(© Cute Colors)I have a quick question for you all. I'd appreciate as many responses as possible!
Have you ever bought, or would you consider buying, items for sale online by other 'mommy bloggers'? If you've done it, what items have you bought?
I have two ideas in the pipeline but I wanted to guage how well they'd be received before I moved ahead with them. Firstly, you guys all know that the reason I set up this blog was most definitely NOT to make any money from it. I don't like ads or pay-per-post - that's just a personal preference :) However, I've come across an avenue whereby I could offer downloaded files - articles, ebooks, templates, recipe books, homemaking books, budgeting books and so on - for a price. In some respects though, I almost feel as though I'd be 'selling out' by offering anything at all for sale through this site. So I'm still in two minds about it. It's not why I started this blog six-odd months ago. If it was to go ahead, however, there would still be free content available and the 'for sale' stuff would be confined to one or two clearly marked boxes in the sidebars, which you could freely ignore, LOL. Everything else - yes, including my kooky ramblings! LOL - would remain exactly the same. Lizzie's Home, as it stands now, would remain. I love it here.
The second idea I had has to do with my very talented (and it goes without saying, wildly handsome, LOL) Hubs and his photography. The exhibition of his work is in a few months and we've been talking lately about that, and about how I can best help support him. The other photographer in the exhibition has indicated that he should be able to source wholesale materials for photo cards (and other products) cheaply, and of course my brain is ticking over. I'd love to take that side of things on as an 'at home project' - it would be income-producing and something I could do at home while the kids were in school. Several weeks ago I thought The Perfect Job had literally dropped down into my lap but when I figured out the logistics of getting there and childcare, the 'perfect' part kind of evaporated. It soon became blindingly apparent that working from home is in my future. So I'd love to help Hubs develop this side of his 'business', and I was thinking of including either a link to an ebay page here (with a 'buy-it-now' only feature) or a link to a PayPal account for a direct sale. Again, having this link here would not impact on the other features of Lizzie's Home. And trust me, Hubs' photos are awesome.
So what do you guys think? Would you buy these things from me? LOL. What kind of price would you expect to pay for, say, a 50-page recipe or homemaking book? I've seen a few online for $US 7.95 (this would make it approx $AUD 8.90). But the ladies offering this feature are all very well known with bazillions of readers and can probably price their stuff accordingly. I'd probably go a little cheaper.
If you feel inclined and have a blog of your own, I'd love a link back to this post. The more responses I get, the better :)
Cheers,
Lizzie
13 comments:
I think its a great idea. The photo's really intrigue me. The books not so much, but then I am an impulse buy kinda girl so catch me in the right mood and I would buy anything.
Might I suggest you try a small idea that doesn't cost you much upfront and see how it goes.
Good luck. Happy venturing.
The photo cards would be multi-purpose (probably blank on the inside) images from my husband's 'catalogue', LOL. He does a lot of animals, plants/nature and landscapes. I've seen a mock-up of what the cards would look like and they're awesome. Then of course there's the opportunity to expand into other products :P
When Hubs does his exhibition in February, most of the shots will be available for sale, either framed or unframed. We've had indications that some of his larger shots could go in excess of $250-$300. The cards would be 6x4 versions of many of his larger 'for sale' shots (except for the exclusive runs, of course).
Cheers,
Lizzie
See, I'm the opposite of Amy. I'd be more interested in the homemaking type things. Not that I'm not postive your hubby is a brilliant photographer! But I don't see anything wrong with offering up your work product for sale. I certainly wouldn't be offended by it. It wouldn't hurt to give it a try and see if people take you up on it, right?
Thanks Lori
I had the same thoughts as you - I'm totally enamoured with the idea of homemaking stuff a la Biblical Womanhood and Keeping The Home's downloads. If I did Hubs' photos though, it would more than likely be a link to a separate blog (which I also run) plus maybe a few small 'glamour shots' in a box somewhere on Lizzie's Home. Nothing terribly major. Whereas the homemaking stuff (aka Lizzie Originals, LOL) would have a box of their own (set aside from the free stuff) and links to Payloadz/PayPal. Still thinking it through - will probably have an 'opening special' on a simple 20 page recipe or similar book...like $3-$5 or something. That way when nobody buys it, I won't feel so bad, LOL.
Cheers,
Lizzie
It wouldn't work for me. There are scads of free recipes available in netland (eg the rec.food* archive) so why would I buy a book? Flylady is enough homemaking for me, so I wouldn't buy a book about that, and I tend to buy charity cards...
Chookie -
That's just one of the ideas I had. And of course, people who don't want to download don't have to! It's just there for those who do.
Have investigated stuff for Hubs' photo ideas tonight. Looking promising. Fingers crossed I'll be able to put something up within the next month.
Cheers,
Lizzie
I think you should go for it Lizzie. Both ideas are good, while there are some people that don't buy ebooks etc, there are lots of people that do. Start out with something small if you can and see how it goes :) Also your husbands photography is wonderful, so I love the ideas of the cards :)
I think all of your ideas are great! I don't think there is anything wrong with starting up your own online store of ebooks. They are actually very popular right now.
One rule of thumb I have heard for pricing your ebooks is that the more "7's" in the price of the product the more likely people will buy it. I think pricing your books at or around $7 each would be a fair price.
Also you may want to read up on copywriting, because that's what is going to propel your sales forward, not the number of readers you have, or how many visitors you have. People could have a gazillion readers and/or visitors, but if you don't have a good brand, or ad copy, you're not going to sell anything, period.
I really hope that helps, and I pray that God will bless you on whatever venture you decide to move forward on. :)
Oh, and thank you for adding me to your blogroll! :)
((Hugs))
"The Hope Filled Mom"
I think it could work. I'm not sure that I'd buy anything (I don't buy much online) but you never know who might. Just so long as your blog doesn't start to sound like a running advert for your products you'll do fine.
Lizzie, are your recipes original? Can you sell them if they aren't?
Just a thought.
Also will people buy templates considering the abundance of free stuff available?
Precious-1
I know what you mean - and I'm not like that, LOL. I was actually thinking of setting up a second website solely to house sales (both my own stuff and Hubs') So probably the most you'll see here on Lizzie's Home is a link to somewhere else. As I said before, I love the folks that pop in here to visit and yep, I've been to blogs before that spend most of their time hawking their products, which to me is a total turn-off. As I just commented to Hubs, I don't blog to make money, and never will. This just seemed to be a neat avenue to explore.
WendyC -
I know what you mean, and I had thought of that already. Any recipes I offer would be my own adaptations (are there ever any truly unique recipes anymore? We all get our ideas from somewhere). Ingredients would be suitably altered from the original so as to make it a 'new' recipe. I can think of five recipes off the top of my head, two of which 'belong' to family members, that I'd include in a 'mini booklet' of sorts. Also, what happens (someone else can chime in here if they know) when a recipe is SO well known as to be completely impossible to attribute to a source? For example, my MIL's Anzac Biscuit recipe goes way back, but really, the ingredients of ANY Anzac Biscuit recipe are the same, maybe with minor quanitity differences. If I included this recipe, I'd like to find out whether there'd be issues with copyright (she'd give HER permission to use it in HER format, but she would have gotten it/adapted it from somewhere herself). You could, I guess, include a 'mini bio' bit at the bottom giving the commonly-known history of such a recipe (where it originated, who it was made for, and so on) but I highly doubt in that case (the Anzac Biscuit one) that someone would be prosecuted for selling a recipe for profit when it is so well known. Maybe the CWA would know? LOL. They've produced thousands of cookbooks using 'famous' recipes...
But the recipes idea was just one of many. Obviously a straight out e-book (written by me) would not have copyright issues and that's more toward where I'm leaning.
Also, to make sure the 'system' works, the first thing I put up will be free, and the next couple maybe very minimal cost, like $4 or something. But that's a good point you brought up Wendy.
Cheers,
Lizzie
Okay...I found out what I needed to know here. It might be worthwhile reading (especially to Aussies, as it is Oz-specific) for anyone who regularly reproduces recipes online. This is a direct link to a PDF document.
www.copyright.org.au/pdf/acc/infosheets_pdf/G019.pdf
(copy/paste if that doesn't come up as a clickable link).
Similarly, for readers elsewhere in the world, Googling 'who owns the copyright on a recipe?' will bring up country-specific info.
I'd just had a bit debate with Hubs about the legalities of reproducing recipes (even without the added complication of selling for profit). He was adamant that even if I'd changed some of the ingredients or method, that the copyright remained with the original owner. I was SURE this wasn't the case because we're talking billions upon billions of recipes out there - it's a bit like a game of Chinese Whispers. Each person who gets the recipe tweaks it. Thankfully according to this document (again, Aussie-specific - check your own country's copyright laws) I'm safe, providing the recipes are not straight-out copying. And they're not. If the whole recipe/copyright issue seems overinflated, consider the woman we just heard about on the news a couple of days ago - fined (I think) $250k for illegally downloading just 24 mp3s. So covering your bases is always a good thing :) Again Wendy, thanks for prompting me to chase this up.
Hope that helps someone!
Cheers,
Lizzie
I just had another thought - and this is the last one, I promise!
How many times have you seen a recipe COMPLETELY REPRODUCED on a website? Eek. Sure, most people would credit the source in that instance but as far as I understand it, this would not protect you if the copyright owner chose to pursue it. While the realities of someone being sued for putting a recipe up on a blog are quite remote (especially if they HAVE attributed the source), from the document I linked to above, putting a recipe (without any alterations, ie, copying an original work) up on a website without permission from the copyright owner is one of the MAIN infringements of the copyright owner's rights. Double eek.
Now I may not be removing the two or three recipes I've written out here, it will definitely make me think twice about reproducing any 'as is' recipes in the future!
Cheers,
Lizzie
Post a Comment