Harry, You HAVE to know your cards are wonderful.  AND they are unique.  The problem is really not you...and your imagination....it is that if our customers were to click on blank cards they would probably come up with thousands, right?  Well, they don't want to sort through thousands when they are looking for a "Thinking of you" card...That blank card could have a surf board on it, or a snowman, or a carpenter hammering in a nail,  or a priest giving communion, or a pianist pounding the keys...They need a card that will certainly be generic and subtle enough.  Soo, our task is to choose that card wisely and label it "Thinking of you."  That's not such a big thing when you think about it.  And it helps sell our cards.  You don't even have to put a verse inside, just have that "Thinking of you" on the card front...
Your cards are just too good for you to get in a funk now.  Just keep creating and give up your hang-up about titling a card.  Just DO IT.
I LOVE YOUR WINDOW CARDS.  
SueB

Hi Ginger! Welcome to GCU.
 
One of the major strengths of GCU over traditional card venues like Hallmark is the ability for the customer to personalize or customize the inside of any card - so if a buyer isn't happy with the inside verse they can change it quickly and easily.
 
There is a category called Blank Cards under Collections. At present, it contains more than 3000 cards. There is also Note Cards (also under Collections) and under Occasions, you'll find a General category.
 
Corrie
http://www.corrieweb.nl

Harry-
 
It does seem a little frustrating to feel you have to put idle words on a lovely illustration just so it can be categorized.  But that's the way things work here. . . more and more so.  But if you want you're cards to be "found" that's what you've got to do.  And profiling a card for what it "could be" is a big no-no.  Many a blank card could be just perfect for what one is "thinking of" when they want to send a "just thinking of you card."  But unless you have the words on the front, you can't put it in that category.  It's too bad, as customers CAN put whatever they want inside.  
 
Myself, I rarely look for cards that say something specific (in card stores OR online)  I LOOK for images that touch me, rarely purchasing cards with text on the cover and have rejected cards (in stores) that open up to ridiculous verbiage.  On the other hand I have also purchased cards BECAUSE of what they say inside.  But that's just me.  
 
Greeting Card Universe caters very much to the parent Big Dates and the reminder services which work well with the specific categorizing.  And I know those who have a lot of cards with this specific profiling do very well on this site. There are many excellent artists on GCU who just won't get the exposure without "playing by these rules."
 
I'm ranting today, sorry. . . must be this 25th snowstorm of the season, the price of gas, heating oil. . . yet another friend diagnosed with cancer.  I wonder if it's okay to pick a blank card of an artist and inside text from another card by the SAME artist?  Corrie- want to chime in on this one?
 
 
 

Hi Harry,--From fellow frustrated--just can't seem to get the hang of it. Of course
this is coming from a guy who four months ago heard  'POD' would have thought  
they were talking about a new disease!  ........Hi, Ernestine, will get back to you.  
this has not been the best of weeks, our little communitys bank crashed and was closed last Friday!  ..............Norval

Seems many of us are feeling frustrated with GCU right now.  I don't know if it has to do with the "testing" that GCU is doing -- I've been assuming that's the case -- but I've been looking for an answer to some problems I found and brought to GCU's attention almost two weeks ago.  I decided not to post it on the forum to give Shaun and the programmers a chance to look into it without getting peppered (or hammered) by emails and posts.  But I think at this point, y'all ought to know about it.
 
I noticed that at least two of my cards were NOT showing up in the categories I had ascribed to them at several of the reminder services ... BestReminders, BirthdayReminders, DateBoxx, etc. ... and of the ones that were showing up, I couldn't understand why one of my cards (within an age-specific category) which had no sales was ranked higher under "Most Popular" than another card of mine in the same category that has multiple sales.  Go figure that one.  That's another problem altogether.
 
Anyway, I did some research to see if other cards were not showing up ...  There are LOTS of cards not showing up in the categories where they should be at the reminder services ... not just mine ... could be yours too.  I don't know about the rest of you, but the majority of my sales come from the reminder services.  I was pretty upset that we spend a lot of time going through a cumbersome process to profile and categorized our cards ... only to learn that the customers shopping in those categories may never get to see them because they're not there!
 
In the age-specific category 75 Birthday there are 41 cards at GCU and BigDates, but at all of the other reminder services the count is 30 ... that means that 10 cards other than mine are not available for customers to find.  Check out 25th Birthday ... at GCU/BigDates there are 50 in the category, but only 37 in the same category at the reminder services ... 13 cards missing from customer view.  This same thing is repeated over and over again, sometimes it's only 1-5 cards missing, other cases it's 10-14 cards missing.  Now, that doesn't sound like a lot ... unless it's one of your cards that's not available for customers to see or buy.  I double checked and rechecked my GCU module settings, so this is something that can only be fixed by GCU and its affiliates.  And btw ... these are not "new" cards that just haven't made it into the system yet.  These cards have been up for over 5 months ... and the ones I just put up seem to be showing up.
 
Shaun updated me last week that the programmers are looking into this.  I told him there was no hurry as far as I'm concerned because I'm not sure about my future with GCU, but for the rest of you ... if you are not seeing sales or activity on certain cards, it may be because no one at the reminder services can find them.  
 
Here's a broader example of what I'm talking about ... open up 3 browsers -- 1 with GCU, 1 with BigDates, 1 with BestReminders or BirthdayReminders ... then look at the number of cards in each major category.  
 
If you look at the numbers associated within the sub-categories under each main category, you'll start to see how many cards are miscategorized, not at GCU or BigDates, but at the other reminder services.  
 
After hours and hours of searching, I finally did find my 75th birthday card ... under  BIRTHDAY>>Age-Specific>>Other Years.  I think many of the "missing" cards may be found in generalized categories like this.  I've been very disheartened and reluctant about submitting more cards because of this and some other problems that may be going on.  
 
It nearly breaks my heart because I love GCU, and I so truly want to see them succeed now and in the future.  But it seems that many contributors are being disadvantaged in too many ways, either by technical glitches, testing of new modalities in marketing, or other matters for me to feel very "Rah! Rah!" right now.  For the last month or so, I've been at a loss to figure out which end is up here.
 
Hopefully, Shaun and the programmers will have some answers and a fix for this soon.  But since a lot of folks get stressed out about putting their cards in the right category, you may want to check all the sites where they are marketed to see if or where they are showing up.  
 
Geez ... this makes me sad.    GCU, we want to give you our best work to sell, but please, play fair with us.  
 
Teri
 

Thanks for all the input and suggestions folks ... I've been taking everyones suggestions into consideration.
 
And Sue ... thank you ... but I really don't know anything of the kind ...  I just keep trying.  
 
It's also nice to know other folks here like blank cards too.  Personally I think it would be nice to have a site where folks can just browse through images to put on cards.    Is there one??  I sent a note card one time that all I could write inside was ... "I saw this pretty picture and thought you might enjoy it to."
 
I'm sorry but when I wrote my comment on Friday I think I was reacting, maybe over reacting, a lot to this phrase in the approval e-mail "Consider adding occasion specific text to the inside of your cards to give them a real purpose and resonate with shoppers."  WOW, I couldn't help but read that as saying my cards have no real purpose and don't resonate just because they aren't occasion or whatever specific.  That really got inside and just irked me.  And I realize the person who wrote that might have just been trying to be helpful.  
 
But I thought about that real hard this weekend and here is the purpose of my cards ...
 
To simply BE a nice card, with a nice image or design, that just MAY resonate with a shopper depending on how THEY are feeling, what THEY are thinking, what THEY are looking for, and most importantly what THEY want to say.  With or without words, and whatever it may be.
 
I fully understand this is not the kind of place where people browse through cards ... they click mechanically through categories to find that pre-packaged thought.  So be it.  I'll keep on creating my odd little cards and putting them in places as best I can.
 
The three cards in question have been re-categorized. 2 are now in the "thinking of you"  and one in "missing you" ... along with a number of my other blank cards that got approved in those categories no problem at all.  How did I do that?  Well ... the fact is you can put a card anywhere after it is approved and to placate the management I added some text in the innards ...  
 
Thinking of you??? Heck no!  I got a line of ... "Forget you ..... NOT!" cards   That's sorta like thinking of you ain't it??? LOL
 
I dunno folks at GCU, I think we may end up butting heads here ... because I am going to try to get up on here the kinds of cards I want to do ... what can I say I like the way you print and I do some things that I think deserve to be printed nicely.  And maybe just maybe there is someone out there who will stumble across them and like them too.
 
I think it's interesting ... I've only sold one card here ... I've bought a lot but only sold one to another person.  They bought 15 of them at Christmas.  I was thrilled ... it was my first big sale anywhere. (Then I sold 50 on Zazzle LOL).  I think I had maybe a half dozen cards up then.  Most said Merry Christmas, Seasons Greetings or Happy Holidays.  Which one sold?  None of them.  The one that sold had the image of the gothic window on black and simply said "Peace" below it and not a word inside.  
 
There are other folks who are looking for odd little cards ... not just me.  I'll gladly sell to them.
 
Thanks again folks ... I really do like the back and forth on here!
 
 

I agree with you all.  Teri, I've also checked this out and what you said is happening
constantly.  Check the keywords in your stores [ if any persistant customer can run
 the obstacle course to get in ], you click on a key word and half the time it pulls up nothing there.  Also, Mindy, you keep telling us be more specific, yet one can only
put age specific and not combine it with relation specific.  I tryed to tell Shaun [I don't know whether he receved the message],  If I'm shopping for a seven year old son card, I don't have the time to look through upteen hundreds of age seven
general cards [I'll just click off, that is the beauty of online shopping from a consumers view]  What few cards I've sold have been through the reminder services or very specific google searches, so quite putting obstacles in our way.
 Everyone is complaining about foot trafic in our stores, the best thing GCU could
do is link us with the reminder services.  If you can link a sale from a widget to a
specific artist, you could do this with the services [Bigdates etc,] otherwise GCU is
just a very large on call artist stable!