Atlantic Dreams Photography

Your shop name *	Atlantic Dreams Photography
Zazzle to me is a... *	Hobby that occasionally pays
What is the best advice you have received from a fellow shopkeeper about your shops or designs you would like to pass on to another shopkeeper? *
Make sure you have really great descriptions and tags. You have to think like a customer who is looking for your production. Write your description as if you were describing the product to a friend over the phone. Also finding a niche market and really developing products for that market. Seek out and join forums that are relevant to your niche market, and interact with the community, don't just spam the forums. Using Squidoo and other similar platforms to write about topics that are related to the type of product you are promoting. Having a large number of products available also increases the odds that one (hopefully many) of your products will sell. The most important thing is to enjoy creating your designs and the interaction with your fellow shopkeepers.
What PODs do u currently use or have shops on? *	Zazzle Redbubble
What did you do with your free time before zazzle or other POD's....and what do you do with it now? *	I have been a lover of music all of my life and became a musician in my late teens. I still play in a classic rock/blues band. My main passion now is photography, and have slowly been getting clients for portraiture, weddings, etc.... I also combine the two passions by photographing local bands when they play a gig.
What programs do you use to make your designs *	Photoshop (any version) Illustrator Other photo-editing software
Tell us more about what you like and do not like about each software you use, what makes it special. *
Most of my photo editing consists of basic corrections such as adjusting the white balance and minor colour and contrast enhancements which I do using LightRoom. I shoot exclusively in the RAW format rather than jpeg which gives me some leeway in my adjustments and it also means I don't have to worry about degradation of the image files do to the lossy compression that comes with jpegs. It also means there is no destructive changes to my original file. When I need more heavy lifting I use photoshop which is great for removing distractions that appear in photos, and when i want to create something completely different like using the 3D features.
Will you make custom orders? *	Yes - no prepay required
Elaborate on your answer above regarding custom orders... *	This actually happened to me today. A potential customer sent me a message about one of my designs asking if it could be created on a different product at a different size. It was not possible with the image file I had already uploaded to Zazzle, but I was able to create what they requested from the original file with some slight modification. I just set it to direct only and sent them the link. Hopefully they will end up buying the customized product. I believe in providing customers with the products they want if it is possible to do so.
List your shop URL's *	http://www.zazzle.com/atlanticdreams http://www.zazzle.com/sruhs