This Zazzle book is INCREDIBLE!! Best thing I’ve seen yet on how to get started on Zazzle! Excellent!!! – Becky Blanton

Zazzle’s model lets you sell products without the hassle of keeping and inventory or shipping items to customers. Using the site’s features, you can design hundreds of different products from t-shirts and bumper stickers, to smartphone cases and skins for electronic items such as iPads and laptops. When one of your designs is purchased from the Zazzle site, the company will produce the item and ship it to your customer, often within 24 to 48 hours.

We’ve found Zazzle to be a great way to support our goals of location independence and work-life integration. All you need is an internet connection to create products and keep track of your sales. You don’t have to worry about inventory or mailing costs. Your design goes up and is available for someone to buy as long as you want. You can create as many different stores within Zazzle as you like, and you can earn referral fees when a customer purchases from another Zazzler, as well. And your earnings are deposited into your PayPal account every month. This kind of diversification and convenience fits in with the idea of work being something you do, as opposed to someplace you go.

All of this versatility is very appealing, but it can be intimidating to get started on Zazzle. While the process is simple and sequential, it can seem complicated to a beginner. And even though there is plenty of documentation and help on the Zazzle site, Pete often thought it would have been so much easier for him to get started with a simple, step-by-step guide instead of having to track down the information and learn on his own. Voila! “How to Get Started on Zazzle” was born!

As a Zazzler myself, my first thought was, “Oh, how I wish I had this tutorial when I set up my first store”. Although the learning curve can be steep, Pete’s ebook makes the process of setting up a store and creating products easily understandable. Although it’s possible to learn without a “how-to guide,” if you value your time, I highly recommend “How to Get Started on Zazzle” as a time saving,  quick-step guide which will quickly put you on the path to earning that supplemental income you’re dreaming of. – Barbara Swafford, Blogging Without a Blog – Your Blogging Classroom on the Web

We’ve priced “How to Get Started on Zazzle” at an incredible value! Just $5 will get you started on the road to additional income. Zazzle is a wonderful, easy way to make money online, and who knows, it could be the start of a wonderful adventure!

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New E-Book: How to Get Started on Zazzle is a post from: Passing Thru

• illustrate achievement in relation to our objectives
• identify areas and projects that could use attention
• spark strategic planning with a big picture emphasis (to build upon the valuable insights we gained from utilizing business coaching over a two year period)
• inspire you to incorporate similar efforts and objectives within your personal success blueprint

Want to get started with us? Read on . . .

The idea to start reporting our progress came about while we were preparing our 2011 income taxes. It was actually fun to see the LLC’s first annual Profit & Loss report and Balance Sheet. Our numbers were pleasantly surprising! (Preparing the taxes themselves? Not so fun.)

This process is a departure from our comfort zone. It’s one thing to evangelize a lifestyle, and quite another to share how it’s really working. No, we won’t be sharing specific dollar amounts, but we will be sharing percentages and other data, and the conclusions and strategic planning that result.

These progress reports will have a loose categorical structure: sources of revenue, travel-related activities, pending projects and their potential (when possible due to confidentiality or other concerns) and strategic planning. We’ll also cover problem-solving and any creative solutions we’ve implemented in response to challenges or modifications we implemented in response to changing business conditions.

Does all this sound like too much gobbledy-gook for a lifestyle business? It really shouldn’t. If you’re in any type of business, this kind of accountability and strategic planning is vital. You can’t make progress if you stay inundated in the minutiae of the day-to-day. If you do, you’ll sacrifice overall awareness, which is crucial for the kind of creative thinking and strategic decision-making good executives do (and you’re the chief executive of your own career even if you’re an employee). This kind of strategic planning might be out of your comfort zone, but it’s possible our example might encourage you to take a bigger-picture approach. Let’s dive in!

Revenue Sources

Consulting: Our global franchise client projects include electronic marketing services to franchisees, regional and global franchise sales marketing and development, internal communications, social media services, franchisee mentoring and education. For other consulting clients we provide electronic and direct mail consulting services including list and project management, training, ideation and strategic mentoring. Overall revenue in this category is even with last year. Note: through all but the last two weeks of the second quarter last year, Pete was still working at his previous employer. There are seasonal aspects to our consulting client profiles that contribute to “sleepy” first quarters. We’re anticipating increased revenues during the remainder of the year due to this seasonality.

Melting Crayons Phone Case

Online Stores: We have multiple online stores with several produce on demand business partners, including Zazzle, Cafe Press, and Greeting Card Universe. Overall receipts in this category are up 165% for the first quarter when compared with last year. This is great progress!

Pete’s creative thinking has been to focus heavily on our Zazzle stores for several reasons: the commissions per item are higher and there is a greater range of products.

Bumper Sticker

His product creation methodologies have scaled: we now have over 27,000 products. Best selling items: iPhone and smartphone cases, political bumper stickers and embroidered caps for wedding party members.

Change of Address Card

Trending merchandise categories are seasonal: wedding, political (because of the election year). Our popular “We’ve Moved” card series continues to perform.

Our Zazzle-specific revenues are significantly up over last year (January +116%, February +192%, March +261). This is due in part because the items we are selling are more expensive, and we’re often selling them in multiples.

We are also selling many more items that Pete designed several years ago for the first time. This proves the residual nature of the Zazzle and other produce on demand business models: put the product up once and it’s forever available for purchase. This aspect fits our passive income objective to a “T”!

Rainbow Paws Pet Bowl

Zazzle is at the vanguard for new product categories, such as skins for electronic devices including phones, iPods and MP3 players, gaming gear, tablets and laptops. Zazzle has recently rolled out decorative ceramic jars, pitchers, tea pots and pet bowls, along with home decor items such as cloth napkins, toss pillows and placemats as well. This range of products is vastly diversified from when Pete started with Zazzle.

Publishing: Publishing revenue for the first quarter has no comparative as we didn’t monetize The Narcissist: A User’s Guide until June of last year. Revenues began to flow in a month later due to Lulu’s payment structure. The User’s Guide landing page routinely shows one of this site’s highest visitor counts per Google analytics, and narcissist-related search terms brought thousands of visits during the first quarter of this year. Sales remain steady for the Guide, even though it’s two years old. The User’s Guide Facebook page is active as well.

Travel Business Opportunity: PassingThruTravel, our travel search and booking site, continues to serve us two-fold via customer-booked travel and for our individual travel booking. This is part of World Ventures, a six year old network marketing company, which offers a DreamTrips wholesale vacation club membership. World Ventures has expanded to 19 countries, with over 20,000 DreamTrips members. Our individual team is in high growth mode as well, with over 22 members added since the first of the year. These are folks who have made the move out of their comfort zone to begin working their own Plan “B.”

We routinely feature current DreamTrips in our monthly email newsletter (subscribe here). With over 400 trips per year, as well as access to timeshare and villa vacation inventory, the DreamTrips membership sells itself. A new membership category for younger people aged 18 – 25, called DreamTrips U, is on fire. When they add the World Ventures business opportunity, the potential for offsetting education expenses and funding a better than entry-level lifestyle gets them excited.

Travel

We spent about 40% of our time during the first quarter of this year away from home, working and traveling. Beginning in January, we based ourselves in Hawaii on Maui and Kauai. We then spent a week in Michigan with family in February, and then several days in Nebraska for the Sandhill Crane migration. Utilizing methods you can learn from our Travel Resources list, we kept costs down quite well. Unsurprisingly, though, by comparison with last year they are up significantly. Still, it’s all part of the program and we wouldn’t have it any other way!

During our time in Michigan, we assisted a family member who is a classically-trained chef with his Plan “B” setup. Wow Your Food has its own growing Facebook page, Zazzle store and a website in progress that will showcase a lifetime of gourmet cooking skills in video, still photo and blog post formats.

Pending Projects

We’re excited about several pending projects we have in the hopper. Pete is finishing up an e-book, “How to Get Started on Zazzle,” which will be available in multiple formats very soon. This book mirrors the information we taught in a beginners-focused Zazzle seminar last November. Plans are to build upon this information toward more intermediate formats. These would encompass creative thinking and strategic planning for new and established entrepreneurs alike who wish to add this passive income component to their business repertoires.

There is one more e-book project in progress which is under wraps at the moment. This should round out our diversification strategy in this component of our business  pretty well for the first half of 2012.

Strategic Planning

Moving our business activities from the comfort zone of employment-subsidized revenue to complete independence required creative thinking for each stage. This kind of strategic planning is comprised of several elements: broad goals, specific objectives and then action steps for each objective.

When you have a revenue diversification goal, the corresponding objectives get complicated very quickly. When this first started happening with our business, I developed a task list spreadsheet to keep track of project categories in a column-based format. I also mapped out a flow chart of the inter-relationships each element of our business had. These are great tools for visual learners, and they often spark creative thinking. I like using the task list spreadsheet in particular as my dashboard, which provides status-at-a-glance. We know exactly where we have lots to do, and which areas are receiving less attention.

Checking our first quarter Profit and Loss and comparing it with last year shows revenue trending upward, always a good thing. But we still need to balance our diversity: we’ve got a number of sources, but some of them are still disproportionate in comparison with where we’d like them to be.

We are fortunate to have so many opportunities continually presenting themselves to us. Like many entrepreneurs, our primary comfort zone lies in start-up phase – we enjoy that initial infatuation with an idea and envisioning its potential. We’ve refined our recognition skills a bit to become a little more choosy now that we’ve settled into a more easily-described niche, so we’ve matured somewhat in that respect.

Troubleshooting

Looking at our first quarter results and comparing them with last year’s numbers yields a big change in overall expenses. The culprits? First there’s Hawaii, of course, which is an expensive proposition for older folks like us who like our creature comforts, no matter how skilled our travel hacking might be. Wouldn’t you like to stay in a room like the one we had at the Westin, pictured at right? That’s what they call the Heavenly Bed and the Heavenly Bath, folks. And it’ll cost you, but probably more than it cost us.

Advertising expenses are up as well, due to several online campaigns we are expensing in partnership with a client. While overall results are building as a result of these campaigns, no direct ROI is attributable to us. We’re watching this activity closely, and have temporarily suspended it while funding sources build up again.

The good news is, we did better in other expense areas than last year. Dues and subscriptions are down; office and legal expenses are way down from equipment purchases relating to our LLC start-up phase and move last year. Non-travel meals and entertainment are way down, as they should be. General administrative and ongoing office expenses have been reduced by half.

Still, we are going to have to continue to watch and plan for expenses carefully within the context of our revenue structure. As well, we’ll have a better idea of how our biggest revenue categories will scale this year with another quarter’s worth of data to review.

The best news is that we’ll add more revenue from pending projects to the mix in our second quarter 2012. These will settle into the passive income category with little else than monitoring required once they’re completed and launched. We can replicate this process over and over with additional projects throughout the life of our business, sustaining our location independence and providing more enjoyment.

All in all, not a bad start for the year! We’d love it if you’d share how you are doing with your personal and business objectives in the comments, and, as always, if we can help with anything, please don’t hesitate to ask!

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Progress Report: Q1 2012 is a post from: Passing Thru

After leaving traditional employment five months ago, Pete’s primary attention has been to grow our online stores. We’re proud of the fact that he’s achieved “Pro Seller” status on Zazzle, where we have our main retail presence: YourShopofShops.com. Recently, Pete won a Design Award in the political category for a bumpersticker, and his products are pretty regularly pulled out and featured by the company. Over the summer and early fall, Pete increased the number of products in our stores to just over 13,000, and sales for October were at 161% of the same month last year, and up 20% year to date. Additionally, at the end of October, we’d exceeded all of last year’s sales, with the lucrative months of November and December yet to occur, and 22 products sold for the very first time. If we were traditional retailers with a brick and mortar store (and thank God we’re not!), we’d be dancing in the aisles.

It is time, we agreed, for a Christmas Catalog. As is usually the case with small businesses, a great idea comes and needs almost immediate priority. This is one of the reasons I love working in an organization of two: you can pivot easily and punt a new objective into play by reassigning importance to tasks. Pete set out last week to make the catalog happen and put in 10 and 12 hour days to finish it. We think it’s beautiful, and we hope you like it, too! Click the image for an easy PDF download for yourself.
Forward Our Catalog via email to a friend or colleague.

Right in the middle of all the work for the Christmas Catalog, Zazzle rolled out some new products. We’d long awaited the opportunity to provide these items and Pete was just waiting to access his design skills in a new context. Here are some of our favorites. Check out the ornament, coaster and calendar categories in the store for more.

And, just because we love ya, here’s an early Christmas present: a $10 discount on your Zazzle order of $35 or more! Click this link to get it.

But wait, there’s more!

One of the less prominent aspects of what we do is ongoing work for clients. Our longterm client, THE original basket boutique (OBB Gifts), is a global company (North America, Persian Gulf and Australia), whose franchisees provide gourmet gifts for business clients and individual customers. Betsy has designed an award-winning email newsletter subscription program resource for the company, and provides ongoing services as their Director of Communications and Global Development.

Recently, we’ve been involved with the rest of the OBB Executive Team in a re-vamping of the OBB franchise structure. This is a marvelous opportunity for would-be entrepreneurs – you literally deliver good taste and happiness! We’re proud to have contributed to these improvements by designing a series of free informational resources folks who are contemplating a career in the gourmet gift industry can receive by email. If you, or anyone you know, is intrigued by the prospect of business ownership with a more traditional model, check THE original basket boutique’s franchise information website out. Or order a yummy gift basket for someone special!

We’re continuing with additional projects for other clients, and we’re beginning our strategic plan for 2012 for additional aspects of our travel business, the online stores, and our valued clients.

But before the holiday season really heated up, we decided we’d share a bit of what we know by offering our first Local Workshop for new “Zazzlers.” This will occur here in the Minneapolis area on the Sunday after Thanksgiving (November 27) from noon to 3 pm. We’re very limited on space and as of this writing, we’ve got 3 openings left. If you’d like to start or continue down this particular avenue to residual income, email me: betsywuebker AT gmail DOT com: for details.

Thanks for reading. We’re grateful beyond measure for all these wonderful opportunities, thankful for each of you, and wish you the best as we begin the happiest of holiday seasons.

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An Update with a Couple of Firsts is a post from: Passing Thru

For this post, I was seeking a synonym for “income.”  Pete and I wanted to tell the story of how we are playing offense with economic conditions.  “Proceeds” was on the list the thesaurus spit out.  I realized that “proceeds,” while a noun, looks like the plural of “proceed.”  So, the not so subtle inference is we accumulate revenue by doing, right?  How cool – a pun-like tie-in!

Here and here, in what turned out to be somewhat of a series on the economy, I mentioned that those who have been hurt the most in this crisis are those who aren’t self-reliant, as well as those whose income sources aren’t diversified.  Pensioners, employees, single income households, all take serious hits with declining markets, lay-offs, and adjustments.  While Pete and I are fortunate in that we don’t have a lot to lose, we empathize with those who are still in shock from the combination of precipitous drops in the investments and housing sectors.  We all want to feel less at the mercy of conditions we cannot control.

When we got married two years ago, we knew we would have to work long after the traditional age of retirement.  We didn’t think Social Security estimates were reliable, and we knew the benefit amounts would be insufficient to support us.  It seems like no one is able to tell whether the program is going to be solvent, or whether the age when benefits can be drawn is going to be modified.  There are any number of additional reductive modifications that might be made at any time.  It made sense to look around and see what options are out there to supplement our income.  Then, we thought, it might be possible to turn one or more of those into a vehicle that would support our dreams of travel and freedom.  We also wanted to see whether there was anything that we enjoyed doing that would allow us to work together.

Divorce wreaks havoc on most financial situations, and our experiences had been no exception.  Self-employed and single, I had refinanced my house on a no-doc loan, unwittingly putting myself in the running for poster child of predatory lending.  Just before our wedding, we put my house up for sale at the moment the real estate market died, and it languished.  Right after we listed, my mortgage rate re-set and the payments escalated to double, and then triple, what they had been.  The monthly mortgage obligation on our two homes vastly exceeded our gross income for a year, depleting our savings and any hope of traditional retirement.  We wound up selling the house for less than what was owed in a “short sale.”  Since then, we’ve been playing catch-up with our finances, attempting to move on from these serious hits.  It’s not an understatement to characterize things as pretty tough.

During that time, I took a second temporary job grading elementary school examinations at night.  The work paid fairly well, but 18 hour workdays away from home aren’t fun in your 50′s.  Pete moonlighted from his day job, too, picking up a series of free-lance photography gigs after work and on weekends.  One of those jobs found him within blocks of the famous bridge collapse in Minneapolis, and he took some dramatic photos of first responders and the devastation from inside the yellow tape.  He also set up his photography websites, (Nature and Travel Photography and Wild Places), resurrecting and updating decades of images in order to build a portfolio.

Still, we knew all this wasn’t enough.  We wanted to eventually be free to travel and work at our own ventures.  We didn’t want to be dependent upon single-source income, especially in recessionary times.  We decided to begin this blog to document our journeys – posting about ourselves, our travels, our plans and experiences.  And we looked around to see what else there might be.  We knew we’d be embarking together, but what we didn’t know was how frequently we’d encounter others who had reached similar conclusions and had begun working on like-minded goals.

Fortunately, I have a communications gig with a monthly retainer.  I am able to work from anywhere that has phone line and an internet connection.  I am still tethered to our franchise’s physical operation, but the business is cyclical.  Pete has been with the same company for over ten years, and his vacation schedule is generous.  We are both lucky to have flexibility.

Looking around, we spotted more opportunities.  Pete had a trunk full of comic books from the 70′s that I dismissed as clutter.  I was shocked when, after he put them on E-bay, they brought in the equivalent of two mortgage payments.  They are selling like hotcakes!  So, he has decided to seek out additional inventory and re-sell it.  With my blessing!

Pete also has started two online stores – one at Zazzle and one at CafePress.  At first they were just tongue-in-cheek to poke political fun.  They’ve been so successful that we have decided to continue with them after the election to showcase his photography and other ideas.  He is adding more stores with specific merchandise, and is driving traffic with ad words placements, learning as he goes.

We have been evaluating ways to coordinate our goals with this blog, but we don’t want to demean it with irrelevant advertising.  So, we are researching and treading very carefully.  Cheapening our voice is the last thing we want to do.  We decided to affiliate with Chris Guillebeaus’s Unconventional Guide to Discount Airfare. The Guide fits in with our travel ideals and we knew the information had great value.

So, while we are happy with the progress we’ve made in the few short months we’ve been at these projects, we’ve realized there is a lot farther to go.  Some of the things we are looking at are

• setting up additional websites on a formulaic basis for optimization,
• writing e-books that would share Pete’s expertise in direct mail and agency marketing and mine in small business, b2b sales and marketing,
• establishing more consulting services via referrals,

and others.  The good part about being older is you have “vast” resources of experience from which to draw!

We totally get that we are entering this landscape with a lot to learn.  We’ll plan on sharing what we’ve discovered here in these pages from time to time.  We believe that our vision of the future is quite similar to that of others.  Lots of boomers are getting close to retirement age, and younger people want to control their own destiny.

Re-thinking what work/life integration entails and how to finance their plans are subjects in which almost everyone is interested. For those of you who are exploring in a similar way, you’re not alone!  There are literally thousands of good resources available online.  Unfortunately, there appear to be an equal number of scams.  Perhaps an intermittent series could unfold as we become more proficient in rooting out the promising from the truly awful, and all that in between.

Whatever happens, it is clear that the future looks unlike our parents’ retirement.  No longer will most be able to plan or continue with leisure as their primary activity.  Recent losses have caused all of us to re-think and re-adjust.  This doesn’t have to be a bad thing.  In adverse times, the silver lining has always been the sense of community and sharing of time, talents, resources and communication.  We view the so-called economic crisis as an opportunity!

Taking meaningful charge of our future will probably have more impact on our life together than any other decision. Your feedback and ideas, no matter where you are in your journey, would be valued additions to everyone’s travel along this path.  With that in mind, we enthusiastically welcome your thoughts and invite you to share your plans in the comments.

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PROCEEDS is a post from: Passing Thru