Digital Scrapbooking Business - 5 Minutes to Success!

If you are considering your own digital scrapbooking business as a way to get out of the rat race and make a good living working from home then I'm about to give you the 5 minute secret to your success.

That's about how long it will take you to read this piece - possibly less - and in a nutshell it contains everything you need to know to take your scrapbook business to any level you like.

Oh, and it'll cost you less than fifty dollars to start.

Ready?

OK, first thing you're going to need is to get yourself on the internet. Go get a proper dot com domain name so you look like a pro. Under ten dollars for a whole year.

Next you need some hosting for a blog or website. Get professional hosting, not free. This is a digital scrapbooking business you're running - emphasis on the word business. You don't want to look like an amateur. Depending on the deal this can cost you between six and nine dollars a month.

I'd recommend a blog rather than a traditional website and I'd recommend WordPress. It gets in the search engines quicker, it's easier to run and more customer friendly. WordPress is free and has a huge number of themes so you can customize its appearance and plug-ins to extend it's abilities. It can do virtually anything your scrapbook business needs.

If you don't have Word or a page-layout program get a copy of OpenOffice (free) so you can create sample digital scrapbooks. Save them as PDF format so that you can offer them as free downloads from your blog.

Now subscribe to a mailing list/autoresponder management service so that you can collect names and email addresses of visitors to your blog. This is absolutely vital and can dramatically increase your income. Your free digital scrapbook download should be offered in exchange for their details. This will cost you just under twenty dollars a month and will repay that investment over and over again.

Depending on your precise scrapbooking business model, find a couple of affiliate programs that you can promote alongside your own business for additional income. Any reputable scrapbook affiliate program will be free to join.

Finally promote your digital scrapbooking business via your blog posts and article marketing. Both free and extremely effective.

Is our five minutes up?

OK, you might think this article is a bit tongue in cheek, and clearly there's a lot more flesh to put on these bones, but the above really is all you need to create the framework for your own digital scrapbooking business. Building it from part-time pennies to substantial full-time money is just a question of putting in a bit of effort.

Over the next few weeks I'll be expanding on each element to give you the bigger picture, and I would be more than happy to answer any questions you have. You'll find lots more free professional information and a wealth of scrapbook resources at Digital Scrapbooking Business where you can also download a valuable free report from well known scrapbooking teacher Dawn Stegall. If you're thinking about making money from scrapbooking you don't want to ignore help like this!

Digital Scrapbooking For the Ages

For most kids who have grown up with the internet, mastering the art of the digital scrapbook can be easily accomplished with a little assistance. That idea can be a difficult idea to fathom for adults, considering some of us are still learning how to properly save a JPEG.

For kids, working on computers and with the internet is nothing new - in fact, it's practically ingrained within their DNA. Helping them create fun digital scrapbooks on the computer is an excellent way for your child to continue to master the internet and to create some fun art projects to boot.

Get Focused

Help your child understand why he is creating a digital scrapbook in the first place to help him want to see the project through. Create a list of questions for your child such as Who, Where and Why? These questions can help the child start thinking about the purpose behind the digital scrapbook.

Who? Who is going in the scrapbook? Grandma? Daddy? Friends from school?

Where? Where should the scrapbook be located in time and space? Is it in a magical forest? New York City? At the North Pole? These ideas can help your child start categorizing to create the...

Why? Why are you making the digital scrapbook? Is it to show to friends, bring to show and tell? Give as a present to Daddy? Once your child understands the why, it will be easier for him to focus and not get overwhelmed by the hundreds of digital scrapbooking ideas and colorful digital scrapbooking layouts.

Shop Around

Once you know your child's theme, go through the paid and free scrapbooking sites on your own and pick out the scrapbook pages that match up with the theme your child has picked. Bookmark several of these pages and let your child pick out one to three choices, depending on the aptitude of your child.

Searching for these types of pieces ahead of time solves many common problems. Typically, when confronted with the hundreds of websites and pieces to choose from, a child will get overwhelmed or too excited, wanting to download and purchase everything. Then the project becomes about fighting over downloads rather than making the project you were planning on.

Find Tutorials

Depending on the age of your child, pull up some of the easy to understand tutorials found on many of the digital scrapbooking sites. These can help guide your child through simple to understand activities, such as cropping a photo to fit into a layout.

However, use your teaching wisely. Boring your child to tears will defeat the fun. Sometimes, the best way to teach is to talk your child through where to click on the keyboard and let him pick it up as he goes.

As with anything, patience is key. When you work on a digital scrapbook with your child, start small and be encouraging. Don't be surprised if he has a knack for it and ultimately, ends up teaching you new tricks.

Marie Perrow is a scrapbooking queen extraordinaire. She has been scrapbooking since she was 5. Her scrapbooking are gaining immense Find out more about her scrapbook layout, scrapbooking tools and scrapbook here.

Cropping and Matting Your Scrapbook Photos

There are many different aspects of making a scrapbook. These different things are what make a scrapbook unique and what make it different from an ordinary photo album. When it comes to these things, cropping and matting are important steps that help make your photos look great in your scrapbook for many years to come.

Cropping refers to removing unneeded background from your photos so that they look better or the photo only focuses on the most important part of the scene. Matting refers to putting a border around the photo, similar to a picture frame. This is usually done with paper, cardstock or matting materials.

Both of these techniques can help your scrapbook photos look their absolute best. The images will pop from your scrapbook and it can even add to the theme and the overall appeal of the book.

Cropping can be simple such as the type of digital cropping that is often used to edit a photo or it can be done with fancy shapes and styles to make the photo more interesting for a scrapbook. There are even scrapbooking tools to help you do this.

If you want to crop your photo, you need to first select the photo that you want to use. Then you want to choose a shape that's going to flatter the photograph that you have chosen. When cropping, you want to be sure you don't remove anything important from the background. Things like cars, houses or the background of where you';re at can be just as important as the subject on the photo in many cases.

You can also find scrapbooking templates around to help you with cropping your photos. To use these templates, you just place them over your photo kind of like a stencil. 'Then you trace it lightly with a pencil and all you have to do is cut along the line you've traced.

Another way to crop is to trim around the edge of the photo to make the photo smaller but without losing the original shape of the photo. You can also use a ruler to help keep your edges straight when you crop.

When it comes to matting, you can use cardstock to make a border for your photos. This gives your scrapbook photos a border like a picture frame. You can use mats in one color, in assorted colors and in other designs and themes to match the theme of your scrapbook. You can also use different types of scissors to cut your mats to make more designs.

Win a free cricut cartridge.

How to Make a Disney Scrapbook Album

Coming home from a Disney vacation doesn't have to be the end of your trip. Vacation memories can last forever in a Disney scrapbook album.

You have to preserve your vacation memories in order for them to live on. You'll always want to remember hugging Mickey Mouse and eating ice cream on Main Street USA. Your Disney scrapbooking album will be your guide to your own memories. Making an album requires taking many pictures while on vacation.

Be sure to snap shots of all of your fun activities. Try taking more candid shots than posed shots as that's where the true magic lies. Upon returning home, get all your pictures together by printing them out or having your film developed. You can then choose a theme for your Disney scrapbook album or do a random layout.

Spend time focusing on what each page should look like, and then go for it. It's totally your call, so have fun. One important thing to note here is that your Disney scrapbook album won't design itself.

You have to set aside time to work on your album, and the sooner you sit down to scrap after returning from vacation, the better as your memories will still be fresh. Once you have the designs and layout ideas you want to use, then start putting the pieces together.

Be sure to journal, or write a bit, about each picture so that youll remember exactly what was happening when the picture was taken. Soon, you'll have a finished Disney scrapbook album. What a perfect souvenir! Your finished album will delight your family and friends as they re-live your vacation. Your Disney scrapbook album will allow your memories to live forever.

Learn more about making a Disney scrapbook album.

Different Types Of Scrapbooking

Overall, there are many methods of scrapbooking that a person can utilize to document their memories. Each depends upon how creative or organized the scrapbook maker wants to be. It really doesn’t matter if you are creative or ‘artsy’, anyone can create a scrapbook of memories. Each scrapbook is reflective of the personality of the person who created it.

1. Standard Scrapbooking – Creating pages and placing them in a scrapbook album with page protectors. Scrapbooks used to only come in two sizes 8x10 and 12x12. Check out your local scrapbook store to see the many different sizes of scrapbooks available now.

2. Book-making Scrapbooking – Using a binding system, creating covers and pages with cardboard and embellishing the pages with paper, ribbons, stickers, pictures and other keepsakes. The binding can be done using a three ring binder, binding rings, ribbons, brackets, staples or spiral binders. Really the options for binding are only limited by the creativity of the scrapbooker.

3. Digital Scrapbooking – Creating pages online using digital images and software rather than purchasing individual embellishments. Many people use these to create pages to upload to their blogs or to print and place in a book. Many software packages are also compatible with online websites like Shutterfly.com and Snapfish.com and allow you to upload your pages and create a printed book of your creations.

4. Creating Picture Books Online – There are many different websites that allow you to use their templates to create a picture book of memories. You upload your pictures to their website, paste them into the prepared templates available based on the number of pictures you would like on the page and then add text to your page to personalize. There are many different photo and self-publishing websites available that offer this service.

5. Blogging or Scrapblogging – There are many people who utilize web logs to maintain a journal or to document the happenings of their family. These blogs are highly personalized. Starting out you can use a standardized template, but once you are comfortable with the services provided, you can upload your own creation to make your blog more personal.

6. Creating presentations – Using presentation software to create personal presentations on the computer is very easy. You can use templates included with the software or go online and find more individualized templates for creating presentations. The nice thing about using presentation software is you can add videos, and you can add sound and transitions between your pages. You can even automate a presentation to scroll through the entire presentation ‘hands-free’ once the file is accessed. When choosing a presentation software, be sure to choose one that creates presentations that don’t require those viewing to necessarily own the software you used to create it.

7. Picture slide shows – There are websites online that allow you upload your pictures and organize them into slide shows. Many of these sites provide the service free of charge and provide links so that you can post your slide shows to your blog or even to post them on social networking websites.

See the links I have provided here on my web page to find your local store, and also to find online web sites that allow you to scrapbook online.

Taken From Examiner.com