Brecho Variedades

I originally wrote this as a section of my Squidoo lens "Using Etsy Search Ads to Promote Your Shop" but I think it's so important I want to post it here too. While this is written for the new Etsy Search Ads it applies equally to Google Adwords, Project Wonderful, or any other advertising you run. To get the most for your money and to be the most effective you have to look objectively at the numbers.

Don't be Fooled by Big Numbers
Lots of impressions and clicks doesn't mean a good CTR. 

Here's a perfect example. For 6 days I ran "polymer clay" as a keyword for my ads. This is a term that you would assume would perform well for my items because I make polymer clay jewelry. It also garnered the most impressions and clicks for that time frame.

However when you actually do the math and look at the CTR for this keyword you can see that it wasn't actually a good keyword for me to use with a CTR of under 1%. In contrast, over the same period of time "squid" received 359 impressions and 8 clicks for a CTR of 2.23%, "octopus" had a CTR of 2.36% and my best keyword in terms of click through rate was "halloween jewelry" which had a CTR of 3.64% (though being a seasonal term will be just about useless for most of the year).

Be willing to waste a little bit of money to run ads for one week to determine click through rates then mercilessly eliminate those with low click through percentages. Those with low impressions (less than 100) and no clicks be willing to let run a bit longer to see if they do, a keyword that only get 30 views in 2 weeks but get 1 click may not be getting much visibility but when it does it's effective.

NOTE: Since the changes eliminating low performing keywords went into effect this morning the overall CTR for my ads today has improved dramatically. Next week I'll do another follow up with data from a longer time frame.

Search Ads on Etsy started this morning. The grand experiment has begun and I hope it's a grand success as well.

I've put together a tutorial lens on Squidoo all about Search Ads including a lot of how to set them up and my personal thoughts on choosing keywords and evaluating your ad results (seriously, I put a lot of thought into the evaluation section and I think it's a good method for a more objective evaluation).

Since Search Ads have only begun this is a work in progress and it will be refined over the coming weeks.

Note: I was hoping so be busy evaluating the first day and posting live updated on @HandmadeBizBlog and @Noadi on Twitter but I've had a minor emergency involving a smoking light socket and will be dealing with repairs going on in my living room today. Updates will be sporadic.

Etsy is launching their new search ad program but there seems to be a lot of confusion about some basics on online advertising so here are some definitions of common ad terms. Etsy's new ad program works a lot like Google's Adwords search ads so you can apply a lot of information about Adwords to Etsy Search Ads.


Impression - When your ad is seen. So 5,000 impressions means your ad is seen 5,000 times.
Click - When someone clicks on your ad. 5 clicks means 5 people have clicked on your ad and viewed the page it is linked to. Etsy uses the term view for this on your shop stats page.
CTR - This stands for Click Through Rate it's a percentage arrived by dividing the number of ad clicks by the number of impressions. If an ad is clicked 8 times and has 300 impressions it has a CTR of 2.6%. Generally a CTR of >1% is considered good.

How Search Ads Work
When someone searches using a keyword (say "silver necklace") ads using that term are displayed. The price of that ad depends on several factors: frequency it is searched and competition for the search term. So a term that is searched 500 times a day and is being bid on by 30 ads will have a higher price than a term with 1000 searches and 30 bidders. Likewise a a term that is searched 500 times with 5 bidders is going to be less than a term with 1000 searches and 50 bidders. Thus a popular term can actually be quite cheap because it searched thousands of times a day and even though it has a lot of bidders there's enough rotation for everyone.

Etsy has a list of estimated prices per 1000 impressions for keyword on this page but expect it to change once the ads go live based on demand for keywords and changes in what people are searching for.

Etsy Ads or Google Adwords
This isn't an either/or question, nor should it be. The fact is that Etsy Search Ads, Google Adwords, and Project Wonderful (another fantastic ad network) all serve different audiences and can all be part of an overall advertising plan. Adding a new advertising option may require that you shift your advertising budget around a little bit to make room for the new expense (though if you were a frequent relister on Etsy you can put some of the money you are now saving on listing fees towards advertising now that relisting isn't as useful a strategy). If you don't currently have an advertising budget you really should have one, marketing is a vital part of business and as much as I'm a fan of marketing that costs time not money (blogging, social media, etc) traditional advertising is still important.

I'm a big fan of using video to promote your business. We humans are very visual animals, this is one reason good photos are so important when you're selling handmade products. When the photos are also moving that grabs our attention even more.

Now one of the problems with using YouTube for promotion is that usually the only place you can put a link is in your description and many users ignore the description, even more so since YouTube redesigned the video pages to hide most of the description. There is a way around this, using YouTube's Promoted Videos you can put what YouTube calls a "call to action overlay" on your video that can contain a link to your shop. This will cost a little bit of money, because it is an advertising program, but there are ways to minimize how much you spend.

Here's a video that describes how to set up a Promoted Video and use the call to action overlay. YouTube gives you very few characters to write your message so choose your words carefully and be creative.



Here's an example of one of my videos using this overlay (apparently it doesn't work on embedded videos so you'll need to go click the link to the video on youtube to see it in action). If you have ad blocking software you might need to disable it to see the overlay.

Tip: YouTube also gives you the option to use a 56x56pixel image. I used a .png of the cuttlefish in my logo with a transparent background. Just take any image you want, crop it square, then scale it down to 56x56, save, and upload to an image hosting site like Photobucket. You can then use it on your overlay to add just a tiny bit more branding. I recommend using your logo or a portion of it like I did.

Here's a quick little video from google on improving your ads.



Sorry I don't have a longer post for you guys this week. I'm feeling sick and wasn't able to get the post I had planned done.

Today we have a guest post with a different perspective. Usually this blog is from the point of view of someone running a small handmade business today we have the point of view of a professional in advertising and marketing. If you are interested in writing a guest post, please send me an email.

David Gash is the Founder of Prova Advertising, a company that is revolutionizing the way that businesses meet their advertisement needs. Prova promotes crowdsourcing with an ingenious approach that allows small to medium sized businesses to launch Ad Design Contests in order to find the best design talent at YOUR price.

Being Small Doesn't Mean Looking Small

Here are a few tips to help your business look more professional even if it's a one-person operation.

1) Don't use your personal email address - Time and time again business owners using their personal email address for their business. This sends out the sign that you either lack money, expertise, or commitment. If any of these are true, never let it show. Take a few dollars and register a domain name and at least sign up for email service. Even if you aren't going to develop a website, a domain name will let you get a professional email address that tells the world you take your business seriously. Godaddy.com sells domain names for less than $10. A lesser known service called Google Apps can host your new domain's email for free.

2) Business Cards - It used to be that an independent business owner would have to go to their local printer and buy an enormous box of ugly business cards. The owner knew every time they handed them out that everyone saw they were small. Those days are over so let them go. Have a professional designer spend some time to put together a logo for your business and get that design into a business card. Make sure you include your name, contact information, website address and enough information so that people will remember who it was that gave them a card. Avoid the temptation to give yourself a title like President or CEO. Owner will do fine but Artist will say a lot more if you are creating a product. Let the design of your card emulate the style of your business. Find a printer online that does small quantities of full color printing and order a box. You'll be amazed how quickly you can go through 500 cards. Don't be tempted by large quantities because they are incrementally cheaper. You may decide after the first set that you want to make some changes. After you're sure they fit the bill, then you can order larger quantities. Go for full color and a UV coating on the front which will give you a high quality, expensive feel to the cards. Be sure to leave the back without coating since UV coating will keep you from being able to flip over a card to write some notes.

3) Skip the Clip Art - Clip Art can be easily spotted even if you feel like you dug it up on some remote site. You can spend as little as $200 to get a nice, quality logo for your business. Remember, usually graphic designers will charge less for a package and can get a logo, business card, and other work done for you in one project.

4) Remember the Press Release - The best way to generate free buzz for your business is to do a press release. It isn't magic but it does take some research to put it together. If you do an online search for press releases, you'll find numerous free templates to follow. Put together an announcement you may have about a new product, a new employee, or an upcoming event and send it to local news outlets that may cover community or business news. Make the release compelling and interesting and most of all, short!

5) Social Networking - Consider starting up a social networking site like Twitter or Facebook for your business. These are somewhat time intensive but the relationship that you, your business, or your products can build with existing customers is invaluable. You'll also be quickly exposed to new customers and can begin to build your brand with them. Consider Twitter for more constant updates with shorter information, such as, "I'm sitting at my wheel with a lump of clay, I wonder what will emerge today." Consider Facebook for longer, more detailed information where you can post pictures and get a real dialogue started.

6) Plan - Sit down and think about where you want to be a year from today with your business and write it down. When you are presented with any advertising opportunity, like the yellow pages, or a marketing event, look at your goals and see if that event is in line with getting you where you're headed. If not, skip it.

Big businesses have dedicated staff to pull off their marketing strategies. With a little effort and some elbow grease, your business can have the same marketing advantages. And if marketing really isn't your strength or you don't know the first thing about hiring a designer, consider hiring a company like Prova that will let you run a contest to get your marketing needs professionally met on your budget. Remember, being a small business never has to show on the outside, unless you want it to.

So here are the postcards I just had printed up. I think they turned out really great. To design them I used GIMP an open source image editor that's a lot like photoshop, I did it from scratch but you can find templates online to help you.


What are the postcards for?

• Contacting potential clients
• Sending with certain orders
• Posting as mini posters
• Used as a mini brochure
• Hand out at shows
  

I'm sure the list will get longer as I think of more uses. The postcards cost me about $0.14 a piece so it's a pretty good deal. If I had gone with customizing one of the default designs at Vistaprint and not uploaded a backside too they would have been even less.

Overall a very affordable bit of promotional material that looks great.

Designing a Postcard
Postcard templates
Sample Postcard Layouts
POSTCARD DESIGN ARTICLES & DESIGNING POSTCARDS TIPS
7 Tips for Successful Postcard Marketing

Places to Print
VistaPrint
OvernightPrints

So you've signed up for Google Adwords or Project Wonderful and set up a few ads but you're not getting clicks. Now there are several things that might be causing this problem, maybe you're targeting the wrong sites or keywords, you're bidding too low, or your ads aren't inviting clicks. The first two are for a later post, today I'm going to focus on the third: making an ad that gets clicks.

As a disclaimer, I'm not an advertising professional this advice comes from my own research and experience not any formal training. Like any of my posts please take this as a starting point upon which to build your own ideas and do further research.

Text Ads
The most basic ads are of course simple text ads such as those sponsored links beside Google search results. These can be the hardest to create, a graphic ad you can show your products with text you can to attract interest without the benefit of someone seeing what you sell. Simply stating what you sell isn't enough.

The headline for your ads is what people will see first since it's usually in a larger font size and different color than the rest of the ad. Grab attention with it “Handmade Soap” just isn't that interesting compared to “Delicious Blueberry Muffin Soap”. That second headline makes you want to find out if the soap really smell like blueberry muffins and maybe if it shaped like one. You can also use it to ask a question like “Are you looking for vegan candles?” this will grab the attention not only of people interested in vegan candles but pique curiosity in those not sure what they are. Use a call to action, words like buy, purchase, order, etc. it encourages a user to click if they are looking to shop. Don't forget your keywords, try to slip one or two big ones in your headline and more in the rest of the text.

After you have a good headline you can use the rest of the ad text to elaborate on your products. Describe what your products are made of, are they organic, are they precious metal or other premium material like angora, silk, etc. Suggest a use, gift for mother's day, pamper yourself, pamper you pet, etc. If you're having a sale or promotion create an ad to promote it and get the word out.

Graphic Ads
Many graphic ads also contain text and you should follow many of the same principles for that text as you do for writing a plain text ad. Okay, now what should the graphics be? Most ads aren't that large so choose product photos that are clear even when reduced in size. Even better shoot new photos specifically for your ads so you can fit them within the size constraints of your ads. I find shooting photos for banner ads to be especially tricky because of the combination of narrow height and wide width.

Animation or not? Animated ads can definitely grab attention but can also be very annoying. If you choose to create animated ads don't make them rapidly flash especially between bright colors. Aim for an animation speed that any text is easily read before changing and your photos can be absorbed. Most animated ads are still .gifs (though an increasing amount are flash) which are limited to 256 colors that means the quality of your photos will be reduced so choose carefully.

General Advice
Look at other ads. Take time to see what other ads look like and what words they use. If you see an ad that catches your attention take a close look and try to figure out why. Test multiple ads and see which come out on top.

Resources
Here are some links to more articles on creating web ads.
How do I optimize my ad text? - From Google Adwords Help
Ads, Writing Effective Print
Write the ad, I pray you

Here's a bunch of great links I've come across lately.

Timothy Adam Designs - Article on increasing your Etsy traffic (many of the tips will also work for other selling venues as well).
Etsy Marketing - You Can Sell More, Here's How. Site all about marketing your Etsy shop. Some really great articles here.
Allover Art: Tuesday Tip - $100 Facebook Ad Credit Try out facebook ads for free, $100 gives you plenty of time to play with the ad service. This is legit, I gave it a try.

After reading a number of conversations on the Etsy forums lately I've realized that a lot of sellers don't know what SEO is and why it's important for their shops. I'm writing this as just a quick primer on optimizing an Etsy shop for SEO (it will also work for other venues like eCrater and ArtFire). This is just an overview touching on what I think are the most important things to work on.

Definition of SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, makign your website attractive to search engines so they will rank you highly in search results. Search engines account for a tremendous amount of traffic online so if your shop isn't ranking on search engines you're missing out on a lot of visitors who may become customers. The two sides of SEO to focus on are on site and off site.

This post is just going to focus on on site optimization of your Etsy shop. Off site will have to wait for a later post.

On Site Optimization

On site optimization is creating your site's content in a way that makes it clear to the search engines what your site is about and what keywords are important so you'll show up in search results for those keywords (on Etsy tags are the Etsy search keywords). Since I'm talking about optimizing an Etsy shop the options for optimization are limited. You only have what text you can edit to use in optimization.

It is possible to optimize a site for search engines and lose customers. User friendliness and content has to come first and then SEO but the good thing is a lot of SEO changes can also help user friendliness if done right.

Keywords

Keywords are the words that people use to find your site when they use a search engine. You want to try and target keywords that you want people to find your shop using. The obvious ones are the type of product you make, subject matter, or materials, less obvious ones can often be things like occasions people would buy your product for, wider categories of products, etc. Google has a great keyword research tool that can give you suggestions based on a sample of keywords you give them.

Make a list of the keywords you would like to target to use while editing your shop. Keep these keywords on hand for Part II on off site optimization.

Titles

It's a good idea to use keywords in your title, but not at the expense of making the title informative. So something like "Blue Sparkle Earrings" is informative but few keywords "Blue Sparkle Earrings, Handmade Lampwork Glass Jewelry" is both informative and has several keywords. Keyword stuffing is loading a title with a list of keywords and while it may help your search engine ranking it will be a turn off for customers, an example would be "handmade earrings lampwork glass gift etsy blue bead crafts". You must balance SEO with user friendliness.

Descriptions

Your descriptions first and foremost must inform a potential customer about your products. The good thing about this is the more you tell your customers the more there is for the search engines to pick up on. Make sure you work in your keywords where you can. As an example I make jewelry based on cuttlefish so my descriptions all contain this paragraph after the description of the piece of jewelry:

Cuttlefish are not fish at all but are cephalopods, their closest relatives are squid and octopus. These amazing sea creatures have eight arms and two tentacles with suckers that they use to capture their prey. Some cuttlefish are brightly colored and many can change the color and the texture of their skin as camouflage, mating display, or warning.

It gives from background on cuttlefish which help customers who may not be familiar with these cool animals but it also includes many of my keywords such as: cuttlefish, fish, squid, cephalopods, tentacles, sea, etc.

Make the first few sentences of your description count the most, Etsy pulls the first 240 characters for the meta description tag. How much this tag matters anymore is debatable but some search engines pull this info for their results display. So you want to make sure it's clear in those first few words exactly what your item is.

Tags

Since tags are text on the listing page google will see them but you should be focussing them for Etsy search because that's where they will do the most good. List type of product, subject matter, materials, colors, etc. then if you have some tag spaces left over throw in some of your keywords. The tags also show up in the keywords meta tag but most search engines no longer give those much weight so Etsy search first then what might help with Google.

Shop Announcement

Your shop announcement is the only solid piece of text on your gallery page. Use it to introduce you and your products while working in your keywords. Like your item description the first 240 characters of your announcement are pulled for the meta description tag so describe your business first before any other announcements (including sales).

Also don't forget your shop title, you have about 55 characters to work with so instead of just your shop name include a little more info and keywords. As an example instead of just using "Noadi's Art" I use "Noadi's Art on Etsy, Polymer Clay Jewelry & Sculpture". It doesn't just show up in bold at the top of my shop annoucnement but is also used in the title tag, the title tag shows the title in the top of the browser (or on tabs) but search engines also factor it into your rankings.

Shop Sections

Shop sections need to be clear to your customers what they include, but they are also text so search engines see them (also along with your user name they are pulled into the meta keywords). Instead of for example listing "Hats" be more specific and put "Fleece Women's Hats".

Off Site Optimization

Off site optimization boils down to one basic thing: backlinks. Backlinks are links on other sites that lead to your shop. You want to have links from many other sites, but not just any site. Sites with content related to your shop will have more effect than a totally unrelated site and some sites have more weight with search engines than others (google pagerank is often used a measurement of this).

NoFollow

Not every link will help your search engine rankings. The nofollow attribute tells search engines not to count a link, blog often have these on the comments and all paid links (like ads) are also supposed to be nofollow. These links might bring traffic so they aren't useless but won't help you with search engines.

Getting Started

So where to start building backlinks? If you have a blog, twitter account, flickr account, etc. add a link to your shop. Then you can start searching for free directories to add your site to, here's a big list of free directories and you definitely should get added to the Handmade Product Directory. Other things you can do are start a blog just for your shop, create Squidoo lenses for your products, email other blogs about featuring your shop, most Etsy teams have a blog that lists member shops so that's yet another great reason to join a team (among many including meeting cool fellow Etsy users). If you have great products and good promotion other people will do some of the work for you by linking to your shop themselves.

Another way to build backlinks is to use the RSS feed that every Etsy shop has. has a great list of places to submit RSS feeds.

While not directly related to the normal google results you deifnitely want to sign up for an submit your products to Google Base so they will show up in the product search. Let's Ets is a great tool for getting the bulk file to upload.

Linking to Your Shop

You can't control all links to your shop just those you create yourself. This is where your keyword list comes back out. You want to create links to your shop that use not just your shop name (you do want a number of those) but also your keywords.

If you are using images to link to your shop the best option is to also have a text link below it or near it to the same page. However you can also use the alt and title tags for images in the format <img src="http://yourlink.com/image.jpg" alt="Your shop name" title="Your shop name"> and the search engines will read that text for the image.

Hiring Out your SEO

There are many companies online that will do your SEO for you. If you find this all overwhelming you may decide to hire someone else to do it for you, however be very careful. There are some shady SEO companies out there that may want to scam you or who use unethical practices that could end up getting you punished by the search engines by being blacklisted. Always do your research before hiring anyone.

I recently started running some ads with Google Adwords. Been working nicely from the standpoint of sending visitors to my Etsy shop but I ran into a problem: the integration between Adwords and Google Analytics wasn't working right. Usually Adwords and Analytics integrate well to show you extra information about adwords campaigns bringing visitors to your site but it wasn't doing that for me. I tried tweaking various setting in Analytics and Adwords and finally figured out the problem.

I was using http://noadi.etsy.com as the link adwords was to use to send people to my shop, once I changed it to the direct link http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6288550 it started registering the stats correctly. I think this is related to how Etsy handles urls for subdomains. I still use noadi.etsy.com as the url that is displayed on my ads but it's not where visitors are directed.

So if you're using Adwords to advertise your Etsy shop you might want to edit the ads so you get more accurate stats in Analytics.

With Etsy and ArtFire joining selling venues like eCrater in offering Google Analytics I figure it's time for an article on this incredibly useful tool. If you need help setting up Analytics and the technical aspects of it here are some useful links:
Tech Update: Etsy Web Analytics Now Available
Google Analytics Help Center
Google Analytics Video Tutorials

Now once you have Analytics set up how is it useful?

The types of stats you can get from Analytics:

• How many visitors view your shop per day, week, month, or whatever time fram you want.
• The average number of pages they view and how long they stay in your shop.
• What are your most and least popular pages.
• How many people immediately click out of your shop and what pages they do it from.
• What sites are sending visitors to your shop.
• How much traffic from search engines are you getting and what are the search terms they are using to get to your shop.
• Find out what if any links visitors are clicking on to leave your shop.
• See what countries your visitors are coming from.

Where Analytics really becomes useful is as a tool to analyze and improve your promotion efforts. Here are a few ways you can use it for this purpose:

• If you are running ads on a site like OwnTheHour or another site find out just how many people are visiting from that site and whether it's worth the money your spending for the ad.
• Analytics integrates with google adwords to give you added tracking of the performance of any adwords campaigns you are running.
• Is Twittering working? Check to see how many people are clicking from your tweets to your shop. If not reconsider how your using Twitter, are you maybe tweeting too much about your shop? Too little? Not enough followers? Etc.
• Is your blog sending visitors? If not maybe the links to your shop aren't prominent enough or they're too far down the page. For that matter set up Analytics for your blog too if you haven't already and use the two reports together to get an even better sense of what is and isn't working.
• Do you only sell in the US and your getting a lot of Canadian visitors? Maybe time to rethink selling to Canada or retool your promotion to bring in more US visitors.

I plan to do a much larger post specifically on some of the ad networks later on but after a Twitter exchange today I wanted to write a short post about setting up an ad campaign. I've had some moderate success with ad campaigns using Project Wonderful so I feel like I have learned something about what works and what doesn't.

DO target sites or keywords related to your business such as: handmade, etsy, crafts, jewelry (if that's what you sell), or bath and body (again if that is your product type).

DON'T target an unrelated keyword just because it's popular. Project Wonderful has a lot of web comics offering advertising space so "comics" is a very popular keyword. However if your products are unlikely to appeal to comic readers you're wasting your money using that keyword. I sell cephalopod related jewelry so I do advertise on some comics with octopus, squid, or Cthulhu as characters because people who like those types of comics are likely to also like my jewelry.

DO monitor where your clicks are coming from, a site that sends you a lot of visitors (especially if those visitors also shop) is worth extra to keep your ad on the site. This only works with a service that allows you to select specific sites to advertise on though.

DON'T keep your ads on a site that isn't sending clicks. It doesn't matter how many pageviews it gets, if no one is clicking on your ad then it's not worthwhile.

For my first site review here on Handmade Biz I'm going to cover a site that doesn't let you sell handmade products directly but has some very useful services for your business.

Zazzle.com is a print on demand site that also lets you sell your designs through them and make money. This is especially useful for those working in 2D media like pencil, paint, or digital art in that you can offer your artwork for sale on a wide variety of products at no direct cost to you. It's a fun additional way to promote your art work.

Zazzle offers a really wide and unique variety of products to put your designs on from clothing to bag to cards to skateboards. They even offer embroidered designs though those require an upfront artwork processing fee. When you sign up you get your own customizable storefront, you can take a look at Noadi's Art on Zazzle to see my store as an example. The way you make money on Zazzle is when you create products with your designs you can add them to the marketplace (which will put it on your store along with in Zazzle's search) and put a percentage markup over the base price on each product, if someone buys one you get that percentage. When you make products to buy yourself you pay the base price.

What makes Zazzle really useful for a handmade business is their paper printing options, they offer business cards, postcards, greeting cards, stickers, and postage. All of these can be used to create your own promotional products which is exactly what I used Zazzle for this week. You could also make custom t-shirts to promote your business and wear them to craft shows.

I was running out of my home printed business cards and decided that I really wanted some that looked more professional so I looked around at different online printing services and not surprisingly there is a huge range of prices available depending on quality of the cards and whether you want color and two-sided printing. I wanted full color with two sides and Zazzle's prices were pretty good and I already had an account with them so I decided to give them a try.

First I had to design my cards. Zazzle has pre-made templates already that make designing a card really easy or you can upload your own images and then you can add whatever text you want. I wanted a little more control over my design than that so I downloaded a business card template and used my own photos and the Gimp photo editor to design my card. I then uploaded my images and deleted all the text boxes that Zazzle puts in automatically for business cards.

I went through the order process, Zazzle was having a half-off promotion for business cards so I only paid $25 for 300 cards which was the lowest price I found for 2-sided full color printing, even the full price of $50 for 300 was in the middle of the price range I found. You can find much cheaper business card printing but those usually restrict your design choices and/or put their logo on your cards.

I was given a delivery estimate of 6-10 days after printing. Printing apparently doesn't take very long because they shipped the next day and I received them in only 4 days which is impressive considering I'm on the other side of the country from Zazzle's headquarters.

So my opinion of the cards? They are gorgeous, the cards are a nice weight of cardstock, a satin finish (just a little more glossy than matte), colors are bright and the images are very crisp not grainy. Overall I'm very impressed.