Nuts and Bolts: Updating Old to No/Low Selling Card Tips
Nuts & Bolts – Updating Old to No/Low Selling Card Tips
This week we are pleased to bring you a guest post from GCU artist Stephanie Laird. Stephanie has been doing some housecleaning and has some excellent advice to share with her fellow GCU artists.
Hello! I have been having a great time updating (and deleting at times) some of my old cards or cards that have no to low sales. Editing existing cards is a wonderful opportunity and I encourage you to take advantage of it. It has been working quite well for me. It’s so rewarding to receive the “Artist Services You’ve Made a Sale” email shortly after you’ve updated a card to find out that it has just sold! A little success story of mine. The very first card I submitted to GCU back in 2009 had very few clicks and not a single sale. I updated it, asked the review team to look it over, and within a week 3 were sold! From no sales in 8 years to 3 sales in a week. Exciting!
There are great advantages to updating your older cards or no to low selling cards. There is no submission process as they are already approved and in the system. You can ask (and should) the review team to look over the changes you’ve made (a brief email with the pid#(s), note of what changes you made and a polite request for a re-review is fine). GCU Note: the email subject line of “Updated Card Re-review Request” would be appreciated. The review team is quite helpful and have a great eye for detail. I felt like I was bothering them on such tiny details but they are very kind about it and truly help you create a better card. Due to the store size limits another advantage is that you don’t use up a new card submission when you are updating an existing card. And lastly, when your cards are of better quality, it simply just makes your store look better.
Ok, now onto the tips. This is what I look for when updating cards.
- Clicks. If there are low clicks there can be multiple reasons. Your card metadata isn’t serving your card well (keywords, card title and Artist Notes) or the cover image itself just might not stand out very well. It can be as simple as the orientation of a card running right to left vs. left to right. Below please see the equine sympathy card before and after and how it flows much better in the After flowing left to right. I started receiving sales just by flipping this image.
GCU Note: There are two additional considerations that can be a culprit to declining card sales. First, an older card that enjoyed sales in the past may be losing sales over time to other newer cards entering the category. Wise to look at how your older cards are holding up compared to the newer ones in the same category. Second, if you chose to keep your images watermarked this could be deterring shoppers relative to cards without watermarks as well as reduced search engine exposure and ultimately sales, see here for the Watermark Changes.
So the next time you get a little creative block, can’t think of a new concept for a card, or just want to have some fun resurrecting a good card idea, go through your older cards or no to low selling cards and see what you can do to improve them. Then drop the review team a brief email asking them to check out your updates. There are guidelines on updating existing cards, please be sure to check those out. GCU Note: See related post Change or New Submission for tips and guidelines. You can’t edit a card into something totally different but you can improve the existing card. Most of all, have fun and watch as your sales increase with just a few corrections. Thanks for reading!
GCU Community Manager
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Wanted New Cards: Thinking of You – Natural Disaster
We’d like you to create at least one card for these categories using the Stock Cards function (Bigstock) or your own graphic designs.
Remember, when you’re submitting your new card, add a little note about the intended category in your Notes to Reviewers. Be inventive, be clever, be creative. Go for it!
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Nuts and Bolts: Self Promotion I
GCU Community Manager
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Wanted New Cards: Diwali – Missing You / Away at College
We’d like you to create at least one card for these categories using the Stock Cards function (Bigstock) or your own graphic designs.
Remember, when you’re submitting your new card, add a little note about the intended category in your Notes to Reviewers. Be inventive, be clever, be creative. Go for it!
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Font Frenzy: Blue Fires Handwritten Font
Blue Fires is a quick and easy handwritten font, with:
- A-Z, a-z, 0-9, accents, punctuation and symbols
- Ligatures
- Bonus swashes, circles, arrows and ornaments
Blue Fires can be used for quotes, logos, packaging, merchandise. It is a versatile font that looks great in both short bursts and longer texts, in lower case and all caps and comes with a complete Commercial License.
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Nuts and Bolts: Custom Card Requests, Holiday Ready?
GCU Community Manager
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Wanted New Cards: Greek Rush – Recruitment
We’d like you to create at least one card for these categories using the Stock Cards function (Bigstock) or your own graphic designs.
Remember, when you’re submitting your new card, add a little note about the intended category in your Notes to Reviewers. Be inventive, be clever, be creative. Go for it!
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Rainbow Connection: The Color of Shrooms
Here are some Color Pallettes I created with pictures I found on the internet – this weeks subject are Mushrooms:
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Wanted New Cards: Ask a Stupid Question Day
Wanted Cards – Ask a Stupid Question Day
Celebrated on the last school day in September, Ask a Stupid Question Day gives you the opportunity to simply ask away! No risk of embarrassment or being frowned upon for asking something so obvious, bizarre or something that you should already know.
This day embraces the saying “the only stupid question is the one that you don’t ask”.
This new category is in need of cards:
Holidays >> National & International Days >> Ask a Stupid Question Day / September
We’d like you to create at least one card for these categories using the Stock Cards function (Bigstock) or your own graphic designs.
Remember, when you’re submitting your new card, add a little note about the intended category in your Notes to Reviewers. Be inventive, be clever, be creative. Go for it!
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Dash of Inspiration: Big Stock ONLY Design Challenge September 2017
Another Big Stock ONLY challenge for you this month. We hope to INSPIRE you to fight through the learning curve and enjoy this different creative outlet. Perfect for creating greetings with subject matter you may not have or simply to add something a bit different to your current card offerings. So, August’s challenge is now in the hands of the jury so let’s get started on this new journey of inspiration!
With the holiday season quickly approaching, it’s time for some fun and to let our canine friends do the talking!
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Theme: From the Dog’s Mouth
Requirements:
- ONLY Big Stock cards will be accepted in this challenge.
- DOG(S) must be the visual focus in the stock image you choose. Cats will be another challenge at another time.
- FROM the DOG – write your own verse/message, be creative and write a message that clearly speaks from the dog.
- The judges will be looking for professional quality text layout, typography placement and font combinations in addition to a unique and captivating message that tells the story of the stock image you choose. Your added value needs to wow the judges!
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Entry Deadline: Saturday, September 30th
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How to Enter: Post the PID (card number) and the URL (public storefront link – please WAIT for the card to be available in the public marketplace, please DO NOT post a link to your Manage Cards area) as a post in the challenge blog. We’ll forward your entry to the jury.
NOTE: Submissions will appear immediately in your Private gallery as they await review. If approved, the reviewer will move them to the public gallery – they will then become ‘live’ in the marketplace within 24-hours or so just like regular submissions. Be patient and wait.
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Category: Research the category you intend to submit to before creating your card to make sure what you have in mind is different that what is currently being offered and is as good as if not better than current cards in the category.
With that said, choose one of these seasonal themed categories to design for:
Holidays > Thanksgiving Cards > From Pet
Holidays > Halloween Cards > From Pet
Holidays > Chanukah / Hanukkah Cards > From Pet
Note: Utilize the Notes to Reviewer field to include any helpful notes to the reviewer AND to indicate your intended category since you cannot select a category during submission.
Tip: Choose and work with an image that you feel a) fits with your vision and b) will meet GCU’s Submission Guidelines and c) is as good as or better than what’s being offered in the category of submission.
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Rules:
- Submission must meet GCU’s Submission Guidelines and be Approved through the usual Review Cycle. Big Stock creations are automatically identified as Fast Track – please add in the Notes to Reviewer: September Design Challenge Submission here is the link to the blog post: (include THIS blog post URL)
- Only ONE card per artist per challenge.
- Submissions must be NEW, no existing designs.
- Your entry must meet the Challenge Requirements and Theme or it will not be included in the challenge.
- Big Stock Card Creations ONLY will be accepted.
- Your designs should differ from those already offered in the categories above to offer shoppers a variety of choices, not more of the same.
- No BLANK cards will be accepted.
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BLIND Judging: We hope each of you enters every month! Entries are submitted anonymously for judging by the GCU Challenge Jury which means that before and during the challenge, judges do not have any way of knowing what artist is behind each entry. This eliminates any and all concerns with ‘favoritism’. Results will post on the Community Blog. The jury will judge the entries on the following criteria:
- How well the card meets the Challenge Requirements and Theme.
- How well the card speaks to the Category the artist chooses for the card submission.
- Creativity, Execution and Marketability. Your overall ‘added value’ determines this.
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Winners: 1st Place:
- The winning designer’s card and store will be featured on the GCU Public Blog – the blog which customers view and follow.
- As well as featured on the GCU Public Facebook Page – nearly 46,000 followers, now THAT’S exposure!
- The winning card will be Design of the Day following the announcement of the winners (within 48-hours).
- The winning card will be added to the Greeting Card Universe Design Challenge Winners Pinterest Board – currently GCU’s Pinterest Page followers: 2K!
- Winning card will be included in a marketing email to over 100,000 customers!
- GCU will create a Meet the Team board for the winning artist under the Pinterest GCU account where the winning artist will be able to pin and promote her own storefront and all that makes them a unique card designer and one of GCU’s artistic community team member.
- Winning card will be posted on GCU’s Instagram with 2,000 followers and counting!
2nd Place:
- Your submission will be Design of the Day the following week of announcing the Challenge winners (within 7-days).
- Your card will be added to the Greeting Card Universe Design Challenge Winners Pinterest Board.
- Winning card will be included in a marketing email to over 100,000 customers!
- Winning card will be posted on GCU’s Instagram with 2,000 followers and counting!
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Tips:
Visit all the available tips, tricks and guidelines offered on the Big Stock Creation blog page!
GCU Community 