Let’s face it… Everyone could use some extra money, why not make some using custom decals and laptop skins? Whether you own a business that is seeking a new revenue stream or you’re a freelancer working at home looking for a little residual income, earning more money is always a welcome idea.

If you have previously tried to sell art online without success, then you are now in luck because sticviews has recently announced a new way for any business, creative professional, or freelancer to provide digital content on customized products to sell from an existing website.

While traditional wall art may not be flying off the shelves, the personalization market is experiencing immense growth. Just look at the success of Zazzle and SkinIt for proof. Many people do not just want to buy a standard case for their cell phone, but rather a custom skin with their own words and photos. Everyone wants something unique, and sticviews products offer just that. Now, you can make more money online, providing popular custom products to your customers or clients, as well.

Perfect for those with a busy lifestyle and little extra time, sticviews takes care of all aspects of producing and shipping product orders that come in from our partner companies. Once your website is set up to take orders and communicate with our printing platform API (or Application Programming Interface), the process requires no constant monitoring or further action on your end. This truly is a turn-key solution where sticviews takes care of all aspects of the production process.

For instance, let’s say a photographer decides to utilize the sticviews platform to offer her customers a way to order photos (from their recent photo shoot) on custom skins and decals. After integrating her website with our API, customer orders start rolling in. The customer chooses their desired product (possibly a laptop skin or wall decal), desired image, and desired size. The order is then sent straight to sticviews (through the API), where it will be printed, packaged, and shipped to the customer under the photographer’s brand. The photographer never has to perform any additional work, and the customer never has to know that sticviews was involved.

Talk about a simple way to sell art online.

Even better, our platform is not just beneficial to photographers, but to nearly any type of business that may have digital content. Other ideal business uses include (but are not limited to):

·         t-shirt companies to sell decals and skins and stickers

·         décor companies to make custom furniture skins

·         video game developers to sell in-game snap shots as products

·         high volume printers that want to offer personalized skins to their customers

Could you benefit from such a simple printing platform? If so, signing up is as simple as requesting more information.

Questions about how you can sell your art online? Feel free to contact us at contactus@sticviews.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdpm4KtSdqk

Custom Window Art with Window Decals and Window Stickers

As you can see in the first image (before) her front door was a plain white door with a single clear glass panel.  With Brooke being the designer she is the possibilities were endless when sticviews reached out to her.  Her final decision was to create a pattern in Illustrator to create her own custom window decal.  Check out her blog about sticviews window decals for more information.

The custom window decal turned out great!  It’s light enough that you can still see through the window clearly, but when Brooke or her husband pull the shade down you are left with a soft pattern and the letter of her last name.  This is such a great idea that I’m thinking about doing the same thing to my screen door of my apartment!

Some other great ideas for window decals:

• Stick up your favorite artwork (scan it in and submit it on the sticviews site).
• Search our gallery for a great landscape image and stick up a great view.
• Stick up a wrought iron decal.  There are several different styles available in our gallery.
• Stick up some great family photos.  You could use clear or white vinyl for this one.
• Stained glass decals would look great on a glass door!
• The possibilities are endless, what is your idea?

Custom window decals are an affordable way to change the look of your entry way without getting a whole new door!  And you could change it every season – or when you’re tastes change!

Keep Stic’n

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmzYQDkvrwE

We created a new easy-to-use navigation scheme to help users browse our products in the categories of skins, décor and decals.  Each product page now features an image gallery, top selling favorite designs, video demos and tutorials; not to mention featured blogs about the specific product.

New gallery module on site to display different ideas for decals.

The new Sticviews website features relevant blogs, videos and a favorites module on each product page.

In the next couple of months we will launch several more product pages, and hopefully have an exhaustive list of our custom decals by summertime.  The great thing about custom decals is that the creative possibilities are endless, so anytime we or you have a new idea for using sticviews decals we can post that offering to our website.  Have an idea for a sticviews custom decal that you don’t see featured on our site?  Let us know in the contact us section of our site.

There's a whole section dedicated to teaching you how to customize your decal!

We’ve revamped the help section, and will continue to add more help information as consumers present different questions about sticviews decals.  There’s also a thorough tops section full of great ideas and information about how to design and install your custom decals.

We have a new community section that focuses on our social media presence and our online communities.  This section includes information featured on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr to keep you in the know about sticviews.  Sticviews uses the social networking sites to showcase decal ideas from the company and consumer side.  Have a great idea for a stic?  You can head over to our Facebook fan page to upload an image of your custom decal or post a comment about your idea for your own custom decal.  We also will be incorporating an area where we can feature bloggers we are working with to show off their use of sticviews.

We’d love to hear your feedback about what you like and don’t like about our new site.  Leave us a comment, contact us on Twitter or visit our Facebook page!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-0KZSe7EKU

Kids Wall Stickers and Kids Wall Murals

Another great use of sticviews:  Have a stool that your kids use?  Why not spruce up the stool with a custom photo sticker of your child?  A great quick way to add some style.  I love the way Missy decorated her child’s stool.  The black and white image looks great on an antique-looking stool!  Another great way to use custom photo decals from sticviews – way to go How Does She team!

Another great use for sticviews, also from the How Does She team, is to use pictures of your kids as labels for storage boxes.  You know all the things your kids bring home from school or church?  Maybe projects or drawings that you want to save?  You can order 3″x3″ photos of each of your kids and stick them to these plastic bins.  Not only is it easier to remember who’s box is who’s, but it also looks better than sticking a white label on the front.  And adding the photo makes the storage space look more polished using sticviews custom photo stickers.

Sticviews offers great ways to organize your stuff with a custom style.  Not to mention it doesn’t ruin any surfaces and you can re-stick them anywhere!  Using cloth stic would be best recommended for organization purposes so you really can re-stick them anywhere!

Sticviews is offering a $10 discount on the first 100 orders before February 18th if you use the promotional code “HowDoesShe.”
How would you use sticviews to organize your life?

Keep Sticin’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPKE6FImgU0

So, you’ve started a blog or a business and you’re building a following – now what?  Now is the time to start really learning from the experts.  Tradeshows and conferences are a great way to meet other entrepreneurs in your business area and learn from the best in the industry.  For example, conferences such as Blissdom and BlogHer are for the women bloggers, SxSW for music, film and interactive, Blog World Expo for all bloggers, and many more tradeshows are great opportunities to learn from others.  Sticviews is sponsoring Amy Locurto and Angie Arthur of I Heart Faces for the Blissdom conference this February, and we wanted to pass along some useful hints for being prepared to attend your conference.

1. Business Cards – We just got some really awesome business cards from moo.com and we’re really excited to get them shipped in. Hopefully we’ll have them in time for the next Social Media Club Dallas event with Chris Brogan on the 21^st!  Business cards are a great way to give your contact information to people you meet and helps you follow up with people after the conference is over.  You can always go with innovative creative designs like the ones on Web Designer Depot.  TIP: Make sure to put your social network contact information on your cards (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc) – many people forget! And you could always be creative. Amy Locurto handed out her business cards with a little Valentine’s Day sticker gift – no one threw those away!
   
   

   

2. Create a list before you go of questions you’d like answered or specific people you want to seek out. You don’t want to miss the opportunity to talk to someone who has more experience in particular areas that could really be of benefit to you and your website.  TIP: You can tweet about your questions too!  If you don’t have a smart phone or a laptop for the weekend I recommend you borrowing one for the weekend.
3. Laptop skins – If you are a known blogger, or a beginner, getting a laptop skin with your blog name or banner on it really helps people put a face to the name of your blog. What a great way to promote your blog through technology.  Angie and Amy from I Heart Faces received their laptop skins from sticviews. Remember…it’s hard to recognize faces, but it helps when people can recognize your blog banner or twitter profile photo.  Amy Locurto recommends putting your blog banner and your Twitter photo on the laptop skin works great.
4. iPhone skins – Do you have an iPhone or another smart phone? You can get custom decals to fit on the back of your phone (see below) to also promote your blog.
   
5. T-shirts – This is always a fun thing to have around. Another great way to make your brand known while walking around a conference. Nomee handed out free t-shirts at the Twestival event last year – great way to build awareness and recognition of your brand.
   
6. Camera – You never know who you are going to meet at the conference, and it’s a great way to showcase things you saw when you blog about your experience.
7. Do some research on the presenters of the conference. It’s good to come in well prepared to soak up the knowledge they have to offer without having to figure out who the people are before hand.
8. Mints or gum – you are going to be doing a lot of talking, and you should pay the favor to your neighbor!

There are always lists on the conference sites of extra things to bring, but this list is pretty comprehensive of things you need to bring!  Is there something you won’t go to a conference without?  Let us know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX5WS5JpODk

So, what is nomee?  According to the CEO of nomee, Kevin Mokarow, “nomee is a tiny app that harnesses the power of the entire social web, integrating more than 140 social sites and giving users one dashboard to follow and publish on the entire social web.”

What does this mean for the sticviews brand?  It means that sticviews consumers are able to see all of sticviews social media content through one application (below).  What a great way to manage your social media content for yourself and for your followers – not to mention a great way for you to follow other people.

What does this mean for a company?  Mokarow explains that nomee allows for an increase in customer engagement.  “Instead of waiting and hoping for users to stumble across your social content online, nomee delivers it to customers live 24/7.”

That means they can be used for any variety of fun, creative projects.

The jr. cheerleading squad of Brooke (daughter of sticview’s CEO, Bryce) have been using a creative storage and seating solution for when they cheer on their football teams – buckets decorated with custom decals. They function as chairs when they’re not jumping up and down during their spirited cheers, and they serve as storage for their pom poms and other props when the game’s over. Each bucket is decorated with custom decals printed with their team mascot – a bear, and they’re also personalized with the name of each cheerleader. Not only are the custom sticker labels decorative, but they also let every girl know where to put her things and where to sit when there’s down-time.

For Brooke’s cheerleading squad, they made 10 x 15 in. custom stickers on sticviews.com by uploading a graphic of their Bears logo in Step 3, adding their names with the text editor, and choosing white stic for their sticker material. The buckets had previously been decorated with paint markers and permanent markers, but they faded and rubbed off with wear and tear. Because sticviews are waterproof, durable, and easy to apply, sticviews custom decals were a perfect way to re-vamp the cheerleaders’ bucket chairs.

These were the cheerleaders’ bucket chairs before they applied sticviews custom decals:

Sticviews Custom Kids Decals and Stickers

The photos below show the jr. cheerleaders enjoying their newly personalized bucket chairs and showing their spirit!

Sticviews Custom Kids Decals and Stickers

Design your own custom skins, decals, and labels for your next project on sticviews.com!

Things I’ve learned so far:

1. It matters how you present yourself visually.
   In many cases now, people’s first impression of you comes from your online personality. Having a well designed profile page is like having a smile and being well-dressed when you meet someone in person.
2. Social media is personal!
   You really need to put yourself out there if you want people to interact with you, trust you, listen to you, etc. People seem to respond more to a real person than a faceless company.
3. People don’t like spam, duh.
   But when you’re on the other side of things, it gets harder to tell whether or not you’re spamming! It takes time to be thoughtful about how to tell people about yourself, your company, or your product without being pushy or irrelevant.
4. Put out content that people will naturally want to share.
   Your networks should naturally start expanding if people start telling their friends how cool you are or how cool the stuff you talk about is. Get people to care about what you have to say.
5. Talk with people, not at them.
   Invite a conversation. You ain’t no preacher! Unless… you are a preacher, haha! (speaking of… I follow @PastorMark on Twitter)
6. The technology and the standards are always changing!
   You want to be relevant, so keep up! Also, you have to be picky about what new technologies you want to use. Don’t download every new application there is – just the ones you will really use.

So naturally, since I’m a n00b at this, I have some questions for the more experienced users of social media:

• When does content get too spam-y? When do you cross the line?
• Is it okay to put out interesting/viral content that isn’t related to your product? How effective is it if you get a lot of people sharing your content but never remember what you’re selling or who you are?
• How personal is too personal?
• Is it worth it to buy an iPhone/smart phone so I can stay connected 24/7?

So, now, I need your help! I welcome differing opinions, links to good articles that will help me, or stories of how you’ve effectively used social media in marketing. Leave a comment, or chat with me on Facebook or Twitter

Check out sticviews’ Facebook, Twitter, and/or Youtube and give me some feedback on how me and Kat have been doing with our Social Marketing.

Cheers,
Sonya

sticviews always looks to partner with good companies and causes,

so when my friend Ryan, organizer of the annual Helping Hands benefit concert, asked me if he could print some custom decals for the concert, sticviews was happy to help. Ryan wanted to sell sticviews and t-shirts at the concert to benefit the non-profit organization, The Lord’s Hands & Hearts, which serves the homeless in Dallas by offering a meal,  clothing, and providing love and encouragement to reinforce their ability to be stable, productive members of society. Helping Hands was able to raise a total of $1,862 for the cause, and sticviews was proud to contribute to the event. Visit sticviews.com if you’d like to print custom decals for your next event, and contact us if you’d like us to promote it with you.

Visit The Lord’s Hands & Hearts website if you’d like donate food and supplies to them or volunteer with them.

If you’d like to be involved with Helping Hands 2010, contact Ryan at theryanchen@gmail.com or Megan at megsoh@gmail.com. Tell them how you’d like to support their efforts.

Custom Decals, Auto Stickers and Auto Decals

This was one of many examples of what sticviews can be used for. Here’s a couple reasons why sticviews custom decals are perfect for events:

• They can be used for fundraising. Supporters can either buy a custom decal, or they can donate x-amount and get a sticviews to show they donated.
• They promote a cause/company by being used as car decals, window decals, laptop skins, and you can even use these custom decalsto skin your cell phones, instruments, and more!
• Sticviews custom decals are always customizable, so you can upload an image of your cause/company’s logo and make it the exact size of whatever you want to stic.
• They’re great for easy decorating. They’re inexpensive, and they won’t blow away like banners and posters. They also come off clean, so you don’t have to worry about cleaning up a gummy, papery mess (yuck!).

We’re looking forward to sponsoring many events and causes in the future! Get updates about what sticviews is up to next by subscribing to this blog, becoming our Facebook fan, or follow us on Twitter.

Until next time,
Sonya
(follow me on twitter.com/sonyato)

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0XG-P_KVnc

My name is Sonya To,

and I’m one of the interns in the sticviews Social Marketing Team. I’ve been with the team since June 2009, and it’s been a blast being paid to write blogs, Twitter, and Facebook all day! Here’s a few tidbits about me:

• I just graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas, where I got a BA in Arts and Technology.
• I have a passion for design (I like making things functional and pretty), food (eating’s my favorite hobby), and music (I sing, play guitar, piano, and clarinet).
• I do some graphic and web design on the side, but I’ve been loving social media marketing since I’ve started training/learning about it at sticviews.
• Now for some random facts: I sneeze REALLY loud, I love soup (I don’t know why), I sometimes talk in weird cartoon-y voices without realizing it (awkward…), and one day, I’d like to be able to speak another language fluently (I speak conversational Cantonese, but definitely not fluently).

Be lookin’ out for blog entries from me, and follow me on Twitter – twitter.com/sonyato for random updates and links to things I like. If you really like me (and vice versa), you can friend me on Facebook – facebook.com/sonyato.

<- Yes, I’m kinda goofy.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0XG-P_KVnc