At long last, after months of preparation, CybaSumo has opened its doors!

We’d like to welcome everyone to our site and encourage all of you to take the time to shop for products, create your own storefronts, and embed your portable stores in your MySpace, Facebook, or other social networking profiles.

CybaSumo is dedicated to offering artists and other creative types (like writers and musicians) a way to sell their work to their friends and fans. The site was built from the ground up to support anyone who wants to make money selling their creative stuff online.

Since we’re still sweeping away some of the sawdust and taking down the tarps, you may notice an issue, have a suggestion, or want to see a feature. Please let us know!

And to those of you who have been following us for a while, thanks. We appreciate the support.

Welcome to CybaSumo.

Here at our (virtual) CybaSumo headquarters, we’re getting excited about tomorrow’s launch.

Come June 3, everyone’s going to have the chance to sell their videos, music, eBooks, digital art, photography, crafts and fashion on CybaSumo.com and through the CybaSumo portable store you can embed in your MySpace, Facebook and other social networking profiles, as well as your blogs and Web sites.

It’s free to sign up and you can create as many customized stores and sell as many products as you want.

We take care of all the details like catalog management, billing, transactions, and digital fulfillment (emailing links to people who buy your digital stuff so they can download it after they’ve paid you).

Get ready for the next step in selling your stuff online. Get ready to put your stuff on sale right where your friends and fans already hang out.

Get ready for CybaSumo!

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.

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.

Yes, eBay has decided that you can no longer sell your digital goods directly through their site. Seems like they’re worried that sellers might sell thousands of copies of the same (near-worthless) thing in order to boost their feedback rankings.

It’s a real shame for people who were trying to sell their digital art, photography, or writing on eBay, though. You can still post on eBay using a ‘Classified Ad’, but that’s pretty much the same as posting on Craigslist - you’re still responsible for making the actual sale and working out the transaction.

What’s worse, you have to sell your stuff under “Information Products.” Take a look at this page from Information Products - we don’t think music, photos, writing, and other art belongs with ‘Make Money Quick’ schemes.

CybaSumo was designed from the ground up so you can sell your digital goods, including:

• Music (MP3s)
• Photos (JPGs and other formats)
• Writing (PDFs and text)
• Digital artwork (JPGs and other formats)
• Video (multiple movie formats)

We’re also working on features that will let you sell tangible products like crafts and collectibles.

No classified ads here - CybaSumo gives you a real store and we handle all the transactions and downloads.

We do the heavy lifting so you can concentrate on your art.

We’re working around the clock here at CybaSumo to get things ready so you can start selling your music, photography, video, art, and writing online to your friends on Facebook, MySpace, and everywhere else they go.

Just create a CybaSumo store and you’ve got a widget (an interactive shopping site in a box - see below) that you can put anywhere.

One of the issues that a lot of artists online have had is how to sell without giving away the store. You want to give people a sense of what they’re buying, but you don’t want give it away for free so that you can make some money!

CybaSumo to the rescue. When you upload your music or video, CybaSumo lets you define part of it as a tease or a taste of your product that anyone can listen to or watch. You can set how much or how little you want people to be able to see for free. CybaSumo can even auto-generate your previews for you.

The same goes for photography. Give your customers a lower-resolution image as a preview - and you can even embed a watermark that’s not there in the full-sized version.

The best part? Customers can preview your stuff no matter where they are, right inside your widget. So they don’t have to leave your profile page on Facebook or MySpace to - even if they’re on Facebook looking at your widget. Then it’s just one click to buy.

Cybasumo’s previews turn window-shoppers into paying customers. Look for this feature on our site, launching soon.

We’ve been working very hard on the CybaSumo Web site and services, and we’re really looking forward to opening our doors very soon to you. The wait’s nearly over.

What is CybaSumo?

It’s a place where you can sell your MP3s, e-books, artwork, photographs, and any kind of digital work you create. But it’s more than just a place. It’s a store you take with you.

With other e-commerce sites, you have to get your friends and family to visit the store, spend money on advertising, or hope your store shows up at the top of Google searches so everyone will find out about you. Not with CybaSumo.

We give you a store in a widget - a box where customers can browse and shop - that you can put anywhere. When we launch you’ll be able to easily place your store widget on your Facebook profile without any programming or HTML. Soon you’ll also be able to place your store on your MySpace page, blog, and more.

That means that every time your friends see you on Facebook, they can browse and buy your stuff. Your profile does the advertising for you! No need to send them to another site - they come to CybaSumo.com when they’re ready to check out. And it’s free to sign up.

That’s where there’s strength in numbers. You’ll find hundreds of other artists in our CybaSumo catalog. Every time their customers come to the site to complete a purchase, they’ll be able to see what you have to offer, too.

Keep watching this space for more news about our (very soon) launch. And get ready to become a paid artist - over and over again.

CybaSumo - your portable store.

P.S. Want to sell non-digital products like crafts or collectibles? That’s coming too.