I’ve been quiet here lately because I’ve been crazy busy getting ready for the holidays. It might seem eons away, but in retail terms, the holidays are almost here. I am trying to wrap up my website enhancements for my own ecommerce website this week and I’ll be sharing my changes next week.

In the meantime, I want to call your attention to holiday advertising. As many of you know, I run co-op advertising websites though Smaller Box. These co-ops allow indie designers to share the cost of advertising and buy expensive ad space we can’t afford on our own. For my own ecommerce business, this form of advertising has been tremendously successful. That’s why I’m looking for partners to advertise with for the holidays.

My goal is to set up a special holiday advertising co-op website and gather enough members to split the cost of ads on sites like  Dlisted, Cute Overload, and Design Sponge. These blogs get millions of views during the holiday months and would bring a deluge of new customers, Facebook fans, newsletter subscribers, word of mouth, etc. It’s the kind of reach I could never afford to deliver for my brand on my own, which is why finding partners is a priority.

My goal is to offer membership to this co-op for a flat rate around $500.00 for the full year. (Meaning this one time payment gets your brand into the co-op for 12 months.) Those dues would be used to run ads from early October to end of December. Members would have their products featured on the co-op website all year long, even after the ads stop running. Members would also be able to promote on the co-op newsletters all year long.

Speaking of which, I plan to use the new co-op to get a new mailing list together. All co-op members would be welcome to share their promotions on this new mailing list, plus my existing lists (which go to thousands of indie shopping fans each month). I will be doing a special Cyber Monday mailing in November to the lists and all co-op members will be encouraged to share promotions. I will also be establishing a Twitter account and Facebook fan page for the new co-op so you’ll have even more avenues to promote all year long.

If you’re interested in becoming a part of this new co-op please enter your email address below. Once I get enough co-op members together I’ll email you with more details.  Space will be limited so if you’re interested please sign up now: