Since we’re looking for independent artists and other creative types to sell your stuff on CybaSumo, we’re well aware that you may be creating stuff for a niche – even a small niche.

The good news is that niches are the hottest thing in marketing and sales right now. Consider that there are people out there successfully selling videos on how to repair your RV, fashions for cats, and Klezmer music.

Niches can be extremely profitable for you. Here’s why.

First, targeting a niche means that you have a ready-made, easily identifiable market. If you choose women golfers as your niche, you know how to identify them (women who golf) and that you are only going to market to them and not to women at large, or all golfers.

Second, niches have their own methods of congregating online or offline. There may be forums, blogs, magazines, Facebook groups, and Livejournal groups dedicated to women golfers. So, instead of just going anywhere online and saying ‘hey, buy my e-book/hat/video for women golfers,’ and taking a shotgun approach, you can take a sniper rifle approach and go on the women golfers Facebook group to tell them about your stuff. It’s cheaper and easier for you to market to a niche, once you find out where they hang out.

Third, it’s easier to develop a real relationship with your niche. When you participate in blogs or forums relating to your niche, you get to know the movers and shakers – as well as what they’re looking for, and the language they use.

What if you’re not selling information, but music or art? The same principles still apply. You can choose to sell your stuff to the general public – or you can see if your art appeals to a specific segment, and target them.

Why the ‘Long Tail’? Chris Anderson wrote an influential Wired article in October 2004 about a way of looking at niche markets. Before the Internet and the Long Tail, businesses would only provide the most popular products (10 types of pizza, for example), because it cost a lot of money to design, launch, and sell new products.

With the low cost and ease of selling on the Internet, businesses and people can affordably and profitably sell to customers who are looking for hard-to-find or ‘non-hit’ items – the Long Tail.

Rare, curious, and funky products all have a place on the Long Tail, and on CybaSumo. Bring us your cool stuff, and find your niche – and your profits.

Many people dream of lying on a beach, without a care in the world. You may be one of them – I know I am!

One of the hottest theories to hit the Internet in recent years is that of passive income. The idea is that you set up a business or money-making opportunity that runs pretty much on its own. The money rolls in while you relax, on the beach or otherwise.

If you’re interested in reading more about becoming a ‘lifestyle entrepreneur’ and making money through passive income and other minimal-involvement strategies, be sure to check out Timothy Ferriss’s book and blog, “The Four Hour Work Week.”

What can you do to create passive income, and how can CybaSumo help?

The most common forms of passive income are royalties and automated sales systems. Think of creating a new invention and being paid a small amount every time a company sells a product based on the patent. That’s one example of royalties – and it requires you to not only come up with something completely original, but also negotiate with large companies.

Automated sales systems are easier to create and manage. You create a digital product once, and then sell it multiple times. The effort required to sell the first copy is the main work you need to put in – advertising your product, and setting up the sales system. Copies #2 through 1,000,000 take virtually no effort and no cost.

CybaSumo is the perfect automated sales system for your business. We handle catalog management, transactions, and digital fulfillment for you. All you have to provide is the product, and market it. We do the rest.

Now you may be wondering how you can automate the marketing of your product. It’s possible, and Tim Ferriss’s book goes into further detail. Here are some ways to automate your marketing:

• Put our CybaSumo store widget on your Facebook profile, blog, and Web site.
• Advertise on Google AdWords
• Insert a link to your CybaSumo store in your email signature.

Some of the biggest-selling digital products online are ebooks. Our Bookbarn section is an ideal place for you to sell your business ebooks online. Since our fees are so low, you get all the benefits of a full-functional digital store with none of the aggravation of managing it.

Passive income takes some time to build up, and we’re not saying that you’re going to be lazing on the beach doing nothing by next week. What we are saying, though, is that CybaSumo is an excellent platform to sell your digital goods unattended. As Ron Popeil would say, with CybaSumo you just ‘set it and forget it.’

In the Prepping Your Work series of blog posts, we’ve been showing you the ins and outs of getting your stuff ready to sell on CybaSumo, and adding your products to the easy-to-use CybaSumo catalog system.

So far we’ve discussed selling intangible digital items such as ebooks, images, and music. Now we’re going to take a look at how to sell tangible products that require shipping - in this case, fashion goods.

Photographing Your Fashions

More than any other type of product, fashion items require an attractive photograph or photographs that will show your prospective customers exactly what they are purchasing. Make sure your item is either laid out on a flat surface, on a mannequin, or on a helpful friend. The lighting should be direct and plain enough that true colors are visible.

Since CybaSumo currently provides the facility for adding a single image to your product description, you should choose a clear shot of the entire garment.

Another option is to stitch together several views of the product into one image. Here’s an example (this is all one image):

 

Description

As with the photograph, your description is vital. Customers can’t touch or try on your clothes, so your description has to describe all the important details. Consider:

• What size it comes in (see below)?
• What materials is it made of?
• What cleaning/care/laundry instructions does it have?
• What seasons is it appropriate or not appropriate to wear?

Sizing and color choice

CybaSumo is in the process of allowing customers to choose specific sizes. In the meantime, you can do one of two things:

• Create a different ‘product’ within CybaSumo for each size of your fashion item.
• Offer a range of sizes, and indicate that you will email the customer once you receive the order to confirm the desired size.

You can also use these methods to offer different color or material choices.

Shipping

Currently, shipping must be included in your product price and product description. It does not appear as a separate line item.

It’s up to you to add the shipping cost to your product price and inform shoppers what the shipping includes (air mail, UPS, or bulk mail, for example). Consider a Jackie O. Hat:

• Price of hat: $39.95
• Shipping via UPS: $15.75
• Total price to enter in the CybaSumo catalog: $55.70

You may want to include an estimate of shipping times (based on information from the post office, UPS, or other delivery service) in the description as well.

The Eclectic Stores

The eclectic store enables you to sell multiple types of products, including a mix of digital and tangible items. Note the following:

• To add a fashion item, select the Shipping option on the Add Product screen.
• To add a digital item, select the Digital option, and then select the specific digital item type (Audio, Video, Image, or Other).

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This is the last entry in the Prepping Your Work series - for now. We’re constantly looking to add other types of products (digital and tangible) that you can sell to your fans. If you have any suggestions, please contact us. And stay tuned! There’s much more to come.

In the Prepping Your Work series of blog posts, we’ll give you advice, tips and tricks to prepare your digital work for sale on CybaSumo and SumoStores.com.

If you can provide an attractive presentation for your store that includes enticing graphics and interesting descriptions, you’ll increase the chances that a shopper will turn into a buyer. Here’s how to optimizing your store for selling photography and digital art.

File Formats

CybaSumo supports JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF, PSD, and TIF image formats when upload your photo. Any image editing program should be able to save your images into JPG/JPEG, PNG, GIF, and TIF.

PSD is a Photoshop Document, and describes aspects of an image in Photoshop. A purchaser cannot view a PSD file in anything but Photoshop or another image editor like JASC’s Paint Shop Pro. You should only sell a PSD if you want to give purchasers access to Photoshop-specific features in your image such as layers, color spaces, alpha channels, and so on. Be sure to explain that the PSD image is for advanced users and that they must own a PSD-compatible image editor.

File Size and Dimensions

The resolution of your camera in megapixels will determine the dimensions of your shots in pixels.

For example, if your camera is rated at 4MP (4 million pixels), it can take pictures at about 2304 x 1728 pixels. Each picture will take up about 2.14MB of space.

File size (2.14MB) is different from dimensions (2304 x 1728 pixels). You may think that there’s a set relation between file size and dimensions, but there’s one added variable: image quality.

When you save your image in JPG format after editing it, for example, most photo editors will give you the option to specify the quality from 1 to 100. A JPG with a quality of 1 might only be a few K, whereas a JPG with a quality of 100 might be several MB.

How do you determine the best trade-off between file size, dimensions, and quality? Here are some rough guidelines:

• Consider what purchasers will use the image for. Will they be printing it out, using it as wallpaper on a 20”, 1650 x 1080 monitor, or using it as a backdrop on their cell phone? If you can, target your image to a specific use and make sure you describe its size and use in the CybaSumo product description.
• If your purchasers will be printing your images at 4 x 6 inches at a professional resolution of 300dpi, you’ll need to output your image to at least 2.16MP (1800 x 1200 pixels). If they will be printing the image to 8 x 10 inches at the same resolution, your image will have to be 2400 pixels by 1920 pixels – and you’ll need at least a 7.2 megapixel camera. For more discussion of this, see http://www.photoshopessentials.com/essentials/image-quality.php.
• The bigger the file size in MB, the more reluctant prospective customers may be to download it. Some people are still using dialup, and for others, per-KB Internet costs are prohibitive. If an inexperienced user downloads a large image where they only need a smaller image, they may have problems resizing it.
• Generally speaking, your image should be just as large as it needs to be to provide a quality experience for your buyers – and no larger.

You’ll find a useful pixel/resolution calculator at http://auctionrepair.com/pixels.html. Screen resolution is typically 75DPI (dots per inch), while photo printers can print at 300dpi and up.

In the Prepping Your Work series of blog posts, we’re going to give you tips, tricks, and advice to prepare your digital work for sale on CybaSumo.

When your digital goods are easy to browse, download, and use, you are far more likely to turn a window shopper into a buyer. In this post we’ll discuss music and other types of audio you can sell on CybaSumo.

MP3 Formats

CybaSumo supports MP3 files only. These are the most common types of audio files, and can be played back on every software and hardware player being made and sold today, including iPods, Zunes, iTunes, and Linux players.

Be sure to follow these tips to make sure your fans get the most out of your music:

Choose a bitrate that’s appropriate to your music and size of the download.

Your music editing software should allow you to save your music at different bitrates. The higher the bitrate, typically the larger the file and the higher the audio quality.

The current ‘standard’ for MP3 music is 192 kbits/s. 128-160 kbits/s will provide smaller files, but listeners may notice some loss in audio quality, especially in bass sections. You can go all the way up to 224-320kbits/s, but be sure to check the file size – you don’t want to have huge files that will take a long time for customers to download.

Choose a constant vs. variable bitrate.

Constant birate (CBR) is more compatible with older players. Variable bitrate (VBR) may not work as well on much older MP3 players, but it takes up less space than CBR music.

Make sure your ID3 tags are filled in.

ID3 tags provide information about your music such as composer, title, album, track, year, and even album art. Using ID3 tags means a more enjoyable experience for your listeners, who can see them in many music players.

If your music editor does not let you tag your files, you can use a separate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_editor tag editor.

Use standard file naming conventions

The standard file naming convention is typically Artist – Title.mp3 (for example, Madonna – Material Girl.mp3). This is separate and distinct from ID3 tags. Name your music files consistently and they will be easier to manage on an MP3 player or computer.

Describe Your Work

Be sure to give each track a title, description, and tags. Let shoppers know who you are, what your music is all about, and what your influences are.

Other Types of Audio

Just because this category is called Music, don’t think you can’t sell other types of audio as well. You can sell anything you can record with a microphone on CybaSumo:

• Podcasts
• Lectures
• Spoken word recordings
• Audio plays
• …and more!

Next time - preparing your digital art for sale on CybaSumo.

Congratulations on joining CybaSumo, the easiest way to sell digital video, music, books, and other creative stuff to your social network.

Now that you’ve signed up, have added products to your CybaSumo store, and added the store widget to your social networking pages, you might just want to sit back and let the money roll in. If you follow these seven tips, however, you can really raise your response rate and get the word out to your fans.

1. Tell your fans you’re selling stuff.

It sounds obvious, but even though you’ve decided to sell stuff, your fans won’t automatically know about it. Send them an email, or put up a blog post. Change your Facebook status to say “I’m selling music!” or send out a Twitter tweet. And along with telling them you’re selling products…

2. Point out your CybaSumo widget/store.

…let them know where they can buy. If your CybaSumo widget is on your Facebook profile page, tell them exactly where it is. Give them a link to the URL if you can. The easier you can make it for your audience to find your stuff, the more likely they will be to buy.

3. Explain how easy it is to use.

CybaSumo is very easy to use. Once the widget is loaded on the page, they just have to click Start Widget to begin shopping. Browsing, previews, and adding items to the cart are handled right inside the widget. Once they’re ready to check out, they’ll be transferred over to the main CybaSumo page where they can pay with PayPal or Moneybookers.

4. Overcome objections.

Some people are uneasy about shopping online. You can assure them that CybaSumo uses encrypted SSL to process their transactions. They can also use a credit card right away without having to sign up for a PayPal or Moneybookers account.

5. Explain the value of your stuff.

Explain the value of what you’re selling, what’s gone into creating it, and how buying your stuff supports you. You’re not simply a random seller online; you have a connection to your fans and it’s important to demonstrate to them that you are worth buying from - and that by supporting you, they’ll help ensure that you create more great stuff in the future.

6. Thank them.

Once you receive a notification of a transaction, consider sending the buyer a thank-you note. It keeps you and them connected, and you can develop even more of a relationship with them.

7. Follow up.

Let people know what you’re up to regularly on your profile, blog, or Web site - whether you’ve added new products to your CybaSumo store, changed pricing, or are hard at work on a great new piece of art. It helps keep your name in the ‘news’ and in the minds of your fans.

CybaSumo is all about selling your fans stuff they really want because they have a relationship with you. Keep that relationship strong and you’ll create fans for life!

In the Prepping Your Work series of blog posts, we’re going to give you suggestions as to how best to prepare your digital work for sale on CybaSumo and SumoStores.com.

Making sure your digital goods are in a convenient, accessible, and attractive format can make all the difference between a sale and a prospect passing you by. In this first entry, we’re going to look at the Video section - where you can sell movies, shorts, documentaries, animation, and all types of moving pictures.

File Formats

CybaSumo supports the following video formats for upload. If your video isn’t in one of these formats, your video editing program should be able to save it into a supported format. Otherwise, several free and shareware applications exist that can convert videos from one format into another. Check out http://www.videohelp.com/tools for some examples.

• AVI - This format was originally developed by Microsoft and Intel, and is now a very common format for downloading videos from the Internet. Most video players will support AVI. Note that AVI is a ‘container’ - which means that there can be different codecs (video compression types) within an AVI file. For example, an AVI file might be encoded with the DIVX codec. You need to ensure that your customers have the codecs on their computers, or can download them. AVIs which use DIVX or XVID provide excellent quality video at a relatively small file size.
• QT - This is the QuickTime video format, most often used on Mac computers. Windows users can view QuickTime videos if they download Apple QuickTime software - and this software also comes bundled with iTunes. If your customers have iPods, the likelihood is they’ll be able to play QT files.
• MP4 - Like AVI, MP4 is another common video file type that supports multiple codecs. You’ll usually find it used on Apple Macs, as well as iPods. Windows users may need to download a special player or codecs to view a video encoded as MP4.
• MPG and MPEG - these refer to the same type of files. They can be played on most computers, but they tend to be larger in file size than AVI or MP4 files of the same quality.
• VOB - This file format supports the DVD video format. If you browse a DVD video disc when it’s in your computer, you’ll see files like VIDEO_TS.VOB. These files are of very high quality, but also tend to be larger than AVI and MP4 files.

Your ultimate decision should take into account where your customers will play your files, how important quality is as compared to file size, and how long it will take your customers to download your video files.

How can you ensure they will be able to play your file?

The easiest way to check this is to give a friend of yours a CD or email them a file to play on their system. Make sure they haven’t downloaded any special codecs (like DIVX or XVID) or video players (like VLC Media Player). You may want to use two friends to test - one using Windows and one using OSX.

Next time - preparing your music for CybaSumo.

CybaSumo enables you to upload and sell your digital artwork for free. If you’re just looking for exposure, it’s a great way to show fans and friends on social networking sites like Facebook what you’ve been creating and what you’re all about.

Just because you’re offering something for free doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t want to have a say in how it’s used. You may not want your work to be used to sell something, or you may want credit if it’s used on a Web site.

Creative Commons provides a way for you to distribute your works for free, but still specify how you want them used. The main CC site is http://creativecommons.org/, but we’re going to reprint some information here.

Creative Commons is all about keeping copyright and inviting other people to use your works in specific ways. You can choose what applies to your work:

Attribution. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.

Noncommercial. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

Share Alike. You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

To add a CC license to your work, see http://creativecommons.org/about/license/, then select the license you want to add.

If your work is an eBook or document, you can embed the CC license right inside the document. Otherwise, make sure you state that your work is under Creative Commons license on your CybaSumo store and in the work’s description.

Remember, Creative Commons is entirely optional. If you want other people to use and build on your work, though, it’s a great way to ensure you retain the rights you want.

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Note: In North America, as soon as you create a work of art (or music, video, book, etc.), it’s automatically copyrighted simply by the act of creation. You don’t have to register it with a copyright agency, although you can if you need to prove when your work was copyrighted/created.

CybaSumo Blog - Entry #7

April 9, 2008

“Six easy ways to increase your SumoStores sales”

As we mentioned in an earlier blog post, you can expect more sales to your CybaSumo store because all stores are listed on SumoStores.com.

Visitors to SumoStores.com can search or browse through the site for titles, keywords, tags, or categories. Here are six easy ways you can increase the visibility of your SumoStore and make it more attractive to prospects and customers:

1. Add a photograph as your Store icon.

This will let SumoStore browsers get an idea of who you are and what you’re selling. For example, you might use the cover of one of your albums, or a photograph of your face. Remember that it’ll appear in a small size in most places, so be sure whatever you choose is visually striking.

P.S. You’ll also want to make sure any images you use for the purposes mentioned here were either created or owned by you, or that you have the permission to use. Royalty-free images also work.

2. Use a descriptive title for the item you’re selling.

Which looks more interesting - “Song” or “Beethoven’s 5^th Symphony, Disco Remix”? The more information you can provide up front, the more likely a customer is to click through to the description. Your CybaSumo store widget can handle about 40 characters (including spaces) in the description length.

3. Write a full description of the item.

Remember, people are going to buy your material online without being able to touch and feel it (though you can provide a preview - see #6, below). It’s vital for you to write a good description of your item. Think in terms of vivid adjectives and words that make your artwork come to life.

4. Include tags to describe your items.

Tags are like keywords that describe your item, but don’t appear in the title or description. For example, you may tag an MP3 song as ‘country’ or ‘funkadelic’ or ’ska.’ Think of keywords people are likely to search on. You can add or edit keywords on the Edit Product page.

5. Make sure to upload a photograph of the item.

Again, offering prospective customers something to get a sense of your work is very important. Even if it’s an eBook, you can upload an image of the cover page, or of something related to its topic.

6. Offer a sample.

CybaSumo gives you an easy way to offer a sample of your work before customers buy - without giving away the store. For songs and videos, CybaSumo can automatically generate a partial clip - you set the amount you want to share. For other product types, you can upload a file that contains a preview. It’s yet another way to make your work stand out.

With these tips you’ll be off to a great start in no time. Let us know what you encounter in the comments below!

The URL you’re on right now is CybaSumo.com. You may only have heard about us as CybaSumo. We’re more than that, though.

When we sat down to come up with a simple, profitable way to sell your digital goods online, we looked at what was out there on the Internet – what was working and what wasn’t.

There are hundreds of digital storefronts out there. For most of them, you’ve got to know they exist first – or a friend or an ad has to tell you about them.

That’s why we came up with CybaSumo: the portable store. You can use our tools to create your own store that fits in a Flash widget you can embed in your Facebook page, Web site, blog, and more.

That’s one half of the story.

The other half is SumoStores.com. If you go there, you’ll see a more traditional Web store divided into the categories we’re currently supporting: the Bookbarn, Digital Art, Music, Photography, Video, and Fashion.

Your customers have two ways to buy your products now. If they’re part of your social network, they’ll see your CybaSumo store widget on Facebook, blog, Web page, or other networking site. Or they can visit SumoStores.com to browse your storefront along with hundreds of others.

Afraid of competition? No need to be. The other sellers on SumoStores actually help you make money. Here’s how: Remember that when anyone buys something through a CybaSumo store, they have to check out using SumoStores.com (it’s just one click away). So if someone’s buying a photograph from another seller, they end up SumoStores anyways It’s an ideal opportunity for a buyer who’s already bought digital creative work to browse and buy your work.

Encourage your friends and social network to visit SumoStores.com as well as shop through your store widget. Increasing traffic to SumoStores means more prospects, more views for your store, and ultimately, more customers.

Happy selling!

Update!: Now it’s even easier to buy and sell original works - CybaSumo.com has now absorbed SumoStores.com and sports an even simpler navigational scheme. Your works are now more accessible to your fanbase than ever.