Orphan Categories

Here’s a Newsletter article that first ran in October 2011:

Little Orphan Category

What’s an “orphan” category, you ask? It’s a category at Greeting Card Universe that contains few or no greeting cards. It’s a category that’s neglected. Unloved. Begging for attention.

And you should give those poor little orphan categories your attention. Know why? Because adopting an orphan category can lead to some very nice sales for you because you’ll have hardly any competition.

Here’s how it breaks down: in a popular category like, say, Birthday – General, you’re competing with thousands and thousands of other artists, some of them pretty heavy  hitters whose cards are well established. Some sub-categories, however, are wide open with very little competition. By focusing on those, I may be able to take advantage of my fellow artists’ lack of attention by designing cards to fit those neglected sub-categories.

It gets better, because sometimes you can find a whole CATEGORY that contains very few cards, and adopt that as your own. I did that not too long ago, and I’ve already sold a few hundred cards – and no, I’m not telling you which one 

Most of us design generic cards suitable for a multitude of recipients, but in addition to that, if you want to see your artist commissions go up, you should be designing cards for specific specialty categories and sub-categories … and you should also be adopting those poor, lonely orphans while you’re at it.