If you are going to make more than just one or two pieces of quilling, you owe it to yourself to purchase one of the quilling work boards and design guides that are currently available. These are quality boards made of dense self-healing cork or durable foam that are sturdy and made to last for years. The design guide helps you keep your quills straight during assembly, which is very important when working with symmetrical patterns such as snowflakes. However, if you are working with a group (Scout troop, church group, craft club, etc.), it is not always practical to purchase each member their own quilling work board and design guide. You can make them instead.
A simple, temporary quilling board can be made from any sturdy sheet of cork board, plastic foam, corrugated cardboard, or other similar material. A nice size is 6" x 8", but use what you have. For my quilling classes, I have taken inexpensive 12" x 12" cork squares, cut them into four 6" x 6" squares, and edged them with masking tape. These work very well, and if one happens to get away from me, it can easily be replaced. Go green with a quilling work board made from corrugated cardboard cut from a box that was headed for the trash. When it has too many holes to be useful, just place it in the recycling bin.
Wax paper makes a serviceable cover sheet for your work board. It is handy and certainly cheap enough, however, if too much glue is used and the quillwork is accidentally glued to the wax paper, the wax may come up with the design when it's removed. I prefer to use clear plastic sheets cut from scrap (think old office sheet protectors and transparencies) or recycled plastic packaging. Even heavy-duty food baggies will work. You can either pin the work board cover in place, or wrap it around and tape it to the back. To use, simply slip your quilling pattern underneath the cover sheet (plastic or wax paper), pin it in place, and assemble your quilled masterpiece over the pattern.
For symmetrical work, a design guide can be created from a piece of graph paper cut to fit your quilling work board. Count the squares horizontally and vertically to find the center point of your graph paper. Using a ruler and black pen or fine-tip marker, draw a vertical and horizontal line that cuts through the center point to divide your graph paper into fourths. This will give you 90 degree angles. Next, using the lines of the graph paper as your guide, draw an "X" on the paper that runs through the center point and bisects the quarters. This will give you 45 degree angles. Continue to draw lines running through the center point to divide your paper into as many sections as needed for your pattern. Circles can be added to the guide with the aid of a compass or circle template. Be sure to center the circles on your guide using the intersection point of the lines as the center of the circles.
If you are looking to start a business online, you may have considered affiliate marketing.
Now affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to get started in an online business. Notice, I intentionally didn't say easiest. The reason is affiliate marketing is not necessarily easy in the sense that you can't put up a website, sit back and do nothing else. Affiliate marketing requires a lot of work as it is in starting any business. Online business is no different.
If you are willing to put in some hard work, some money and stick with it - you will become successful. How successful will be up to you?
What is your interpretation of success?
Believe it or not, everyone doesn't think the only symbol of success is earning millions. Success could mean making a living working around kids, not having to answer to a boss.
Success could be an online income exceeding your salary.
You can achieve whatever your idea of success is if you are willing to put in the necessary work.
You are probably thinking, well it is obvious you will achieve if you put in the work. However, it is evident many believe in writing a few blog posts and sending a few emails, is enough to build an online business.
You have to be prepared to do some hard work. After all, you are starting a new online business. You are starting a new business. It makes no sense how people who are relatively well educated can expect to sit and do very little work and build a business.
The smart business person plans, executes and has a mentor.
A mentor will guide and support your efforts from the twenty-twenty hindsight of their experience, saving time and money on processes and activities that won't work.
A mentor, accompanied by the right tools in starting an online business (affiliate marketing business), is the difference of being a success or ending up beaten down and broke.
It is vital as an affiliate marketer you accept the need for a mentor and the right tools to get started online scheduling free and become a profitable venture.
Key Tool #1: YOUR WEBSITE
The essential tool for business is a website. The first step in any successful online business or affiliate marketing business is to build an excellent, credible and professional looking website.
Your website is the focal point of all future marketing efforts and will need a domain name. My recommendation, spend some time on the domain name. It is going to be the name, point of contact, and how people are going to know the business.
The domain name is the website name for the business. Choose a name that describes the business accurately and is congruent to products and marketing.
Build a user-friendly, modern-looking website appealing to your customers that would encourage them to interact with your website. Therefore resulting in clicks and exploring your website. (possibly make the converted sales)
Great platforms such as WordPress.org enable users to build a modern-looking website for free. WordPress.org also has a wide variety of styles & themes.
Keep your customers in mind, as they go online to get information, not necessarily buy something immediately. Make sure your website is easy to find, navigate and filled with original content relevant to your products and services.
Customers enjoy appealing, helpful articles, and when they get the information they require, are more likely ready to purchase. Remember online; content is king. Good quality content will build your credibility while helping achieve higher search engine rankings.
Online business owners are always looking to be search engine friendly. By posting new original quality, relevant content will satisfy search engine algorithms and establish your website as an authority/expert in its field.
This original content will also appeal to customers/visitors by endorsing your products, therefore becoming trustworthy, resulting in building a good reputation and creating repeat loyal customer base.
Key Tool #2: USING INCENTIVES
As a new online business, be extra disciplined for providing better content and products as you compete in a very crowded internet world.
Use every opportunity to drive traffic to your website and engage with visitors. You soon realise getting traffic to your website is difficult and an essential part of the work.
Drive traffic by free or paid options; however, irrespective of the path - you are going to want to create an opt-in list.
Allow the visitor to subscribe to your opt-in list, allowing you then to market repeatably to the visitor who now is a subscriber.
Your newsletter or ezine emailed to the subscriber with relevant, valuable, applicable and congruent information to your products, regularly.
Encourage visitors to subscribe by creating an incentive. This incentive could be in the form of tips, techniques, free eBook, perhaps free software or may even offer a lower-priced product that isn't selling well.
Key Tool #3: LINK POPULARITY
Search engines determine how popular and relevant your website is - one way they discover your website popularity is by the number of websites linking to your site.
Driving visitors to your website will generate business; therefore, driving traffic as the central theme in everything you do. Increased visitor make purchases, but more importantly, higher search results.
Enhance your link popularity, by writing articles with website's link in source box, and submit articles to ezines/article directories. There is a two-fold benefit. Get exposure to the website, and get a link back to your website from the directory sites for every article published. The more articles published, the more directories, the better your exposure and the better link popularity.
Make sure your articles are original relevant and useful content and other websites will use then, extending your link exposure.
There you have them.
These are only three of the many tools an affiliate marketer can and will use to maximise earning potential.
There are endless possibilities, only limited by your imagination, creativity, and resourcefulness.
As you develop and grow your online business, explore other ideas, adopt different strategies and implement them in your online business.