Product Ideas For St. Patrick Have Been Turned Upside Down

Wow… I’ve been getting some great ideas and comments regarding my next public domain bundle product idea… thank you!

Ann wrote to me and suggested I think “Irish” instead of St. Patrick’s Day.  I had the same thought late at night when my brain was relaxed and finally clear…  with just the one email from Ann it’s sort of solidified in my head now.

Deb Henry sent me a quick email with these ideas:

Do something with luck or rainbows and gold…

Don’t necessarily focus on leprechauns!

Maybe even a kit on how to press flowers (or four leaf clovers!)

And Dave…. He suggests (often) to add “booze” – because it would sell well! LOL – and yet Amazon won’t let us sell alcohol. I’m thinking about something that includes “everything but the booze” kit.

Dave also suggested adding in Shamrocks – Lapel Pins – Images with harps (harps is something I didn’t realize were part of an Irish tradition – I learned something new).

And – Dave thought the bird picture would look great on the shopping bag you can create with Zazzle.com.

Sylvia was thinking about that bird image in a similar way that I was:

I have an idea for you for that beautiful bird image-
Picture this- make a sack -paper- with the bird image on it -throw in a bird feeder of some sorts-and here’s the prize= (make your own bird food, birdseed recipes ) include organic recipes, bla bla bla. ??? What do you think?? also – another twist – focus on the hummingbird – throw in a feeder – and give them the “recipe” to make their own hummingbird food – instead of buying it. Some people don’t know they can make the nectar.

Another thought came to me because of from what Aadel wrote : kits for teachers for the kids. Mothers Day gifts kids can make from little bags(you supply) (for their homemade birdseed- that you provide with “a recipe”) the kids attach their “pretty bird labels” on the bag. (Topped with a supplied bow) It is educational because they put the recipe together in the bag and they learn about bird food, how they eat what they eat – etc. This is for father’s day too- Topped with some kind of trinket.

Aadel commented about the bird idea with this:

You could definitely market that to families, as an educational project to do together. Like a family nature kit or something. “Attract birds to your own yard by making your very own bird food!”

Steve left a comment that is also interesting:

Hi Debra — I did a Google search on “Bird feeders kids can make” and saw some very clever inexpensive, easy-to-make bird feeders. While many of the parts wouldn’t fit well into your 2″ deep box, you could provide a mini-book of directions and photos for the kids and parents to use. March is the time when birds begin coming back to most areas of the country, so this might be an idea that could easily be developed.

Pearl suggested I Try Googling bird watcher or twitcher – Twitcher???? I had to look that up on Wikipedia. It’s under Birdwatching. That one page will lead you down a rabbit hole of information regarding everything Bird Watching! LOL

My next question is – Are any of you working on bundle products yet? Are you going to join in the real fun of selling products?

Anyway…

I’ve been thinking and shopping and researching so much lately and I need to get busy creating the bundles for Amazon so I can cash in on my ideas!

Also… I wanted to remind you that you never know when an idea will just pop into your head. You know I have been “muddling” around with my ideas for selling on Etsy, and I really wanted some of the products to be available on Amazon as well.

As I was walking across a parking lot the other day… an idea just popped into my head that I am really excited about. You see… my first ideas to sell things on Etsy were prints I created myself from public domain images.

I’ve also been noodling around with the idea of selling “craft” supplies on Etsy.  These would be supplies directly related to the “Steampunk” niche. (If you don’t know what Steampunk is yet… Google it!)

Two problems kept niggling at me…

1.) I don’t really want to ship anything to customers myself. (I want to be able to travel and I also don’t “just love” the pressure of shipping on demand).

2.) I am striving to have products that sell for $25 and over. This keeps me with fewer products and a nice profit per sale.

 Then this idea came up – combine the two! As a combined product I can sell these “kits with an image” as a set. AND I can sell them on both Amazon and Etsy! AND I can ship them all to the Amazon warehouse and when one sells on Etsy – I can go in and have Amazon ship to the customer! How cool is that?

I can’t wait to show you what it will look like and be filled with. You are going to think I’m a pretty smart gal… I hope. *giggle*

Okay… back to the St. Patrick’s Day and Irish product ideas. You all know by now that I’ve been struggling with this and I finally gave in and let my mind wander into uncharted territories.

First… let me just make a note – I am not against doing anything related to Irish or St. Patrick’s Day… I am against creating a product that is too “niched”. (Is that a word?) I may (in the future) make an all Irish product. Some of the ideas above are really good!

The two products that I am going to make (from all this research) are year ’round products and I’m happy with how things are fleshing out.

• The first product is a Congratulations On Your New Home gift (or House Warming). I’m going to use an Irish blessing and a Public Domain image and create a “boxed” gift similar in idea to the Valentine product.
• The second product is “BEER” related. LOL I know that anything related to Beer is going to be a popular gift all year, birthday’s – Fathers Day – Christmas etc.

I’ve gotten a hold of a popular “Beer” related public domain image to use and I found some products that will blow you away with my “thinking outside the box” for this boxed (bundled) gift product.

I got the message from some of you that “beer” is part of anything Irish and St. Patty’s day… but we can’t sell alcohol of Amazon! I had to get my brain churning on this one.

Well… I’ve really spilled a lot of my thoughts today. It’s time for me to get to “making” and not just talking about it (and I share even more in my p.s. )

Until next time… keep me up to date on what you are doing in the comments below.

p.s. A few other off topic notes:

I got all the products that I ordered from Etsy:

• The digital product came super fast via email.
• The “game pieces pack” was shipped quickly and came packaged up in a nice bag. Nothing super special was done with the packaging of the product or the package itself.
• The printed image is perfect – AND they sent me a “gift” of a second image (different) because I mentioned them on the blog. I mean their customer service is super special – they sent personal messages via Etsy and inside the package. The shipping is a little slow (probably because they have to create the product first), but this product is worth the wait.

This was a good exercise for me as part of my “getting started with Etsy” plan and my book review.

One more thing I wanted to mention about creating bundle products. I’m working on packing up another set of the Valentine product (which will be renamed more generic for “anniversary” gift or something similar). In this bundle I include marshmallows… the heart shaped marshmallows would be very heard to find all year, so I want to include the regular every-day “should be available all the time” strawberry flavor marshmallows.

I hit Walmart and Not One Package was available – not even an empty spot or shelf label. Grrrr.

I’m headed to other local grocery stores – it won’t be a problem finding something.

The point is this… if you are going to create bundles to sell on Amazon, you still have to be able to “replace” some of the items in the bundle. I should be able to “edit” the product page to reflect anything that is new. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t.  It’s not like editing on Ebay… grrrrr.

If the “editing” process doesn’t “take… you can delete the page and start over (or call Amazon and see if they can help you. The best way to  “delete” the product page once the product has sold out is in seller central where you can “delete product” and then wait 24 hours for the delete process to migrate through all of Amazon’s catalog. Then create a new product page using the same bar-code.