Women Are Too Stupid to Run a Business?

Yes, I am a woman and yes, today I feel that way. Maybe not ALL women, but a Godawful lot of  them most certainly are too stupid for their own good and certainly have no idea how to run a business.

What has set me off is pricing on Etsy. I have long suspected that my lack of sales is largely due to my prices. This week that reality slapped me upside the head TWICE.

Needing something to list for my PromoFrenzy Team's New Listing Thursday activity, I moved one of my made to order sets over to Etsy, keeping it on my site for the same price, but adding few bucks to cover the Etsy fees over there.  I sell this set for $56 or $8 a bead:

Rainbow Chakra Set

I feel that that is a fair price for the set considering the time, skill and materials involved. The set made a big splash, getting lots of hits and into two treasuries that day! As I perused one of them... clicking on all the lovely items to support the treasury, I noticed that much higher up in this treasury was another set of rainbow big hole beads. They were not as nice as mine and there was one less bead. But the maker was selling them on a chain (my Pandora bracelet is only used as a prop.) and they were $22 LESS! OUCH!

Then the next day, a beadmaker I know fairly well... we belonged to the same artisan beadmaking group... casually mentioned on Facebook that she returned home from a trip to orders for 64 big hole beads!  SIXTY FOUR! I've never sold 64 of anything! So I go to her Etsy, the only place she sells. She sells her big hole beads for $5 plain, $6 decorated and, get this, $7.50 for a set of FIVE! Somebody explain the math on that one! 

Breaking it down....

Let's just take a look at that, shall we? Many of the better-known glass workers I know feel that charging a dollar a minute of torch time is a fair price. But in recent years, I know many, myself included, have cut that in HALF...

Glass: My beads of that size weigh about a gram apiece. So five grams of glass and the cheapest glass is around 9.60 a pound.  9.60/ 453(grams / pound) = .02 per gram. Add in the breakage / popping to be generous. So we'll say the glass cost her 15 cents.

Kiln:  My kiln uses 1.4 kilowatts / hour  and runs for 12 hour cycle when I make beads for a total of 16.8 kilowatts. and I know from looking at my ginormous electric bill that I spend 13.3 cents per kilowatt hour + a 10% surcharge / bend over fee to the great shitty of Los Angeles, so we'll call that 14.63 cents x 16.8 kilowatts =  $2.46 per session to run the kiln.  Boy, that took a chunk out of her profit!

Cleaning: Once cool, the beads are soaked in warm water and cleaned with an electric dremel with a diamond bit. Let's just say the electricity and water cost is negligible... 2 cents.

Handouts:

Listing fee: .20

Sales fee: .23

PayPal: .22 + .30 = .52

So far, that set of beads for $7.50 has cost our artist 3.58 for a profit of 3.92. But we have not considered several things here. 

Overhead:

Tools... Glass tools are VERY pricey but I'm going with the bare minimum here to make those beads.  Granted, they can be used over and over but they still have to be bought and often replaced!

• Mandrels: 1.66 per mandrel. This makes the bead hole and you use one per bead or maybe two beads if you rock your heat control.
• Kiln - digital kilns start at $700
• Tweezers  $10 To move glass around when you have a little too much on one side and not enough on the other. 
• Donut mold- $60   Ensures consistency in sets.
• Decent camera - at least $200

I'm not including a computer since that seems to be a given for selling online but... what about photo editing software??   We've got close to a thousand dollar investment in those beads and it seems only fair to say a buck of those beads should go into "overhead."  So now we are down to a profit of 2.92 for her most precious investment...

Time:

Making the beads 5 x 5 - 7 minutes each. Let's say six. 30 minutes

Cleaning:  8 minutes

Photography: 10 minutes

Editing: 10 minutes

Description Writing: 10 minutes

That's an hour and eight minutes assuming everything goes according to plan... For $2.58 an hour (2.92 / 68 minutes = 2.58) , I'm wondering if I should call her state's labor board and report her for slave wages??? 

While that is the bottom line, she's still not considering other factors... My God, we play with FIRE. It's dangerous. It's also a costly skill to learn. I've spent thousands on my education in books and classes and tutorials! What part of that 2.58 an hour is she putting back into her education to keep her business and skills growing???  China pays on average 1.36 an hour... so I guess she's just trying to keep an eye on her competition!

How it should be...

Let's look at those same costs:

3.58 raw materials costs. Every pricing study I've ever read says you should be charging three times raw costs + overhead + labor = retail sales price. But as artist we also have to allow for wholesale! 

I would say 25% of the materials  cost is a fair overhead fee and according to our Bureau of Labor Statistics the median income for an artist in this country is 27.91 which seems a bit high to me so I'll round down to 23.00

3.58 materials + 25% materials  .90 for overhead  + labor 26.07 (1 hour 8 minutes)  = 30.55 is the WHOLESALE price of those beads!

If we were calculating for actual retail, that price would be 30.55 x 2.5 (conservative) = 76.37 making my $56 seem like a bargain!

But we're not in the real world. We're in Etsyland....

That's not all folks...

I know from this woman's post that her big order will take her four days based on the tools she owns. Let's assume that 60 of those beads are  12 sets sold at  7.50 and 8 are singles for $6. That's $138 dollars - Etsy's portion 8.14 and Paypal $8.50. Her takeaway before considering costs is 121.36 for nearly a week's work. Can YOU make that little and survive??? I can't.

But then, she's had over 700 sales on Etsy. I probably haven't had 200 on Etsy / Artfire and my own site. Would I be better off with some money instead of none???

So, how do you compete with STUPID WOMEN??? Women who call it a "hobby business" or who have husbands that support them and "just want to make enough to buy materials?" I've read more than one article where the powers that be at Etsy feel that as much as 60 and up to 70% of items on the site are UNDER-PRICED! And yet these stupid women still persist and it hurts everyone!  And the fact is, it will not change!

I'm not worth that much...

Why won't it change??? Because glass beads is field dominated by women and WOMEN ARE STUPID!

A family member of mine is an educator. He has managed oil field operations and has been a politician but sports and education are his heart. When I was a teen and we were loading kids up to go to some event, a group of moms started chatting with us and the subject of how little we pay our teachers came up. My relative simply nodded and said, "Yes, teachers will always be underpaid because the field is dominated by women." 

The mothers in that group gasped audibly and started to get defensive when  he added... "Women always undervalue their time."

Back to that buck a minute scenario mentioned above: A dear friend of mine offers her beautiful intricate beads for way too cheap! When I asked her her formula for pricing, she admitted she charged  about 26 and hour or about .43 a minute and she felt that was high but she discounts her beads to anyone spending over $100! She felt she was high to anyone wanting just one set! When I asked her about the sage advice of our leading bead-makers, she actually said to me, "I don't think I'm worth $60 an hour!"

Phah!!! NOT WORTH THAT MUCH??? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? She wasn't. 

Well, this chickadee has made as much $150 an hour in previous careers (that are ageist and I cannot return to...) and you know what??? I WAS WORTH EVERY PENNY AND MORE!

And I truly wish EVERY woman would begin to realize what she is worth. You know those government surveys that come out every year itemizing how much someone would pay to do all the things a woman does around the house, cooking, cleaning, driving kids, etc.? It's always some tremendous number. Most women I know poo-poo that. But we shouldn't. WE are ALL worth so much MORE! 

The bottom line...

I'm not willing to cut my prices. And I'm not going to give my beads away.  I'm single, live alone and have a mortgage. And I'm NOT too stupid to run a business like many of my fellow artisans apparently are. I'm stepping up my job search. The writing is on the wall. I cannot make a living doing this, I can't compete with idiots and simply must move on.

I will still teach and my plan does involve beadmaking... but you'll have to read about that tomorrow.

Win for the Not so Little Guy

Almost every type of designer in this country has felt the pressure imposed by someone copying their work - namely by Chinese manufacturers who can make "the same*" product for less. Just this week alone, I have been beseeched by Chinese manufacturers via my Artfire shop to allow them to make beads for my shop!

DO MY BEADS LOOK LIKE CHINESE CRAP???  Yes, I know, I've always been a bead snob. I can spot cheap Chinese fakes a mile off! And I've always had an eye for genuine Swarovski crystals. I can tell the difference between Swarkies and Czech! And most certainly Swarovskis and Chinese knockoffs!

Interestingly enough, Swarovski has fought hard to protect it's image and product over the years, getting patents on certain cuts and even developing their gross packs to not be resealable (Thieves were stealing the packages from jewelry stores that legally sell in smaller quantities, filling the packs with Chinese knockoffs and reselling as genuine!) . And they recently took it to court against a Chinese company violating their Intellectual Property! [The bold red italics below is mine. I LOVE THAT PART!]

From the Swarovski Elements site:

An infringement recently occurred in China: the company namely Yiwu Yongyang Ornaments Co., Ltd. stood accused of producing and distributing flat-back stones imitating SWAROVSKI’s patented XILION cut design. A civil litigation was filed by SWAROVSKI and lead to a settlement in which the defendant admitted engaging in an act of plagiarism that constituted infringement of SWAROVSKI’s registered design patent. The perpetrator was obliged to destroy the goods in question in the witness of the plaintiff; pay a substantial monetary compensation; and issue a public apology that included a statement of intent never again to infringe SWAROVSKI’s design rights.SWAROVSKI’s pursuit of justice was wholly based on the unfairness of plagiarism. SWAROVSKI ELEMENTS take years of costly research and development to produce innovations. Protecting SWAROVSKI’s business partners worldwide from the knock-on effect of such acts of theft is a key motivator for prosecution.

Win one for the not so little guy! More companies need to do this!!

*You all most certainly know that Chinese lampwork is NOT the same as true artisan lampwork right??? It's not cleaned, not annealed and breaks easily. Remember, with art glass, you get what you PAY for! And thanks to the Chinese, you are paying less and less and real ARTISTS are struggling to survive! 

Fan Page Apps

The number one question I received after last week's post was how to get people to like your page.  I will cover that but first we have to finish decking out your fan page. Before they come, you have to build it!

You have to think of your fan page as another interactive website for your business. You want to give them a lot too look at and things to do (buy) while they are there.

 Keep photos of your latest work, new shops listing and even blog listings feeding to your page!

The easiest and best thing to do is work with the photo albums that come with your page. For my page, I know that I make lots of beads and occasionally jewelry and those items fall into specific categories: Glass Bead Sets, Under the Sea theme, Focals, Big Hole Beads, Sweet Treats and jewelry. So I create annual albums for those items. I don't want the albums to seem too long to discourage browsing.  But if you only make a few items you won't need so many. Maybe you make so much, you need monthly albums. However you organize them, these are my tips:

• Try to keep 30 - 50 current photos per album.
• Never list more than three photos at a time to avoid spamming your own page.
• Always hit "Publish" when you are done for the last three photos to be visible in your wall feed. 

If you are looking to cut down on work, there are apps out there that feed your flickr uploads to your fan page. I have not tried them but some are highly reviewed. 

There are also apps that allow you to create custom tabs for your fan page. You can create a landing page, telling people about your business / products / you and encourage them to like you. If you know basic html or can deal with a WYSIWYG editor such as blogger, you can do this. TabFusion is one such free tab maker that is fairly straight forward and used by many high-end clients!

Additionally, you want to feed all your listings to your fan page. Having a steady flow of interesting content is KEY!  You should feed anything to do with your business that has an rss feed to your wall! There are MANY apps and third party sites that allow this.

For the Fire Divas fan page, we set up a twitterfeed account. We feed every team member's newest listings to our team twitter account, one per shop per hour. (You ARE feeding all your listings to your twitter automatically, right???)  As a team, we decided that many new listings was too spammy for our fan page however and we do not feed team listings there, choosing instead to manually post treasuries and collections that focus on the whole team.

But as an individual, I RARELY list more than three items per day on any of my sites combined... and my fan page is about ME... supposedly, my fans want to know what's new. So I do feed all new items to my personal fan page.

While twitterfeed is great to feed to twitter and to your personal page, it doesn't have the capability to feed to your fan page. But there are several apps on Facebook that you can use for this. The two I have the most experience with both have quirks.

• Networked blogs  - will feed anything with an RSS feed to your personal or fan page wall. The downside is... I find it to be a popularity contest. You have to either post some code on your page (impossible on Etsy / Artfire) or get 10 friends to confirm you as the author of your feed. They can also delay the feed based on how many followers you have... which sucks! 
• RSS Graffiti - will also feed any RSS feed to your wall or fan page. This one can be trickier to set up and it does have posting errors from time to time but...it's not a popularity contest. 

For the record, I use twitterfeed to feed my listings and blog to twitter, RSS grafiti feeds all my blogs and new listings to my fan page and I still have Networked blogs set up to feed my listings and blogs to my personal page. 

So now, you have some content for your wall but you should also make shopping easier so that your fans can shop from your fan page. There are shopping cart and payment apps right on Facebook but, you can also link to the shops you already have!

Artfire has step by step instructions for this on their site. NOTE: if you had the Artfire app installed on your page before 12/1/2011, you will find it has stopped worked due to an upgrade. Simply go to your fan page / Artfire tab and enter your shop name and the upgrade will work!

Etsy, as always, makes things just a bit more difficult.  But there is a My Etsy app for your fan page as well. Click on "Add to My Page" and it will walk you through the steps. It may be helpful to have three tabs open: My Etsy app, your actual Etsy shop, and your Fan Page.

*** Summary***

1. Utilize photo albums on your fan page.
2. Create a custom landing page.
3. Feed all your shop listings to your fan page wall.
4. Add tabs for your Etsy / Artfire shops.

Get busy!!! Next week... getting those LIKES!

Fan Pages

You NEED a fan page. If you don't have one, you are missing out on a fantastic business opportunity on many levels! Here are a few advantages to having a Facebook Fan Page:

I had lots of comments on this set of beads... which can be both good for sales and bad for fans...

• Sell right off your page - I often list photos of new works on my fan page and frequently make sales before I even list my item on my site or Etsy and Artfire. I save listing time and commission fees. You can also set up apps that place your Etsy and Artfire items on their own page within your fan page!
• Fast communication with fans - I often go six months between newsletters. Mine are time consuming. But if I want to have a sale quickly, I announce it on the fan page.
• Frequent communication with fans - Say you post a sale on Thanksgiving... you can remind your fans frequently - and at more convenient times! By feeding your new listings, blog posts,  or even your tweets to your fan page, you should have something new for your fans to see DAILY whether you physically log on or not.
• Access to reasonable, super targeted advertising - Think about it... Facebook doesn't just know the basics of targeted marketing - gender, age and geographic location. Facebook  knows EVERYTHING!  What people are interested in, what they talk about, age and zip code specifics, other groups they like and frequent... Trust me, Google adwords should be VERY afraid. Facebook has SUPER reasonable ad rates and can tell you exactly how many people on their site your ad would target!
• Insights - Facebook gives you amazing data so that you can see what reach your posts have. You can tell that you get hits off your blog, that you get new fans when others talk about you and... that you lose fans when people talk about you a lot! 

 I lost 2 fans they day I showed off the beads above... with so many comments on one photo, my fan page may have bothered them! Insights allow you to see what's going on from day to day. What your fans like and what some don't!

• Expands your Google footprint - as we've talked about before, the more places Google finds you, the more legit you seem! And Facebook pages come up high in the Google rankings for keywords!
• It's FREE! - Speaks for itself!

Ready to start your own??? From any other fan page, scroll all the way to the bottom and click "Create a Page."

Before you do this, give some time and thought to your name!!! Facebook will get you some higher rankings if you can work your #1 keyword into your fan page name. Learn from my mistake! I walked away from a fan page with 275 fans and I'm struggling my way back! Why? My keywords were not a part of my fan page name! I sacrificed fans for Google rankings and would do it again tomorrow!

Facebook does allow you to tweak it a bit but after you get a certain (small) number of fans, you cannot change your name!

Once you get your page set up, you'll want to add your shop apps and feed your new listings to your wall. We'll go over that next week. In the meantime, be sure to invite your Facebook friends to fan your page!

Expanding Your Footprint

Last week we looked at our google footprints and discussed how to control our business image by utilizing various sites. Before we delve into some less obvious ways to do that, I wanted to refine a point from that post.

When you sell on Etsy / Artfire etc, be sure to use your whole business name. I know of folks who have one user name and a different banner with a different name in their shop. Consistency is the key expanding your footprint. Now that Etsy will allow you a one time name change...it's a good time to think about that.

On to other ways to add to your google footprint:

• YouTube is one of the top search engines on the web with TONS of traffic! Is there a way for you to shoot a video tutorial of something you do? OR can you just shoot some video of your booth set up at a live show??? I personally shoot quick videos of some of my high silver beads that are impossible to get a decent photo of. I will embed that in my listings (on my website) or refer to it for my Etsy / Artfire listings. As always, load your keywords in when uploading the video. 

A short video but it uses my keywords and people find me! 

•   Guest blogger - If you have writing skills, offer to write for another website or blog.  Choose carefully and pick one with way more traffic than your own and in a topic that will appeal to your customer base. They will embed your shop links with your article.

• Artist Profiles - Every business has someone successful and well known within that community. I can't even begin to name all the "famous" beadmakers I admire. I wrote an article about one once (and I really should do it again...and again!) and that article gets me lots of traffic. Even better, my blog pops up in searches for HER! Not that my beads are anything like hers... but who knows if someone looking for info on her hasn't purchased from ME!

• Participate in Blog hops... such as the one on PromoFrenzy or the big grand-daddy of blog hops One World, One Heart. For PromoFrenzy, you end up on stumble... another great search engine. Events like One World, One Heart send you tons of hits, introduce your work to thousands and you end up with lots of link love. More links = bigger footprint. My last One World event post is HERE.

• Online Photo Albums - i.e. Flickr, Photobucket, et al. Again, these are great search engines. Tag your pics with your business name. Submit the photos to groups for more exposure. (ex - The Fire Divas has a Flickr account and we allow members to submit up to 4 photos a week to our team account and those get fed to our blog.) I will submit to groups that specialize in beads, jewelry or even color themes!

• Charity Fundraisers - If you find a charitable event with an online presence... donate!  I've found customers this way, still get some link love and... it felt great doing it!

• Arts Bulletin Boards - Is there an online community for your art / craft?? Check around; you may be surprised! Glass bead makers have no less than 5 and even more if you count some of the groups that have sprung up on Facebook! I joined several card making and scrapbook bulletin boards to get rid of some of our excess supplies in my stamp shop. But I joined under my glass bead business name. That is on page 3 off my google footprint. Whatever forum / hobby you participate in, use your shop name and link to your business!

This is the kind of presence you build over TIME. I don't expect you'll go out and do ALL these things in a day or a week but if the opportunity arises, give it some serious consideration. You never know where your next customer is coming from and the bigger web presence you have, the more legit it feels to shop with you!
------
I'm taking Thanksgiving off... JURY Doody - UGH! And I'm working as a KJ for my bestie's karaoke business until the wee hours of Thanksgiving morn but... the following week, we'll finally tackle the subject of fan pages!

Google Footprint

Do you know what your google footprint is? It's the first 10 - 40  items someone sees when they google your business name. Why is this important??? It's the best way to control the virtual impression your business makes.

Think about it... For the sake of example, let's say your business name is AXZ Sewing. And you google your business and maybe your etsy and twitter account come up. But let's say you had a problem with a customer and they've taken to the web saying AXZ Sewing SUCKS and that is in the top 10. And let's say, you're business is fairly successful and someone is trying to ride on your coat-tails and they's started an AXZ Sewing blog... that has NOTHING to do with you or your business... but it will mislead and frustrate YOUR customers. Just what are you supposed to DO about all that??? Well, controlling your google footprint can help!

Let's take a look at my google footprint for some ideas - This is 1-5.

#4 is ALSO facebook so I cropped that out. This is #5-9

#10 was Facebook - again!

Let's break it down:

1. My website... with a nice layout to the most popular pages on my site. I maintain and extensive site for this reason.
2. My Etsy... when I concentrated more on Artfire... that was #2.
3. Facebook fan page
4. Fan page again
5. My blog
6. My blog... I wrote a tutorial for free... and posted it on a site listing tutorials for other glassers. It gets me TONS of traffic, boosts my ad revenue and...now, another toe in my google footprint!
7. A site geared toward glass people. I get a free listing there. I RARELY update my profile or pics there (I should!) but... look...that site gets so much traffic, it adds to my google footrpint.
8. My twitter
9. Widgetbox - an app that allows me to put a slideshow of my current work on my main blog page. 
10. Fan page again.

The bottom line here: ME...ME MEME and ME! I control my google footprint by spreading my name around. In other words... I don't care HOW you find me but find ME. Not an angry customer and not someone trying to make money off my name... find ME.

Here are a few obvious ways to spread your name around:

Yourbusiness.com. - having your own website may seem pointless if you sell on Etsy / Artfire but there are a several  good reasons to have one. It can serve as a anchor with links any selling venue, online or in person. It gives you control over your image... suppose you have thousands of business cards printed with your Etsy shop and Etsy goes belly up???  Train your customers to start at your site FIRST, someplace you control .

And let's go back to the scenario in the beginning... what IF you become wildly successful??? I love the Daily Coyote blog... but when her writing career took off and it became obvious she needed a new website... DailyCoyote.com was taken. The domain has since been sold... I pray to the rightful owner but that's just one example of how a web scammer will try to make money off of a successful business name.

For around 12 bucks a year, you can and should own your own dot com...whether or not you use it! Protect your name! If you do launch a website... update it often! Google hates static!!!

Facebook FanPage / Google + Pages: A great free way to get your name out there as well was an amazing way to communicate with people who are already clearly interested in your work!  I frequently post pictures of new work to my fan page and often sell it before I can bother listing it elsewhere! This is a win /win all around in my book!

Blogging - For footprint purposes... it's really bad form to blog on your own dot com. A number of web hosting companies toss in a free blogging template. But this does nothing to add to your footprint. Additionally, blogs on their own dot com never seem to aggregate properly. My experience starting the blog for the Fire Divas taught me this... Our Diva blog lists our individual blogs with the most recent published on top. Divas that published on their own sites would never go to the top.

It's much better to go with the grandaddies... Blogger (a google product!) or Wordpress. You pick up more followers there as well. Wordpress is so amazing that I utilize their inner workings as a template for my main website. It gives me the power of a blog with rss feeds shooting out to twitter and my fan page with the flexibility allowing a shopping cart.

Don't think you have anything to say??? Hogwash! I haven't met a creative type that couldn't talk about their work for ages.  Focus on new items (again, sell before you list!), holidays, other sellers who make complimentary items. Write a tutorial and share the link! Wordless Wednesday is a popular blog tag around the net. Who can't take a great pic and put it up one Wednesday??  Try to blog just twice a week to keep your blogging footprint active.And sign up for blogger in your business name whether you ever blog or not! Protect your name!

Arts Organizations - There are three free handmade glass art organizations online and yep, I'm a member of all! There's also one expensive one.... and no, I'm not a member of that one.

Try and find one geared toward your art form. If you can't find one... consider starting one.... The ad revenue alone should make it worthwhile!

Twitter -  Many people are twitter resistant. I use twitterfeed.com to feed all my shop feeds and my blog feeds to my twitter. I don't go on there and get political or personal... I just try to keep my feed active. And that keeps my google footprint bigger!

Now... back to that angry customer... eventually, he will fade away. Why??? Because YOU are working to keep your name in the top of the google search! You have inundated google with legitimate and current methods to find you and the angry customer's post is getting older and dying a sad google death!

Feel free to ask questions!

Next week, I'll focus on some other ways to increase your footprint.

Analytics in Action

Before we get started, I wanted to remind everyone about the BIG Treasure Hunt and SALE going on with the Promo Frenzy team on Etsy! You can click on the pretty button to the right to read my post about it!

In last week's web marketing lesson, your "homework" was to get  Google analytics set up for your websites.If you did that, you should begin to see some results and start to know how people are finding you.

Memorial Beads is a HUGE keyword for one of my websites!

To view YOUR results: From the Analytics dashboard, click "View Report" beside the site you wish to access. In the left navigation, click Content / Content by title. Scroll down to the bottom of the window and tell it to show "100 rows."

Below is the top search results for my glass beads website.

 Followed by the results for my Artfire Site:

You may be surprised that the top results are different!  My Etsy search is also very different! But I have different goals for each site! And I have multiple sites for a whole other purpose which will come next in this series.

My own website is ultimately where I hope people shop. It costs me less money to maintain but it is more work... My favorite thing to make that I only offer there is Memorial Beads containing the cremains of a dearly departed loved one or pet. Because they are time consuming and require much interaction with a customer, I don't want to pony up a sales commission to another site on those!  So my main goal is to give plenty of information on memorial beads and to inform customer's who already like my work that my newest stuff is there.

As you can see, my #1 search term is memorial beads. #3, #4 and #8 is my business name or some form of it. I mentioned last week that people are often searching for glass cupcake beads so... I spread some of those out on every site I sell on. #7 proves my point.

My Artfire site is where I move my oldest work from my site to. I also use Artfire as my main holiday venue for timely sales: Valentines, Christmas, Halloween, Breast Cancer awareness items go directly there and, a few weeks later, on to Etsy. I do this because those sites provide lots of traffic quick. And I want to turn those items around faster. Big traffic is where Artfire and Etsy excel...IF you know how to stand out.

Because I'm a rubber stamp manufacturer, I designed a set of stamps with jewelry makers in mind. I have to make perfect sheets of these to go into stores... but I have lots of "seconds" where the images didn't come out of the stamp machines perfectly. I sell these on both Artfire and Etsy and am amazed at how many people find my beads by looking for those stamps!  I knew that people were looking for them en mass from the Analytics on my rubber stamp site. But by making my seconds  (The images are still perfect but instead of one sheet of 12 images... the buyer could get 12 perfect but separate images) available on these two sites with LOTS more traffic than I can ever hope to generate on my stamping site, I pick up bead customers as well!

Notice my #3 term on the Artfire example: rubber stamps for PMC. My Etsy results are the same...  Do research on Google's keyword tool. Are there any items similar or closely related to the inventory you already sell that you could add to your shop??

Are people zeroing in on one detail of an item in your shop that you could offer more of??? Example, people often start searching for Christmas lampwork glass beads right about... well... NOW. By paying attention to that phrase (you can download and save your keyword reports!) and noticing when traffic requests are on the rise, I know when it's time to start stocking my shops!

By taking a hunch from the Analytics tool (Gee someone searched for purple beads!) to the Keyword tool: I find that way more people are searching for BLUE glass beads. I know I need to go back into all my blue items and make sure "blue" is higher up in the tags!

I would love to hear from you guys what you've learned from Analytics this week and did it make you take action???

Next week: Your google footprint and...how to fix it!

Clearance Sale on Artfire

I'm hosting a glass bead clearance sale on Artfire until the 31st! 20% off everything in my Fall / Winter holidays category with coupon code Spooky11.

You will find Christmas items:

Halloween items

 


Fall glass beads:

And a few goodies I moved there just for the sale! ;-)

It's a good time to stock up and prepare for the holidays!

Analytics

This is the beginning of a new Wednesday marketing series I'm going to write for the small business person. What qualifies me to write this? I've worked in advertising for decades. And the last several years I have taken numerous classes devoted to web marketing and run my own experiments in SEO (That's Search Engine Optimization for you newbies). I've gotten an education by trial and error.

One of the things I've learned from analytics is that people frequently look for cupcake glass beads so I always make sure I have some in every shop! .

I was going to begin with the importance of a Facebook Fan page... but I quickly realized that is putting the cart before the horse. Before you can start implementing changes, you have to understand what people are searching for when they find you, which of those searches benefit you and your business and which don't.

And the most powerful tool to do that with is Google Analytics. It is excellent and FREE! If you have a blogger account, you already have a google account. If you have set up anaylitics, just hit the blue ACCESS button. If not, hit signup below the blue button and do the basic account set up. Once there, you want to scroll to the bottom and add a website profile.  Enter the address and it will give you some code to paste into your website.

If you are an Etsy or Artfire seller, you will have to turn on Google analytics from within those apps. And even though you can check your stats on those websites, the analytics site is much more thorough in helping you understand what's going on and how people are finding you.

Why do you need to know how people are finding you?? To make it easier to find you! For that, you need to do a little research on what people search for...with another free google tool, called the Keyword Tool. (Did I mention?? Google ROCKS!)

Head over there and enter every possible search term for finding your business. Here's the one I did:

And even though I only typed in five search terms, Google gives me a whole page of suggestions...ones I've taken to heart (and action!).

The first thing I see is that glass beads is a far more common search term than lampwork beads...but still that 27,000 hits I have the potential to capitalize on... so I work BOTH terms into my keywords.

I also learned that many people are looking to buy them wholesale. And while I can't really do this on my Etsy / Artfire sites, I can offer wholesale glass beads on my glass beads website. Hey... did you notice how I just used top level key words in my two links??? That's how it's done! You should be blogging with your keywords as well!

Your homework this week is to get your anayltics set up and to snoop around keywords for your items. If you can, use those keyword suggestions in your listings titles, copy and tags.

Basic Black

It was my turn to create a collection for the Fire Divas on Artfire this week:

Its so Basic

Curated By: HollysFollyGl...

ArtFire.com

Treasuries and Collections Galore!

I will say one thing for joining a more active promotions team: I've been in treasuries and collections A LOT lately!! Check some of them out:

'Black Halloween' by gbrosseau

Dark Orange and Pea... Brigite $25.00	Linocut PRINT - Bri... srajab1 $23.00	Needle Felted Acorn... NatureFelt $30.00	Spider necklace Got... DoBatsEatCats $40.00
Fringe Scarves Hall... FlorasFinest $19.95	Wings of Night TaviaSanza $20.00	ten vintage large b... artyfactz $199.00	Ornate Orange Black... GiltyGirlVinta... $27.00
Halloween Orange Ca... steffie97 $10.00	Vintage Glamorous 1... HOTEL1953 $120.00	Halloween orange bl... HollysFollyGla... $16.00	Web Cape Handmade B... kiamichi7 $65.00
Raven Leather Mask AnnieLibertini $75.00	Felt Bead Necklace ... felttess $25.00	Orange and Silver P... unashooshie $15.00	Gothic CHOKER Skele... ash2ash $39.00

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio. 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

'Fall is Here!' by overthemoongifts

This collection was inspired by my favorite time of the year

Crocheted Bathroom ... ProdigyCrafts $27.99	Save the Boobies Ti... HollysFollyGla... $8.50	Goldstone & Crystal... RomanticThough... $20.00	Lotion, Shea Butter... LostLemonade $5.00
Scarf and Rose Chif... magdamagda $9.90	Pillow Covers 26x26... beckorama $55.00	Pumpkin thank you n... TheCraftingPla... $3.50	Cocktail rim sugar ... dellcovespices $3.75
Trio of Pumpkins crochetedbycha... $15.00	Newborn Pumpkin Hat PetuniaandIvy $20.00	Candy Corn Lampwork... TurtleXIII $15.00	Fall CHUBBY OWL - P... toystorynutty $6.50
Halloween Soap - Ca... SymbolicImport... $6.00	Fall Wreath Autumn ... IdeasBloom $65.00	Autumn Inspired Boo... nickollette113 $12.00	Fine Art Photograph... Crystalphotogr... $40.00

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ And you know I love my Divas!

Purple Passion from the Fire Divas

Curated By: AmySimsDesigns

ArtFire.com

Please check these out and give them some clicky love and tweets!!! Believe me, handmade artisans so appreciate the attention!