SILKFAIR Blog – May 2008

How many of you haven’t heard „Oh, my God! That’s so cute. You should sell it!” when other people (friends, family or just simple acquaintances) have seen your crafts? And you took their advice, worked your butt off to create original pieces, went to craft fairs, set up online shops and ....the results were not as you expected them.  Time passed and sales seem not to reflect your devotion and heart put in every little piece of work. Naturally, you start questioning yourself what you’re doing wrong?, what we’re doing wrong?, where is everybody screwing up?

The thing is that no one is doing anything wrong, but you must take advantage of the traffic and potential customers that visit your shops everyday. We’re bringing them here, you must make them stay, buy and return or at least speak about what they bought from you. That is advertising, that turns your shop into a viral.  
Now let’s get over all the specific marketing terminology and get to clean tips and suggestions on a budget, suggestions you can choose to stick to and improve your online stores.

Basically, it’s all down to DETAILS.
1. List new items. Often. Let’s suppose you finished 3 new items, nobody asks you to list them immediately. Today, tomorrow, in a week, listings are free and are meant to give you time to showcase each object. Show everybody that each item is important (so each needs some time to be in the flashlight before another one takes its place)

2. Develop the niche you’re good at and showcase your shop accordingly. If you try your hand in different crafts and areas, it may be better to have a new shop for each interest, rather than mixing paper crafts, with jewelry and vintage items with prints. Mixing different things only gives a feeling of discomfort and suggests you don’t really know what you’re selling; you may send wrong signals. If you’re not sure on your items, why should I buy them?

3. Be active in the forums, use the free blog as a way to advertise your items (I know several of you are already doing this, but this article is meant to tip suggestions to each seller in SilkFair). Posting raises the number of people that see your name, thus the number of people visiting your store. Keep in mind that other SF sellers are also potential customers.

4. Market you store! (Yes, we’re always going to emphasize the marketing thing, this is the way all businesses in the world develop). You know you should be doing this - but are you?

a). Join forums and put your SilkFair store URL/ widget in your signature, if the forum rules allow it.
b). Find people to link to your SilkFair store, and do the same for them in return. Advertise in free bulletin boards. List your stores in specific directories:
http://www.myspace.com/
http://www.cracker.com.au

http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
http://froogle.google.com/
http://www.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
http://www.dmoz.org/add.html
http://www.arts-crafts.com/market/
http://www.ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/
http://www.made-in-new-york.com/
http://seocompany.ca/directory/free-web-directories.html
http://www.blogger.com/start
http://www.freecraftfair.com/link_exchange.html
http://www.freecraftfair.com/categories.html
http://www.bust.com/girlweb/index.html
http://www.clipfire.com/

c). Put your SILKFAIR URL in your e-mail signature

d). Join communities and stick to other sellers in SF. Create groups, network, share skills, and promote your products and shops all together. Start groups based on shared location, craft interests, similar business medium or any other thing you may have in mind.  
http://www.stumbleupon.com
http://groups.xanga.com
http://www.stylehive.com
http://www.kaboodle.com
http://www.thisnext.com

And a couple for moms:
http://babble.com/
http://www.momblognetwork.com/

e). Do business card exchange with other sellers. You can use Vistaprint.com – (they have a free business card feature) and give them away like crazy. Send samples or cards to people attending craft fairs in other cities. Send your items to the Sampler (homeofthesampler.com) for gaining more exposure both online and to subscribers.

f). Use the video feature, people! The future of all business is in the interactive media. We’re offering you showcase with videos, why don’t you take advantage of that? Create short advertising videos for your items or your whole shop. You have tons of imagination to create beautiful, unique things; you must be able to create videos, too. Upload them on YouTube (if really creative) or just showcase them in SF (I know I’d like to see the backstage of your business, we all appreciate hard work so why not share a little piece of the process)

Not everything is going to work, but keep mark of what it does and stick to that!

5. Be accurate and objective when pricing your items. Calculate the costs based on your work, time spent and market relevancy. Try to have a couple of “less than 10$” items in your store, as statistics say that people are more likely to buy cheaper things.

P.S. Stay tune for the photo tutorial to come.  

Live simply.
In kindergarten your idea of a good friend was the person who let you have the red crayon when all that was left was the ugly black one.

In primary school your idea of a good friend was the person who went to the bathroom with you; held your hand as you walked through the scary halls; helped you stand up to the class bully; shared their lunch with you when you forgot yours on the bus; saved a seat on the back of the bus for you; knew who you had a crush on and never understood why.

In secondary school your idea of a good friend was the person who let you copy their social studies homework; went to that "cool" party with you so you wouldn't wind up being the only freshie there; did not let you lunch alone.

Love generously.
In pre-university your idea of a good friend was the person who gave you rides in their new car; convinced your parents that you shouldn't be grounded; consoled you when you broke up with Nick or Susan; found you a date to the prom or went to the prom with you (both without dates); helped you pick a university and assured you that you would get into that university; helped you deal with your parents who were having a hard time letting you go. On the threshold of adulthood your idea of a good friend was the person who was there when you just couldn't deal with your parents; assured you that now that you and Nick or you and Susan were back together, you could make it through anything; just silently hugged you as you looked through blurry eyes at 18 years of memories; and reassured you that you would make it in university as well as you had these past 18 years; and most importantly sent you off to university knowing you were loved.

Care deeply.
Now, your idea of a good friend is still the person who gives you the better of the two choices, hold your hand when you're scared, helps you fight off those who try to take advantage of you, thinks of you at times when you are not there, reminds you of what you have forgotten, helps you put the past behind you but understands when you need to hold on to it a little longer, stays with you so that you have confidence, goes out of their way to make time for you, helps you clear up your mistakes, helps you deal with pressure from others, smiles for you when they are sad, helps you become a better person, and most importantly loves you!

Speak kindly.
Thank you for being a friend. No matter where we go or who we become, never forget who helped us get there. There's never a wrong time to pick up a phone or send a message telling your friends how much you miss them or how much you love them.

This is something I found online. Unfortunately I didn't find the author, so if you by any chance know him/her, drop a line, in order to add credits.