Sales, Sales, Sales

Sales were booming pre-Black Friday. I was beyond excited over the amount of Etsy sales that I had the 2 weeks before Thanksgiving. My boyfriend probably thought I was a psycho because I couldn't contain my excitement. Hey, I'm not a Etsy Super Seller (yet) so any sale is something to get excitable about. I'm almost at 50 sales. There were some bumps with the sales I made. One customer didn't get her item for nearly a week - which I did send her another pair of earrings and of course, 2 days later she got the original box. I have some awesome customers though, she offered to return any duplicates. I appreciated her offer but let her keep both because she was so nice about communicating with me. Another customer got charged an additional $0.83 by the post office so I refunded her the amount which she was very cool about. I even got 2 repeat customers.

Also, I sent my sister some earrings to sell at a craft fair at her work...and she sold 107 pairs of earrings. Now I really need to send her a great Christmas gift. She deserves it for working the sales of those earrings.

Where Can I Get a Great Business Card?

Although I make and print my own business cards, not everybody knows how to use photoshop or illustrator. I was cruising around the Etsy forums and came across a post about business cards and the importance of having one (and as evidenced in my previous post about the need to have business cards with you wherever and whenever). I have taken my own advice and been carrying the cards around with me. I also read about another good idea. If you are somewhere that has an open bulletin board, you can post your card on the board. Doesn't hurt or cost anything.

On to the real topic of this post. The best places (I've found) to get a great and inexpensive business card.

www.vistaprint.com
Most people already know about vistaprint. They do mucho advertising and they do have a free business card offer. You do have to use one of their 45 templates if you want the free card, but the templates are actually quite nice. If you opt to use one of their templates - you can get 250 cards free. The only downside is that the free cards take forever to get to you like 3 weeks or something. You can pay to upgrade your shipping to get it sooner. If you do not want to use the free business card templates, their fees for printing are not that expensive and they have literally thousands of templates to choose from.

www.fedex.com
You're thinking...FedEx? Really? Well, FedEx bought Kinko's a couple years back and they offer all the things that Kinko's used to. You can go to the FedEx website and go to the FedEx Office tab and create your card from there. They have a QuickCard option that will allow you to get your card within 24 hours and you can pick it up from the FedEx Office location nearest to you. The quickcard options are pretty minimal. You can use one of the fancier templates (which looks like the templates from VistaPrint) and it takes about 2 weeks to get your cards back. Black and white card pricing starts at 18.99 for 100 and $28.99 for 100 color cards. If you order more than 100 cards, the charge for each additional 100 is pretty nominal ($2.50 for black and white and $5.00 for color I think).

www.moo.com
Currently, moo is my favorite business card website. They have much different template options than the 2 previously mentioned ones and their prices seem totally reasonable. I haven't ordered from them but have heard tons of people rave about them in the Etsy forums. I am really liking their mini cards options (it's about half the size of regular business cards) and the designs they have available are stunning. They also have a "Printfinity" option which allows you to have every single card in your stack with a different picture on it. Now that is very cool and innovative. Works well for people that want alot of variety in their business card options. I think it's a great idea. Even if you could have 10 different designs in a stack, that would be awesome.

If I see any other awesome options, I will keep you all posted. Remember, business cards are mucho importanto to help promo your business.

Wire Wrapped Ring Tutorial

I've always wanted to learn wire wrapping, and I've read a gajillion tutorials about them but have yet to have a successful effort. I have been using wire that is softer than recommended because...uh my wire wrapping skills and tools are kind of sucky. lol.

I did come across this awesome wire wrapped ring tutorial that seemed very simple and had step by step photos. For some reason, I have an aversion to video tutorials although I have watched some.

This one seems to be the easiest for me to follow through. When I make one that's worthy of posting, I'll be sure to post a pic. I know, I always say that, but well, when Etsy or Artfire starts selling those "time" things that I talked about previously, then maybe I'll have more time to dedicate to actually doing tutorials instead of just reading them. Lol.

Pinterest is Addicting

I joined Pinterest a couple weeks ago but hadn't really looked into it until I got an email that I had a follower. How the heck can I have a follower when I hadn't pinned anything? lol. So I checked it out and the follower was actually someone I knew from elementary school (she's actually my little sister's classmate). While I was there, I looked at some things "pinned" by other people.

Then, I decided to pin some stuff myself. Oh my god, pinning is addicting. You can't pin just one I'm telling you.

Pinterest was recommended on a promo discussion thread that I was reading...and guess what, somebody pinned one of my earrings. Yay!!!!!

So far, pinterest is just another thing to take up my time, but at least I can do it while I'm doing other things that take up my time (online christmas shopping, fantasizing about my dream vacations, looking up easy recipes...yadda, yadda)

You all should check it out.

www.pinterest.com

Beware, very addicting.

Free Promo Videos Website - Animoto

I was in the Etsy Forums discussions and someone mentioned a site where you can make free 30 second promo videos. So I decided to check it out and I have to say, I was very impressed with their setup. It was so easy to upload photos for your video and you can either upload your own music or use their wide selection of available music.

For a free subscription, you can make a limitless amount of 30 second vids (which is all you really need for a promo video). You can upgrade your account for what I thought was a nominal fee and have access to longer videos.

I've only made one video so far but the possibilities are endless as far as what you can create with a little time and planning.

Definitely visit: www.animoto.com and check it out.

To Craft Fair or Not To Craft Fair

I've been seriously thinking about doing some craft fairs this Holiday season. Craigslist is actually a great place to find small craft fairs that don't require you to be juried. I located a couple and contacted one in McMinnville which is about 20-30 minutes away from my house. Not that far. It appeared to be in an enclosed area and they provided you with a table and chair. Those were my top concerns because I don't have a craft fair appropriate table. The bonus was that they had an email address so that I could obtain an application and get additional information about the fair.

I really want to participate because of the all the pros (booth fees were really inexpensive too - only $25) and they provide you with a table and its indoors. I've just been worried about how to display my earrings. I think I have the signage down and the price structure will be very simple to make it easier for the buyers.

I've been online and searched tons of places...I think I can DIY a great display for the craft fair. We'll see how it goes, the fair is in December...wish me luck!

New Idea for Earrings

I've been rocking on with my paper earrings and pumping out designs, but I've been thinking about using transparency plastic in making some of my earrings. So I'm not sure if you can see it in this picture, but I used a gradient for the paper part of the earring and printed a swirly design on the transparency portion and overlayed it on the paper gradient portion. I really like the result. I think the overlay makes the swirls stand out more than if I had just printed them onto the gradient.

We'll see how they do, but I love them, going to be rockin' a pair to the market today.