Promoting own small businesses?

[lilsiyh]

Hi there!

I was wondering is there any place in this forum where people could advertise their own small businesses? Or is it even allowed?

I have two small businesses: one sells vintage stationery and paper goods, for example genuine vintage post cards, stamps, book pages, book covers, recycled paper, notebooks and more and my second one sells handmade jewelry, skincare, candles, soaps, hand picked herbs, crystals and more.

I think it would be nice to support other small businesses as well when buying postcrossing/penpaling/swapping/bullet journaling/scrapbooking etc related items for yourself or your swap partner/penpal etc instead of just buying all these crafting things from big companies!

Let me know what do you think?

[Bille]

@lilsiyh Welcome back to the forum.

You can read about that in the Forum Guidelines:

Don’t use the forum to advertise a business or anything commercial. If you own a business or a shop, you can leave one link to it on the #everything-else:elsewhere-on-the-web section.

and I think this is a good solution - otherwise the forum would probably be flooded with advertisements in all categories.

[HM]

Advertise with Postcrossing

Just pay for your advertising and see your small business growing.

[lilsiyh]

@HM That is not what I asked and suggested.

[Cassisia]

@lilsiyh, I’m wondering what you’re meaning by “That is not what I asked and suggested” .

@lilsiyh

I was wondering is there any place in this forum where people could advertise their own small businesses? Or is it even allowed?

This was your first question, and it was answered.

@lilsiyh

I think it would be nice to support other small businesses as well (…) instead of just buying all these crafting things from big companies!

Let me know what do you think?

Of course it’s nice to buy from small businesses! I often buy cards and decorations on Etsy.

But as already mentioned, there are rules for advertising your own business on this forum, which already applied for the old legacy forum btw: One link in the section “Elsewhere on the web” is allowed for telling people about your business without buying an ad.

So may I ask what you are suggesting? A discussion on a change of rules?

[Feuerstuhl]

@lilsiyh

I think it would be nice to support other small businesses as well when buying postcrossing/penpaling/swapping/bullet journaling/scrapbooking etc related items for yourself or your swap partner/penpal etc instead of just buying all these crafting things from big companies!

Sounds good to me! There is already a linklist where we collect online shops for postcards:

Online shops (wiki)

Here’s a wiki of online shops where to get postcards, organized by country where they are based. Feel free to edit it to add your favorite shops to it too — just click the [image] button underneath this post! Argentina Hoorn Vintage Australia Australia Postcards Australia Post Doodads- 3D postcards Fishpond Mitch Revs Natalie Parker Prints The Curatoreum Utopia Homewares zetta florence Etsy Shops ClosetPlannerAddict EnjoyIllustration goldstpress GreenM…

We could also create a linklist for stationery online shops. But I’m hesitant to only allow small shops. How do we know when a business is too big to be included? I think it would be easier to just collect all that we know of, and with the order by country, you can even find local shops which is better for the environment, too!

Also…

@reisegern

And then I thought there was a list of stationery shops in the old forum - but I didn’t find it.

There are a lot of links and recommendations already in that topic, why not start a wiki to collect stationery shops? Allegedly, there was a list in the old forum. It might have been accidentally automatically deleted since the old forum software did that sometimes.

[lilsiyh]

@Cassisia There is already existing list on this forum where people can add big companies websites where you can buy postcards and stationery. When I looked that list, there were already small businesses as well. So why those are allowed but this forum’s own users small businesses are not? Who would know if that list already have some users own websites listed?

I was simply suggesting that we could have made similar list but with this forum users own small businesses. And if someone would have bigger business, that wouldn’t really matter, the point was to see this forum’s users own businesses and support them together and create even better, supporting community instead of buying from Amazon-like big companies and ignoring the fact that we already have great shops in our own community aka among this forums users.

[S_Tuulia]

Maybe in this elsewhere on the web -list, the owner could add their forum name after the link it if they like? Like “stationary shoppe” (owned by: forum member name).

[Cassisia]

@lilsiyh That’s right, there are lists with online shops for postcards. One in the German forum is kept by me. There are small and bigger online shops in my list, a good amount of the shops belong to Postcrossers, even if it’s not mentioned. If a user recommends a shop (not his own, that would be self-advertising), I’ll add it to the list.

@lilsiyh

So why those are allowed but this forum’s own users small businesses are not?

Why shouldn’t they be allowed? I’m not aware that there are limitations to only big shops. Perhaps you could point out what you mean?

Concerning your suggestion, I agree with @Feuerstuhl that a limitation to small shops would be difficult. Who sets the rules which shop can be in the list? I think this would provoque discussions.

[lilsiyh]

I already have that, if you checked my profile.

[MaeganLong]

I didn’t know that we had separate profiles on the forum. I commented that I couldn’t find the link on your profile because I looked on the website.
That’s good to know.

Your Etsy shop is adorable.

[Bille]

I am now closing this topic because the question of @lilsiyh has been answered.
Continuing to discuss it here comes close to advertising the shop.