And now it's September!

Well, here I am again! Trying to keep up with everything and mostly failing. But, the children are ready for school - shoes bought, hair cut, lunch boxes purchased, school supplies delivered - now all I have to do is get my daughter to kindergarten for her first day without embarrassing myself. I never thought I would be, but I think I may indeed be that parent in dark glasses, sobbing uncontrollably by the school doors come Tuesday morning. Honestly, every time I think about it I well up.

Anyway, on to business.

I had another order! Oh yes! Another new design, a kitchen this time, for a preschool. This order included three 'tablecloths' to fit over shelves and boxes in the classroom. What a clever idea - not mine, of course. The customer was very definite about what she wanted and this is what we came up with:

Item one: fridge

 

 

 

Item two: Pantry

 

 

Item three: kitchen unit using all four sides and the top of the 'tablecloth'

All the decorations in the pantry and on the fridge have Velcro attachments and so can be moved about thusly:

 

 

The top had the hot plates and the washing up area but I forgot to photograph those!

 

 

This one is not currently listed in the shop but can be purchased by special request.

 



I'm back and things are looking up!

The whole idea of writing a blog was to hold myself accountable;  to making an effort to increase my sales through my etsy shop and to try to increase my shop's traffic from other forms of media. So far I have mainly been useless at it and the blogosphere has not had an amazing impact,  but as for my shop.......

well, I have news! My sales are up - in that I have made some - and my numbers are good - people are still looking at my shop every day but as to how that happened, I have absolutely no idea.

As far as I can tell, one day someone with a great deal of influence came across an item in my shop, 'favourited' it and - blam! - my numbers doubled, tripled, quadrupled overnight!

And then - people started buying stuff! Which is after all, the whole point, right?

My first custom order was for one of these with a minor modification - the curtains were on the inside (and the fabric was a little different due to sourcing difficulties)

Then I sold one of these: a camping themed tablecloth fort that a customer and I designed together for her party planning business.

 



 

 Then I sold the one item I never thought I would sell, the template I made to take pictures of for my first tablecloth fort listing, the pink one above. (The customer has since left a review, albeit a slightly ambiguous one!) The customer bought one of my cushions too - now that was a good day!

Then I had another custom order for a camping fort - this customer loved the design but wanted a slightly different colour scheme - here's how it looked:

It was really difficult to photograph as I don't have a table the same size as the order so I draped it over some chairs. My customer was delighted with it - 5 stars all the way - so cool to et my first rave review!

In summary: the last couple of months have been super busy - along with my orders I made the two tablecloth forts shown below to give to my daughter's preschool as a leaving gift, and I have been making plans for some items to list in the Fall. I am going to try and get my act together and have the items pre-made and ready to list and ship BEFORE the Fall starts. Good idea, huh? I know, that's what everybody who runs their business efficiently does, instead of playing catch-up all the time, but I'm still learning. And I'm determined. And I'm holding myself accountable, right?

 

step 4 - write a blog....

"You know what you should do? Write a blog!"

So, always being one to follow the advice of the more experienced, I did. Er, do. Um, started one.

Ta-da!

The question is: did it make a difference to the number of potential customers flooding to my shop? Well, let's look at the figures for February and March:

                    February:  views:150                       March:   views:158
                                 favorites: 10                                  favorites: 9
                                       sales:  0                                         sales: 1

The answer?  No, not really! A few more people looking, and one person actually buying (still celebrating that one!) is all,  but the source of the increased traffic (such as it is!) cannot really be sourced back to my blog because........

.......... the more pertinent question to ask is: Is anyone reading the blog? Well.........

step 3: tweak (and keep tweaking!)

There is nothing more depressing to a shop owner as inexperienced as I am, than searching for your own items on the open marketplace that is Etsy. For example, if you type "baby quilt" into the Etsy search bar it fires back at you with 63,171 results. That is a ridiculously enormous number of pages that no-one in their right mind is going to sort through to find what they want. Are they? I would love to say that my quilts jump right out at you from page 2 or 3 but, sadly, they don't. In fact I have never persevered for long enough in sifting through pages to find out where they do in fact turn up. Like I said. Depressing.

So, what is to be done? Tweak, of course! Go into your listings' descriptions and "think like a buyer" as one article put it. Each listing has a number of tags that can be added to it (13 to be precise), to aid the search engine in picking it up. The first time I listed a quilt I used four of them. I couldn't think of a single other word that could possibly describe my creation. Nowadays, 13 seems pitifully few. The idea is that you think of every  permutation of 'baby quilt' and use it to tag your item, along with words that buyers might use if they were loking for your item in particular. That way, when a buyer types in 'camo crib quilt', mine should be nearer the front of the line than one that isn't tagged with those words. I have experimented with this and found the key words that other quiltmakers tend to use (bedding being one I hadn't thought of) and tweaked and tweaked and tweaked......

The title of your listing is another element that can be tweaked. This one is a little more tricky. This is the description that will appear to a regular search engine, and appears on your item's page in your shop. It needs to be to the point and attractive (to a search engine) without looking like a thesaurus exploded. For example, I might write:

                 Camo crib quilt Real Tree Blaze orange perfect for a nursery with a camo theme

which highlights what it is with a couple of my more obvious tags to make it searchable, but isn't just a long list as some tend to be.

Does any of this actually make a difference?  I don't know yet. I'm keeping a running total of the number of views each month. If they suddenly jump up into the millions I'll be sure to let you know what did it!

it's back!

My new Camo quilt! I am really pleased with this one and couldn't wait to get it finished and listing on Etsy.

It's a crib quilt again but has a different pattern from my first Camo creation. There is a cushion to match, which I love, and maybe a diaper holder? We'll see!

step two - again!

So...I finished another quilt today which brings my shop listings up to 9. Is that a reasonable number? I'm not sure but I do know that people are still viewing my SOLD OUT Camo crib quilt (Yay! Go me!) so I need to finish that one too. You never know, it could be the one everyone is waiting for!

                                                                Spring is coming!

step two - list more items

If you read all the very helpful blurb that those in the know at Etsy write, then you will hear over and again how important it is to have well stocked shelves in your shop. For several reasons: your shop will appear more often in search results, people are are more likely to stop and browse and therefore you are more likely to make a sale, and of course, the more choice you can offer......

However, for those of us just starting out with items we make ourselves, the thought of listing many, many items is frankly scary. After all, the more items you list, the bigger the initial financial input and what if nobody buys anything? What are you going to do with all that stuff?

And of course, it takes time. Lots of time. I have small children,  a husband and a home to look after, a part time job, as well as training, so I tend to be on the busy side. Aren't we all? So just how much time am I prepared to put into this experiment? And how much money? Both difficult questions to answer.

As my Dad so eloquently put it, "Well, are you planning on making your living from this or just having a bit of fun?'

A perfect quilt for Spring! Available soon.

Can you tell what it is yet? Feeding the Camo obsession....

Decisions, decisions!