AP 0729: Should I Separate My Products into Different Sites?

AskPat 729 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here and thank you so much for joining me today in Session 729 of AskPat. Thank you so much. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week. We have a great question today from Ryan.

Before we get to his question, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is DesignCrowd.com, which helps entrepreneurs and small business outsource or crowdsource custom graphics, logos, web designs, anything you can think of that you need designed from designers all around the world. DesignCrowd has more than half a million designers from over 100 different countries ready to help you with any creative and design projects that you might have. Check out www.DesignCrowd.com to learn more. Actually, if you go to DesignCrowd.com/askpat, you can get a special VIP offer there just for you guys. Go to DesignCrowd.com/askpat and check it out from there.

All right, thanks so much, and here's today's question from Ryan.

Ryan: Hi, Pat. It's Ryan McArthur. I run a small, Toronto-based art studio called Design Different. I design and sell posters and prints online. I really love what I do and have been very successful over the past few years thanks to you and your online marketing tips.

My question is this. I have a few different series of prints and posters that I sell online and they all have different niches. For example, I have some prints based off of motivational quotes and others that are what I call Zombie Safe Zone Maps where you can find your nearest safe zone in case of an apocalypse. Currently, I'm selling them under my root name, www.DesignDifferent.ca. Should I separate these niche series into their own sites or just subdomain them? Any help you would have, that would be great. Thank you.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Ryan. Thanks so much for your question. I appreciate this. I'm going to give a shoutout to your URL here in case anybody wanted to visit it because it's awesome: designdifferent.ca. I think you're over in Canada. DesignDifferent.ca.

I know it's been awhile since you asked this question, so I apologize I didn't get to this sooner. I get dozens of questions everyday and I go back and there's a whole spreadsheet with thousands in there. I went back and I saw this question. I went to your website and I was like, “This is awesome.” I love the Zombie Safe Zone maps. Those are really cool.

Anyway, it seems like you have a lot more here, too. You have hand-lettered prints. You have illustrated quote prints, like you mentioned. I love the Einstein one with a little bicycle spoke and wheel. It says, “Life is like riding a bicycle. In order to succeed, you must keep moving,” and all that kind of stuff.

This is really cool. I love what you've done here. For you specifically, because a lot of this is in its own style, it has its own kind of culture on this website. I would keep it all under one umbrella. I think this is all very unique and I think somebody who purchases one would be likely to potentially purchase another. You don't want to separate them out.

There are cases, however, where people—some in the design space, some other spaces—they sell products and the products are completely different. Yes, they are essentially doing the same thing, but they are for different audiences. I think people who are coming onto this site, I could easily see them buy more than one thing. I hope that through the buying process, I could potentially get bundles or I can get two-for-one kind of thing, or maybe there's special promotions going on for certain posters for different times of the year.

With this kind of stuff, I can see a lot of advantages taking advantage of the seasons and the holidays and anything that's coming up. I know you're in Canada, but U.S. holidays, there's a lot of posters and things that can be done to serve audiences who are into these holidays. Especially these other holidays that are happening now, like Cupcake Day and National Doughnut Day and all this stuff. Anyway, I don't know. I'm just brainstorming here and thinking out loud.

For you and how you have it all set up, I think it's great. I think you're doing it the right way. I'm looking at your shop and I can see that you've been featured on many other websites like GQ and Buzzfeed and The Chive, Huffington Post. It's awesome. I love the work. I think it's very unique and it should definitely all stick together.

Yeah, I'm actually curious in terms of the ecommerce side of things, how you are managing all this because it seems to be being sold in all different places. I think there was an image here that was showing where all these things were featured. Let's see. Where did that go? Barnes and Noble, Waterstone’s, Book Depository, Indigo, IndieBound, Powell's, Books-A-Million. Oh, that's Artfully Spoken. That's your book. Oh, cool.

When did this come out? Let me see when this came out. Artfully Spoke on Amazon.com. Eight reviews and, let's see, four or five-star reviews. That's amazing. That's great. This came out, oh, March of this year. Great. Awesome. Looks like you're doing the right thing. I think a book actually is of great strategy here because it's going to put some of your illustrations together with these quotations that you have, which is what it looks like this book exactly has. It's going to be a great way for you to bring leads in to get more into your stuff.

I also see some film and TV prints here, too. There's possibly some ways that you could reach out to other influencers and people in the movie space, the movie-review space. This stuff is so unique that you have to offer that it might be cool to give some away to some more influential people to get even more exposure on said website. I love this Predator one here, or the Terminator one. That's really cool.

Anyway, any Back to the Future stuff? Let me look through this. Star Wars. I see Star Wars. I see zombies. You like your zombies. No Back to the Future stuff. Jaws. The Jaws one is really cool. No. No Back to the Future stuff. You know, I have to say I'm a little bit disappointed. No, I'm just kidding. I'm proud of you. This is good stuff. Keep up the good work.

Keep everything under your own brand because it is you. It's your art. It is all tied together and I can see you cross-promoting a lot of these things together. If that's something that if you're listening to this and you're like, “Hey, would it make sense to cross-promote these items,” if yes, then you want to keep everything under one umbrella. If not, then you want to separate them out. That would be a good litmus test.

Thank you so much, Ryan. I appreciate it. Best of luck to you. Keep up the great work. For those of you listening, if you have a question that you would like potentially featured here on the show just like Ryan, all you have to do is go to askpat.com and you can ask right there on that page. Guess what. Ryan gets a free AskPat T-shirt which, thanks to the sponsors, we have enough money for to just give them away for free. All that good stuff. Great job, Ryan, and we'll send that to you as soon as we can.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you and here's a quote to finish off the day by the philosopher, Aristotle. He said, “Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.”

Take care, guys, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye now.