Another Way To Earn From Home

Last week or so, I checked out Zlio as an alternative to CafePress and Etsy. I do make things (crafts, clothes, accessories, jewelry, etc.) by hand but I don't have time to make them consistently and sell them on Etsy...though I may consider it in the future if I can keep up. I finally have some free stock photos I can use for CafePress, but I haven't opened up a shop yet...mainly, I think, because I want any designs, etc. to be my own and I'm still looking into how to go about copyrighting them.

I came across Zlio in a blog I found through either Entrecard or The Website Owners Zone (WOZone). His blog is great and can be found at http://moneyfromnothing.blogspot.com/

I checked it out and saw you can open up to 50 shops (I had previously thought 20) and earn 10% commissions on all sales. They give you the products to add, meaning that it takes you longer than the 5 minutes they pitch to you it'll take to set up. It takes 5 minutes to get the shop, but hours to set it up with inventory. I've been steadily adding for days, a bit at a time, and now have between 500-600 items in stock.

They also have a feature that allows you to give your own descriptions of the products and a good description will boost it from 0 to a higher visibility on search engines (it takes at least a 35 to even show up on a search). These are name brand products and I was disappointed that the descriptions the companies already have up only have a 0 visibility because adding one that is good enough to get seen takes forever when you're dealing with lots of products. It took me, I know, about 15-20 minutes to get a 40 visibility rating for only one product...the time really adds up!

Honestly, I gave up after a while and put more focus into adding enough inventory to match my shop's chosen variety. Descriptions are for later on, even though I feel they are necessary for a higher degree of success with any shop that's created. I see now why most people specialize...it's on my to-do list for future stores, since this is my "starter shop" for tweaking on to figure out how the site works.

If you're looking for a new stream of income and you've got the extra time for well-thought-out descriptions and lots of inventory management (once it's set up, it only needs maintained and updated as often as you see fit), I do recommend looking into Zlio as another opportunity for earning from home. Check it out to see if it's for you or check out my shop to see an example of what you'd get signing up (many templates are available).

http://www.zlio.com/

http://for-the-home-etc.zlio.net/