New! Free Advertising for Indie Businesses

[Donna]

New! Free Advertising for Indie Businesses

We’re making a big change! Amy and I are pleased to announce that, starting on Tuesday, March 16th, Crochetville members who have an indie crochet-, fiber-, or craft-related business can talk about their business on Crochetville for free. Such businesses would include crocheters, designers, spinners, yarn dyers, fiber artists, and any other type of crafter.

 

For complete details on how you can promote your indie crochet-, fiber-, or craft-related business on Crochetville, please read our Free Advertising for Indie Businesses Policies.

 

Additionally, we still have very affordable above-the-fold banner ads available to crochet- or fiber-related businesses of any size. (Indie businesses pay only half our regular banner rate.) If you’re not sure where your business fits, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

 

New! Indie Business Group

We’re discontinuing Marketplace Subscriptions but retaining some of the additional features of the Marketplace in a new user group called Indie Business. Any Crochetville member who has reached Villager status (edit: We've opened this up to all Crochetville members!) who is operating a legitimate indie business can request to join the Indie Business group for free. Since this is a business group, you must have an official business to qualify for membership in this group.

 

Members in this group will have the following additional benefits: the ability to include an image ad (any size up to 210 x 100 pixels/40 KB) for their business in their signature, an increased private message (PM) limit (1,000 instead of the standard 500), and an INDIE pixel icon next to their user name/avatar to designate them as an Indie Business.

 

For complete details about the Indie Business group and how to join, please read the Indie Business Group section of our Free Advertising for Indie Businesses Policies.

 

If you are a current or expired Marketplace Subscriber, a current CBC (Crochet Business Center) member, or a Professional Member who is indie, we will automatically add you to the Indie Business group by Tuesday, March 16th so you don’t need to make this request.

 

More Information

If you’re interested in reading more about the upcoming changes, we’ve written some Q&A that cover more details in the next post in this thread.

 

If you have any questions you don’t see the answer to here, please post a reply here or contact us.

[Donna]

More Detailed Q&A About the Upcoming Changes

 

What will happen to the Crochet Business Center (CBC)?

Because the CBC has been a private forum, we will move existing threads to a private archive. Then the CBC will be a public forum where any Crochetville member can post. Also, several subforums within the CBC will be consolidated into a CBC subforum called Selling Crochet.

 

What will happen to the Advertiser Show-and-Tell forum?

The Advertiser Show-and-Tell forum will be closed to new posts and threads. All advertisers (both current and expired) will be given the ability to move their own threads out of Advertiser Show-and-Tell and into the appropriate regular Show-and-Tell forums. (Don’t worry; we’ll have easy-to-follow instructions. EDIT: Instructions have now been posted!)

 

As an indie business owner, when you post in the regular Show-and-Tell forums, you may post projects you have made from patterns you have for sale and, if you wish, you may include your pattern links and/or prices.

 

What will happen to the Marketplace forum?

The main Marketplace forum will be closed to new posts and threads. Since there are only a few threads there, Amy and I will either move those threads to the appropriate forum or archive them if they are no longer useful because they are outdated. Then the Marketplace forum will be removed.

 

What will happen to the Meet Our Marketplace Advertisers forum?

The Meet Our Marketplace Advertisers forum will be renamed Introduce Your Indie Business and will be a subforum of the Shopping Strip forum. Any member of Crochetville will be able to start a thread describing their indie crochet-, fiber-, or craft-related business.

 

What will happen to the Patterns for Sale forum in the Marketplace?

The Patterns for Sale forum will be moved into the Original Patterns forum and any Crochetville member with an indie crochet-, fiber-, or craft-related business will be able to post about their patterns for sale.

 

What will happen to the Advertiser Sales and Coupons forum?

The Advertiser Sales and Coupons forum will be renamed Indie Business Sales and Coupons and will remain in the Shopping Strip forum. Any Crochetville member with an indie crochet-, fiber-, or craft-related business will be able to post about their sales and coupons.

 

Again, if you have any further questions, please post a reply here or contact us.

[Donna]

I just wanted to say that I am personally thrilled and excited about these new policies! I hope for all of you that you and your indie business will benefit from being a part of Crochetville!

[Amy]

I also wanted to say how excited I am about our new free advertising policies for our members with indie businesses! I hope these policies will help each indie business owner achieve new levels of success and recognition.

[Amy]

Requests to join the Indie Biz usergroup are starting to roll in. It's exciting to see that others share our excitement for this new program!

 

Whether or not you're an indie biz owner, feel free to let us know what you think of this new program.

 

Members, do you think the changes will make it easier for you to try to support the businesses of other members?

[RachelG]

This announcement surprised me a little, but it was a good surprise!

 

I've successfully put in my request to "advertise CPC" (I know, like that's necessary!)

[TurtleLvr]

This is awesome! Thank you so much Donna and AmyS!!!!

 

[CroJulee]

Yes!!! Thank you so much!! This REALLY made my day!! It's gonna be so much easier to drum up business now. Things have been so slow lately.

 

Thanks again!!!

 

Julee

[moomooo]

Thank You soooo much Donna and Amy this is like a wish come true..

You ladies are just always looking out for us in every ways you can and this is great and so much appreciated..

God bless you ...for all you do....

hugs

[Donna]

Thank you, RachelG! I hope everybody is pleasantly surprised!

 

TurtleLvr, CroJulee, and moomooo, you are very welcome!!

[Katchkan]

This is wonderful. I think it will be great for Crochetville and the Independant designers on the site.

[auntbubbels]

Sounds very exciting - you two have been very busy and you know, we all appreciate all the work that you do

[Donna]

Thank you, Katchkan and auntbubbels!

[Amy]

Thanks, everyone! We really do hope these new changes will lead to great things for all our indie designer/biz members.

[Donna]

We've decided to start adding people to the Indie Business user group now. We're going to have a lot to do on Tuesday with all actual changes to the forums we mentioned.

 

We'll add people as they request it and, as already mentioned, we'll also include current and expired Marketplace Subscribers, CBC Members, and Professional Members who are indie.

 

The INDIE pixel icon will be active now (so that people can see they've been added to the group), and the rest (sig image and increased PM limit) will go into effect on Tuesday.

 

So you should be seeing your Indie Business pixel icons soon! I'll be working on it.

[RoseRed]

Just to clarify - this is for the Etsy sellers and hook makers among us?

 

Pleasantly shocked is more like it. What an awesomely cool thing you guys are doing.

[Donna]

Just to clarify - this is for the Etsy sellers and hook makers among us?

 

Yep, Etsy sellers, people who make hooks or stitch markers, Ravelry Pattern Store, Patternfish, patterns for sale on your blog, etc. (Can't think of any more off the top of my head.) The venue isn't important, as long as you are indie.

 

Pleasantly shocked is more like it. What an awesomely cool thing you guys are doing.

 

Thank you!

[jimbo]

That's fantastic news, you guys!! I'm going ahead and asking the obvious bone head question....and at the risk of displaying my abbynormal IQ... what's an "Indie"? At first I thought oh, its folks from Indiana, but then thought hay you wouldn't do that. Then I thought oh its Indiana Jones fans. Then when I really strained hard, I came up with Indie as in "Independent", as in not affilliated with a chain or the like. Then smoke started pouring out my ears and I had to quit thinking and go get a drink of water....

[Donna]

Yep! You're right, Jimbo, indie means independent. It's a term that has been associated particularly with music for some time, but it's also well established in the craft community.

[Amy]

Yep! You're right, Jimbo, indie means independent. It's a term that has been associated particularly with music for some time, but it's also well established in the craft community.

 

And also the handcrafted soapmaking/skincare/mineral cosmetic communities, which are also pretty creative/crafty in nature.

[samijofitz]

This is awesome, thank you guys from the bottom of my heart!

[Donna]

You're very welcome, Sami Jo!

[planetjune]

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Amy & Donna! This is a wonderful surprise! I really appreciate it, and I'm sure all the other indie biz owners here at Crochetville will too

[Chiscrochetcrazy]

Thank you so much Donna and Amy for making this great change Now I can post pics of things other than doll clothes

Many hugs

[Amy]

June and Alisha, you're very welcome! We have already added 99 members to the Indie Business usergroup!

 

Please be patient with us tomorrow morning as we enable all the changes. It's going to take a little bit of time to move forums around and get the correct posting permissions enabled everywhere.

 

I'm sure we have many more members who can take advantage of this program. Don't forget to Contact Us and let us know you want to take part! (Be sure to include a link to your business URL.)