Showing posts with label Marketing. Show all posts

Oooh! I came across this post and found some real gems of info for anyone who is hoping to promote their online store and optimize their website.
Check it out:
http://www.squidoo.com/101WaysToPromoteYourOnlineStore

One of my steps towards this was to create a brand new Facebook page for Wear Me Jewels which can be found at: http://www.facebook.com/wearmejewels .
I did this on Wednesday and have some followers (27) which is a start. I am thinking the the facebook page could be a great way to stay in touch with customers, more real-time then a monthly newsletter. I is a wonderful place to add new items, offer coupons, etc...
I learned some things while setting up my facebook fan page. The first was that you need to have 25 subscribers before you can shorten your url to your business name from the big long number filled url that they initially give you. Once you have your first 25 fans go to Http://www.facebook.com/username to make this change. A shorter url is much easier to remember.
That's it for now!

My Custom Jewelry Display-

I am so excited about my new jewelry display! I had it custom made by a woodworker friend of mine. I had looked and looked for the perfect display that would be easy to transport to craft shows and set up. Since I couldn't find one, I had to design my own. I am delighted with how it turned out. Unfortunately (only since I love this one and want to use it right away), I had this one made for my sister who does shows for me, but I am having a larger version made for myself soon.
This one is designed to fit inside a rolling crate (bought at Staples) for easy transport. It is about 20" tall and 13.5" wide when closed. As you can see- it holds a lot . It should hold at least 30 (3 1/2" long- business card size) earring cards. I have a piece of foam that fits snugly over the jewelry and keeps the jewelry in place when the case is closed. If you are interested in having one made- I'm sure my woodworker friend could make one for you too!
You can contact me for pricing, etc..

Wear Me Jewels Catalog: (click image to view 16 page catalog pdf)

My catalog is finished- woohoo! I actually finished it before Christmas but am just now getting a chance to blog about it. If you have been thinking about making your own catalog- here's proof that it can be done. However, it is a ton of work and I've learned some valuable lessons that will greatly benefit me when I go to have my next catalog printed. Here's some of the the things that I have learned through trial and error:
1. Make a list of the jewelry that you want to include in your catalog. Create a price list with product numbers and fabulous pictures for each item. This is probably the hardest step. It is hard to decide what to include and how to organize all of your items. Include only what you can reproduce and only items that have components that are readily available.
2. Back to the pictures. This was the most expensive and time consuming part of the process. I chose not to take the pictures myself. I found a photographer to take them for me. If you approach a photographer for this project you need discuss the following:

• Choose the background/theme and keep it consistent. I went with a white background.
• You will need either tiffs or 300dpi jpegs (I got both from my photographer). Check with the graphic designer to see what they need (most catalog printing companies have an in house designer- this is part of your printing price). My photographer for each jewelry item gave me a tiff, 300 dpi jpeg (8x8), and a 500x500 pixel web image. That way I had a version for my website as well as for print. This can cost anywhere from $15-$40 per item. I was able to negotiate the lower price because I had a large quantity of items to be photographed. These are large images and will need to be delivered to you on a DVD.
  
• Come up with a way for the photographer to name the image files- otherwise this can be a mess. They may take 10 pics of an item to get the one they like. If they deliver you 100 images that have file names like 1202-A , it is hard for you to find the picture you want. Talk about how they are going to name the image files. Ask them if they can add tags to the files (i.e the product number, description, color). When you deliver a group of items to the photographer to be photographed- include a inventory list with the product number and description of each item. Also- indicate how you want this item photographed (i.e laying flat, hanging..).
• Super important- if you have sets of items (i.e a necklace with matching earrings) or a collection of jewelry- have them photographed at the same time. My photographer did photo editing before he gave me the image files to approve. It wasn't until later that I noticed that the metal in photos he had taken a month earlier didn't match the metal of the matching earrings that I had gotten to him more recently. The problem was that he had taken it in a different light and edited it differently. Technically if you looked at the pictures separately they were good- but when you looked at them as a whole they did not look good together. That happened with a lot of items. If possible give the photographer everything at once or big groups of like items and you will avoid this issue. Be very careful before you "approve" the picture- make sure it's coloring (i.e contrast, lightness, etc..) match the other items on the same page.
• Be super clear with the photographer about what you need and what he will deliver- that will make both your jobs much easier.

I just added a great new feature to my website- Printable coupons. This is a new built-in easy to use feature on Webstorenow. There are many custom coupon designs to choose from which allow you to just add you own text. Presto- you have an instant coupon and it's super easy!
My new coupon is for 10% off any jewelry purchase online (coupon code fallsave10) or from my Wear Me Jewels booth (Eugene Saturday Market). I will also be at the Mushroom Festival (Mt. Pisgah Arboretum- South or Springfield, OR) this Sunday from 10-5pm.

I was the featured artist this week for the Eugene Saturday market and made it into their ad in the Eugene Weekly. In addition I was chosen as the "Beautiful booth of the month". Check out the write-up on the Saturday Market website:
Saturday Market Beautiful Booth of the Month

Creating a Wholesale Catalog:
OK, so it has been absolutely eons since I've posted on my blog. I know- no excuse for such neglect. However, I do have a big project that has just taken tons of my time and is still not completed. I decided months ago that I needed a wholesale catalog. My sister has been working as a sales rep for me and I thought "wouldn't it be convenient to have everything in a catalog". Whew.... bigger project then I imagined. However, when it's done- I think it will be a great marketing tool and resource. If you are thinking it would be great to have your own catalog- I'm going to do a series on the steps I've taken in the creation of mine. Then when it's all finished, I'll share the finished version with you for inspiration.
Before you do anything else there is some important groundwork to set which will save you lots of time later on. This is one of the hardest parts of the process.

1. Create a list of items that you would like to sell in your wholesale catalog. Seems obvious but it is a necessary and utterly important task. Write down the requirements you need your products to meet. Some ideas for requirements for an item to be included in the catalog are:

• This item must be re-producible. What if a store asked for 50 or 100 of this item. Could you realistically produce this item in the necessary quantities. Not all of you items need or should be in your wholesale catalog. Just choose the ones that fit the requirements that you set.
• Materials/Components: Can you buy the materials needed to make this item without worry of running out? What if you featured this item on the front page of your catalog and the vendor you bought the specific stone, color of pearl, etc... stopped carrying this item? What would you do? Do you have a backup resource? For the items that you choose- invest in the components/ metal/ stones, etc... Buy enough to see you through to your next catalog printing. Is silver down in price?- stock up. Are you at a great gem show?- buy enough supplies to make a large quantity of the item.
  
• Price point- Stores expect to sell your product at a minimum of twice your the price that they have bought it from you. After all, they have a lot of overhead and it doesn't make sense to buy product from you unless they can make a profit. If you have a pair of earrings that you sell at $14, you need to be able to sell them at $7 and still make some profit or it is not worth selling wholesale at all. You will probably have to adjust and re-think your pricing. Choose only products that you know the store will be successful selling at twice the wholesale you've set. Wholesale pricing can be tricky- don't undersell yourself and don't work for free. Your pricing structure needs to be consistent, profitable, fair to you, the customer, and a prospective store.

Summer is in full swing and so is the busy selling season. I haven't posted as regularly as I'd like, but came across this information on Google base, that I just had to share. Google Base is the database that Google uses for its “shopping” search. By following the tutorial kindly created by Kathryn Maloney on her Great Panes Blog you can create a RSS feed of your products onto Google. As we all know, the more that your products are visible, the more traffic will be driven to your site. If you get the Etsy newsletter, you probably saw the link to this information which was provided by Katheryn Maloney. If not, I'd recommend you not just bookmark this but click on the free tutorial below and start expanding your Google Base.

What is Google Base? Click here to find out more and how to have your Etsy or other website products scheduled to automatically be uploaded onto Google

Google Base Tutorial

Another helpful resource for getting your products on Google base for fellow Etsians is:
Let's Ets - A tool for Etsy Sellers

If you've been making jewelry for awhile and are looking for ways to grow as a business owner and jewelry designer, I'll outline some tips that I've learned that may be of benefit to you. First of all, it is important to realize that success does not just happen, it is the result of lots of hard work, planning, and creative thinking. So first thing I'd suggest is to come up with a business plan and do some brain-storming. Each jeweler has their own style- come up with something that reflects who you are, something unique, that can be a reflection of what you want to get across to the customer. Ask yourself these questions:
1. What is different about my product and how does it stand out from my competition?
2. How can I capitalize on those differences to make my product tell a story? A story about who I am, what my design style conveys, and the overall feel of my product line. For instance- Does your product have a whimsical theme, a nature inspired theme, a modern geometrical theme, a classical, contemporary, or organic theme? Do you use a lot of natural stones, silver, glass, pearls, etc... If you consistently have customers use the same words to describe your jewelry- that is the theme that is coming across.
3. Once you have come up with a thematic direction for your product- it is time to create branding.
I have a consistent dragonfly theme that I use in my business cards, earring cards, tags, website banner, and craft faire booth banner. I use a similar picture/logo on each which has my web address included (super important). I was able to put together the design of all of these with the help of an Etsy graphic artist: For Keeps . She did all of the design work for the business cards, earring cards, website banner, and booth vinyl banner, giving me a cohesive look. I then took the earring cards and had them printed at Vista Print (as business cards)- super cost effective. I had the business cards printed at Overnight Prints (they have a high end glossy uv coating which I love). I had Redhead Diva (another Etsy artist) print the stickers for my boxes. I printed the hang tags myself on my printer. The front of the hand tag also doubles as a logo/avatar. The website banner was easy to load onto my website and Etsy site. Lastly the vinyl banner was taken care of by For Keeps- she works with a company that does the printing and shipping of these. The vinyl banner is excellent quality- thick waterproof vinyl. It has heavy duty grommets, perfect for hanging. The tricky thing about something large like a vinyl banner is that it must be created in a scaled vector graphics format. You cannot take your website jpeg banner and send it off to be printed as a vinyl banner. It will not scale correctly and look horrible. A graphic that is created as a vectorized graphic (using Adobe Illustrator, etc..) could be printed on a business card or printed on the side of a bus and will look exactly the same. So, having said that, it is helpful to have someone create the graphic and send it off in the format that will work.
Once your created your branding, you'll find that you are much more memorable in the customers mind. Imagine you are a customer and have walked around a big craft fair looking at booths or browsed through a website, like Etsy, looking at jewelry. The more you see a business's name, the more your will remember that business. That is why a catchy business name, web presence, and branding are so important. Stay tuned for more about picking the right business name and creating a web presence in future Jewelry Business Tips installments.

Police what traffic gets counted : Google Analytics- Part 2
Well, I've officially signed up with Google Analytics and find myself fighting the tendency to pour over the statistical overload of numerical info like a nerd with a pocket protector. The first thing that I noticed is that a lot of the traffic to my site was from..... me? Hmmm...... I'm pretty sure that no good will come of that. So, that leads us to the next Google Analytics installment - excluding yourself or any other website that you do not want counted from your visitor and bounce statistics. After all, if you are going to analyze this preponderance of numerical craziness, you might as well be working with good data. Here's what you need to do:
1. Log onto your Google Analytics account and click on the filter manager (bottom, right hand corner). In addition to filtering out your own site from google stats, you can customize the way data is displayed on reports.
2. On the right hand side of that dark grey header - click "+add filter".
3. Now on filter type- click exclude all traffic from an IP address. Don't know your IP address? Find out at Anonymouse.
4. This should add your website(s)- click add. This will add them to the box on the right (selected website profiles). Then click save changes! Your're done!!

Bounce rate- What's that???
One of my goals in 2009 is to understand, track, and improve traffic to my various websites. One of the tools that I will use to do this is Google Analytics (a very powerful and free tool from Google). My first step in this venture was to sign up (yesterday) and get the ball rolling. I have been tracking traffic with hitslink but wanted to try out this more powerful tool. I have to say that it is a bit overwhelming at first. My first question, was what exactly is this "bounce rate"? Mine says 81% for the first day, that must be good right? Yikes, was that ever wrong. The bounce rate is basically all of those Attention Deficit Disorder people (you know you are one) who click on a site and click off within 10 seconds or less. So you could say the bounce rate is your abandon rate, your "nope, not interested" rate.
This is a very basic yet powerful metric to look at when analyzing your site. Once a visitor lands on one of your pages the clock starts ticking. You have only a few seconds to get their attention and convince them to stay on your site. How can you do that? What are the steps you need to take to change your bounce rate from a high percentage to a lower one? Those are a few of the questions that I will be exploring and discussing in future posts. Stay tuned!

Shop Handmade this Christmas Season!

This is a great year to buy handmade and what better place then the Eugene Holiday Market. This is a picture of my booth this year (an ever evolving project). If you are in the Eugene, Oregon area be sure to stop by Holiday Market (at the Lane County Fairgrounds) for some great Christmas shopping. I'm located in booth #20 for the next two weekends. We are open from 10-6 on Saturday and Sunday. Holiday Market is a collection of over 300 artisans. All of the items for sale are made and sold by the artist. Be sure to also check out the great food booths and live music.

Merry Christmas!!

My Analysis:
I just got back from being a vendor at the Portland Holiday Food and Gift Festival and thought I would give the lowdown on this event for any vendors who might be considering participation. The event was last weekend (Nov. 7-9th) at the Portland (OR) Convention Center. The convention center is a great building and the logistics of load-in and parking were fairly easy. However, the show overall was not very successful. Speaking for myself, I broke even, when you add show fees, hotel, food, time, etc... I think that I actually did better then a lot of the vendors around me. The show cost $585 for a 10x10 spot plus $79 for electricity (absolutely necessary -lighting is so important). I arrived on Thursday (with my Mom to help, which was wonderful) and easily found the load-in area at the back of the convention center. Right across the small back street from the load-in is free 20 min. parking and the vendor parking lot which cost $25 (cash only) for the weekend (no overnight parking).
It is easy enough to park in the vendor parking and walk the short distance to load-in your booth. I stayed at the Red Lion which is about a block away and very convenient. The rooms were three star quality (recently redecorated), clean and perfectly acceptable for the price. The parking at Red Lion was $10 per night. However, if you have a big truck like me you might want to figure out a way to park it early in the SMALL lot because the spaces fill quickly and it can be extremely stressful trying to park anything but a tiny car in those little spots.
The food at the show was good and the booth/vendor mix not bad. The convention center is a great venue and has the bonus of having a Starbucks in the lobby. There were lots of gourmet food and wine booths, handcrafted items (good quality) and art. However, there were also some imports and I prefer shows where most items are made by the artist/seller. The traffic was surprisingly light. At one point the artist across from me said you could throw a bowling ball down the aisle and only hit vendors. That was not far from the truth on Friday. The traffic picked up Saturday and Sunday but it was still not enough. The show had advertised that it had 18,000 customers the previous year. I would be surprised if there were actually half that amount. The customers were actually a different crowd then I normally have in Eugene. I'm used to the customer who loves to buy local (shop at local markets) and will pay extra for organic because it promotes a healthy lifestyle. This show just a different demographic. Overall I would rate this show 2 stars. It was well organized, beautiful location, decent mix of vendors, just not well attended. It might be the slow economy and the early date (it was hard to listen to Christmas music the first weekend in November) but in the end it was a good experience just not one that I will be repeating next year.

Jewelry Tip of the Week:
If you are a jeweler and work with precious metals, accurate pricing can be difficult. This is a picture of one of my rings. The question is, am I pricing it correctly in a fluctuating silver market? Sam Kaffine of Sterling Bliss jewelry came up with this great pricing solution:

"Keep an index card for each of your production pieces, listing materials by piece or weight,and assembly time. Write a pricing formula, using "x" for spot market price and "y" for length of product - be sure to include your profit margin. That way it's easy to adjust prices when the market rises or falls, or for different lengths/sizes of that piece. For example: ((x+25+30)/y)1.3 In other words... Take the spot market price(x), add your hourly rate($25) and any additional materials($30). Divide that total by the length(y), then multiply by your profit margin(1.3/30%)."

I think this is a brilliant solution for the jewelry artist that works a lot with precious metals!

Jewelry Business Tip:
I've been spending so much time printing out earring cards, cutting them, and needed something that was easier and more efficient. I came across an idea from another jewelry designer to have the earring cards printed as business cards from Vista Print. It was really inexpensive and works wonderfully. All you need to do is take your earring card design and upload it into their business card design program and flip it so the design is vertical vs. horizontal. If you need help coming up with a design for your cards there are lots of designers on Etsy who would design one for you for a good price. I used For Keeps, a graphic designer on Etsy that was great to work with and will customize a card to your business style. I had my cards printed with a matte finish so that I could write on the front. However, glossy would look fabulous and isn't that much more expensive. You could even have some info about your components or how you design your jewelry printed on the back. Don't forget your web address! This is a great place to advertise your website. If you need a website, I'd recommend Web Store Now (very easy to use, economical, and all-inclusive).

I'm so excited to finally get a cohesive look for my packaging and Saturday Market booth. I worked with a great graphic designer named Sarah from Etsy (www.forkeeps.etsy.com). I seriously believe that you can find the best things on Etsy. She did a great job in creating a "look" that matched my personal and business style.


The fabulous stickers in the center of my boxes were printed by another Etsy seller- Redhead diva . The boxes and bows are from Nashville Wraps. These bows are great! They are brand new and I snatched up 100 as soon as I saw them. They are stretchy and come in lots of colors!

My dragonfly necklace was featured in an Etsy treasury. Check it out Here!

This is the first time that I've been in a treasury. Never heard of Etsy or an Etsy treasury?

The Treasury is a member-curated gallery of short-lived lists of 12 hand-picked items each. Members can feature their favorite items, items selected on a theme, or just whoever they like. The Treasury is not intended for self-promotion, but instead to acknowledge and share the many cool things for sale on Etsy. Etsy Admin often chooses an exceptional Treasury list to promote on the home page. Maybe the one with my necklace will make the front page. You can only hope........

My Etsy site: Http://www.wearmejewels.etsy.com

If you are going to sell products on the web you inevitably find that you can have the greatest website, blog, or products but unless you can drive traffic to your site, your products can remain an undiscovered treasure. I recommend a three prong approach. The first thing every business needs is a place for potential customers to view and/or purchase your products. If you sell you jewelry, for instance, at craft fairs or other venues, a web presence will make you look more professional and provide a way for people to shop your product from anywhere in the world. You can use a great site builder like Web Store Now to easily create an affordable and professional full e-commerce site yourself or have it built for you for a small investment.

The second thing that I would recommend is to create a blog. A blog is a great way to promote your site, increase traffic to your site, and catalog useful information pertaining to your products. Your blog should be business oriented and interesting, but not be about the recent tricks you just taught your dog. If you want a personal blog, create a different blog and use it for that purpose.
I recommend a site called Blogger Buster for some great tips and templates to create a fabulous looking blog.
The third suggestion is to start a store on a site like Etsy. It is free except your listing/selling fees, which are very low. Many people just have an Etsy site but doing that does limit the customers that you will have. A customer must be a member of Etsy to purchase and typically must use PayPal. Having both Etsy and a website allows you more flexibility. Your website can be very customized and have any information that you wish, whereas Etsy only allows a short profile and intro. Your website also allows you to have a domain name like www.mystore.com and email accounts (yourname@mystore.com) that are specific to your site. Having all three of these resources provides a well rounded way to drive traffic to your site and different mediums to get out the word about how great your products are and why your customer can't live without them. Best of luck with your business!!

How would you like to see your jewelry in a glossy coffee table book? I came across this great opportunity for promoting your business on Etsy thanks to TimothyAdamDesigns. He has created the "Handbook to Handmade"- a monthly volume of 35 artists and their shops...this book makes a great promotional tool to promote your shop or website.