branding « Epheriell Designs

What I Wore – Lecture Time!

So, today I got to bring one of my dreams into reality – I gave a guest lecture at my old university, The University of Queensland – better known just as ‘UQ’ to the locals.

I was invited to speak to a group of International Business English students (hi guys, if you’re reading this!) and it was great! I really enjoyed sharing my business journey so far with them, and they had heaps of great questions for me at the end, too.

So – what does one wear to give a lecture? I just went with one of my fave vintage dresses, as well as a good dose of Epheriell jewellery.

Hello, slip! One thing that sets these vintage 50′s dresses apart – you *really* need to wear a slip, there’s no built-in lining!

I love the cut of this dress – I had one lovely student ask me if I made it – I had to be honest and say noooo…. as we all know, my sewing skills are pretty non-existent… though I am improving slightly!

The next shot happened on a crazy camera setting – but I kinda liked how it highlighted the green of the plants (and my eyes, if you look closely) and the red of my hair…

Finally, my first proper fancy-schmancy business cards arrived today, just in time for me to take them to uni with me!

I was supremely pleased with the quality of these, and the fact that they were delivered on time (something I have come to value immensely in a printer, after my last few bad experiences with *bespoke* being delivered late) – so if you are in Oz, and you want some affordable, awesome biz cards, check out Saltprint.

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From Nothing – to a sale a day in one month. How I Did It! Part 3 of 3

Over the last two days I have shared the backstory and stats, and also the first three strategies that have helped me to go from nothing to an average of a sale a day.

Today I’m going to share 3 more strategies that have helped me get to this point.

4. Teams and Forums

I happen to be an active member of the best Street Team on Etsy. No, it’s true!

The Down Under Street Team (DUST) is a collection of Australian Etsians who support, help and encourage each other. I would not be where I am without them. If you are on Etsy, I would advise that the first thing you do after setting up shop is find an active team in your niche and get involved.

How else will you learn to do business better than by learning from others in a similar situation? If you’re not on Etsy… or even if you are but want to expand your scope, you need to find ‘your people’. A group of people – generally a forum of some sort is the best for this – who are in the same boat as you. And, chances are, you can cross-promote each other, too!

Not only will you learn an amazing amount, but you’ll sell more. Why? Because we’d all rather buy from our friends than strangers if we had the choice! I know I do So we all support each other in that way, too.

So get out there and find a group – it will be well worth the time you invest in it.

5. Blog, bloggity, blog

Now, I have to say that I have delusions of grandeur about my blog. I want to be the next Indie Fixx, Scoutie Girl, Dream Lily, Modish, or even Decor8. Yes, I know I am probably mad, but I’m also damned determined!

In my case, then, I run my blog as a stand-alone thing in and of itself. However, obviously, part of what I do is promote my jewellery. I have an ad at the top right of the page, I have a slew of my photos lower down on the page that link to my store (Epheriell.com), and I have a page at the top that tells you how to buy my work.

However, because of what I want my blog to be, I don’t often post about my jewellery. Maybe one in 15-20 posts is related to my jewellery – the rest are a mixture of art, photography, handmade goodness, artisan features, biz tips, and general handmade/indie loveliness.

Only you can decide where you want to take your blog – but I believe that you do need to have one.

I know there are people out there who have been very successful in the handmade marketplace without a blog, but I feel they are in the minority. In fact, social media as a whole is vital to doing business online these days.

You want your blog to be a place people enjoy visiting, subscribe to, and mention to others!

I can only hope that this is what I have created, and will continue to create, here at Epheriell Designs – and it should be the goal you are striving for, too.

6. Advertising (free and paid)

I made the decision pretty early on in the last month to re-invest almost everything I make back into the business for the next little while. I’m fortunate enough that I don’t currently *need* the money to live on… but I want to build my business to the point where one day I *can* live on the income from it.

They say you have to spend money to make money, so that’s what I’m living by at the moment.

First – free advertising

If you can’t afford any sort of advertising (or, like me, you’re a cheapskate and try to get anything for free that you can, teehee) then there are lots of good options.

Of course, the things we’ve discussed above are all forms of free advertising – all you invest is your time.

Check out the following:

CraftGawker – this site allows you to upload a photo and information about a crafty item. If accepted, it’s shown on the FP of the website, and will bring lots of new visitors to your site.

Craftgawker have unfortunately just announced that they won’t be taking submissions from online shopping venues any more. However, they will be taking submissions that link to blogs, etc, so they can still be used as a promotional tool – as long as you don’t abuse it

Indie Spotting – A nice website that showcases indie craft and design. You can submit one product a week, and again, if you’re chosen your item is featured on the Front Page of their site for a period of time.

Project Wonderful – Most of you have probably heard of Project Wonderful by now, or at least seen their ad blocks around. This is a program where you can submit an image ad directly to blogs and sites that are related to your niche. You can get free ads – this takes a LOT of work as your bid is only active for 2 days, and you have to apply for each ad spot separately.

If you’re willing to pay for some spots (starting at as little as $0.01 per spot) you can set up a campaign that will do all the hard work for you. I haven’t used it as a paid ad program – I’ve just put in the hard yards to actually advertise for free. You can also have PW ads on your site – and perhaps get paid for it – if you so choose.

Flickr – Flickr is a photo-sharing site – similar to Photobucket and the like. The great thing about Flickr is you can join ‘groups’ and submit your pictures to them. I’m part of a number of jewellery groups, for example, so when I submit a photo to a group, anyone looking at the group will see my pic. It’s a nice way to showcase and share photos of your work. Now, the free account is limited to a small number of photos – I have a paid account with limitless uploads… I think it costs me around $20-something bucks a year.

Other People’s Blogs – getting featured on a big blog is like gold. You will get tons of new visitors to your shop, and hopefully increase sales, too. I have done a few giveaways on other blogs, and they’ve always been great for me.

So, how do you get on blogs? Well, many of the popular blogs will have a ‘submissions’ page (I do, just look at the top nav menu). Bloggers are people too – and they have to find things to blog about! So don’t be afraid to submit yourself with a nice, short, informative e-mail. Remember to make sure your shop/blog/photos are the best they can be before you do this, though!

I’ve been featured on a number of blogs simply because of the connections I’ve made… people will like my jewellery – perhaps they’ve bought some and they’ll blog about it… or they’ll link to a blog post I have done… or if I’ve featured them here they’ll mention it on their blog.

Basically, get out there and make yourself known to folks. You’ll get a lot of rejections, or just never hear back, but you’ve lost nothing but a minute to write a quick e-mail and hit send!

Magazines/Websites – Ditto for what I’ve said above. Don’t be afraid to e-mail magazines or websites about your work if you feel you’d be a good fit for their target audience!

Second – paid advertising

Craftcult and the like – Craftcult is one of a number of sites that exist to help Etsy sellers in particular monitor what’s going on with their shops. They – and other sites like Craftopolis and Statsy - offer advertising to Etsians at reasonable rates. I have just the other week advertised with Craftcult, and I am going to do so again. For me, the cost is reasonable for the number of views and hearts you get. I look at it as another good form of exposure for my shop.

Some argue that advertising there is a waste, because only other Etsy sellers will see my ads. Well, to be honest, at least half of my sales have been to other Etsians… and since they are people who value handmade, they are my target market!

Blogs - again, busy, popular blogs will often offer paid advertising at a good rate. I’m quite selective with this, as I don’t have oodles of advertising money to throw around, but I have bought a few ads on blogs.

I choose to put ads for my blog on these sites, rather than my shop… because of my delusion as above, and also because of my belief that people prefer to buy from someone they know and trust. People are going to get to know me much more thoroughly through my blog and twitter than they will ever do from just visiting my shop. And it’s not like they could miss the links to it here, anyways

I currently have ads on Renee-Anee and Lushlee, just to give you two examples.

One Final Tip

This is one thing I strongly advise everyone to do – keep a spreadsheet that shows your daily income, # of sales, sale venue… as well as your daily expenditures and where you spent your money.

This is something I have ALWAYS avoided in the past because, as a rule, I hate bookwork. However, I have been doing it religiously this time around (to the point where as soon as I make a sale I enter it in the spreadsheet). It has made a very big difference for me, because I can now track – day to day – exactly how much money I’m turning over, and how much I’m spending… and where!

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Okay… so that was supposed to be it!!

However, I quickly realised once I’d finished these three posts that I’d left something out – so tomorrow I’ll bring you a Bonus Part 4 – the resources I’ve used (ebooks and websites) to help me out. There are a few great ebooks and websites I’ve not already mentioned…

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You can now download this whole series as a FREE e-book over here at Crafting a Business.

Want more Epheriell-y goodness? Subscribe to Epheriell Designs! Also, you can follow me on Twitter!

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From Nothing – to a sale a day in one month. How I Did It! Part 2 of 3

Yesterday I gave you the backstory and details of how I’ve gone from no sales to over 40 sales in the last month. Today I’m sharing the first three strategies I’ve used to achieve this.

So, how did I do it?

I’m sorry to tell you, but the simple answer is through sheer. hard. bloody. work. For almost all of that time I have spent almost all day – from when I get up around 9-10 to when I go to bed at around 12-1 – working. However, when your work is your passion, this isn’t such a difficult thing. But you’ll have to put in as many hours as you can!

A majority of that time has been spent on the computer, but I have of course been making products too – both my sold products and a slew of new ones.

I have blogged, tweeted, listed, networked, flickr’d, written on forums, facebooked…. I could go on. In fact, I will, in detail

Here is the detail of what I have done over the past month to get to where I’m at. Today I’m sharing the first three strategies, tomorrow I’ll share three more. (I’ve also decided to do a fourth bonus post sharing all the resources that have helped me outside of these six strategies).

1. Make Stuff

If you’re a handmade business person, this is your core business. If you’re not making stuff, you don’t have a business!

I know that I have soooo many ideas about new things to create. And if I don’t get to create them almost every day, I tend to start getting a leeetle bit frustrated.

As someone trying to be noticed online, you need to be regularly making new products – so you’re fresh, you’ve always got something new for your customers to check out – and so you’ve got something to talk about! I don’t know about you, but if someone was constantly promoting the same old thing over and over to me, it would get really old real fast. But if I know of or follow a shop I love, I like to check out the new things they’re making!

I tend to make one or two new things each day – sometimes I won’t make anything. But I do keep making things regularly - I think that’s the key. I keep photographing, editing my photos, and listing new things – preferably at least ONE thing each day. I’ve found it’s helpful to have a backlog of items made and ready to list, so that on slow days or periods I still have something new to share. It can be REALLY hard to hold of listing it all at once, though!

On venues like Etsy and MadeIt this is particularly important, as the search results are in reverse chronological order. If you don’t add new products (or at least, in the case of Etsy, renew a thing or two every day or so) you get buried in the search results.

I’m pretty sure that most of my MadeIt sales have come from that site’s search, as I do very little promoting of that store, but am finding reasonably consistent sales. It is still small enough that my work stays in the first – or at least the first two or three – search pages for a few days. Etsy is another story – I don’t really rely on getting found in the search over there very much at all.

2. Tweet Up a Storm

I *LOVE* twitter. It is by far my most successful promotional tool. However, I don’t just spam my followers with links. Also, when I got back into this, I already had about 1,500 followers from last year who hadn’t booted me, so I was starting with a good base. It will take time and tweeting to get to that level.

I use twitter because I enjoy it! I use TweetDeck, and have it running on my desktop all the time. Whenever I’m waiting for a page to load, or just every 5-10 minutes or so, I’ll have a quick peek to see what tweeps are up to. I tweet pretty regularly when I’m on the computer.

What about? Well, I’ll tweet about what I’m thinking, doing, cool sites I’m reading/looking at, funny things that happen during the day, my blog posts… I RT (re-tweet) things on twitter I like, I’ll chat to the friends I’ve made and respond to any tweets @me… and I’ll throw a promotional link in there every once in a while.

Basically, when I tweet about my work it’s because it’s just another thing I’m doing… for example, whenever I list a new product, I’ll tweet it. If I have something special going on (sale or whatnot) I’ll tweet it. When I sell and re-list something, I’ll tweet it.

My twitter stream is me, distilled.

My business is a big part of who I am – and who I am is a big part of my business. I’m a big believer that I am my brand. In the handmade world – and the online world in general – people buy things because they want something unique and special – they care that they’re buying from a REAL PERSON and not a faceless company.

That is also why I use my own name – @jessvanden – instead of my business name, Epheriell.

And I also believe in the importance of being genuine. I don’t talk to my friends on twitter because I hope they’ll buy from me. I talk to them because they’re fun to talk to!! And if they buy from me, bonus.

Oh – also – set up a custom background on your twitter page. You can see mine here – @jessvanden. This means that whenever someone visits your page, they can see what you’re all about! I made mine in Photoshop – just opened a new image file and added the test and pics to it.

3. Facebook is your Friend

I had already set up a Facebook Page for Epheriell last year, so I went over there and started prettying it up a little. I added a new, more eye-catching pic as my profile photo, I started promoting it a little more, and I begun listing all my new items over there to let my fans know.

I have also instituted a monthly giveaway. Anyone who becomes my Fan and stays one is automatically entered in a draw to win a piece of jewellery each month. This month I began with a set of my stacking rings, and each month I’ll choose a new product to give away.

This strategy has seen my drastically increase my fans. Sure, I’ve still only got around 150 fans, but the number is growing every day. I usually tweet the link to it about once a day, reminding people that they’ll be in the giveaway draw if they Fan Epheriell. This gives people a reason to stay a fan, even if once and a while they might get sick of seeing all your new updates!!

(Update - I have been informed by someone that offering giveaways on FB may be a breach of their TOS. Please look into this yourself before doing a giveaway. A way around this, from what I can see of their terms, is the following. Offer a monthly giveaway based on your blog. Your terms for it can be that people go become a fan on FB, then come back and leave a comment on your blog post to that effect. That way, you’re encouraging them to be a fan, but not running the giveaway on FB. This is what I will do beginning next month).

Remember the power of Facebook – whenever someone ‘likes’ or comments on a post – every one of their friends sees that on their page. This gives you a huge scope to catch more eyes and bring in more people to your business.

Summary

Do what you love, and love what you do. This is a passion for me – if it wasn’t there is no way I could keep up these sorts of hours.

I would definitely advise getting familiar with twitter and FB if you aren’t already. If you follow me (@jessvanden) please say hello! I’d love to chat with you!

Remember it takes time to build followers and fans… but the time you invest now in building those groups of people is going to be gold a few months down the line when it’s paying off for you!

Tomorrow I’ll share the next 3 of the six strategies I’ve used to get this far.

Edit: They’re now published – here they are!

Part 3

Bonus Part 4

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What I Wore – Lecture Time!