Have you ever considered writing a book? In the last century, the only way to publish a book was through printed media, but times have changed and now you can easily share and publish information online even your very own eBook!Today, it's a new ball game and many are finding success writing and publishing eBooks. eBooks are the new Model T...easy to produce, low cost, quick to market and can even add revenue to your bottom line. Here are 3 ways publishing an eBook can help you succeed in your creative business:1. Build your Brand: Share your knowledge and build your brand. Knowledge is power and people need a reason to follow you, listen to you and tell others about you. Sharing your knowledge gives them a reason to follow, listen and tell others about you ultimately strengthening your brand and setting you up for long-term success.2. Build your Business: Sharing your knowledge through an eBook allows others to recognize you as a leading authority in your subject. When people are looking for individuals accomplished in your area, you will have a greater opportunity to close those opportunities and grow your business. 3. Add New Revenue: Sharing your knowledge doesn't mean it has to be free. Of course it's always a good thing when you're starting out to give something away to increase awareness and exposure, and you can easily build a series of eBooks and give them away to increase the sales of your products and other services or sell them at a reasonable price adding a new revenue stream to your business. So, what do you think? Wanna give it a try and write an eBook? Here are some tips to help you get a jump start on creating your own eBook:eBooks can range anywhere from as short as 2 pages to as long as 100 pages. You can also publish a series of shorter eBooks that become chapters of a much larger eBook so that you can publish often and in no time create a great resource. eBooks can easily be created in Microsoft Word (or any program you find comfortable), but should always be saved as a PDF document. A PDF document is safer, easier to share and compatible with most eReaders.eBooks can be reasonably priced between $2 and $20 and can easily be sold through your blog using services like E-junkie and now Meylah's Digital Product capability.As you may know, Meylah has published two eBooks so far and will continue to publish an eBook every other month or so as a resource to help the creative community become more successful. All of our eBooks are FREE so be sure and download and share them:Meylah's eBook #1: Get Started with Social MediaMeylah's eBook #2: Creating Online Tutorials with Byte-Syze LearningBe sure and share your experience with writing and publishing an eBook as we'd love to hear it!Main image courtesy of William Hook

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What if we could change the world through play?

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You are finally seeing progress with your online shop, and one of your unique designs has just been mentioned in a small magazine – winning your store tons of attention. Things are taking off, just as you always hoped they would!Then, while browsing through a retail catalog, you notice something odd: "Is that ... No way!” You see an almost identical copy of your unique product!Companies have been creating copies or “knock-offs” of other companies' products for years. If you have ever exhibited at a trade show, you know that “snooping” – while discouraged – is difficult to police, and many competitors walk the floor after hours looking for ideas and taking pictures.Being online can help your business grow, but having every detail of your work displayed opens you up to having your product copied (especially if you are doing well!). Now that online markets are the hot places for style editors (and subsequently product designers and competitors) to spot trends, finding that you have been copied may be more likely than you might expect.Still, for many creative entrepreneurs, seeing nearly exact copies of their work often comes as a shock.Not To Worry, I Have A Copyright! (Right?)Surprisingly, copyrights and trademarks may not provide complete protection for your work. According to the attorneys we interviewed, copyright law protects some things, but not others.Joy Butler, author of the Cyber Citizen's Guide Through The Legal Jungle explains, “Copyright protects original creative works, including visual artwork and crafts. However, copyright protects only expression. It does not protect concepts or raw ideas. For example, if I create a figurine of a horse, anyone may duplicate my idea of producing a figurine of a horse - even if it is the exact same horse. What another may not do is duplicate the expressive elements I used in my figurine version of the horse. Expressive elements in visual artwork include the selection of lighting, shading, camera angle (for photographs).”"Expression" or expressive elements that are unique to your design are protected, but the law simply isn't black and white. An exact copy of your product would clearly violate copyright law, but when another company is "heavily inspired" by your original idea, it is difficult to prove they are in direct violation of the law.You may find that even if you have a copyright, a savvy imitator may be able to get away with producing a “legal” copy of something uncomfortably close to your work. What is the best thing you can do to protect your original products? Surprisingly, it is not necessarily taking legal action.Use Your Strengths: Your Speed To Market and Brand May Be Your Best DefenseJust as it has been for many years, being copied is often just a part of doing business. Of course, there are legal steps you can (and should) take to proactively protect your rights when bringing a new product to market or putting it in your online store. (Don't miss our upcoming article, “Tips From Legal Pros on Protecting Your Products.”)But, ironically, marketing your brand (yes, drumming up the attention that may have made you a target in the first place) is exactly what you should continue doing to fight imitators.Consumers generally prefer to purchase the “real” item, rather than its imitation, particularly when a product's popularity is at its peak. Phil Marcus, a lawyer for over 35 years specializing in intellectual property law, highlights the importance of leveraging the strengths of a small business:"Get to the market first," he says. “If you go back to the Pet Rock of the 1970s, anyone could have thought of the idea but Gary Dahl did it, and by the time anyone could market "cuddly pebble," for example, he had made his millions. No large company can make and market a great new craft quickly - too many layers of decisions.”Photo courtesy of where are the joneses.

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Terri Conrad Designs Giveaway!

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Though many of us dread the end of summer / back to school period, there is an upside to this time of year: Structure.Structure, planning and time-management are key to success in education and in business, particularly for those who want to be their own boss. Even if we're no longer students, the start of the new school year is a great time to refresh goals and action plans.Here are 5 ways to structure your efforts for a more successful creative business.1. Time for a new schedule. It's great that you're using a blog to boost your creative business. But rather than blogging randomly, take the time to create an editorial calendar. It's simply a list of blog post ideas that are assigned to dates. No more writer's block. Once you've got a list of ideas in front of you, all you have to do is sit down and write!2. Get your homework done. Then play. Rather than getting sucked into TV every night, think about using that time to get homework done for your creative business, whether it's social media strategy or creating new business cards. Decide on one or two shows you really want to watch, but get your homework done in time to watch them.3. Learn something new. As kids, we learn new skills and delve into different topics each year of school, but as adults, we often narrow our horizons. If there's something you want to learn or accomplish, decide to make it a project with a start and end date, and schedule time to spend on it weekly.4. Set deadlines. You don't need a teacher for this – if you are your own boss, it's all up to you. Having self-imposed deadlines will help keep momentum up and get you to the next level.5. Plan to ace big tests. Look forward to the big annual "events" for your business, like major craft fairs, holiday sales or new product launches. Think about how best to schedule your time to ace them and be the best in your class!Can you share any tips on how you structure your work for success? Photo courtesy of Pink Sherbet Photography.

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With online stores, photographs are the only way of communicating to a potential customer what your product looks like, so capturing it perfectly in one shot is imperative. I scouted some amazing product photography online and talked to the people behind those photographs for their tips and advice on effective product photography.Tip #1: Create Dimension & PersonalityHaving a sense of depth adds more interest to a photograph. Jennifer Herrick and Janet Thomas from Pretty N Preppy have a fun quirk to their product photographs. They sell travel mugs, bottles and lavender sachets among their other items, and manage to make these inanimate objects seem like they have a mind of their own. When I look at their water bottle photographs (shown in the main image above), I think of those bottles as children waiting along a wall for their turn in a game of Red Rover. Jennifer and Janet recommend using depth in product photographs, and you can definitely see that they’ve used it to their advantage in their photographs. By placing and focusing on the product in the foreground and placing other items in the distant background, it really creates dimension in the image. Their main aim was to create a sense of fun in their photography and said that their photos that have dimension are their most successful. Tip #2: Keep a Signature StyleYou don’t need to confine your branding simply to your logo and printed materials – the way you style and photograph your products can also represent your brand and style. Lavinia Hanachiuc, the owner of the gorgeous store Alma Pottery has displayed her products with clean, simple, beautiful photography (shown in the second image above). I was drawn to her products because the way they are photographed looks like something straight out of a Design or Lifestyle magazine. Notice that she keeps the background of her photographs in the white tonal ranges, with soft and delicate textures in the background. Her ceramicware is soft and delicate, so she does a great job with repeating that in the background of her images. Tip #3: Convey Beauty yet ProportionLavinia explained to me that not only should a store’s product photos be aesthetically pleasing, but they should also give an indication of proportion. She highlights jewelry as an item that definitely would need to convey some sense of scale in the store photographs, and she recommends including a few objects in the background to help the customer get an idea for the piece’s size.Tip #4: Tell a StoryYour customers are looking at your product to be part of their lives. Photographing your product in a ‘scene’ will help them to picture it in their own story. Claire from This Neck of the Woods does a great job telling a story with her photos of her lovely garlands and mobiles (shown in the third image above). She advises to photograph at different angles and distances and to bring other objects into the photo to help you think of the product in a different way. She also adds that bringing in other pieces will help add to the mood of the picture. Lavinia agrees with this point, and shared with me that she starts by thinking about how she personally feels about the piece and then models her shoot around capturing that feeling in the photograph to build her story.Thank you, ladies, for sharing your tips with us! If any of you have any product display and photography advice, please let us know!Dionne Christiansen is a graphic designer based in Houston, Texas. She is the face behind the Etsy store City of Dionne, and blogs at Notes From Dionne.

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Respond by September 8, 2010, for a chance to win some fun creative prizes!

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Tackling product photography, especially as a beginner can be an incredibly daunting task. Oftentimes I feel that people (including myself) get so wrapped up in taking the perfect product shot that it winds up pulling them away from where they should really be focusing, which is on creating the products that brought them into this industry in the first place.I truly believe there is beauty in simplicity when it comes to product shots. Here are a few seemingly common sense, but valuable lessons I’ve learned along the way:Focus on your Product If you’re exerting all your energy trying to find the perfect props, you may want to take a step back to really evaluate what those props are doing to improve the quality of your image. If the purpose of the prop(s) is to display the product in its’ best light or if it serves a purpose (such as a metal tree for jewelers to display earrings while hanging) then it’s worthwhile. On the other hand, if your props are a distraction, remove them from your photo. Your concentration should be focused on making your items unique rather than their surroundings!Be ConsistentTry to create a theme for your product shots through consistent backgrounds and props. This doesn’t mean you have to be boring! Again, as I mentioned above, the key is to avoid distractions. I try to use solid colored backgrounds, either black or bright colored and I typically take images of my products with river rock or metal trees as my props.Start Slow and Build From ThereDon’t try to make every aspect of your pictures perfect from the get go. When I started taking product shots, my biggest struggle was managing the lighting in my shots. Once I figured out how to capture good lighting for my products, I moved on to the props and backgrounds I wanted to use, and so forth. Becoming a good photographer doesn’t happen overnight, but if you're patient, you’ll develop the necessary skills, and before you know it, other people will be asking you for photography advice!Let us know what your style is and how you manage your product shots!Main image courtesy of Silvio Tanaka

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You can stencil on vinyl, so don't throw out that old shade!

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Recently I read a blog by Julien Smith titled Life Doesn't Start Tomorrow about getting the things you'd like to get done accomplished today. He made the point that "If you don't want to do it now, you clearly don't want it bad enough." We all have those "to-do's" that we dread, the ones that get carried over from day-to-day and week-to-week. The type of tasks that stare at you from sticky notes on your mirror and dashboard and, if left too long, wake you up at night.So, today I'd like to encourage you to take care of one of the"to-do's" nagging at you. Believe me, you'll feel rewarded when you get to cross that item off your list or tear up and throw away that sticky note.I'd love to know what you are going to tackle! Come back and report on your progress or send us a Tweet to let us know how you're doing!Main image courtesy of Mr.Pessimist

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