that sell your patterns for you.

1. Make certain that you have all of your notes, and any previous attempts that were not so successful. This helps document your development process and that you did create this on your own. This is a copyright protection measure.

2. Investigate EVERY venue that you are considering selling your patterns through.
  • Identify their Seller and Buyer Protection policies
  • What are their Dispute Resolution Protocols
  • How good is the Search Engine
  • How easy or difficult it is to find your products in their system
It won't do you much good to list a product, if folks can't find it.

3. Weigh the Good and Bad of using a service that MEMBERS ONLY can purchase your products. Not everyone is willing or ready to JOIN a community, just to buy your pattern.

There is nothing more frustrating to a customer to Google an item; find exactly what they want, and then can't buy it right there.

You risk loosing numerous customers by forcing them to create a new account with a company that might use their information in ways the consumer doesn't want... or the hosting site offers no solid protection for that private information.

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