CREATIVITY

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It used to be that I was making a thousand dollars just by selling different items in my thrift shop downtown. People love to purchase handmade dresses and jewelry because they’re affordable, plus they can try it out. Some of my friends earn too simply by leaving their items for sale in my shop, and I just get a percentage from it. That was then. Now, the world of selling through mortar-and-brick is almost impossible.

Since the coronavirus hit the world more than three months ago, small businesses like mine have gone dropping down. Boutiques and local coffee shops in my area have eventually closed down because they’re not allowed to entertain customers in the first place. These times, it is so hard to earn a few extra dollars a week, and these few dollars are so useful nowadays.

A month after I realized that I was through with watching five movies on Netflix and eating my stress out, I decided to put my time at home into use and try making money from my couch. And one of the most convenient ways to earn with nothing but the Internet and a creative mind is through online dropshipping.

Dropshipping is done by purchasing and selling products online without actually buying any physical items upfront. This is what enabled me to pick up on what I lost at the thrift shop. In just two months, I earned thousands! Nope, I didn’t learn this by going through a four-year course in business. In fact, I just knew about it through blogs and, of course, YouTube.

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Dropshipping will help you sell products to your customers. It’ll also give you knowledge on how to advertise using Facebook and spend just a small amount of money – or nothing at all – when you start your business.

Choose Your Product

This is the first step in selling a product online – knowing and choosing what to sell. What to sell? Believe me, it can be anything and everything! But if you ask me, the more in-demand products during this pandemic are medical supplies, food, and other goods for the home. Novelty items would also be a great idea. People are looking to find other forms of entertainment. Pet toys, face massagers and laser hair removers are trending items online. The choice is yours. Take an hour or two to look for products on the web. Visit sites where thousands of suppliers post their products. Choose and then save your favorites.

Kick Start Your Online Shop

Now that you have chosen and saved the products that you want to sell, you can proceed to build your online shop. Shopify is a great place to do just that (I did!). Don’t worry if you don’t have that much knowledge about the computer. You can still create your online shop in a few hours, with only $50 or less. And once you’re done, you can now move your chosen products from the websites you chose them from over to Shopify. At this stage, you’ve spent about $50 for your shop without any order inventory until a customer makes an order and makes a payment through your Shopify. So get ready to sell now!

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Get Advertising

You have the products, and you have the online store that I assume is pretty, professional, and functional. Now let’s find customers to sell these products to, and let’s get help through advertising. It isn’t for everyone, though, because it needs skills, but the easiest place to begin would be Facebook Ads. By paying $5 daily, your online shop will be advertised and seen by thousands of people a few times a day. Otherwise, you can also try marketing through Facebook Groups. If you’re into food, join a food-focused group and advertise there. These groups are composed of fanatics who are looking to buy their favorites where they can see them.

Business, online or not, needs determination and the will to be successful. If you’ve been planning to start your own online shop, I hope you’ll find this article useful. Read these first and put them to action. You’re on your way to creating a flourishing online business career.

Generalizing is always wrong, but we cannot deny the fact that there are groups of people that are less likely to buy online than the others. Some discriminating factors can be:

Age

Kids or early teenagers are too young to own a credit card, and they cannot buy anything online. (They can be annoying influencers, but you cannot consider them as buyers all the time!) On the other hand, the internet is becoming more accessible to anyone, and it spreads among all age groups — that’s true. However, it is more likely to sell something to a 30-year-old man than to an older person in their 80s.

“It is difficult for today’s parents to teach delayed gratification especially because we live in an instant gratification world where children are bombarded by marketers as early as age one,” writes David J Bredehoft Ph.D.

Nationality/Culture

Nationality or culture matters. People from certain countries, despite good internet infiltration, are less likely to buy than others. Some reasons might be practical (high importation taxes or low usage of credit cards) or cultural (language skills, cultural prejudices, preference for a live “see, touch and buy” approach, fear of online scams, etc.)

Hobbies and Passions and Interests

Every one of us has hobbies and passions, and that often involves buying things (online or offline). Some of these interests, though they are more expensive or simply more related to purchase than others. Not all people with passions or hobbies are good potential online buyers. Think about the difference between a group of golfers or jokers. They both have passions, but who is more likely to buy something online? 

There’s no group of people that you should avoid by definition. They all have needs, and they all buy things offline or online. As an affiliate, you want to maximize your results and minimize your efforts. Thus, do not forget to target your promotions only to active “buyers” with related products that suit their needs, expectations, interests, or desires.

Buyers Are Not Always In That Mode

Now that we know that some categories of people are more likely to buy online than others, we have to be aware that online buyers are not always set in “buy mode.” For instance, when they are online to work (e.g., writing relevant emails on outlook) or to chat with friends (e.g., gossiping on Facebook), they are probably not willing to buy anything even though they have all the intrinsic characteristics of right potential buyers.

“Industry relies heavily on persuading us all to do what they want. But then the vast majority of us walk around not thinking that applies to us,” writes Nathan A Heflick Ph.D.

Therefore, when preparing your campaign, it is essential to understand who the buyers are. You should also know when the right time is to interact with them to maximize your results. Keep in mind that people are not all high potential online buyers, and buyers do not live in buy mode all the time. Now it is time to become psychologists and understand precisely the mental processes behind this “buy mode.”

Customer-Buying Process

The path that leads an online user to purchase on the web is usually a multi-step process that involves different phases and different marketing channels. 

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Intent
• Decision/Purchase 
• Repurchase

“Across age, gender, religiosity, different educational background, political affiliations, and countries, people still believe that the choices they make are their own and that those choices are under their own conscious control. This challenges the messaging that might be promoted more widely in the media,” writes Magda Osman, Ph.D.

Final Thoughts

The role of these channels may vary from market to market. For example, if we consider the travel industry, social networks are more effective in creating awareness. Conversely, direct marketing is more useful when we are close to the decision to purchase. 

Think about everything mentioned above before you start promoting your products or services.

Cheers!

As an affiliate, you can either decide to participate in an affiliate program of a company directly or subscribe to an affiliate network. However, whichever way you want to go through, you WILL be given an affiliate ID. This ID must then be embedded in all the links to a merchant website or product page. Thanks to these unique URLs (called affiliate links) that contain your unique identifier, all the traffic you send to the merchant is tracked, and all the sales that are generated can be referred directly to you. That’s how you get a commission! 

Most sites have a dashboard of your account; you can quickly check your commissions as they pour in. How much money you get primarily depends on your ability and effort and may vary according to the type of affiliate program that you choose.

Nevertheless, knowing how to make money through an affiliate program is not enough to turn it into a significant source of your income. If you are a beginner, you need to take a few steps back to understand a couple of things about it.

The Players Of Affiliate marketing

In affiliate marketing, there are four different players involved:

Merchant

A merchant (also known as retailer or vendor) seeks to maximize sales or leads by allowing affiliates to promote their products or services via affiliate campaigns.

Affiliate 

An affiliate (also known as the publisher) uses different methods to drive traffic to a merchant’s offer and get a commission for each sale or lead he/she generates.

User 

A user is a potential customer. They are individuals who purchase goods and services – a decision that’s typically based on personal needs, wants, or interests. Affiliates mostly work on business-to-consumer (B2C) markets rather than the business-to-business (B2B) types, but both options are possible.

Affiliate Network (Optional)

An affiliate network mediates between affiliates and merchants. They usually facilitate the connections between the two by providing a virtual place for them to meet and interact. They also act as a technical platform to manage all the practical aspects of their relations. E.g., tracking technology, reporting tools, and payment processing. 

The affiliate network is an optional player in the system. Many companies prefer to set up their in-house affiliate program and work directly with affiliates without being part of an affiliate network.

Types Of Affiliate Programs

There are two main types of affiliate programs:

Pay-Per-Sale (PPS)

In PPS, affiliate programs receive compensation for each purchase on the merchant website, generated by their traffic. It can be a percentage of the total amount of sale or a fixed fee for each transaction, depending on the agreement with the merchant/affiliate network.

Pay-Per-Lead (PPL) 

Pay-Per-Lead programs slightly vary with Pay-Per-Sale. Insurance and finance companies commonly use this type of affiliate marketing. It allows an affiliate to earn money each time he/she directs a potential customer to the merchant’s website and registers for their service.

Final Thoughts

You may not see the full effect of being able to earn money by talking about a particular company on your channel if you have not done it before. However, once you remember the ideas above and get the hang of marketing through affiliation, everything will turn out amazing.

Good luck!

The 2016 Chicago Creative Conference focuses on bringing insights, wisdom, and new ideas for its audiences through interaction. Lead by Advertising Age’s Visionary of the Year and Founder Kat Gordon, this two-day conference in Navy Pier features 85 speakers of color who share excellent keynotes, spirited networking, and informative masterclasses.

Continue reading “The 2016 Chicago Creative Conference – Seventh Annual 3% Gathering”

Four percent of the world population have personal accounts on Instagram. That may sound small, but if we convert it out of the 7.4 billion inhabitants of the planet, it equates to more than 300 million potential customers in total. This is the approximate number of people who will be able to see your posts and may get enticed to check out your brand.

The thing is, not every company that creates an Instagram account flourishes. Some may be too boring for their target audience’s liking; others do not post enough for people to think that the profile still works. Worse, the posts may be full of marketing words, which can suck the life out of the audience and cause them to label your brand as ‘toxic.’

Now, who wants the latter to happen?

What you need right now is follow the four tried-and-true tips on how to build your brand with Instagram.

1. Generate Eye-Catching Posts Daily

Consumers can technically only see the entrepreneurs who are always present online. And the most straightforward way to increase your searchability on the platform is by posting every day. The kind of posts you produce, however, matters because you will have a greater chance of being viewed when you use interesting pictures, appropriate captions, and hashtags.

2. Evaluate Which Hashtags Will Work

Adding the pound sign before a word makes an absolute difference as it helps the users to be discovered more by other people on the web. In case you are not familiar with the hashtags that do well on your niche, know that there are keyword analyzers accessible online. They can tell you how many individuals they have reached, as well as what related hashtags you can use. This way, you will not stay in the dark about what hashtags work and what don’t work.

3. Encourage Tagging And Sharing of Photos

If YouTubers always tell their viewers to subscribe, share, and like their videos, you can do the same in each picture or short clip that you upload. Making use of the emojis lets you express your thoughts better. Photoshopping your photos to make you or your models or products seem flawless is not a crime either. 

Furthermore, there is nothing wrong in asking your audience politely to tag their own friends in the comment section. If they do that, an extra number of individuals (read: potential consumers) can check out your brand.

4. Innovate With Your Pictures

Lastly, you need to take photos wiser. They are not going to be used for passports, so it is okay if your teeth or gums show. You may even pose in different quirky ways to keep the people entertained. As for the products, you are allowed to change their exposure to reinvent or highlight every subject.

 Final Thoughts

Are you daunted by the number of competitors who are already making names on Instagram?

You should be — they are famous, and you know it. Instead of letting the fear and intimidation put you in a dark place, though, you should use that feeling to snoop around your rivals’ Instagram account. See what they’re doing that people are eating up and match it to the tips above. Thus, you can beat anyone at their game.

Good luck!

Facebook video ads are bringing in a lot of traffic and sales to a lot of brands. We can safely guess that it is because of consumers, in general, who want to see the product before they believe in it. The content and the quality of your videos, however, still matter. Because of that, you have to come up with a great concept that will make your target audience want to watch it until the end. Try to optimize your video advertising strategy on Facebook with these five tips.

1. Picture Out Your Goals

When a photographer or a director shoots a scene, they already have a clear idea of the message they wish to represent through it. You need to think like these creative individuals and set achievable goals before the production begins so that you have a clue about what the video should look like.

To simplify the decision-making process, be concise and focus on one objective. If your current goal is to introduce the benefits of getting the merchandise, for instance, refrain from asking the clients to subscribe to your mailing list or visit your other websites.

2. Use Readable Fonts

Advertisements in video form on Facebook typically play as a preview, but they lack sound until the user clicks on it. For this particular reason, you should give more attention to the text you allow to pop up within the video as it plays rather than the audio. Enlarge the font size, apply neutral colors on the words, and opt for natural styles that are easily readable for your target viewers.

3. Capture Videos

Ask yourself this question: “Would I like to watch an ad that shows objects in diverse angles or a model that demonstrates how and where to utilize those objects?” The choice of many is the latter since it offers relatable ideas instead of only displaying the product. In case you can’t have actual persons in the video, lively animations may work too.

4. Re-Target Your Viewers

The platform allows content creators to categorize the audience based on the number of videos they have seen. Once you take advantage of this feature, you can suggest your other ads to these people so that they can check out all the videos connected to your brand. It follows the funnel technique in which you show them a general topic in the beginning, but as they watch more clips, they get presented with more lead-generating videos.

5. Keep It Short

The recommended duration of a Facebook video is between 15 and 30 seconds. Downsizing a clip does not seem to be stress-free for those who are used to publishing videos on other platforms. However, remember that it is going to be an ad, and anything less or more than the given range will be too hasty or dull for the potential consumers. When you do the first three tips mentioned above, though, this last one will not be as hard as you possibly imagine.

Final Thoughts

Optimizing your video advertising strategy is the best thing that you can ever do if you want to market on Facebook. It is perfect for people who don’t want or have no time to read. It will also allow you to express yourself better.

Remember the tips mentioned above for your next campaign. Cheers!

In layman’s term, creativity is the individual’s ability to come up with a better solution while straightly looking at a problem. The main intention is to solve and analyze a scenario by only using what is currently an available option. “We depend on our creative abilities to help us adapt and thrive in increasingly complex and uncertain times,” Marilyn Price-Mitchell Ph.D. says. However, there are instances that creativity exceeds an expectation, and that is because of the enhanced creative thinking. It is where a person generates an unusual solution that pretty much solves a problem considerably. But take note, using unconventional methods in trying to solve a problem does not always guarantee a productive result. Yes, there are instances that idea can be significant. But there are cases that it might not be useful. So how can an individual learn to understand the better way of using his creative thinking? Let’s hear it from a psychologist’s point of view.

Adaption-Innovation Methods

While a lot of people are creative, they all differ in the way they use their creativity to an extent. That is where the adaption-innovation theory takes place. It is the psychological explanation where a person solves a problem using innovative-creative thinking or adaptive-creative thinking.

Adaptive-Creative thinking is the process of doing things better and smarter. An individual who understands adaption and is also creative at the same time usually do things differently. There is a sense of analyzing situations from previous experiences and often try working on the issue over and over. With that, the solution to a specific problem undergoes a different approach. But once all options are there, a person then measures the best possible and applicable conclusion that fits in. Let’s say it is more of a trial and error type of problem-solving method.

On the other hand, an innovative individual that is also creative often works on inventive solutions. The individual usually looks inside the box and think through it. The process of innovative-creative thinking is limited to solving what currently needs an instant solution. However, not all individuals are the same. Sometimes, some people can think outside the box.

Divergent And Convergent Thinking

Another interesting thing when it comes to creative thinking is the difference between divergent and convergent. More divergent-creative thinkers are often better at coming up with tons of ideas when they encounter a problem. People call the individual optimistic because of his mentality to try and attempt to analyze. “Divergent thinking (DT) tests are very often used in creativity studies. Certainly DT does not guarantee actual creative achievement, but tests of DT are reliable and reasonably valid predictors of certain performance criteria,” Mark A. Runco, Ph.D. explains. However, in convergent-creative thinking, the individual focuses on seeing the details that are useful in better narrowing down options that best work. Meaning, the person does not allow more thoughts in his head to avoid distractions and confusions. In complicated cases, both of these processes are effective in problem-solving because there is a focus on collecting options and narrowing it down. Clay Drinko, Ph.D. on the other hand explains that, “Convergent thinking is evaluating those ideas. Obviously, this is an important stage. Not all ideas can be the one. In certain creative scenarios, we have to evaluate ideas to see which ones are better than others.”

Creative-Thinking Basics

Creative thinking is broad. But the main thought of it should support the idea that the solution should be unique as well as useful at the same time. To understand the process of creative thinking, one should understand first how it works.

Preparation – Before an individual come up with a solution, he must collect all the useful data he will need to understand the problem of the situation. The person should know what causes the difficulty, what options are available, and what required ability is useful for executing a solution.

Incubation – Incubation focuses on the subconscious. Meaning, the mind often thinks about the problem even if it does not require an immediate solution. Usually, a person tends to forget the problem, but the subconscious still looks for possible ways in solving what he’s currently trying to solve.

Illumination – The process of getting a resolution in a person’s mind after incubation is called illumination. It is the stage where results become mindfully visible. It usually brings an immediate and creative answer to the problem.

Validation – Validation is the verification of the newly-found solution that comes from illumination. So with that, the process undergoes checking to know if the answer is correct and valid to support the problem.

If you desire to become more creative, you should understand the importance of building a collective memory and knowledge. That is ideal by learning different things and seeking new experiences. You can try by fixing things at home, arranging and organizing, managing schedules and a lot more. There are times that solutions will fail, but that shouldn’t have to be a reason for quitting. Just allow a new perspective, and all things will be okay. Only then you can increase the strength of your brain’s development and achieve enhanced creative thinking.