The Leatherworker Directory is Now Live
After a couple years of discussing, planning, evaluating software, and development (not to mention working around day jobs and families), the Leatherworker Directory is finally a reality! It's a new section of our site designed to help leatherworkers take advantage of the many leather goods consumers that already visit our site every month, and get found by people looking for what they offer.All registered members of leatherworker.net can create a basic listing for free, with the option to upgrade later to more enhanced listings that can attract more buyers to your work. We hope to compile the largest and most complete listing of leather working people, artists, artisans, production leather shops and studios on the web. The closer we come to achieving this, the more the directory will become known as the place to find a leather worker.We also hope to make this a valuable marketing tool for the suppliers, as well, since we all have something to gain by helping them prosper. We hope to compile an equally complete listing of leather suppliers, and other suppliers who provide products to leather workers. We not only hope to provide leatherworkers with a convenient place to shop for all that is available to support them in their craft, but also help the suppliers find more business in the community.The purpose of this blog article is to provide answers to the most commonly-asked questions about the Leatherworker Directory, and instructions for common activities done in the Directory. I will update this article several times to add more questions as they come.Where do I go to see it?To get to the Leatherworker Directory, click here.How do I set up my free listing?Step 1: Create an account by clicking the "Create Account" link in the side menu in the left column. Fill out the form with all your information, then click "Submit".You then receive an email, asking you to confirm that you are the person who created the account. Click the confirmation link, and your account will be ready to log in.To log in, go to any directory page, then click the "Login Now" link in the side menu.Step 2: Once logged in, you are taken to your account page. To create your free listing, click on the "Advertise" link in the side menu.Choose the "1 Years - Free" item under "Leatherworker Basic", then click the submit button.The directory manager will ask you for information about your listing, such as what category to list it under, a description of your business or your work, web site address, email address, etc.When finished adding the information about your listing, click the "Submit" button. Your listing will be active as soon as it is submitted.If I have problems getting mine set up, will you help me?Of course we will!Can I change the listing later?Yes, in fact you are encouraged to keep your listing up-to-date as much as possible. To do that, log in, then click on the "Listings" link in the side menu. You will see all the listings you have created, with links to where you can edit them.Listings? Can we have more than one?Yes, there currently is no limit on how many free listings you can have. That could change later. Each free listing is limited to one category, so if you make items in different categories, you can create listings for each item you want to promote in the list.What if I don't see a relevant category for what I sell?We are still adding categories. Please send a PM to me or Johanna, and we'll add the categories that you need.My listing requires me to enter my location, but I don't see my location listed.Same thing as with the categories. As of the first publishing of this article, I still have a few more US states to add, and a few more countries where I know we have members. Hopefully, I'll get the rest of them in within the next few days.After that, if you don't see your location listed, please let Johanna or me know, and we will add it for you.Hey, I already see a listing with my name/business/site!We decided to add listings with links to all the sites we had listed on the old front page. We are still in the process of doing that, so if you know you had a link on that page, you'll eventually get one automatically.If you find a listing "belonging" to you, and you prefer to manage it under your own account (which we hope everyone will eventually do), just send me a PM once you've set up your account, and I'll move it for you.Can our free listings have photos?Sorry, not at this time. The enhanced listings include photos, however.What other types of listings are you offering?For $10/mo. or $100/yr., we also offer what is called an "Feature" listing, which gets displayed in the "Featured Listings" box at the top-right side of each page. This listing also offers more space for a description, can be shown in more categories, allows you to display a logo and attach photos, and comes with a few other extras.You can also set up banner ads in the directory for just $25/mo. or $250/yr., plus a $15 setup fee.We also have very affordable listings for suppliers. To see a chart comparing all the features and pricing of the listings we offer, click here.How do I set up an enhanced listing?The same way you set up the basic one, only you can add more to your listing, and the process involves making a payment. After the listing is submitted, you are taken to a page that asks for your payment information, then an invoice page.Making Payments:You can pay the invoice right then by clicking the submit button, which takes you to log into your Paypal account. Once the payment is made, clicking on the "Return to Merchant" button will take you back to a directory page which confirms we received your payment. Your listing becomes active as soon as you see this page.Or you can pay the invoice later, by clicking the "Invoices link to see all your invoices, then click on the "Pay Invoice" link next to the invoice you want to pay.What are things like "META description" and "META keywords"?I will post another article soon about using these features to attract more traffic to your listing. In the mean time, the quick answer is, this is information about your listings that is picked up by the search engines and used by them to categorize your content for search results. As I said, I will post more information soon on how to get the best use out of those and other listing features.There are numerous little "kinks" that we're still working to smooth out. Please be patient and feel free to let us know of any problems you're having or request anything you need that isn't there yet. We're very excited to be able to offer this service to leatherworkers and suppliers. It's one more thing we can do to help many of you increase your business, and maybe help some of you get to a point where you can quit your day jobs.UPDATE ON JAN 24, 2010:When entering a listing, what should I put in the "Friendly URL" box?That is what will become the web address of your listing. For most of you, that box gets filled in automatically as soon as you enter a title, so just skip that box.If it doesn't get filled in automatically, enter the words of your title separated by hyphens. For example, if the title of your listing is "Acme Custom Leather", type "acme-custom-leather" in the Friendly URL box.If you have multiple listings with the same title (some people who post the same listing in multiple categories will have this), be aware that there cannot be any two listings with the same URL. If you try to enter the same url twice, the directory will prevent your listing from being submitted, and ask you to change the URL. In these cases, just add a "-1" or "-2" at the end of the existing URL to distinguish it from the others.Can I use my forum name to create my Directory account?In most cases, yes, but you do not have to. Some people have forum names that cannot be used as directory names. These are forum names that are more than one word. You can work around this by placing a hyphen or underscore between the two words, or just running the two words in your forum name together into one word to make your directory name.That's weird! Why is that?The forum and the directory are two different systems that each have different account naming requirements.What if I don't have a web site to provide a link to?Here's a quick and easy way to provide shoppers with images of your work using a basic listing: Create a photo album in the gallery, upload images of your work to it, and in your listing, provide a link to your album.I'm still exploring what can be done with regular listings, so keep an eye on my blog to learn about new things you can do with them.Location UpdateAll the US states, Australian states, Canadian provinces, and countries of the UK have been added, as well as many more countries, so everyone from these countries should be able to set a location for their listing. I'm still adding more, and will give priority to those that are in more demand.It's good if you can set a location for your listing, for shoppers who are searching in your region. The Directory has the ability to find and list all artisans within a certain range of the requested location, so you will definitely want to give shoppers the ability to find you by that search method.More later...
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