The same philosophy goes for your other target audiences. Speak to mothers, fathers, seniors, kids – the possibilities are endless. When you find the needs of a certain demographic, you need to make them WANT to buy your services.

Never assume you know your audience completely. Not all scrapbookers are alike – in fact, you might be surprised at the wide variety of people who enjoy our hobby! By letting your target markets know you took the time to get to know them, you’re already halfway there.

Probably one of the best ways to get your name out in the business is to attend trade shows. Almost all local Chambers of Commerce holds some type of business expo. Spend the money to rent a booth and have samples of your work readily available.

Be sure you have plenty of business cards to hand out. Have a drawing to give away your services. Use the drawing slips to make a direct marketing list for future promotions. Be sure and have a place on the entry slip where entrants can indicate whether or not they want to receive future information from you.

Practically any event in a person’s life is material for a scrapbook—which is great news for those who have a scrapbooking home based business. One woman specializes in making scrapbooks for the kindergartners at the elementary school near her home. And there’s a man who has an extremely successful scrapbooking home business where he only does military scrapbooks for veterans.

If you’re already into making scrapbooks, then you know about all the exciting new products available for scrapbooking home businesses. Beautiful and fun papers are just the beginning. And the scrapbook covers are often works of art – which is the point. When you’re preserving someone’s memories through your scrapbooking home business, you’re an artist and should think of yourself as one.

There are many, many ways to go about marketing yourself and your new business. Most of all know who your target audience is and talk directly to them and their needs. If there is more than one target group, have a different set of materials to send to them. Basically, you’ll need to tailor your marketing materials according to what you’re trying to accomplish.

This is akin to being a freelance writer. If you think you’ve created an especially beautiful page, send a picture to a scrapbooking magazine. If they publish it, you’ve made it! If they don’t, keep trying.

Start out by subscribing to at least four of the major scrapbooking magazines. Some to consider would be:

Creating Keepsakes
Memory Makers
Simple Scrapbooks
Paper Kuts
Paper Crafts
Your Creative Spirit
Scrapbooks Etc.

Just do it! I’ve heard from so many scrapbookers that they haven’t been published, but they “haven’t submitted as much as they should.” Write it on your To-Do list! Schedule a time to submit your layouts on a regular basis. It may seem elusive, but consider that the magazines need to fill space with as many excellent layouts as they can. So keep submitting!
If you are going to be published, the excitement will be great the day you get the call! Be ready for some down time while you wait for the issue to come out, and then it’s excitement time again! You’ll usually get your layout back when the next issue of the magazine is published.

If more than one magazine chooses to publish a layout, you’ll need to tell the other magazines that unfortunately, another magazine contacted you first.

Some magazines pay with product and others with cash. But the opportunity to put “published designer” after your name is priceless! Good luck!

Scrapbooking has blossomed into a billion dollar business. In fact, the latest figures reveal that it’s now a $2.55 billion per year business – and that’s only in the U.S.! If true figures were to be told, the amount would certainly be well over $5 billion. Many people are cashing in on the craze by starting their own scrapbooking businesses. There are many, many ways to make money if you love to scrapbook. The appeal of starting this type of business is easy to see.

You can operate your business out of your home. You set your own hours working whenever you want. Satisfaction can be derived from the creativity that you can display. But perhaps the biggest advantage of starting your own scrapbooking business is that it can be done for a relatively small start-up investment. There are hundreds of places online that offer you the opportunity to pay them to show you how to start this type of business and some of them can be beneficial. However, all you really need to have is a love of scrapbooking and the desire to succeed by doing what you love.

You can pursue this business in many different ways. You can create pages for other people, you can sell scrapping supplies, or you can become a consultant for others teaching them how to do their own scrapbooks. Whichever route you choose, scrapbooking can be profitable and fun!
Many people think the only way to build a business in the scrapbooking world is by opening a retail store – not true! There are more than a dozen other ways you can make a living in this industry and some of them are much more profitable than retail!

We look at more options on how you can start your very own scrap booking business from home in the next series of posts. Stay tune!

When you list new auctions, just send out a short email letting them know what you have listed and include a link to your listings page. You can also send out advertisements on scrapbooking related “groups” or email lists. You can do a search on Yahoogroups.com, the MSN groups or any other email list to find scrapbooking groups. Email the list owner to find out what their policies are regarding ads. A lot of lists allow ads to be placed once a week.

There are also “For Sale and Trade” message boards at scrapbooking sites that you can advertise at. I don’t recommend advertising on regular message boards, though, because most of them don’t allow it and it will really get everyone upset!