Nycole Pederson of Eden Prairie, Minnesota writes:
“My sister and I love to have garage sales and have always made our own fun, creative, bright signs to attract shoppers.
“We had so many people asking us where we bought our signs that we realized there really was a huge need for chic, funky, sassy garage/yard sale signs. We started doing some research and found there was nothing on the market other than the boring black/white, red/white garage sale signs.
“With a lot of hard work, we started Sassy Signs and are currently selling them at retail outlets such as Lowe’s, and independent hardware, scrapbook and party stores. We have also been selling online at http://www.sassysigns.com/ since we started the company two years ago.
“We would really like to increase our online sales and we’re hoping for advice on how to do this. We’re already paying for Adwords with Google and Yahoo, among other advertisers. We are also trying to get the word out with the bloggers of America. Do you have any other ideas?”
Become the Garage Sale Experts! You can do this by putting more content on your web site that demonstrates your expertise. Then following Joan’s ideas for creating tips and other content-worthy press releases.
I looked at the Sassy Signs website, but have to be honest. The format and organization of the information needs work.
For example, the green background with centered paragraphs are hard to read. I would suggest bullet points against a white background. You can still keep the funky look of the site while making everything more readable.
And what I “Need to know” is not how you came up with the product but how I (as the consumer) am going to benefit from using it.
I would expect to see a site full of garage sale tips–everything from when to schedule one, how much to price things, benefits of going multi-family, and how to handle hagglers. Tell me all of your experience plus a few anecdotes of best finds and craziest experiences.
Coupling your expert advice with fun and funky signs would make your site a destination for garage salers and the media. Isn’t garage sale season just around the corner here???
Hello ladies. I work for a large print and promotional products distributor. We actually work with many companies that manufacture signs. I agree with the poster above about making your website more of a destination. I also noticed one or two typos on your website (I think I’ll email them to you later – although I generally don’t do that because it would annoy me if someone pointed out MY typos).
If you are trying to reach national audiences, send samples out to the bloggers/media on a national level. Dooce (Heather Armstrong) for instance features lots of funky fun products on her blog at dooce.com (and mysteriously those products are usually sold out a week later.)
Additionally, if you want to reach your local audience, consider donating or discounting some signs for local events where your target audiences are present. For instance, if you want to appeal to a certain county, donate some signs to the county fair (with your contact information conveniently printed on the back), set up a booth at the fair and give away some clever promotional items to help booth visitors remember your product.
Another fun way to spruce up your website would be to add photos of people enjoying their sign (show families with new babies standing by the sign or people standing next to their garage sale sign holding a bundle of money). Make them all real people, who actually bought your signs. Customer testimonials and images can really help people connect with your product.
Happy selling!
I am a Web Developer student in my senior year. The first thing I noticed about your website is that you have your style code first.
The first thing you should have is your DocType. Put the Style code before your body tags and always start with your DocType, then your title, descriptions, etc.
The search engine spiders look for the Doctype and the keywords. Don’t hide them so far down in your page or they might pass you over for higher listing — even if you are paying for help!
Good luck
For years I have been “preaching” to real estate agents to go out and do presentations at neighborhood association meetings on how to have a great garage sale. Then help individual neighborhoods in organizing their garage sales, including providing garage sales signs, with a tag line on the sign …provided courtesy of (name of realtor, real estate agency) and a phone# or website address. (Makes a great mini billboard for an agent or agency’s business.) After the garage sales is over, the real estate agent, who helped organize the sale, picks up his or her signs, and goes on to help organize another garage sale for another neighborhood. Sell this idea to real estate agents and get them to purchase those signs from you ladies.
p.s. In selling this idea to potential realtors, make sure he or she realizes in organizing the garage sale around a particular neighborhood, there is a good bet those families who have a ton of things they are selling the day of the sale may be moving. Hence, the realtor can be the first to approach these families about selling their homes before they even have put their houses on the market.
I would perhaps post an ad on Craigslist. Do you know how many garage sales are posted on their website? You could even post the ad under that category.
While your site is bright, and, well, sassy, I suggest you use your keywords to better advantage. Your request for help emphasizes yard sale signs, yet your first keyword (which the search engines will see as your “primary” keyword) is graduation. Whatever you choose as your primary keyword needs to be much more narrow (targeted to what sets you apart from the others and makes your product desirable) and it should appear in your page title, headline, and page content (first mention should be within the first 90 characters), or the search engines will not rate your page very highly — and you will be lost among the 54,400,000 offers related to graduation or the 739,000 other yard sale sign offers on Google.
Good luck.
I agree with those who’ve already said it will help if you promote yourselves as expert in all things garage sale. Consider using that expertise to:
1.Write & submit articles (freelance writing)to both on and offline publications in addition to sending releases and trying to get coverage.
2.Write articles for the free directories like ezinearticles.com. This is called article marketing and there are tons of directories where you can submit.
3. Check your local parks & rec or community enrichment classes through schools and offer to give presentations about holding successful sales and maybe related topics like organizing/how to know what to keep/throw out etc.
4. Put together a tips booklet to hand out like a business card (there are several resources for how to do this effectively).
I suggest holding an online ‘contest’ to select a design for your newest garage sale sign.
Have contestants submit digital photos of their signs and post the finalists on your site with a readers’ poll that will determine the winner!
Send details of the contest to garage sale/home organization/life coach bloggers and also send localized releases to the media markets of each of your finalists, complete with a digital picture of the local finalist’s sign.
I watch a show on cable called Clean House, it’s all about garage sales and home organization. Could you donate a few signs to their efforts?
Kathleen Lisson
Hi Neighbors!
(I live in Chaska.)Fun product–as a creative type, I have done similiar signs for my yard sales, so I love the idea!
Have you considered placing a classified ad on eBay? There are several categories that accept ads that you might fit in–under Specialty Services, there are sub-categories such as “Printing & Personalization,” “Artistic Services,” or “Graphic & Logo Design”. Or under Business & Industrial, there is a sub-category called “Office Printing & Shipping.” There are ads there for banners, etc. Look through the ads and see where you think you might fit. Not all categories are allowing classified ads yet.
Classified ads are a great value (base price of $9.95 for 30 days), and one of the few places where eBay will allow you to link to your website and include your phone number, etc. Great way to drive traffic to your site–just think of potentially how many eyeballs might possibly see your ad with the millions of members surfing there everyday! And your ad shows up in the search findings for auctions! And you get a full page for your ad just like the regular listing page for auctions! Worth a try!
Good luck!
Juls
Find all the mom/parent bloggers in a group of targeted cities/suburban regions, as well as those whose topics touch on real estate, moving, home renovation, etc. and GIVE AWAY signs to those folks.