Digital Dreams

Your shop name *	Digital Dreams
Zazzle to me is a... *	Part time job I would like to make a full time job
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? *
1. Create, create, create 2. Promote, and let others promote 3. Don't expect to make sales immediately for a new design. It can take months or even years for a design to sell 4. If you've lost the creativity streak then take a break away from Zazzle to refresh the brain cells. 5. Plan and schedule work, automate if possible. For example, use the feature of blogs to schedule posts for the future. 6. Creation and promotion are only two parts of the task. Don't forget Admin. Learn from experience what sells and what doesn't and focus on your niche markets, 7. As part of Admin clean up tags and descriptions on products
What PODs do u currently use or have shops on? *	Zazzle Other
What did you do with your free time before zazzle or other POD's....and what do you do with it now? *	Photography has always been a hobby, as well as travel, and in my discovery of Zazzle my photos of my past travels formed the basis of the first products I created on Zazzle. I only wish in retrospect that I had taken more photos that would have been Zazzle-worthy. My background is in computing and education and am involved in that when not Zazzling. But always at the back of my mind is the question 'How can I use this to improve my presence on Zazzle?'.
What programs do you use to make your designs *	Gimp Other vector software
Tell us more about what you like and do not like about each software you use, what makes it special. *	I have a far amount of image software on my Mac but for the majority of tasks involving photographs and graphics I use Gimp. I use it because its free and has has almost all the features of Photoshop. I used to run Photoshop but with OS upgrades on my Mac when it failed to run I decided to invest my time in Gimp. ( I am on an intel Mac Snow Leopard 10.6.8 ). I've also dabbled in vector software, Inkscape, but havent quite reached the end of the learning curve on it. I also use Mandela software, and Art Rage now and again, but find I'm much more fluent in Gimp.
Will you make custom orders? *	Yes - sometimes free, sometimes fee required upfront
Elaborate on your answer above regarding custom orders... *
Minor modifications to designs on existing published products (eg color or text changes or repositioning of elements) I'll do for free (up to 2 changes) If there's a design change involved then I may or may not quote a price based on the amount of design work ( eg whether exclusive, or involves a lot of work) This may or may not require an advance on the fee - just depends on amount of work. Having previously lost referral fees to third parties for custom work agreed between clients and myself, and not involving referrers, I have set up a system that I use with clients to minimize the risk of lost referrals so at least I know I have a good chance of getting the royalty and referral fee if I do not charge for custom work.
List your shop URL's *	http://www.zazzle.com/digitaldreambuilder http://www.zazzle.com/zodiac_shop http://www.zazzle.com/francogrid

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