Sewing Business Blog

Attention: Sewing Business Blog Disclosure Statement

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federal-trade-commission-ftc-logoThe Federal Trade Commission has decided that all blogs must have a disclosure statement.  Please read the Sewing Business Blog Disclosure Statement that follows, and if you are a blogger visit DisclosurePolicy.org to get your own customized disclosure statement for your website.

All information published on the Sewing Business Blog is provided “as is” without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement and warranties of merchantability. Offers and prices are correct according to the best of our knowledge when posted but may change without notice. All pictures, banners, logos, and trademarks belong to their respective owners. The views in comments on Sewing Business Blog are not necessarily the views of this blog and Sewing Business Blog is not responsible for those types of comments/statements. For content-related questions, including reporting inappropriate or questionable material, as well as merchant requests for inclusion on this blog, please email support@sewingbusiness.com.

This policy is valid from 04 December 2009

This blog is a collaborative blog written by a group of individuals. For questions about this blog, please contact  support@sewingbusiness.com.

This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.  This blog abides by word of mouth marketing standards. We believe in honesty of relationship, opinion and identity. The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post will be clearly identified as paid or sponsored content.

The owner(s) of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers’ own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.

The owner(s) of this blog would like to disclose the following existing relationships. These are companies, organizations or individuals that may have a significant impact on the content of this blog. We are employed by or consult with: SewWithSarah.com, PatternsThatFitYou.com, Patterns2Go.com, SewMachineRepair.com, SewingWithLeather.com and other sites affiliated with SpecterWeb.com LLC.

To get your own policy, go to http://www.disclosurepolicy.org

Interview With Jill Green of Homemade By Jill

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Refashioned Shirt PillowJill Green of the Homemade By Jill Blog says that she’s been sewing for about three years, and although she is mostly self taught, her mom is a great seamstress so Jill calls on her to help out if she runs into trouble.  A brief stint at Martha Stewart also helped Jill to improve her basic skills through some employee sewing classes.

Jill is a full-time mom and a part-time crafter who generously shares her sewing and craft projects and tips through her blog.  Recent projects include this gorgeous ruffled pillow, which is a refashioned shirt that Jill has now recycled for the second time, a recovered office chair, and my favorite, artwork for her new apartment that she made from blank canvases and tissue paper.

Jill Green of Homemade by Jill
Jill Green of Homemade by Jill

The blog earns Jill enough extra cash through advertising to cover her craft expenses and even enough to save a bit for a rainy day.  She’s happy with that, and with being able to create “whatever is striking my fancy at the moment”, but she’s looking forward to being able to devote more time to sewing and turning her hobby into a business when the time is right.

Visit Jill’s blog for all sorts of sewing projects, home decor, paper crafts, decoupage and crazy crocheted animal hats.

4 Reasons You Need a Blog For Your Business

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1.  Increase Traffic

Search engines love blogs because they provide lots of fresh, keyword rich content.  If your business maintains a regularly updated blog with topics of interest to your target market, your website will rank higher in the search engines when potential customers search for your services and products, which will greatly increase traffic to your site.

2.  Build Customer Loyalty

Blogs offer a way for your customers to keep up with you via email or RSS subscriptions and the more your customers know about you the more loyal they become.  Provide solutions to real problems in your blog and your customers will want to subscribe.  Feature some of your best customers on your blog and you may turn them into raving fans.

3.  Build Your Reputation

Potential customers can’t visit your shop or office online, but they like to do business with people that they know.  Blogs are a cheap and easy way to let your customers know who you are.  Talk about your business’ mission, what you’re trying to accomplish, discuss problems your products and services can solve, and share success stories from your customers.  These steps will all help to build your online reputation and increase your brand image.

4.  Improve Communications

Blogs offer a unique way to keep a dialogue with your customers, unlike typical one-way marketing messages.  Keeping the lines of communication open with a blog allows you the flexibility to communicate with both existing and potential customers, while promoting your business.  This gives you the opportunity to give and receive feeback in an open manner that fosters a positive image of your business.

A couple of years ago many people didn’t even know what a blog was, now their popularity has exploded because they are free or cheap to setup and easy to maintain.  Don’t overlook this low cost method of marketing your business online!

A New Way to Make Money From Your Blog

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Amazon’s amazing new Kindle reading device ($359, Amazon.com) can also be used for reading or subscribing to blogs and Amazon has now opened up their Kindle Publishing Program in beta and they are currently accepting blog submissions.

The program provides bloggers with a great new method of monetizing their blogs.  Here’s how it works – Amazon sells subscriptions to participating blogs, individually or packaged with others, and then they pay the participating bloggers royalties equal to 30% of the subscription and single issue sales revenues.  Blog publishers are paid electronically via direct deposit (so you must have a US bank account to qualify), 60 days after the calendar month in which the sales occur.

Even if you question how many people might want to pay to subscribe to your blog, you can’t beat the free exposure on one of the biggest web sites in the world!  So, if you’re a blogger and you haven’t already done so, you need to head on over to Amazon and sign up for the new Kindle Publishing Program.