Baking for the Holidays

I am home for the holidays getting to spend time with my family for the first time in a year. I know many Etsy owners like myself are trying to manage the stress of coordinating plans with the demands of running an online business. I just wanted to take a moment to remind everyone to breathe. Take a little time out of each day and do something you really love to pamper yourself. As you can see by my photo, I am taking time to bake with my mom and sister. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday.

Stranger then Fiction

So I watched Stranger then Fiction this weekend. It is probably one of my favorite movies. It is also one of the few movies where Will Ferrel plays a non-goofy character. It is all about the concept of the relationship between the writer and the character. You can watch the movie from his point of view. His life is overtaken by the voice of the writer, who seems to be in control of his life. A writer about to kill him with the stroke of a key... a final punctuation. From her point of view her character, who often refuses to participate, has sprung to life begging for his life. This man who was just an impression, a personality is now flesh and blood. All of which is punctuated by a third character Harold's wrist watch. This watch seems to be aware of the story as it unfolds. It tries to warn Harold of the events moments before they happen.

That got me to thinking. I have thought about doing watches. I want to do several types. I have a watch that broke. The band snapped in one spot, but the actual watch is still in great condition. So I am going to see if I can make something of it. I keep the first of all of my creation types. I keep them as reminders of when I took a chance on a concept. So now it is time to take a chance on this concept.

Light Box

So I just created a Light Box. I took a Staples box, that was once the holder of several reams of paper, preformed surgery and came out on the better side. I have yet to use it to take images of my wonderful pieces. But, I know that they work.

I also know that the one thing all of the etsy tutorials tell me is the same. The images you use for your products are the most important part of of your advertising. If the image or item doesn't look attractive, people will not want to look at it closer or buy.

Here is the tutorial I used:
How to Make An Inexpensive Light Tent – DIY

Here are a couple more for you:
How to Create an Inexpensive Photography Lightbox
Homemade Light Box for Product Photography
Homemade Photography Light Box (Video)

November Review...

So I take November off from all of my other hobbies. The main downside to that is that it is also one of the biggest holiday gift buying seasons. I have plans next year to get all of my holiday work done by October. I am a huge believer in trying to preemptively strike a problem you can see coming.

But back to the main portion of this post, I am going to say a word that gets many responses: NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing on November 1. The goal is to write a 50,000 word, (approximately 175 page) novel by 11:59:59, November 30.

When I tell friends about this I get one of three responses. 1.) You're doing what? 2.) People do this? or 3.) Have fun with that. Then a look like I have managed to sprout a second head.

So I sat down with an extra large cup of coffee, my laptop and Pandora Stations geared to certain emotional states. By the end of day 11, I wrote 46,499 words. I won with 125,869 words. This is my second year winning. They don't tell you about the moments you want to bang your head against the desk, because the words aren't right or the character doesn't want to participate in the scene. They don't tell you about how your fingers get stiff. They also don't tell you how the clock will mock you at four in the morning. But it is all worth it.

It is the ability to say, I did this. I made something. It may not be high lit, but this is mine.

The New Website

So as I announced last week I am working on building a site for my Etsy shop. After having read Jordan's post on websites, I decided that I had put it off too long. In honest I had. I have been working on building sites for others since high school, but I found it very intimidating to work on my own. My favorite college professor said once that the hardest person to design for is yourself. I agree. I always see the flaws and what else I could do to make it better. This means it is never done enough to put content on. But I finally did it. I created a site I am happy with. I am working right now on embedding my blog. I am not sure how I am going to do this yet.

So I want you to think about your business.
Do you have a site?
Have you considered having one made?

I took Jordan's advice to heart. You need to think about the end user. Take into consideration that this site is a promotional platform for your work. You want the user to come and stay for a while. So work backwards. As a shopper in your store what features would you want to see. If it is easier go to someones shop and do this exercise. I prefer a well laid out gallery with links to the product. I enjoy a blog to read that involves subject matters related to their art and their life.

(This is not officially a Business Sense, but I am tagging it that way so that it is easy to find.)

Website Building:

So in my real life I build websites and make things pretty. It is the easiest way I know to explain Graphic Design with Web Design skills. I am also currently working on a second Etsy store where I am going to start offering websites for a reasonable rate for other artist. But, for now I am building a site for Strung Out Creations.

I heard the quote once that "the cobbler's children never have shoes." It was a designer talking about how she does all of these amazing designs for everyone else, but her own site always seemed to become neglected or downright out of date. I have to admit I am guilty of this. It is really hard to find time for your own adventures when you are helping to guide everyone else. So I am starting with mine.

I am almost done with the site. I am mainly just working on the blog section. I don't want to loose my blogger, but I also want people to be able to read my work on my store. I have found a wonderful cheat that allows me to embed my Blogger into my site. But I am having to reformat some of the images I have used before.

Right now, I don't have a date for the site release. But, I promise to keep you informed.

Business Sense: Advertising with Craftcult.com

Craft Cult is a "Etsy helper" style site. They are the proud Heart-o-matic service, which allows you to monitor the popularity of your store and single items. It is a prettier more friendly version of Analytics. It allows you to track the flow of visitors, but unlike analytics that is the only information you get. Now the real amazing part is it allows you to separate the views an item might get and the hearts. I use this is a way to gauge the actual popularity of an item.

This is a very popular tool used by many Etsians. I know I learned about it through several shop owners and I like them pass it on to others. So this is a high traffic site.

Pricing
Craft Cult offers two styles of ads. There is the top carousel rotating image gallery. Then there are the two sidebars that have a list of eight images that switch out. (I myself have only done the side bar.) Craft Cult offers a variety of flat-rate packages starting at $15 going up to $55.

What was my experience?
I went with a seven day sidebar ad for $15. I figured this would be a great starter. Since they offer a flat rate, I didn't have to worry about surprise fees. This made this test run seem safer to me. Also, knowing that they are high traffic made it more appealing.

Here is the ad I ran:

I am in the bottom right.

Trackable Results
Here is the important stuff.

My average hits per day when I have not listed a new item is anywhere between 1 and 14. To me this seems like normal average visits if you are not promoting your store. So I consider this my base line of comparison.

I ran my ad from September 25th through August 31st. As per my google anayltics, there is a huge jump in visits. After having talked to the wonderful people at Craft Cult, they let me know that the busiest days for them are Monday and Tuesday. I assume this is because those are the first scheduled days for people after having been out all weekend.

Here are the number:
Wednesday the 25th = 21 unique visits and 2 shop hearts
Thursday the 26th = 29 unique visits and 1 shop heart
Friday the 27th = 30 unique visits and 5 shop hearts
Saturday the 28th = 12 unique visits and no shop hearts
Sunday the 29th = 29 unique visits and 3 shop hearts
Monday the 30th = 23 unique visits and 3 shop hearts
Tuesday the 31st = 10 unique visits no shop hearts

I didn't think to track item hearts. I intend to on my next trial with them. Now I didn't get a sale out of this. But, I did manage on the slow days (the 28th and the 31st) to still almost hit the high end of my non-advertising visits per day. And, on the busy days it doubled and sometimes almost tripled.

So final verdict is that this is a great site to buy on-line advertising. Since money for my store mainly comes from sales in my store I will use this advertising mainly near holidays. I am currently looking for some free sites to advertise on. If you know of any please let me know.