Blog Banners and Backgrounds - Laycock Designs » Online stores and selling

Elayne’s has a new Ning Social Network site to match her blog!

Michelle — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 01:34:31 +0000

Elayne Forgie asked me to set up a blog banner and Ning banner on her blog and her new Social Network site. She also found yet another great use for the banner she ordered by using it on her Store site! Elayne’s banner only needed a few adjustments to be added to her Ning site. Build your own Social Network for use by your customers here!

View Elayne’s Ning Site

View Elayne’s matching Blog Here

View Elayne’s matching Storefront Here

Don’t you just LOVE how everything coordinates nicely?

Elayne’s new Ning and Blog banner:

Elayne’s new "Order Now" button:

Her new watermark:

Her new post siggy:

Elayne’s Favicon:

Do you plan on starting your own Ning Social Networking site? I can resize your existing banner like I did for Elayne. Resizing and installing your banner on your Ning site is only $10! A custom Favicon for your Typepad blog and your Ning site can be created and installed for $3. Catch the Ning fever! Start your own forums! Ning forums include video as well as photo upload options! Get your customers talkin’ and interactin’ on Ning! You can make your forum public or keep it password protected! Versatile and easy to use.

More recent banners

Michelle — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 14:08:26 +0000

I’m working like a crazy woman to get stuff done this weekend!

Here are more recent banners I’ve done…

Judy Caban’s new banner:

Jean Delaney’s new banner:

Cindy Soto’s new banner:

Elizabeth Sloman’s new banner:

Carol Matthews’ new banner:

PayPal Storefront Photo upload instructions for Typepad

Michelle Laycock — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:45:09 +0000

I took some time today to upload some items for sale in my PayPal store widget at the right. I’ve had many people ask me for help. It really is quite easy!

Typepad Users:
Find photos of the items you’d like to sell.
Go to "Control Panel"
Then go to "Files"
Upload the photos you’d like featured in your PayPal Store widget
In a new window, have your PayPal Administration site open at the same time
Click on the name of your photo in your list of files on Typepad to open in a new window
Copy/Paste the URL for this photo into your PayPal Administration Product Detail window. Click on the arrow.
Your photo will upload
Do each the same way.
Then update your storefront!

HINT: Include shipping cost in your price. It appears there isn’t an option to add shipping fee at this time.

Sell your creations on your blog with a PayPal storefront

Michelle Laycock — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 19:36:52 +0000

I just took the new PayPal Storefront Widget for a test drive. The PayPal storefront was released today and I was excited to try it.

First, I was asked to sign in to my PayPal account.

There is an orange button to click on that says "Create New Storefront".

You will see a new store created for you on the right sidebar.

Click on your store and you will access an editing tool to customize your store.

Step 1 is to Modify your Storefront

You have a choice of themes and colors. Then you can enter a title and a store logo if you have one. The store logo should be 60×35. For my blog banner customers who’d like to get a matching logo for their PayPal storefront, I can include one in my regular price for no extra charge.

You can also change the color of the text in your storefront.

The next option is to describe your shipping policies, contact information and any additional notes to potential buyers such as "satisfaction guaranteed".

Listing your products is the next step. Enter your product name, price, description, and a photo. There are several options from which you can choose:

Show all products (great if you only have a few items for sale)
Show currently selected product (for those with lots of product and would like to highlight one item)
Rotate product pages (for those who would like a rotating selection of products)

You may show how many of your product is available. Then, when your item sells, you have a choice of showing product as sold out, or hiding the product until inventory is restocked.

There is an option available for opening and closing your store. If you need to close your store temporarily, choose that option and provide a message to your customers if you’d like! You can also indicate that your customers can still shop while your store is closed and leave a note saying that shipping will be delayed.

This widget is easy to use and configure. One drawback is that the widget itself can’t be re-sized to fit in a smaller width blog sidebar. For example, view my test storefront in the right sidebar of this blog. Notice that with a three column blog, I needed to increase the sidebar pixels of the blog so the storefront would fit. Bloggers using a two-column layout should not have this problem.

On another note, I tried editing this widget using older versions of Internet Explorer and FireFox. I was not able to use the editing tool. If you have an older browser, you may need to upgrade to make use of this widget.

Lastly, you will need to "Publish your Storefront". If you are using Typepad, you will have the option of choosing the "Typepad" option and following the instructions. If you are using Blogger, Wordpress or another platform, you may copy/paste the code into your source code where you’d like your store to appear.

Next step: I will need to upload something to sell and test how this widget handles the transaction! That is the subject of another blog post!

Etsy Mini Shop Widget

Michelle Laycock — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 09:54:14 +0000

I’ve found a great little widget stampers can add to their blogs… it is a mini shop for their Etsy store!

1. Login to Etsy (if you are not a member, there is a link in the right sidebar)
2. Click on "Your Etsy"
3. Find "Etsy Mini" in the left sidebar and click on it
4. Configure the look and content of your Etsy Mini
5. Copy the code to your blog!

Voila! a mini store on your blog!