What is Direct Creatives?

Direct Creatives is an online marketplace that connects new small business owners with people, like you, who are uniquely qualified to recommend and provide the tools they need to get a headstart in their business. Created by direct sellers, for direct sellers.

What makes these particular people uniquely qualified, exactly? Because these are business owners, just like you, who’ve been there.

• The long nights trying to untangle confusing systems
• The wasted time trying to figure out how effective their marketing is
• The hair-pulling frustration trying to get enough sales to afford better tools

You’ve been there, you’ve struggled, and you’ve overcome all those struggles. And how did you do it? By putting together tools and systems that helped you track and manage your business more efficiently, save more time, and ultimately make more money.

And now, with Direct Creatives, you can offer those same tools and systems to other small business owners still struggling with the same questions you once had, or shop with other creators who have made the digital assets that will help save you time, money, and effort.

What is Direct Creatives?

One of the first problems facing new direct sellers and small business owners is the unknown. They don’t know what tools they need or what tools will make their life easier because they don’t know what they need to do: what systems they need to build, what metrics they need to track, what tasks they need to focus on outside of their sales.

Direct Creatives allows those business owners who had to figure it all out the hard way the opportunity to help someone else start without the same struggle.

Products available on Direct Creatives include:

• Branding packages
• Client avatar worksheets
• Social media growth trackers
• Business planners
• Digital paper
• Fonts
• Graphics templates
• Sales trackers
• The answers and solutions you will develop and share

What makes Direct Creatives unique is in the fact that each of the products for sale there has been tested and proven to work by business owners like you — there’s no theory or hypothetical but evidence of results. In many cases, these are the exact systems they used to get ahead in their business and they used to help their teams get ahead.

This makes Direct Creatives one of the best options for selling your tools and trackers and templates that you’ve had to develop for your own business.

How Does Direct Creatives Work?

There are two different ways to use Direct Creatives: Seller and Shopper.

Being a shopper is easy! Just head to Direct Creatives and start browsing. You’ll find all kinds of resources to help your small business, including social media checklists, graphics, scripts, workbooks, party outlines, and more, all designed to help make your life easier! If purchasing some graphics for your next Facebook party saves you several hours making them, and can be used over and over again, that might be worth it!

Selling your business resources on Direct Creatives is relatively simple as well.

1. Gather and review the resources you’ve created for your business. Take a look at each of the tools, scripts, and trackers you’ve had to put together and build over the months or years. What do they do? How could they help someone else? Can you make them more generalized or will they only work for a specific type of business that matches yours? Take an audit of everything you have and gather them together.
2. Register for an account or get onto their waitlist. Direct Creatives only accepts new vendors a few times per year. This way, they can focus their attention and support on their vendors, offering them additional training in marketing and sales, to make sure they get the most out of their membership on the site. (Note: If you’re in Elite Suite, we have a special side door to start your Direct Creatives storefront. Head over to our group and we’re happy to help you get that link.)
3. Set up your storefront. Your storefront includes details about the types of businesses your resources are designed to help, a store name, logo, and contact information to help people find out more about you and your business. You’ll also be setting up your payment information for how you want to get paid for your products.
4. Refine and upload your resources. Once you have been able to go through and refine your trackers and templates and other resources to get them ready to sell, it’s time to set your price, create your listings inside your storefront, and get them uploaded to the site.
5. Market and sell your resources. Of course, “build it and they will come” only happens in the movies. Once your resources are published to your storefront, it will be time to start marketing them and start getting those sales. The good news is that Direct Creatives has training and support in place to help you get started with this (and, of course, the training and tips you get from my groups around the Suite can also be applied to selling these digital resources).

How Much Does it Cost to Run a Storefront on Direct Creatives?

Direct Creatives strives to make everything as easy and transparent as possible for its members and that really shows in the way they’ve set up their fee structures. Rather than individual listing fees and selling fees and split payments, you can set up your storefront and start selling your best business resources for as little as $7.50 per month (paid annually). Depending on just how many resources you want to sell and the types of resources you have, you may also consider upgrading your storefront to one of the premium plans.

Premium plans go up to just $29 per month and give you the chance to offer one-on-one services, consultations, higher commissions, and more. This is the best option for those who plan to offer a variety of services, scale your store to a larger business, or offer higher price point items.

There are other costs involved; for example, you would be responsible for any transaction fees from Stripe and you may be required to pay some in taxes. But listing and selling your products on Direct Creatives itself has no hidden fees – just flat-rate membership prices that includes everything you need to run the storefront that’s right for you.

Do you Need a Direct Creatives Storefront?

I think it’s probably pretty obvious by this point that I am going to say yes to this question – you absolutely should build a Direct Creatives storefront. If you’ve had a problem you’ve had to overcome in your business – a puzzle that you had to solve – and that solution required you to build some sort of tool or resource that could help someone else, it feels like a no-brainer to go ahead and get it listed for sale so those other people who need the help can get it.

But what if you’re already selling said resource on another platform?

Do they sell office supplies at just one store? Or books? Or Diet Coke? Of course not – the best way to market and sell your digital resources is to get it in front of as many eyes as possible. So, if you already have your resources listed on another site, it can only benefit you to also list them up on Direct Creatives. And if you don’t already have them up on another site, then the marketing training and experience you gain from Direct Creatives can only help you flourish.

Our goal in the Suite is to always help you find resources, services, and partners to help your business — both as a user and as a seller. That’s why we’re so excited to partner with Direct Creatives.

Click here to check out how Direct Creatives can help you save money or make money, and tell them I sent you!

#EmpowerSocial