Homemade Button, Crystal, and Pearl Jewelry

PFT Gifts and Purchases

2012-02-01T12:36:00.002-05:00

So the Promotional Frenzy Team did Secret Santa's this past holiday season and I wanted to share with everyone what I received as a gift!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/SymbolicImports

Symbolic Imports sent me this really nice wood soap tray/dish, and perfume oil! The clean cotton smell is really nice! I LOVE the smell of dryer sheets and things similar so this was just perfect for me!
If you haven't shopped through her shop before you should really take a moment to check it out!

Then last week I decided to make a purchase from a teammate. I do quite a few craft shows each year, and like to display my business cards. I have gone out of my way to try to make my business cards unique and stand out. So I wanted a display that would also stand out. So, I splurged on this!

Isn't it beautiful? You can find this beautiful shop here:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/Mtbaldyglassworks

She makes amazing pieces from fused glass! Wine stoppers, to these business card holders, just stunning pieces of work!

Thanks PFT for such amazing gifts, and products!! Now I will smell good, while making a statement at my shows :)

Janet
Trinkets N Whatnots

2012 Goals

2012-01-03T23:40:00.002-05:00

So for 2011 I set 9 personal goals and achieved 5. I am very disappointed in that. Some of the goals were just too ambitious and some were just bad timing and I just wasn't able to complete them.

2012 Goals for me personally and my business:

1. New line of Jewelry coming - Updates to my rings, and new accessories

2. List over 400 items in my shop

3. Achieve over 1000 sales

4. Use Pinterest and Google Buzz more

5. Hit 10,000 Circles (I know CRAZY, probably not possible... )

6. Have at LEAST 4 local shops carrying my jewelry

7. Get my 3rd shop up and running on Etsy

8. Buy a house and Move

****************************************************

The Promotional Frenzy Team had an AMAZING 2011. We consistently maintain a roster of over 100 team members. Had a 100% compliance rate with blogs, we create many new events, and participated in contests for more visibility and the biggest accomplishment??

OVER 1600 SALES IN OUR BNRS!! It is impossible to know how many sales our teammates have had just from our team activities but with 1600 sales from our bi-weekly event I am sure this was a successful year.

PFT GOALS:

1. Have everyone work on their circles (minimum of 500 each)

2. Improve upon our team Twitter account (1000 followers)

3. Use Flickr team account more

4. Master Google Buzz and Pinterest

5. Have our team blog up and running

6. Enter more contests, apply for Etsy grants, advertise and more!

7. Well over 3000 sales for the team!

Thank you to all the support of my friends and teammates.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Janet

www.galla15.etsy.com

EggNog Cake

2011-12-06T22:12:00.000-05:00

This is a super easy recipe and so in the spirit of the holiday season.

I used Southern Comfort eggnog, any store bought brand will work.

You will need a 10 inch fluted tube pan to bake it in.
ONLY 8 ingredients.

1 Package (18 1/4 oz) white cake mix
1 package (3.9oz) instant vanilla pudding mix
4 eggs
1 cup eggnog
1/4 cup canola oil
2 teaspoons rum extract
1 1/2 teaspoons ground nutmeg

GLAZE Ingredients:
1 cup confectioners' sugar (10x sugar)
1/4 teaspoon rum extract
3 to 4 teaspoons eggnog

1. In a large bowl, combine the cake mix, pudding mix, eggs, eggnog, oil, rum extract and nutmeg. Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes.

2. Pour into a well-greased 10 in. fluted tube pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 38-41 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes before inverting onto a serving platter.

3. In a small bowl, combine the confectioners' sugar, extract and enough eggnog to get a drizzling consistency. Drizzle over the cake once it is completely cooled.

TIPS: I found you need much more eggnog for the glaze then called for. So I would recommend adding 4 teaspoons of eggnog and the 1/4 tsp of rum extract, then slowly add the 10x sugar until the right consistency. It was very sweet to me. It took closer to 41 minutes for mine to finish and get that really golden color around the edges.

I hope you guys will try it and let me know how you like it. I am not even a fan of eggnog I made this for my dad and I LOVED it.

Janet
www.galla15.etsy.com

Questionable Ethics

2011-11-27T14:54:00.000-05:00

I would like to start out by giving a frame of reference, a little insight into me personally.

When I was growing up I had an extremely creative mom and sister. My mom could knit, sew, quilt, paint, ceramics, wreaths, decorate, stage, throw parties you name it this woman could do it and do it VERY well. My sister was the same way, she would come home from school with beautiful pieces to show my mom from art class. Now my dad really couldn't barely draw a stick person LOL My dad was on the more analytic side, he loved to build things and was very good at drawing up plans. My point is I grew up thinking I was not creative at all compared to my mom and sister, that I took after my dad. It was only in the last 6 or so years of my life that I discovered my creative side through jewelry.

It is one of the ONLY things I can say in my entire life that I truly feel creative, and absolute love doing. So with this history I take a huge amount of pride in my work. I strive to create truly unique items. With all of this said, I know that in jewelry just about anything and everything that can be done has been done at some point in time... and that we all get inspired by one another at times.
But I strive to put my own personal touches on each piece, and to create my own niche in the market, and feel that is the ethical way to handle any craft or business.

So the drama from yesterdays craft show actually started an entire year ago. These 2 older women selling jewelry (a vendor at the same show) came to my booth wanting to know if they could buy the pattern for some of my bracelets. I told them the patterns were not for sale, that I didn't want them or other vendors selling my creations. They continued to pick up each piece and put their glasses on and examine them very very closely. Later that day I had someone buy 4 of my bracelets, I was thrilled until I saw them later at the booth with these 2 women. They had sent a friend in to buy the bracelets from me since I told them NO. These things happen quite often but usually it isn't done in such a blatant manner. I bet this happens at most shows but we just don't know about it because most people have a little more sense about them, that this is WRONG to do so don't be obvious if you are going to do it! I tried to not get too upset, but decided I would talk to the event organizer. I have been a vendor at this show for 5 years now and felt strongly this wouldn't be the type of vendor they would want to have if they knew the things they were doing. The organizer said she wasn't happy with them either, there were other problems apparently and she wouldn't be inviting them back.

Flash forward to this past Friday at the same show just a year later and these 2 older women were back at the show! Not only were they back but they had a prime location near the entrance, AND they had EXACT copies of my bracelets! I was furious and immediately went to the organizer to complain. It is bad enough they are copying but to now sell it at the SAME show and for me to not have a better spot in the show as a long standing vendor was upsetting too. The organizer said I needed to talk to the copycats myself and make it clear that I wasn't happy with this, but I should wait until the end of the show so that it doesn't cause a problem. I agreed to wait to the end of the show to handle it.

So the show starts and these 2 women immediately come to my booth and start examining more bracelets. They want to know where I get my displays from, where my bracelet trays came from... Of course I just said ONLINE! Where else do you think I got them from? LOL
They walked away finally. All day Friday I had customers who have come to this show for years to see me.... come up to my booth to warn me that someone has copied me. I have some loyal customers which I love them all dearly for.

Near lunch time on Friday my mom and dad came up to let me use the bathroom and get a drink and they brought me lunch. As soon as I walked away from my booth these 2 women came flying over to examine more of my items. I guess they thought my booth was unmanned, but my parents were there! These 2 women made VERY bold and blatant moves the entire day Friday wanting more and more information on my pieces in order to copy not only my jewelry but my displays too!

Saturday comes around and I am really started to get worked up, this has been going on since the previous year, it is becoming more disruptive where I feel I can't even leave my booth. Friday night into Saturday I had to put my entire display away because I knew they would come in early or stay late to stare at my booth! Throughout the day Saturday more customers were noticing the copycats and saying more and more too. Other vendors around me starting commenting, as I was talking to one of my neighbors the copycats came running up behind me trying to look again... until the my neighbor pointed it out to me. One of the other vendors actually went up to these 2 ladies and asked them, so who is copying who, you copying that girl in there or is she copying you? Apparently the lady refused to answer and just changed the subject to explain their designs.

My mom and grandmother came up Saturday to shop around and they gave me a short break again. Again as soon as I walked away these 2 women came flying up to my booth. My mom told me they were whispering and pointing at everything, picking up more bracelets and looking and then she heard one of the ladies say those button necklaces would sell great we can do those! So now the bracelets weren't enough, trying to figure out my display isn't enough let's rip off ALL her designs. I am a person of principal and this to me is so very wrong, I was fuming inside. But I wanted to try to maintain my image and reputation at this show and with my customers so I just kept waiting for the end of the day to talk to the copycats.

Finally around 4pm on Saturday I was with a customer who was buying earrings from me when the taller of these copycat ladies came up to my booth. She had her hands on her hips and this stern look I quickly glanced up to make eye contact and say HI, and she started screaming at me. I honestly don't know what she said because I was so concerned about my customer, that I just looked up at her and said can this wait I have a customer and she yelled NO it can not wait. I took my customers money and slowly packaged up her item and tried to keep a smile and be as calm as I could as to not scare my customer away. And as soon as I gave her the item this woman was screaming. She said how dare you tell others we are copying you. Honestly I don't know what triggered this I had been biting my tongue the ENTIRE day to wait for an appropriate time to confront these women. My only guess is the combination of my customers giving her a hard time and the other vendor at one point flat out asking who is copying set her off. None of which is my fault, I didn't copy, I didn't ask people to do these things, and really don't know what was done or said.

It got really bad, to the point where the woman was leaning over my table with her finger in my face and I said I am not talking to you about this now. I just kept repeating as calmly as I could I am not doing this in the middle of the show. I said can we handle this later, she yelled you better believe we will handle this later, I will handle you. I said is that a threat, she said you better believe it. Mind you this woman is at least in her 60's!! Finally my neighbor vendor came over, and chest bumped the copycat and said that is enough walk away. So the woman left. Now any customer that was in our aisle has gone RUNNING, it is a ghost town in here. I asked my one neighbor to please go get the organizer, that this had crossed a line and was not acceptable. She came back to tell me the organizer was busy but would be over shortly.

I just tried to calm down at this point and keep a smile for any customers nearby and to regroup. 15-20 minutes went by and I had another customer at my table when the 2nd shorter copycat lady came to my table SCREAMING. She talked about how if she had the jewelry they had bought with her she would return them, honestly I don't know what she was saying. I tried for about a 1/2 second to talk and it was obvious they weren't reasonable and weren't going to listen. So when I couldn't even say one word, I dug my heels in and said I won't talk about this now. I am not going to discuss this now.... finally I said please leave. She said NO. I said leave my booth, she said no. I repeated myself at least 10 more times, she refused. So I felt I had no choice at this moment but to call the police. The organizer had not made it over to me yet and this woman was scaring away my business and I had been threatened and she would NOT leave..... I told her if she didn't leave I would call the police, she said go ahead and call. I got my phone out, not really wanting to call, because I did not want a bigger scene then this had already become... so I warned her one last time, I am calling now if you don't leave and she stood there. So I had to call the police. The entire time I was on the phone she was yelling in the background. I could barely hear the guy on the other end. WHAT A DISASTER! The police hung around to escort me to my car at the end of the show and these women didn't say another word after that.

**** So the bottomline to me. These are experienced women, and I don't just say that because of their age. These are women who have clearly made a living out of doing this. In my personal opinion people do not get that bold, and don't have such an elaborate system in place by accident. It is from years of doing these things, and literally being BULLIES to other small crafters. I bet most crafters ignore their antics, most crafters don't know what they can do, what they should do, and these women are so dominating in their actions that I bet most don't stand up to them. These women have been able to get away with this behavior for so long that it has become more and more aggressive. I let them get away with it for over a year myself because I didn't think there was much I could do, these things happen in the craft world etc. etc.

But these women will continue to do these things until something is done about it, obviously. Even with the idea of the cops coming they wouldn't leave my booth. That woman just flat out did not care. And I am positive it is NO coincidence that each time they came to throw a fit was when I had customers. They realized at this particular venue the GIG WAS UP for them and they were pissed and trying to do as much damage as they could on their way out. That is my honest opinion, when they realized that there were other vendors and so many customers protective of me and commenting to them, and that they weren't getting away with it they threw a temper tantrum!

They did do a lot of damage, but probably not like they had hoped. They succeeded in making themselves look like complete asses. They were able to flaunt their selfishness and their unethical behavior to my entire customer base, and to all these other vendors. They were banned from this venue again in the future, and my customers clearly know me and my work and wouldn't give them the time of day and certainly never will now either!

And they have been successful in motivating me to take the next step with my business. If this is something I deeply care about, and treasure my creations and my hard work and time then I have to do more to protect them. I have contacted a lawyer, and I have copyrights, trademarks you name it, all in the works for my company. So I should be thanking them to a certain extent because my business will be elevated now due to their unethical behaviors.

In all the years of doing craft shows I have never even seen a conflict let alone been involved in one. And I hope for the rest of my years doing craft shows I won't have to deal with something this ridiculous again.

Thanks for reading my book.

And I really want to thank all the other vendors who were supportive to me, protected me, and all of my very loyal customers :)

THANK YOU!
Janet
Trinkets N Whatnots - Crystal and Button Jewelry

One Social Share Button

2011-11-08T21:20:00.002-05:00

Everywhere you turn there is a social networking site that people are using. Each site has their own "button" for you to put in your toolbar of your internet screen so that you can share content with that site.

For instance, Stumbleupon has a green share button with SU on it for your toolbar.
But if you are trying to grow a business using social networks it can be hard to keep up with all those buttons! Your toolbar could look quite the mess, and very hard to manage right?

So I discovered a universal SHARE button. It isn't perfect, for instance it doesn't have some of the newer sites like Pinterest just yet. However, it has tumblr, stumbleupon, kaboodle, linkedin, facebook, twitter, google buzz, digg, and many other options!

Once you have this green universal share button you can use it to pick which site to promote too.

Here are the directions for firefox installation.

Here are the steps.

1. Click the orange Firefox button at the top of your internet screen, you will see a series of menus CLICK Add- ons

2. You should now see a page with a search bar near the top right. Type in "Share" into that search.

3. Now you will see a bunch of results, at the very bottom of the result page is Show More Results, Click on that.

4. The 2nd result on the page should be a green Shareaholic add on. The 1st result is also a share button but it isn't as popular and I prefer the one in the 2nd result. If you put your mouse over that 2nd add-on you will see "Add to Firefox" Click on that to install.

5. Now that it is installed on firefox, you will need to restart Firefox by closing it completely out and reopening it. If you don't see the green share button right to the left of where you type in a URL on the page then you have to adjust your internet menu.

Click the Orange Firefox menu button top left, move your mouse over the menu "options" and you should see "Add-On" Click on it to make sure a check mark is next to it.

6. Set up which social networks you want to have available through this button.
To the left of where you type in the URL of a webpage is the Green Shareaholic button, there is a little green drop down arrow... click on there to see a list of choices, and click on MORE OPTIONS.

7. Now you will see a screen with sites on the left and right. You click a site you want that is on the left and then click ADD to move it to the right. All sites on the right hand side are ones that will show under your button on the toolbar. You can remove them or add them through this menu.

****** HERE IS A LINK TO GET THE DOWNLOAD FOR INTERNET EXPLORER ******

IE Shareaholic

Now get sharing on all these sites :)

Have fun.
Janet

SPECIAL Baby BNR Bash!

2011-10-19T00:44:00.004-04:00

WOW! The Promotional Frenzy Team had a special BNR on Tuesday the 18th. And we had 189 sales in one single day!!

I want to give some special thanks out to those that organized this BNR.

Crystal Photography - She is pregnant with twins and realized we could have fun trying to guess the date of birth for her twins and turned that into an amazing theme for our BNR. She spent countless hours while pregnant with the twins blogging, and promoting, arranging all the details. She was able to help get all the prizes lined up and all the curator shifts together. AND donated a prize to this event!

You can read all the details about the BNR and the PRIZES that were over $700 dollars, here at her blog
http://crystalgaylephotography.blogspot.com/2011/10/baby-bnr.html

Check out her amazing shop:

Then there is Camilles Closet. She really had a lot of ideas to set this up and helped Crystal set it all up. She had some really creative ideas and incentives to make this such a huge success.

Her amazing Wax seal pendants I think really make her shop stand out. She donated a prize to this BNR too!!

Our resident BNR lady: Crocheted By Charlene She also donated a wonderful prize and has an AMAZING shop. She helps make sure all the curators are lined up and convo's them all the details... lots of behind the scenes leg work on her part each week for our team!
Check out her newest line, crocheted headwarmers!

Then we have a member on our team that is still fairly new but just jumped in with both feet with amazing energy and enthusiasm. Lost Lemonade She stayed online for basically 14 hours today to help track all the sales, how many entries each person has etc. HUGE detailed, LONG day... she gave our preggo Crystal a small breather today. And I am sure you can start to sense a pattern, we have such supportive members... so she also donated a prize to the cause!

Check out these very cool bath products in a festive Ornament!!

With 189 Sales Total it was obviously a HUGE team effort. Tons of promoting, donations, and hardowrk that resulted in an AMAZING event.

Obviously I can't thank every individual person that helped us make this event such a success.

BUT A HUGE THANK YOU TO EVERYONE THAT HAS SUPPORTED THE PROMOTIONAL FRENZY TEAM AND THIS EVENT.

This was the list of curators we had tonight AND those that donated prizes.

http://www.symbolicimports.etsy.com/ - a bar of oatmeal, milk and honey soap valued at $6.00.

http://www.thechristmascorner.etsy.com/ - a surprise gift valued at $15.

http://www.smileykit.etsy.com/ - a Bird Handmade With Swarovski Crystals in the color of your choice valued at $11.00.

http://www.dellcovespices.etsy.com/ - a 5 pack Pin Up girl spice kit valued at $15.00.

http://www.potsdamelf.etsy.com/ - a pair of hand felted ball earrings valued at $17.00.

http://www.sunnycrystals.etsy.com/ - a glass heart shaped pendant valued at $8.00.

http://www.rooee.etsy.com/ - a pot holder valued at $8.00.

http://www.urdelights.etsy.com/ - a pair of earrings valued at $20.00.

http://www.crochetedbycharlene.etsy.com/ - a headwarmer valued at $14.00.

http://www.calliopeazcreations.etsy.com/ - a pair of earrings that are made of real turquoise and hand worked old carnelian beads. The drop is 1.5 inches. Value is $18.00.

http://www.greenhouseglassworks.etsy.com/ - a Dichroic Fused Glass Pendant valued at $20.00.

http://www.prittyfy.etsy.com/ - a charm bracelet valued at $32.00.

http://www.magdamagda.etsy.com/ - a Chiffon Scarf and Rose set valued at $9.90.

http://www.lostlemonade.etsy.com/ - a bottle of Bath Sea Salts valued at $7.00.

http://www.crystalphotography.etsy.com/ - a 5x7 print called 'Daisy in the Spring' valued at $20.00.

http://www.havendawndesigns.etsy.com/ - a pendant of the winners choice, including the option of a custom pendant design, valued upto $7.50.

http://www.flirtysanchezproject.etsy.com/ - a set of No Place Like Home washi tape deco clothespins and 4 Whisper Neutrals papercraft upcycled mini card gift tags valued together at $8.00.

http://www.yesterdaysmemories09.etsy.com/ - 2 sheets of personalized thank you labels valued at $7.75.

http://www.delightfulprints.etsy.com/ - any item in her shop up to a $15 value.

http://www.galla15.etsy.com/ - a $15 credit to her shop.

http://www.lestroisfleurs.etsy.com/ - a Sunshine eyeglasses lanyard.

http://www.createdrose.etsy.com/ - a Red Flower Print Of Original Flower Painting 5x7 valued at $15.00.

http://www.camillescloset.etsy.com/ - 2 Wax Seal Initial Necklaces valued at $17 each.

http://www.jqjewelrydesigns.etsy.com/ - a Brighton leather accessories are timeless creations assembled by hand and created from fine leathers. Available only in Brighton Collectibles stores and select specialty shops, they are well-known for their heart logos and silver charms adorning many of the products in their collections.

This limited edition case measures 3 by 4 inches and has a zipper closure with pretty silver charm pull. A heart-shaped window is perfect for a favorite photo. It is designed with deep brown fine pebble leather and the famous Brighten croc detailing. Valued at $35 US.

http://www.turtlexiii.etsy.com/ - a pair of pumpkin earrings valued at $15.00.

http://www.nangatesdesigns.etsy.com/ - a wristlet valued at $16.00.

http://www.overthemoongifts.etsy.com/ - a luggage tag valued at $8.00.

http://www.eveyinorbitshop.etsy.com/ - an art zine valued at $3.50.

http://www.grapvineceramicsgft.etsy.com/ - a ceramic sunflower ring marble valued at $12.99.

http://www.photomom101.etsy.com/ - a Genuine European Charm Bracelet with Murano Glass Bead valued at $105.00.

http://www.plarnstar.etsy.com/ - a bracelet made of recycled plastic bags (to be custom made for the winner) valued at $18.00.

http://www.jeannelamp.etsy.com/ - a pair of earrings valued upto $10.00.

http://www.impulsivecrafter.etsy.com/ - a pair of baby leggings valued at $7.00.

http://www.unicornpaper.etsy.com/ - 2 sets of tags valued teogether at $5.00.

http://www.unexpectedtreasure.etsy.com/ - a Elmo Inspired Earflap Hat with Red Fringed Scarf valued at $28.00.

http://www.papermajik.etsy.com/ - a 4 pack of Exclusive Seeds and Fern Handmade Paper Stationery valued at $15.00.

http://www.flutterbyconnections.etsy.com/ - a Christmas ornament of choice valued at $10.00.

http://www.jesseciani.etsy.com/ - a Silk Flower Headband valued at $25.00.

http://www.uglyducklingbeads.etsy.com/ - a pair of Perfectly Twisted Wire Earrings tutorial valued at $12.00.

http://www.lexiekinprints.etsy.com/ - a printable thank you card valued at $9.50.

http://www.nickollette113.etsy.com/ - $15 store credit.

http://www.smileykit.etsy.com/ - curator

http://www.urdelights.etsy.com/ - curator for TWO shifts

http://www.fairladyboutique.etsy.com/ - Curator for TWO shifts

There were countless others who helped convo friends to get the traffic up.

A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL!!!

Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

Operation Care Package

2011-10-04T12:59:00.004-04:00

I am working with an organization called, "Operation Care Packages" and they are collecting items to send overseas to our troops that will be deployed during the holidays. I have worked with this organization for 4 years now. http://www.operationcarepackages.org/index.html

I think about an organization such as Etsy that connects millions of people and can see so much potential to make a difference. If everyone gave one or two items we would easily meet and of course exceed our goals.

So how can we all help with this, in these tough economic times? Direct donations are of course appreciated and needed but there are MANY ways to help this year.

HOW TO HELP?

1. Just help spread the word. Please blog about this, email your friends, tell your co-workers... just help spread the word on this wonderful cause.

2. Get a local school or church involved. My mom is a retired teacher and she gets kids at school to draw and paint and send messages. The troops love to see all of that support.

3. Look around your house to see what you don't need or want anymore. Old magazines are greatly appreciated, used books too. Do you have old games, decks of cards, or movies laying around? All of these things are keep the cost to you down but would make a huge impact for our troops. Other than the cost to ship these wouldn't cost you a thing!

4. Go to the local dollar store and buy 5-10 items which will cost you 5-10 dollars. This organization loves to send a stocking to every troop so you could buy 5 PACKS of stockings. Or just some toiletries, or games and books from there. Very cheap and you can buy multiple items.

5. Here is a great website with very affordable odds and ends, such as deck of cards, stockings that are only 50 cents each, games and ornaments.. .

http://www.orientaltrading.com/

6. You can send blank cards so that they have something to send back to loved ones, or a book of stamps. Just get creative and send something, one thing :)

Here is a LONG list of things they would want and could use:

"Wish List"

The following is a list of items that are especially needed to add Holiday cheer to packages.

Cards & letters of support to 'any hero'

Hot Chocolate & Hot Cider Packets Cookies (small individual packs)

Chocolate bars & kisses

Batteries AA & AAA

Hand held games, dvds and cds

Sweat pants and blanket throws

Socks - Mens - white /black - work /crew

Summer sausage, beef sticks or pepperoni sticks (6oz to 12oz size)

Granola Bars, Trail Mix, Nuts (individual sizes)

Small Christmas trees - 8 to 18 inches tall

Zip lock bags (quart and gallon size)

Popcorn balls / Carmel corn

Phone cards 120 min AT&T

Little Stockings (Approx 10-16 inches tall x 5-6 inches wide)

Hand made ornaments (no glass please)

Protien Bars * Batteries * Jerky

Pre-sweetened powdered Kool-aid, Gatorade

Kool aid singles or similar

Jerky, Slim Jims, Summer Sausage, Beef Sticks

Canned Fruit, Dried Fruit, Fruit Snacks

Canned Hearty Soup, Ravioli, Stew

Cup A Soup, Top Ramon, Dinty Moore

Trail Mix, Nuts, Sunflower Seeds

Pre-Packaged Cookies

Instant Oatmeal, Boxed Cereal

Easy Mac & Cheese, Microwave Popcorn

Canned Tuna, Chicken

Peanut Butter / Jelly (No Glass Please)

Small boxes of crackers

Muti-Vitamins, Tylenol

New/Used DVDs / CDs

Puzzle Books, Pads of paper, Long Envelopes

Qt. / Gal Zip Lock Bags

Hand Held Games, Hand held Mini fans, Misters

Batteries AA/ AAA
Cards games...UNO, Skip Bo,

Yahtzee, Board Games, Sports equipment, Hacky Sacks, X-Box & PS2 Games

Mens White/Black Crew/ Work socks

Under Armour Wear T-Shirts Sm., Med., Lg., Xlg.

Shave towels, wash cloths, Cool scarves

Sun glasses, Safety glasses, Gloves, 72" boot laces

Special Wants

Small Personal or Desk Fans, Hand & Foot warmers, Hot Plates, Small Coffee Grinder, Twin Sheet Sets, Pillow cases, Travel Size Pillows, Cool Scarves, Jogging Pants, Cool Max T-Shirts, Wash Cloths and Bath Towels, Flashlights, Headlamps, Leatherman, New or Good Condition Books, No Romance Please, Mystery, Western, Thriller, Sports, Inspirational

SuperBowl Sunday Help us give them a day every American Loves

Footballs, Nerf Balls, Sports Related Items, New Football or Sports Magazines, Salsa - in plastic please, Totilla Chips, Summer Sausage, Small boxes of crackers, Cheese - Non refrigerated, Plastic Football Bowls for chips, Football Napkins, Football Sports Flags or Banners, Men's Deodorant, Shave Cream, Foot Powder, odor eaters, Small size shampoos, conditioner, mouthwash, Floss, lip balm, toothpaste, toothbrushes, nail clippers, Sunblock, Mosquito repellant, Fly tape, Wet Wipes, Anti-bacterial liquid soap

Holiday Needs

Summer sausage, Crackers, Canned Ham (Sm.)

Lots Pre-packaged Cookies, Hot Chocolate, Coffee

Chocolate Candy, Hard Candy,

Handmade or mini ornaments

Small 18-22 inch Christmas Trees (Artificial)

New or Handmade Blanket Throws

Cards & letters of support

Hand made kids pictures/ letters

Small un-wrapped gifts

Homemade / bought stockings / Mini or regular size

SEND HERE No Later Than November 15th

Operation Care Package

611 Wilcox St.

Joliet, IL. 60435

******************************************************
On a separate note I also collect packages for the local injured troops. I personally deliver them to the local fisher houses at Andrew's Air Force Base, and Walter Reed Army Hospital etc.

These are people who will be in a hospital during the holidays and can't go home and are dealing with major injuries. So if you are interested in helping some local injured troops please contact me directly.
I will post updates here as to what we have collected, and hopefully have some pictures of the local troops, and of the donations to post here too.
Thanks.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

Announcing An Exciting New Etsy Partnership

2011-09-20T22:20:00.003-04:00

A very effective way to market a business is to form mutually beneficial partnerships. To find an ideal partner you have to know your business and who your target market is.

Ideally you can find a business that has a similar target market but is not in direct competition.

For me I am most known for my button creations, and I have been trying to form several partnerships for awhile to fill some unique markets. When a good friend wanted to send me buttons for a custom made necklace it dawned on me.... I could offer customized button creations for my customers.

My customers can send me buttons from a sentimental button collection they have and I will work with them on a color scheme and create necklaces, rings and/or earrings for them.

Then I went one step further and found an amazing ceramic artist on Etsy who makes handmade buttons! It fits perfectly with my unique button creations. My customers won't be getting any buttons, they will have handmade buttons from:

http://www.buttonalia.etsy.com/

She is willing to make just about any shape, size or color button and mail them directly to me for these custom orders! I will be referring my customers to her shop, to find the most unique buttons and then they will order a custom piece of jewelry to be made from the buttons. She will be listing custom listings highlighting the fact that my shop can use her buttons to create unique jewelry creations! It is a wonderful arrangement, we both have good Etsy traffic, views and sales and have set up our first listings to cross promote!

Here is the listing in Buttonalia's shop for the custom buttons:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/82028138/designed-for-and-by-you-you-choose-the

And here is my first listing for a custom necklace, but I will be doing rings and earring listings soon. PLUS I am still tweaking bracelet designs with buttons so hopefully an entire set of jewelry will be available soon.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/82148100/design-your-own-customized-button

We both featured pictures of each others work in our listings, and tried to cover all the details for the customer. Such as the length of time needed to complete an order, including the time to receive the buttons to create a piece of jewelry, links to find the listings, pictures to show examples, etc.

I am truly excited about this opportunity. It will be wonderful for both of us but best of all is the opportunity provided now to our customers.

Such a unique product now available!! The possibilities are endless....

Would love to hear if you have partnered with other shops or websites and what your experiences have been.

Thanks!
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

Update on Lola

2011-09-10T16:41:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to give a quick update on Lola! She is doing pretty good. She is definitely relaxing and appreciative of being indoors where it is safe and DRY.

She is starting to stretch out and really relax, purring and eating really good. We will definitely need to get more work done on her, probably some blood work to make sure everything is ok since she is so malnourished, and to get spayed, and the rest of her vaccinations.

Here are some pictures of her relaxing

We received some really nice donations from friends, and it is GREATLY appreciated. 100% of all donations go strictly to Lola's care. The vet bills and her food, etc. For her to get healthy and to find a loving home.

If you would like to donate the button is at the top right of this blog.

Thank you everyone for the support.

Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Meet Lola An Abandoned Cat

2011-09-07T15:09:00.005-04:00

MEET LOLA

She had a home, was indoors, and had a family. But then the family moved and dumped her in the woods well over a month ago. She has been outside now for a month, I would rarely see her going through the yard, and the last time I saw her a few weeks ago I could see all her ribs. I started putting food out to help her when I could. She was outside during the earthquake and Hurricane we had and now seeing her so skinny and knowing all she has had to endure, plus we are having huge rains and flooding again.... I trapped her in a humane trap last night 9/6.

She was taken to the vets today to make sure she doesn't have FIV or HIV and it was rather shocking what this kitty has gone through. She is luckily negative for the FIV and HIV! YEAH

But we discovered she has been biten by another animal and has an infection from it.

There are 2 puncture wounds on her back and one is pretty large. She has a ton of little nodules/bumps on her belly and around her hind legs that are her lymph nodes. The lymph nodes have enlarged in an effort to fight the infection from this bite.

She weighed in at 6 pounds, and is approximately 1-2 years old. She is very skinny and scraggly. She was covered in mud last night from the huge rains we are having. She has fleas and some ticks and she also has a bad case of worms! They discovered a tooth missing in the bottom front of her mouth too!

It is like she has been through a war! To top it off it does not appear that she has been spayed so there is a possibility that she could be pregnant. So for now Lola is in my bathroom with a sleeping bag and warm towels, tons of food and water and love. She needs a home. We got her a rabies vaccination today, and she will be on anti-biotics for the next 2 weeks to get rid of the infection.

We have to give her 2-3 weeks to see if she develops rabies from this bite she has on her back, and if she ends up pregnant, also to make sure the infection clears up. But in 2-3 weeks hopefully she will be gaining weight and healthy and we can get her spayed and placed in a home!

If you would like to help with Lola ... to help her get healthy, get her vaccinations and spaying and placement in a home we would greatly appreciate donations. Just $5 dollars would be a huge help. Today's vet bill was $188, and we will likely need 400-500 more for the spaying, vaccinations, deworming meds, food etc. The donate button is at the top right of this blog, just click donate and you can put ANY amount in you like. Even $1 dollar! All donations are greatly appreciated.

Here are a few more pics.

As you can tell from these pictures she is very affectionate. Despite all she has been through she just wants to snuggle and have love. She reminds me of the Pink Panther, a rather long, broad nose, skinny, she has a little goofiness to her but is the sweetest cat. At the vets she never put a claw out, or anything just wanted to have her head and cheeks rubbed and to be wrapped in my arms.

You can find pictures of many other animals I have helped over the years on my flickr account:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/galla15/sets/72157624027304995/

We just helped this guy who had to have a 1700 dollar bladder surgery! He is doing great now but there are a lot of bills involved.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/galla15/5919973221/in/set-72157624027304995

All support and help greatly appreciated. I will keep updates posted on how she is doing on this blog.

Janet

http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Who Wants to Pinterest? All the Scoop

2011-08-25T23:06:00.002-04:00

Pinterest is a place for visual bookmarking that you share with others. It’s a great way to keep track of all those things you’ve been wanting to try, and a fabulous way to discover new and inspiring ideas!
It is very addicting the ability to share, and search and visually see everything.

Here is the website:

http://pinterest.com/

You can also follow them on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pinterest

There is also an iphone app if you want to have it at your finger tips on your cell:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pinterest/id429047995?mt=8

1. Get an invitation:

In order to try Pinterest out you have to receive an invitation. You can request an invitation through the website itself but most people I know wait forever to get approved that way. People on Etsy, twitter and facebook seem to be helping each other out with the invitation to join.

2. Set up your account

You can sign in using your existing twitter account or facebook account. The benefit of using one of those social media accounts to sign in, is that you can find people on Pinterest that you already interact with on those other sites. You also can log in to Pinterest using the email and password you establish when setting up your account.
When signing up, you will be prompted to create some boards. Pinterest suggests a few basic boards with titles.
3. Start following others:

This site is like most social networking sites... as you follow people you will see their "pins" and they can see yours. So following people from your facebook network to twitter and finding others to follow will be important.
You can follow all of of someone’s boards, or just pick a one or a few to follow. You can also unfollow a person or certain boards at any time.
Once you have a few friends to follow, look around their pinboards and see if you can find anyone else who looks familiar or interesting. You can always unfollow them later on. You can click on who I follow or who follows me to find some fun people.

4. Create Boards:

You can “like” pins which is liking adding them to a “favorites” file. If you “repin” them, you will want to sort the pins into boards. After browsing through a few pinboards from friends, you will probably have a pretty good idea of what topics you want to focus on. You can always rename and rearrange your pinboards so don’t worry too much about getting them “just right”!

To edit them at any time, I just go to the boards from my drop down menu and I can edit each one individually or even rearrange the order they are displayed in.
It’s also helpful to be be sure each board is categorized properly – this helps others find your pins. Just click on “edit” for each board and select the most appropriate category.

#5 Start Pinning Re-Pinning:

Find the image of photos on a wall that I want to repin to my own boards. As I hover over the picture with my mouse, the option appears to either “repin” or “like” it. I choose “repin” and it prompts me to categorize it to one of my boards. I choose Gallery Walls and click on repin. I could also automatically share this pin on twitter or facebook by using the buttons at the bottom.

What if you want to pin something you find on another site? You can go to “add a pin” and then enter the url and description. You can also have a button added to the toolbar on your internet window to make it easier.

The quick way is to add the “pin it” shortcut. It says you can click and drag it to your toolbar, but I couldn’t get it to work. Here are the instructions:

To install the “Pin It” button in Internet Explorer:

1. Display your Favorites Bar by clicking Tools > Toolbars > Favorites Bar

2. Right-click the “Pin It” button and select “Add to Favorites”

3. On the pop-up window, select “Create in: Favorites Bar”

4. When you are browsing the web, push the “Pin It” button to pin an image

As always with any social network basic etiquette applies. Try to be polite, leave comments, share, but don't spam.

Here is a really nice article with more details on Pinterest:

http://www.sortacrunchy.net/sortacrunchy/2011/05/pinterest-a-beginners-guide.html

ALSO, TurtleXii wrote up a blog post answering specific questions from our team:

http://turtlexiii.blogspot.com/2011/08/pinterest-and-all-its-questions.html

Hope this helps everyone! Have fun with this site.

Janet
www.galla15.etsy.com

Your Keirsey Temperament Sorter Results - Personality Test

2011-08-09T22:47:00.001-04:00

Well here is a little window into the type of person I am. I took a 70 question test to determine my personality type. Although I didn't pay for the details of a more specific answer, this was my general result:

GUARDIAN

Guardians are the cornerstone of society, for they are the temperament given to serving and preserving our most important social institutions. Guardians have natural talent in managing goods and services--from supervision to maintenance and supply -- and they use all their skills to keep things running smoothly in their families, communities, schools, churches, hospitals, and businesses.

Guardians can have a lot of fun with their friends, but they are quite serious about their duties and responsibilities. Guardians take pride in being dependable and trustworthy; if there's a job to be done, they can be counted on to put their shoulder to the wheel. Guardians also believe in law and order, and sometimes worry that respect for authority, even a fundamental sense of right and wrong, is being lost. Perhaps this is why Guardians honor customs and traditions so strongly -- they are familiar patterns that help bring stability to our modern, fast-paced world.

Practical and down-to-earth, Guardians believe in following the rules and cooperating with others. They are not very comfortable winging it or blazing new trails; working steadily within the system is the Guardian way, for in the long run loyalty, discipline, and teamwork get the job done right. Guardians are meticulous about schedules and have a sharp eye for proper procedures. They are cautious about change, even though they know that change can be healthy for an institution. Better to go slowly, they say, and look before you leap.

Guardians make up as much as 40 to 45 percent of the population, and a good thing, because they usually end up doing all the indispensable but thankless jobs everyone else takes for granted.

Guardians at Work

As a Guardian, you enjoy working as a valued member of a team, whether you are leading it or following a credible leader. You like to work with people who carry their weight. You appreciate having clear-cut responsibilities and being recognized for your dedication and achievements. Your natural traits are those that employers have traditionally valued - and that successful companies still respect. You are responsible and loyal to an organization once you've signed on.

In any environment, including your work place, you are usually focused on making people happy and facilitating harmonious relationships. You often lend "aid and comfort" by drawing on a combination of tradition, past experience, and the direction of established authority. In your ideal job, people would give of themselves and work toward the good of the group.

GO take the test for yourself, 70 questions with 2 choices each. Post a comment with your results!!

http://www.keirsey.com/sorter/instruments2.aspx?partid=0

Janet

http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

Promotional Frenzy Specials - Our banners, badges and listing pics

2011-07-31T16:56:00.000-04:00

Ok guys here are all the pics you can use for this event.

We have a team banner if you want to use. All of this is optional but it will help grab the attention of people going to your store and help point out to them that you have a special going on. It will also help brand out team and help us gain a following!

Here is the team banner:

Here are several listing pics you can use, again OPTIONAL. IF you have an empty slot and want to help promote more you can use these:

Make sure you promote this to everyone you know, promote the EVENT and how to search for the deals.

Thanks everyone.
Janet

Facebook "Like" Giveaway!!!

2011-06-25T00:03:00.024-04:00

All Winners have been contacted!!

Congrats and thank you to everyone who helped :)

There is a large contest for Etsy promotional Teams on the new site

Handmade Top 10

My team, the Promotional Frenzy Team
http://www.etsy.com/teams/7512/promotional-frenzy-team has been doing amazing in this contest. There are 3 things we have to do to win this contest and one of those things we need help with:

We need people to "LIKE" our contest page on facebook.

So if you click like for our Team Contest Page you will be entered to win some amazing prizes from shops on my team!!!

HOW TO ENTER OUR GIVEAWAY

1. Go to this page:

http://handmadetop10.com/#/Lists/66ofba7g1

2. On the left side of the page are share buttons, click on the blue Facebook logo (you will need your pop up blocker disabled, a pop up window will appear) Here is a picture of what the buttons look like on the left side:

3. When the pop-up windows comes up click the top left LIKE button.

4. Now leave a comment at the bottom of this post with your contact info (email, etsy shop link... etc.)

Please post to your friends and that way they can share and entered too.

WHAT YOU CAN WIN

Our Team shops have donated prizes (although we may have more donations). Well over $300 dollars in handmade goods up for grabs!!!!

Each comment will be put into a list, in the order that the entry was given... I will then use http://www.random.org/ to pick 3 winners. 1st winner picks 8 prizes, then the 2nd place winner picks 6 prizes, 3rd place winner gets the remaining 6 prizes!!! (We may change how the prizes are divided if we get more donations for prizes, meaning each winner would get MORE prizes)

Each shop will ship DIRECTLY to the winners. Shipping is covered by the donating shop.

1. http://www.galla15.etsy.com/ - $30 dollars in Crystal Jewelry

2. http://www.turtlexiii.etsy.com/ $15 dollars pair of Earrings

3. http://www.kellyjsorenson.etsy.com/ ~ Premade Banner set plus color/font customization $30 value

4. http://www.themayflower.etsy.com/ - $30 worth of jewelry supplies

5. http://www.lindab142.etsy.com/ - $16 - includes (shipping) shop Gift Certificate

6. http://www.calliopeazcreations.etsy.com/ - One Medicine Rock ($14 - $18 dollars)

7. http://www.camillescloset.etsy.com/ Wax seal pendant. Choice of color and letter.

8. http://www.bloomandbling.etsy.com/ - One set of Poofy Piggie Bows OR one Diva Dazzle Bow

9. http://www.prittyfy.etsy.com/ - a pair of cluster earrings, $29

10. http://www.uniquecozytreasures.etsy.com/ - Hot Cold Therapy Rice Pack

11. http://www.toystorynutty.etsy.com/ - 2. Polymer Clay Pens!! http://www.etsy.com/listing/76624260/bold-and-beautiful-mokume-gane-polymer

12. http://www.symbolicimports.etsy.com/ - spa package Soap, Scrub and Lotion ($23 value)

13. http://www.newcreationz.etsy.com/- digital stationery pack ($10 value)

14. http://www.laughingpenguin.etsy.com/ - 2 free necklaces Up-cycled Bottle Cap lines ($10 value)

15. http://www.magdamagda.etsy.com/ - Handmade Women's Top ($25)http://www.etsy.com/listing/70961162/exuberance-top-s-m

16. http://www.leahrhood.etsy.com/ - $10 gift certificate

17. http://www.delightfulprints.etsy.com/ - choice of any item in my shop up to $15.00

18. http://www.petuniaandivy.etsy.com/ - A blue Beanie Hat
http://www.etsy.com/listing/72698304/blue-button-hat

19. http://www.crystalphotography.etsy.com/ - set of two coffee aceos Value $9.00

20. http://www.powersoflove.etsy.com/- $10 Gift Certificate to her shop.

WOW!! Some amazing prices, imagine the jewelry, the supplies, the therapy from the medicine rock to the therapy rice pack, and even Graphic design!

****ALL ENTRIES/COMMENTS MUST BE RECEIVED BY JULY 5TH, midnight eastern time.
Winners will be announced within 1 week of this giveaway ending here on this blog.

We appreciate all the help and support.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/ - Button, crystal, and Pearl jewelry
http://www.galla15whatnots.etsy.com/ - Jewelry supplies
http://www.artisansbooklounge.etsy.com/ - Crafting books and ebooks coming soon!

A Family Cookout!

2011-06-21T22:20:00.001-04:00

Well on Saturday June 18th we had a huge family cookout. My dad's side of the family came into town, my mom's family was there, and then my sister's in-laws came. In our family we always have a TON food. My mom is an amazing cook so is my grandmother... well our whole family.

I make macaroni and cheese from scratch that is required at any gathering we have LOL
I buy 4 different kinds of cheeses in HUGE blocks. I then shred or cut into small pieces so it will melt easier and smoothly. Mix the cheese with some flour and butter, and milk, add noodles and voila. The secret is in the cheese!! But the recipe I have makes a HUGE HUGE amount. I think the one pan weighs 10 or more pounds. It is a ton of cheese, incredibly rich and a family favorite for sure.

It makes 2 HUGE pans full!!! And that is a very very large mixing bowl filled with cheese!! There was only a quarter of it left at the end of the day. One whole pan empty and the bulk of the 2nd one gone! (I also topped this with crumbled bacon!)

We of course had hotdogs, and then my mom made pulled pork BBQ! We had amazing fruit platters, that my mom fixed, she is very creative and always fixes visually appealing displays.

We had steamed shrimp!! I LOVE seafood.

A really good friend of the family that truly is a part of our family makes this amazing taco dip! It is cream cheese and cottage cheese, taco seasoning, cheeses, lettuce, tomato, onions, olives... and you dip dorritos into it. YUMMY. I only get this like once a year and it is amazing!

Of course there were deviled eggs, corn pudding, chips and dip, a tomato mozzarella basil olive oil salad, wine, tea, sodas....

The desserts... My grandmother makes a candy bar cake that has chunks of Hersheys bar in with the chocolate cake. Oh my goodness! My mom made a lemon lime refridgerator cake, it is cake mix that you poke holes in and you add lemon and lime jello liquid into it, and put cool whip on top..... My dad's side of the family, his in-laws are Italian. My Uncle's mom on that side of the family made some amazing Italian pastries! There was a coconut cake. HOLY COW! I mean there would be enough to feed an Army.

It was really really nice to decompress, relax, visit.... my parents have a peaceful yard, surrounded by a beautiful flower garden, woods, and then a pool. It was a wonderful day.

I hope you enjoyed reading about our feast! LOL And that you don't get too jealous :)))

Thanks.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

2nd Heartsy Deal Results

2011-06-18T23:33:00.002-04:00

Well I had a Heartsy deal about a month ago, many of you read how that went. If you missed it here is the information on my 1st deal:
http://galla15.blogspot.com/2011/05/raw-deal-on-heartsy-find-out-inside.html

Monday, June 13th was my 2nd feature. Heartsy heard my complaints and tried to give me a 2nd experience that would be better.

Was it better? I really don't think so. I am trying to be objective and reasonable so let me start out with some positives to give the facts on both sides of this experience.

1st: John at Heartsy was extremely nice and I think he probably did all he could for me with what he had to work with. He e-mailed me quite a bit, and called me multiple times. He tried to offer some special perks to me that I am not at liberty to speak about for the sake of their business. And I appreciate the effort on John's part.

2nd: I did sell 10 more vouchers this time than the last. NOT great at all, NOT more money but at least it was SLIGHTLY better in that one aspect.

Now on to the rest of the facts. Just like the 1st deal I only had ONE person truly spend over the voucher amount. Heartsy will tell you repeatedly that when considering a deal with them to keep in mind that most of their buyers do spend over the voucher amount. I asked John how they know that, because I have personally convo'd several shops that were featured and flat out asked if they had people spending over the voucher amount and most said no. John said that the majority of the people report back that they had most of their sales over the voucher amount. I guess I could just be in the minority, but twice now that was not true for me or quite a few other shops I have spoken too.

The 2 main ways you can make money with such a huge discount is:
1. hope people spend more than the voucher amount
2. hopefully turn these customers into repeat buyers who will buy full price from you down the line.

I had a handful of buyers that I had to send an invoice out for $2 dollars to cover some of the shipping charges, but only 1 went over the voucher amount in merchandise. So based upon my experiences I have a very hard time believing that the buyers on Heartsy will spend money over your voucher amount. As I suspected in my previous blog post most of these buyers are bargain shoppers and will not be spending large sums of money in your shop. And I HIGHLY doubt these buyers will come back to buy full price items when there are so many deals on Heartsy each day. Why spend full price when you don't have too? So I really doubt I will see future sales from these buyers.

I sell jewelry which is one of the most saturated categories on Etsy. So I understand that Heartsy probably has a huge amount of jewelry sellers applying to be featured on their site, but the day of my feature there were 4 other jewelry sellers featured. So 5 jewelers in one day. I would like to think my jewelry is different than most, but lets face it this is really not the best structure to create sales.

Since this was supposed to be a way for Heartsy to create a more positive experience for me I really would have thought more consideration would have been taken into account. That didn't help me with sales that is for sure.

It is a lot of little things that (to me) add up to a bigger picture. So here are some of the details that I wasn't happy about.

1. I submitted 4 pictures of items for my feature but they show 3 of the 4. I had 2 amethyst necklaces up with earrings most of the day (until the 1 necklace sold). Why didn't they show the necklace, earrings and ring instead of 2 necklaces? Variety is better right?
Or ask me which 3 I want featured if they can't feature all 4 pictures the way I submitted them? Yes yes I am sure that seems a bit picky but it is the details that will make or break a deal! A variety of items showing would clearly help more with attracting buyers.

2. I was e-mailed on the 9th that they would finalize all the details for my deal and e-mail me "tomorrow" with the details (the 10th I should have heard something). Well on the 12th the night before my feature I had never received that email. I had to e-mail and ask them. (And not that they could do this with all features, but I would think since I had such a bad experience the 1st time I would think they would have contacted me after my feature to see if I was happy but they didn't)

I never received the final details, like final tips on how the deal would go down, or what I needed to do to prepare. I realize I had a deal prior to this one but they are a new site that is changing constantly. There should be a standard form e-mail they send to every shop being featured with standard/basic instructions. Their format is completely different this month than last month. The last deal I at least received an e-mail that stated what I could do to prep my shop for heartsy customers and phone numbers if I had questions the day of the feature etc.
3. Their newsletter that notifies their subscribers of the deals was sent out about an hour before the deal goes live. (During the 1st deal the newsletter went out about 6 hours into the deal so at least this time it went out early!!) Their newsletter this time only highlighted ONE shop out of 8 of the featured deals! Honestly I don't understand that, if their goal is to drive traffic to their site and to the featured shops why would they only feature 1 of the deals? Maybe a coincidence but that deal sold out! Because they had a lot more exposure than the rest. The exposure for each of the deals of each day should be as equal as possible since we are all contributing the same thing. They should rotate the positions of the deals on their site, and include all the deals in their newsletter etc. Just copy and paste the deal page into the newsletter, it shouldn't take any longer to do that!

Maybe I am being too picky or have too high of expectations... but I am generally an organized person and it seems there is a pattern with my experiences where details keep getting missed that definitely affect the outcome of features.

And these mistakes or things overlooked do add up!

I submitted my deal and waited a month for that 1st deal and then to have all the glitches and problems. There was a lot of time and effort involved in preparing. People spend their time and money to list a ton for these deals, buy extra shipping supplies, time promoting Heartsy's site for them!!

I expected above and beyond care for the 2nd deal since they new my feelings on the first one. If they were trying to change my point of view then I would have thought all these details would be covered.

Maybe it is from my time in the military but we had to have an SOP (standard operating procedures) for EVERYTHING. It was the most detailed instruction book for everything you could ever think of. It made sure that everyone knew what was expected, what to do, if this situation arises you do this _______....

To me Heartsy needs a little SOP. Detailed instructions that prepare a shop for their deal. It should explain how to navigate their account to find the deals, how to check the vouchers, how to find the money in the heartsy account, how to set up your etsy shop for the deal, a form letter that the Heartsy staff can just fill in the blanks of the date and details of each deal... It should be clear who handles what details, and who the customer should contact for which issues.

I think they have tried to break down the jobs, because one person negotiates the details of the deal and another sets your deal up. But after 2 deals I am still not completely sure who is handling what details, and obviously they don't either since many details are overlooked.

Anyways, I am not an expert on their website and I am not privvy to behind the scenes information but from an outside standpoint there is a lot of room for improvement.

I still appreciate John's help in trying to make a better experience for me but I can't recommend the site to others. At least not at this point, maybe as time goes on and they get more organized and established things will change.

I stand by my previous statements that these customers do not spend large amounts of money, they will not likely become returning customers because they want a deal. They are not going to pay full price for anything (most I should say), the only way to achieve high sales is to offer a large voucher amount and have lower priced items. But you won't be making a boatload of money.
I did send a list of questions to quite a few featured shops from Heartsy to ask about their experience and very few had large sales and if they did they offered quite large voucher amounts.
PS- There are a lot of other negative things being talked about throughout Etsy teams that would serve as further warning. The voting system they are using is being manipulated, if you sell jewelry you get all your friends to go through and vote NO for all other jewelers up for consideration (just as an example). There are teams of people on Etsy doing this!!! Since Heartsy sends out this information to their frequent buyers and VIP's to determine if your deal will be popular, I don't think us getting 60 votes for consideration is really a valid evaluation of a shops potential for a deal. Just because I will vote for my friend to help them, doesn't mean I will actually buy from them. The voting system is HIGHLY flawed and ineffectual in predicting outcomes of deals.

Also, because the wait can be a month or more to hear back on whether you get a deal with Heartsy, many are submitting multiple times. That is clogging up their systems with multiple entries, and people are annoyed that they have to vote on the same shop several times.

There are a lot of things going on that are leaving people feeling negative about the site and so I would just caution you to consider all of this before jumping into a heartsy deal. Just consider your personal goals when signing up and find out if your goals will be compatible with how the site works.

MY FINAL RESULTS:

I did have quite a few item hearts but I was listing like crazy to prepare for this deal so I can't be sure how many hearts resulted from my listing efforts or from the Heartsy people that visited. If you are just looking for a flood of views then this could be ok. But the VERY next day after your feature your shop will go dead.

There were 4 other jewelers selling my day.... 1 had 10 sales, several others had 30 and 36 sales. The last one I couldn't figure their sales since it is on Artfire. The 2 shops that had sales in the 30's offered vouchers for 40 or more dollars!!! So again I stand by my theory you either have to offer over 40 dollars in merchandise OR have very low priced items so that the buyer can get multiple items with their purchase.

So there you have it.

Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

HEARTSY DEAL LIVE TODAY Monday 6/13

2011-06-12T23:54:00.000-04:00

So as many of you know I did a Heartsy deal a few weeks back and didn't go very smoothly.

So Heartsy staff has been working with me for weeks to try to come up with a solution that would make a 2nd deal go much better. TOMORROW is the day. Although 2 people have already bought vouchers so I think you can go NOW to get a deal!!!

FREE PAIR OF EARRINGS with all purchases over $60 dollars!!

Click the link below to see the deal!

http://heartsy.me/deals/3823?s=notif

I will definitely be blogging about the results from this deal. So I hope you will all come by and check it out.

If you can please promote the deal.
Thanks.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

Opa!! An Amazing Greek Festival

2011-06-07T23:05:00.000-04:00

As many of you know I had a huge craft show this past weekend. It was at a Greek Orthodox church for the annual Greek Festival. They had amazing food: baklava, gyro, pastitsio, spanakopita, loukoumades and much more!

Greek music played the entire time, they had dancing throughout the weekend and tours of the church.
Of course to top this event off was the amazing crafters. There was an amazing woman who made stained glass pieces, lots of jewelry, clothing, even olive oil!

What a long but amazing weekend!
It was Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Over the 4 days we all worked around 40 hours and well over 25,000 people attended!

It takes weeks to prepare for this type of show. I try to build up my inventory of course but so much more goes into preparing. I put all my pairs of earrings onto earring cards and I place stickers of my logo on the back of every card with a price. It is so important to take advantage of all the people that you will come into contact with, by BRANDING. I put tags on each individual rings with the size on one side and the price on the other. Then organize all the rings by size! This way it is easy for someone to find a ring in their size. Of course by the end of the weekend they are not that way anymore LOL

Then I take all my boxes that I package my jewelry in, and all my receipt books and put my logo on each and every one! I use the carbon copy sales books and I put my logo onto the customer copy.

So the next step for me is to go through a checklist to make sure I have packed everything I need.
I have blogged the checklist before to help others... you can view the checklist here:

http://galla15.blogspot.com/2009/12/craft-show-checklist.html

Make sure you have your camera and that the camera is charged, I also have a propay reader for my credit cards so I plug that in overnight into my computer to make sure it is ready to go! The day before I go to the bank and make sure I have plenty of change. Honestly I have no idea how to figure what amount of change I need but I brought 200 dollars worth of 10's, 5's, and some 1's. It is always more than enough and this was a very large show so I would think that is a good amount of change for most occassions.

The day of the show I go 3 hours early because I don't want to stress out. I can take my time unloading the car and arranging, and re-arranging my space. I have tried to have 90% of the things I bring to the show on wheels. I have even invested in a small fold up dolly to help carry the things that don't have wheels.

I have 3 tables that fold in half and can be raised to 3 different levels. I bring a lawn chair, a fan, all my displays, table covers, packaging and bags... Well here you can see what I bring here: (this is my car packed up)

I have a pretty small car and it is loaded from ceiling to floor, passengar seat, back seat every inch is taken!

So the day of the show, I set up my display and have 1 table that is just for me to check people out and to be able to work. That table has a stack of my packaging materials, the receipt books, and my tools and wire on it so that I can re-size rings on the spot or change clasps for the customers.

As you can see everything has my logo and website on it! I also display my business cards on the table and mailing list sign up sheets too! Take advantage of the traffic!!!

Here is my final setup:

Overall I found I didn't have a lot of big ticket sales. Most purchases were one item, which was unusual. I was very nervous after the 1st day that I wasn't going to be able to do as well as I had in the past but I ended up surpassing my previous years sales!

I think it is really important to notice that well over half of my sales were done via a credit card! I have almost $2000 dollars in the Propay account so imagine how much I would have made without being able to process credit cards!! I had read somewhere that accepting credit cards can triple your sales and I believe it! And I had almost 60 credit card sales, that is a lot. I also handed out well over 500 business cards and had many new subscribers to my newsletter. Even though I am exhausted and having a lot of back pain from this long weekend it was obviously an amazing experience!

So in the next couple of weeks I will be adding my FIRST e-book to my new Etsy shop: Artisan's Book Lounge The book will be everything you need to know about craft shows. From accepting credit cards, to setting up your space, to how to interact with the customers and what NOT to do. I hope to be able to help others have successful craft shows! Keep an eye out for my very first ebook! So excited.

Thank you everyone who supported me through this, and a special thanks to our Etsy Team that has been so positive and helpful!
http://www.etsy.com/teams/7512/promotional-frenzy-team

Thanks everyone
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/ - Crystals, Button and Pearl Jewelry
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/
http://www.galla15whatnots.etsy.com/ - Beading supplies
http://www.artisansbooklounge.etsy.com/ - crafting books and ebooks

The Benefits Of Flickr

2011-05-31T23:16:00.001-04:00

Flickr has millions of very active users and is in the top 15 social networking/media websites!

How does Flickr work?

A Flickr account is free. You’ll need a Yahoo ID to sign up. Once you’ve joined, adding photos to Flickr is done through a simple upload system.

The typical experience for most users of Flickr would involve uploading a photo, adding the photo to a personal photo album (a “set”, as Flickr calls them), and then sharing your photos.

First, let me emphasize that it’s against the Terms of Use to “exploit for any commercial purposes” the Flickr/Yahoo service. Posting a photo specifically for the purposes of advertising your company, your products/services, etc., would be against the TOS and would turn off the Flickr community.

That said, by being a smart and active contributor to the Flickr community, your business (web site) can get indirect marketing exposure via Flickr. The MORE people that see your product the more solid your BRANDING is.

Here are a lot of ideas and options to use Flickr to your advantage:

1.) Use your web site address as your Flickr screen name. Your screen name will be attached to every photo you upload, every message you post in a Group discussion — everything you do on Flickr. Let your screen name advertise your web site URL.

2.) Use your Flickr profile to advertise your company, products, services, etc. In your profile, Flickr asks you to describe yourself and lets you give your web site name and address. Use this to describe who you are and what your business does, but keep the sales pitch to a minimum. Make it informational instead. Make your company logo your Flickr icon.

3.) Upload quality photos of your products/services, and things related to your business.

4.) Write appropriate text for each photo, but avoid the hard sell. You can give a name and write a description for each photo you upload. You should describe the photo accurately — i.e., “This is a bottle of our newest release, 2005 Chardonnay….” — but avoid any hard sell copy. Remember to keep the focus on the photography, not the sales pitch. You can also add “tags” to describe each photo. If you rely on local traffic, the tags should include the city names where you do business (but don’t overdo it).

5.) Find and join appropriate groups and share your photos in those groups. There are groups on Flickr for just about anything you can imagine. Be sure to find and join any groups related to your location — search on your city name, nearby city names, and your state. When appropriate, posting photos and joining discussions in those groups will allow you to reach a local audience. Read carefully the rules of each group for posting photos. There are usually limits.

6.) Link prominently from your web site to your Flickr photostream. There are three reasons for this: First, because people visiting your web site are likely to be interested in your photos, too. Who doesn’t appreciate good pictures? Second, some of your visitors are probably already Flickr users, and they might welcome to the chance to add you to their “contact list.” (Return the favor if they do!) The third reason is that search engine crawlers should follow a prominent link from your web site to your Flickr photos, and when that happens, you have more potential matches for search engine users. (Yes, Flickr photo pages are crawled by Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com, too.)

7.) Take part in the Flickr community. By this, I mean the following:

• Comment on other photos you like, whether they’re related to your business or not.

• Add great photos to your “Favorites” list.

• Take part in discussions in your groups (but avoid the hard-sell tactics).

Remember that every time you do one of these things, your screen name will show — with your comment, with your discussion posts, etc. And if your screen name is your URL, that’s free advertising.
Be smart and creative about this. If you find a photo from another user in your area of interest, and that photo is getting a lot of views and comments, add your own comment to get your screen name in front of a lot of eyeballs. (Just make sure it’s a legitimate comment on the photo, and as always, don’t comment to promote your business.

8.) Providing Stock Photography- If your online marketing goals include establishing your company as a subject matter expert, building brand recognition, and establishing relationships and goodwill, then providing stock photography via Flickr is a great strategy. Make sure you alter your permissions to allow others to view and use your photos. Each time your picture is used in a blog they are supposed to link back! Creating very valuable back links for search engines and the possibility of those blog readers clicking on that picture to see more of your items! Of course there are always limits and risks to this, especially if you sell photography you risk being copied. So this should be thought through carefully before doing.

9.) Load pictures on Flickr and push them out to a Facebook page. When photos are only published on Facebook only subscribers of Facebook can search for them. Pictures posted on Flickr allows anyone on the Web to find them.

10.) Build your Flickr contacts by inviting your friends to join Flickr, and also by networking with other Flickr users you meet online through your groups and so on. You will see your contacts’ new photos on your Flickr homepage and, more importantly, they will see yours too!

Don’t spam.

1. There’s no need to stuff linked keywords into your photo descriptions, into the comments you leave on other’s photos, etc.

2. There’s no need to plaster your URL all over the photos you upload.

3. There’s no need to post advertising messages in discussion groups.

If you try these, all you’ll do is turn-off the Flickr community … when the whole point is turn them on.

FINAL NOTE: Like all social networking sites it takes time to grow and network. It is important to not do the hard sell, and blatantly self promote. We have some interesting workshops to come to help us all out 

Have fun, and enjoy learning about each other through photo sharing!!

Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/ - Handmade Jewelry
http://www.galla15whatnots.etsy.com/ - Beading Supplies
http://www.artisansbooklounge.etsy.com/ - Craft Books and E-books for business

The Raw Deal On Heartsy - Find out the Inside Information

2011-05-25T00:56:00.001-04:00

Heartsy is buzzing all over Etsy lately. A fairly new website that would maybe be comparable to groupon. They basically work with shop owners to offer amazing deals to their subscribers and traffic to small businesses like Etsy shops. As small business owners many of us are starving for traffic, and sales so when an opportunity presents itself with minimal investment we all want to jump but I am here to warn you to really think through what this will entail and if it will truly be a positive and beneficial experience. It seems like a MINIMAL investment because you pay NOTHING to be featured but think carefully about your deal!!

I pride myself in being business saavy. I have spent a lot of time researching and reading about every business topic you can imagine. One of the more important topics that should be thought through carefully is pricing before jumping into a site like Heartsy where huge discounts are involved. I have most of my items set for retail prices so that I can offer wholesale and cosignment. But I do not offer wholesale on my entire inventory and Heartsy does not offer coupons to specific groups of products (it is for your entire shop.) So unless your entire shop is priced at wholesale and you negotiate a low % for Heartsy you will not profit from using Heartsy.

Wholesale pricing means the person/business wanting to buy in bulk will expect 50% discount on the pricing. You make a lower profit but because they are buying so much product it is worth it. Heartsy is basically asking for wholesale OR MORE for individual sales. So it is a risky venture to take. Heartsy expects 50% off MINIMUM to be considered for a deal, and if you should only sell a handful of vouchers it probably wouldn't be worth it financially to do it.

If you want more information on how to price your items so that you ensure a profit, and you give yourself as many options as possible for selling check out this article:

http://www.etsy.com/storque/seller-handbook/etsy-success-reevaluating-your-prices-11033/

Here is the catch: They offer a large discount but based upon a limited amount of money. For instance, they will offer $16 for $36 which is a discount of 56% percent on a purchase of 36 dollars. Most of my items that sell are 30 dollars and 3 dollar shipping. So in this example, I sold 33 dollars to most for 16. (The Heartsy vouchers include shipping.) So this is just a little over 50% off. So that really wouldn’t be as bad as it seems. The customer feels they are getting a steal, but keeping it close to wholesale pricing, IF you are priced correctly for wholesale… it can be great to gain new customers.

You need to consider when negotiating your deal not just the percentage but think about those dollar amounts. If most of your items are around 10 dollars and you offer 10 for 30, you will be selling 3 of your items likely for that 10 dollars. Ideally set up a deal that will leave each customer with a credit to your shop. Don’t forget it includes shipping costs, so in my example above most of the customers I had ended up with a 3 dollar credit to my shop. That isn’t a huge amount, probably could have been a higher credit to entice more…. But try to consider that…. to promote the customers to come back!

So if you have considered the finances of this arrangement, here are all the other pitfalls and experiences I had during my deal with Heartsy. (Since my deal over a week ago their deals have already changed. They now want 70% off of my items for VIP’s and 65% off for others. They require one deal for all users and then a special deal for their VIP’s that is a minimum of $10 dollars more for VIP’s!)

I submitted my shop the 1st time, got the 30 votes required and waited about 5 weeks to get denied!! I submitted a 2nd time, they then required 60 votes. I acquired the 60 votes, waited about 4 weeks and finally got a positive response. Once you receive the required # of votes, Heartsy then sends your deal out to their VIP members and best buyers to do more market research. If they don’t receive a more positive response from their frequent buyers they do still deny your deal even after receiving the required votes. I know many people that got their minimum votes waited over a month just to be denied!!

It was indicated to me that I had a “high quality” shop and an unusually positive response from their VIP’s and so they would love to work with me. This is what they asked me in the initial contact to me:

1. What are your goals for this promotion?

>>> How many new customers would you like to attract? This will help me
understand how to help you best structure your deal.

>>> 2. Given your statistics and products, you are a perfect candidate for our VIP exclusive program. VIP Exclusives are deals that can only be purchased by our paying VIP members. This community of paying members on Heartsy is growing each day and currently represents 25% of the purchases made on the site. With a VIP exclusive deal your store receives the same amazing visibility and attention on Heartsy as all other deals, but it is targeted to a specific cohort of extremely dedicated buyers.

>>> 3. What are your thoughts on the terms of your deal?
Heartsy requires at least a 50% discount but many sellers have been achieving amazing results with better discounts. For instance, the average deal on Heartsy is between 55-65% off. After looking at your store I would suggest a "$14 for $36 in store credit" deal.

I made it clear that my goal was to gain new customers, would love huge views for branding, and of course sales.

The initial offer to me was around 60% off and to be a VIP exclusive deal, which I replied that as a small business I am priced for the standard 50% wholesale rate but I really can’t go much higher. They came back to me with a 56% off offer. I really had to debate this heavily, and I said the only way I could do that high of a rate is if I could get a minimum of 50 sales but I would ideally want 100. I asked if this was a reasonable amount of sales or were my expectations to high, especially if this is ONLY for VIP’s. Their response wasn’t, “50 sales is reasonable”… but that it was very likely to get 100 sales. This conversation went back and forth for many days, I asked a lot of questions…

I asked about payments, and how the vouchers would be redeemed etc. and their response was this:

“Customers are typically given 1-3 months to redeem vouchers. They redeem on your site (our account managers will walk you through that).

> Payment works through Etsy (again, we will walk you through this aspect of the deal when it's time).”

I honestly don’t know who the account managers are, and never had a walkthrough. I was told I could call or they could call me the day the deal goes live to walk me through it but there wasn’t an official form or e-mail that would allow you to prep for this.

This could turn into a very long story but basically I thought I had a VIP only deal, I was told I could very likely get 100 sales, not just 50 sales but 100, so I agreed to VIP only if it meant 100 sales. Then the night before my deal went live I was told this, “The feature will be live for 48 hours (1 day for VIP early access and the second day for regular users). The VIP period starts at 12am PDT Friday morning and it will be available for all users on Saturday morning at 8am PDT. The feature will end on Saturday evening at 11:59pm.”

I thought this is great even MORE exposure if it opens up to everyone on Saturday. I posted this EXACT message to my blog and very excitedly I told the Heartsy staff that I had blogged about the event and promoted their VIP members. That if people wanted to make sure to get my deal they should sign up to be a VIP. She asked for a link to view my blog, she read it and replied back it was great.

I then blasted this to like 10 Etsy teams, facebook, twitter etc. I have almost 7000 twitter followers, over 600 facebook fan pages, probably a 1000 or more Etsy members on all the teams…. Basically I promoted their site and my deal to over 10,000 people!

Friday I get up and run to the computer and it is crickets. I go check the website the deal is up, but nothing is happening.

I was really upset, when I was told 100 sales were likely and I was told at one point that I could sell out and they wanted to know if they could extend my deal… but I tried to stay positive and wait for Saturday when ALL users could buy my vouchers!

Saturday I run to the computer and check for a flood of convos and sales, again crickets. I look at Heartsy and my deal is still VIP exclusive. It never turned over to all users! I immediately contacted the lady who told me it would go live Saturday morning to all, and she responded about an hour later… her response? That I originally signed up for VIP she was mistaken when she gave me that information she was sorry. If I wasn’t satisfied I could always submit a new deal. By the way their live chat wasn't available during this time and I called the number she gave me for during my deal for help and no one answered or returned my call. So I e-mailed and she responded an hour or so later with that non-chalant response.

Honestly, that is the worst customer service ever. I should submit a new deal and wait another month to have this issue resolved? I wrote her back asking if they could change my deal or offer a new deal that I was very unhappy. She wrote me back that they have SEVERAL hundred VIP members and so they had every reason to believe I would have 100 sales. And that they have a policy against changing a deal once it goes live. Although I am truly not happy with Heartsy as a whole, for the sake of being fair…. I understood the logic. If someone bought the VIP membership just to get my deal and then it goes live they would clearly be upset. But what I didn’t understand was why when this deal ended that they couldn’t offer my new deal. The exact deal we had agreed up, but open to ALL users.

If you have been in sales or marketing for any amount of time you have heard many times that sales is a numbers game. Statistics show you have to have your brand in front of a person 7 times before they will start to recognize your brand! So even if someone loved my deal it wouldn’t mean they will buy in that moment. So you have to get in front of as many people as you can, as often as you can. I have to ask: How on EARTH could I get 100 sales out of several hundred buyers? A couple is 2, several hundred is 3 or 4?? That would mean I would have at least a 3rd of people buying from me which is an UNREASONABLE expectations.

I truly feel mislead by the Heartsy staff, and used. I understand business, and if you help me I will help you. They were getting me in front of a new audience so I promoted their VIP program (how they make their money) to over 10,000 people!! And in the end it was pure confusion on the details of the deal, they definitely mislead me, and did NOT try to make it right. The last offer to fix this was they would extend my VIP exclusive deal through Sunday for a 3rd day. I can’t see how that will be beneficial at all, since the VIP’s have seen my deal now for 48 hours, that last 24 hours wasn’t going to really make a difference.

To top it all off, they are supposed to send out a newsletter to all their buyers/subscribers to tell them of the daily deals. The newsletter wasn’t received until 4pm the day of my deal, 8 hours into my deal!! I had a boatload of convo’s to field of people wanting my deal but couldn’t get it without signing up for a 7.99 a month fee to be a VIP. They were VERY upset with me, felt I had falsely advertised. They couldn’t get my deal for $16 dollars, they would actually have to spend almost 24 dollars, AND the 7.99 is a recurring monthly fee. So they weren’t actually getting a deal on my items. It was a nightmare for me personal and for my business. Ultimately I sold 19 vouchers, several of which were very good friends that were just trying to support me. THANK YOU 

Clearly I didn’t even get the low goal of 50 and definitely didn’t reach the 100 sales they said I could get. Eventually the person I dealt with told me they have close to 1000 VIP members, not several hundred. I don’t know what to believe since everything changes so often with them. And if you go to their site it states, first 100 VIP’s get 7.99 per month, after that the fee goes to 14.99. That statement would lead me to believe they definitely don’t have 1000 VIP’s.

I eventually got in touch with Heartsy staff to complain about my experience and they finally offered to give me a NEW deal without having to re-submit my shop. But they want 70% off now! And they want me to give vouchers for over 40 dollars worth of merchandise. They now require that you offer at least $10 dollars more to VIP’s and then all users get a deal too but it is for a minimum of 10 dollars less.

Meaning I would offer $19 for $44 to VIP’s… and $19 for $33 to everyone else. When I explained that I can’t offer more than wholesale pricing, I was “taught” about marketing. And told I need to think about what it is worth to me to have new customers! I was then told that big businesses spend millions on marketing because they know it will result in new customers!

And to that I want to warn you all to NOT fall for this logic. Big Businesses have a VERY different business model from a small business and for that matter small businesses clearly have a MUCH smaller advertising budget. AND that the millions spent are on well researched ideas, and psychology to ensure results. It is a very poor comparison to put a million dollar campaign against a discount website.

Businesses are about PROFIT, making money… not about taking a loss.

THE BOTTOMLINE: Do your research. This is a coupon/discount site, so their target market is frugal shoppers. Not meant in a negative way, just that these are people truly looking for a deal… what does that mean for you? They are not big spenders. I have looked at the current deals and past deal, then I go into those Etsy shops and go through their sold items. You can get a very good idea of their sales. Many have HUGE sales, like 100 items sold. (Of course they had deals open to all users too.) BUT the BIG thing I noticed is that they are mostly low priced items that have these huge sales.

These shoppers are not spending large sums of money. They are taking the deals that are around $10 dollars or less for vouchers. Some of the shops that are bath and body had HUGE sales but for 10 or 12 dollars you can get 1-3 items so the sales look big but they aren’t spending much money. And for me personally out of my 19 vouchers sold NONE bought over the voucher amount. 2-3 owed me a dollar or two for the shipping cost, but no one bought over the 36 dollar voucher amount of merchandise!! NO ONE.

So basically 19 people spent 16 dollars. That was it, not a single one spent more actually all but like 3 have a 2-3 dollar store credit with me now! I know quite a few people that had Heartsy deals and they said many of their buyers spent over the voucher amounts, I can’t speak for them… but from my experience they did not.

And as you can tell it was not a smooth transaction.

Make sure you are pricing retail before offering discounts like this, and if you have higher priced items it is more unlikely to have a huge surge of sales.

Sellers beware :(

I hope this helps put some of the inner workings from Heartsy in perspective.
Thanks
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/
http://www.galla15whatnots.etsy.com/ - beading supplies
http://www.artisansbooklounge.etsy.com/ - Crafting and Business books/ebooks

Heartsy Feature 5/14 Saturday!!!

2011-05-11T16:55:00.000-04:00

It is OFFICIAL. I got my votes on http://www.heartsy.me/ then we negotiated and came to an agreement.

NOW I have the date for the feature!

The feature will be live for 48 hours (1 day for VIP early access and the second day for regular users). The VIP period starts at 12am PDT Friday morning and it will be available for all users on Saturday morning at 8am PDT. The feature will end on Saturday evening at 11:59pm.

So this is a ONE time thing, for an extreme deal on my jewelry shop. If you haven't tried my shop before this is a low risk way to give http://www.galla15.etsy.com/ a try!

We think you will love your order with us, and hope to be able to do business with you this weekend!

Just go here to find my deal on Saturday, it will be out there for 48 hours, including the VIP time.

http://heartsy.me/deals

If you want a larger discount, or to be able to buy the deals early before they go live you can look into the VIP option that Heartsy offers. You get exclusive discounts and deals for a low monthly VIP membership fee!

Hope you guys will help support this event, please spread the word via Twitter, stumbleupon, facebook etc.

Thanks everyone for your support.

Janet

http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

http://www.galla15whatnots.etsy.com/ - Beading supplies

http://www.artisansbooklounge.etsy.com/ - Crafting Books and Ebooks

Promotional Frenzy Team Newsletter!

2011-05-03T23:39:00.000-04:00

We are moving up in the technology world! Our Promotional Frenzy Team on etsy is growing fast! We have close to 200 members now, and about 40 more waiting to be accepted. The limits of Etsy's team format make it extremely hard to keep everyone in the loop.

We all have vacations, and long work hours and things that make it hard for us to read 100 pages a day to know everything. We do try to highlight the important things at the top of each daily thread, but still if someone isn't around for a few days they even miss those.

So how can we all stay informed??
Well I started a team newsletter! This will now be a REQUIREMENT to be on the team. The newsletter will be sent anytime we have changes, or upcoming events happening. For instance, we decided to have everyone add their shop items to the Promo Frenzy shop favorites.... we would send a newsletter to your e-mail address letting you know exactly how to do this, why we are doing it, and how long you have to get it done.

It will make it so much easier. Of course this doesn't mean you shouldn't come to the daily threads and support each other... interact and be positive, supportive teammates. But it will limit confusion and greatly help with time constraints!

To sign up go here:
http://etsy.us2.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=84a618ee566e2ee23e380fbe4&id=c2332d6745

We will not be giving this list out to anyone, it is not for personal agendas and sales and such. Strictly for being able to disseminate information efficiently and to have less confusion.

Also, on a very exciting 2nd note. I have also created a team newsletter for people to sign up to be notified of our team BNR's... or if we have other special events in the future.
This way we don't have to convo people via the Etsy system. For now we still may need to do some convo's until our subscribers list grows.

Put this link on your blog, your facebook, tweet it, share it via convo to your friends.. help spread the word that will will deliver in their inbox our upcoming events!
http://etsy.us2.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=84a618ee566e2ee23e380fbe4&id=a0430a87b3

We should also repost this information for our BNR newsletter during our BNR's and throughout our daily threads!

I hope you guys are excited about this feature, it should improve our results, and minimize our efforts.

THANKS!
Janet
Handmade Crystal, button and Pearl Jewelry
Jewelry Beading Supplies
Crafting Books & Ebooks
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Let's DIGG!

2011-04-18T23:08:00.004-04:00

So a really influential website is Digg. Digg is a website where people share content. It is similar in concept to any other social networking site where you have followers and you follow others except it is strictly about content.

Here is Diggs about us page: http://about.digg.com/

The key is to provide content that is valuable, and interesting. The more interesting your content the more "diggs" you get. Just like stumbling on stumbleupon, only these are called DIGGS.

The more diggs an article gets the more popular it becomes, and it will be placed in more prominent places throughout the website. Some say a front page feature can results in hundreds of thousands of views! The site is quite popular and can be very helpful in solidifying you as an authority on a topic.

This is a quote from their about digg page: "Digg builds lists of popular stories being shared across the web. Every story has a digg button. Along with that button is a number that is the number of people from the Digg community who have said they like that like or digg that story.
The amount of diggs a story collects over time can effect how that story spreads and gains more popularity as it spreads more.... News on Digg comes straight from the digg community! The best links found from around the web are shared on digg to gain traction and exposure as the link is shared virally.
Find an interesting link on the internet? Digg is the best place to take that news further and spread it quickly amongst a vibrant community."

I think that Digg could be a very valuable tool to use for our blogging day. To dig each article for extra exposure AND precious backlinks to our content! But to be highly effective we have to try to make creative content, just posting a few pictures is fine but probably won't gain a lot of visibility with this type of site.

So take 5 minutes to sign up, you can sign in using facebook or twitter to make it fast and easy.

What to do After Signing Up

Once you are signed up at the very top left of the screen is a search bar you can search for friends or specific topics.

You will see the option on the top left to Submit a link, you can use that to copy and paste a link to a blog. OR you can download a button to your toolbar to make it quick and easy to submit content.

If you have internet explorer you should see a little blue wrench icon top left of your internet screen, if you click on there, then click on options, then on the left menu click on custom buttons, top of that page you should see add more buttons. If you click all of this you will be able to search for Digg and just add a button to your toolbar. This way you don't have to have multiple toolbars.

There are two main things that you can do on Digg. The first is to submit stories that you think the community will like and the second is to digg stories that you like.

Submitting

Thousands of stories are submitted to Digg on a daily basis on a variety of topics. There are currently 7 categories on Digg which include technology, science, world & business, sports, videos, entertainment, and gaming. If you come across any stories that you think are interesting, you can submit them for others to vote on.

Digging

If you like a story you have the option of “digging” it, which is basically voting on it and endorsing it. However, if you don’t like a story then you can bury it by marking it as duplicate, spam, wrong topic, inaccurate or even lame. If this is too simple and you’d like to say more, there is a comment section which gives you the opportunity to give your own two cents on the story and what you really think about it.

How to Make the Front Page

There are two separate areas where stories are displayed, one is the upcoming section and the other is the popular stories section that begins on the front page. When a story is submitted, it has up to 24 hours to make it to the front page or longer if it has not been marked as duplicate, spam, wrong topic, inaccurate or lame. Digg’s complex algorithms take multiple factors into account in order to determine if a story should hit the front page. Some of the factors that the [algorithm](http://www.marketingshift.com/2006/9/diggs-kevin-rose-recent-indiggnation.cfm) uses are as follows:

* The number of diggs

* Amount of buries

* Identity of the voters

* Time

* IP addresses

* Category

Example: Stories submitted in the sports category generally require less diggs to reach the front page compared to stories submitted in the technology category. Overall, less people submit and digg sports stories compared to technology stories which is taken into account by Digg.

DIGG Tools

At the moment, in the [Digg Tools](http://digg.com/tools) section, there are 6 features that help people get more involved with Digg.

1. [Digg badges](http://digg.com/tools/buttons) – badges can be placed on one’s website in order for visitors to digg the website.

2. [Digg news](http://digg.com/add-digg) – the latest digg stories can be added to ones website or blog with ease.

3. [Digg button](http://digg.com/tools/integrate) – for those who have a blog a “digg this” button can be added to each blog post.

4. [Google IG module](http://www.google.com/ig/directory?num=24&url=http://digg.com/goog/ig.xml&q=&start=0) – view recent stories from Digg on your personalized Google homepage.

5. [Google Coop module](http://www.google.com/coop/profile?user=017771777217723414381) – see Digg stories at the top of your Google search results.

6. [Video thumbnails](http://digg.com/tools/thumbnails) – enables you to display Digg’s video thumbnails on your own website.

TIPS For Getting Started

Go to the front page and mark the top stories as favorites, make friends with those digging those top stories and those submitting the top stories. Go "digg" other people's submissions, it is like twitter most will reciprocate for you. Have fun and meet some new people and learn a lot!

OK so back to your Digg account, top left... next to the submit a link option is "my news". Here it will give you articles that the digg website thinks will interest you based upon articles you have submitted to them.
Then you can play around with the "top news" articles, which are articles that are popular and getting a lot of votes, or "diggs" and therefore they get extra features. That would be our goal to create a popular article to become top news!

Lastly, you should see near the search bar at the top right of the Digg homepage, a little icon for your account. Click on the down arrow and you will see an option for settings. Here you can play around with your profile, uploading a pic for your avi, you can connect your facebook and twitter to Digg to help you find everyone that is following you. Have fun. There is a lot of wonderful content on this site and it could be a valuable site for exposure to our blogs and etsy shops!!

Thanks.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/ - Crystal, button and pearl jewelry!
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/
http://www.galla15whatnots.etsy.com/ - jewelry supplies
http://www.artisansbooklounge.etsy.com/ - Craft books and ebooks

NEW Etsy Shop!!

2011-04-06T00:18:00.000-04:00

At the end of 2010 I wrote out a blog post with my goals for 2011. One major goal was to open a 3rd Etsy shop.

I of course have my main shop, my jewelry shop: Trinkets N Whatnots
But I also have my supply shop: Galla15whatnots

Now I want to unveil my latest! Artisan's Book Lounge
I have worked very hard for years now to educate myself about the internet, marketing, SEO, the inner workings of Etsy, to offline promotions etc.

I have my Bachelor's degree in Business Management too. I try to help everyone when I can, and many people have expressed to me over the years how much help I have been. So all of this lead me to the idea that I could share my knowledge and experience on a bigger scale. The new shop I hope makes everyone feel warm and welcome, like they would like to curl up on a leather lounger with a cup of tea or coffee and relax and read!

I will be listing ebooks over the next few weeks that will cover many topics. One I am especially excited about is Craft shows! I have read so many times in forums online about people trying one show, not selling much and never doing them again. A lot of negative information and bad experiences are shared and I want to help people see how incredibly successful this type of venue can be for a business! I have done a lot of research over the years and personally have huge success with craft shows so I can not wait to share that!
Several of our fellow Etsy shops will be featured in these ebooks too!!

Right now I am slowly listing different craft books in my shop to help provide inspiration to everyone. You will find books on polymer clay, to metal clay, wirework, basic bead, crocheted, sewing, knitting and more!

I am really so excited to hopefully help people and to share so please keep an eye on my new shop. More topics to look for are SEO help, google analytics help, facebook, twitter guides, social networking information and much more!!!

Thank you so much everyone for your support. Your kind words have been my inspiration for this shop :))

Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.galla15whatnots.etsy.com/
http://www.artisansbooklounge.etsy.com/

Trinkets N Whatnots Workspace!

2011-03-22T23:38:00.006-04:00

A picture of me and one of my Italian Greyhound doggies :) Isn't she precious (the dog LOL)

I am really excited to share with everyone where I work. So I just have my setup around my breakfast room/dining room. I have my kitchen table to create my jewelry and behind the table is a china cabinet. I use the china cabinet for all my mailing needs. I keep the jewelry boxes in the cabinet, my mailing envelopes, bubble wrap, my return address labels, business cards, pens, scissors and packaging tape all in that china cabinet behind where I work. This way I can quickly package things up, and I also file away the receipts for all my shipments.

Then I have a TON of kitchen cabinets/pantry in the breakfast room. But I had WAY too much inventory to organize, so I had to get rid of my food and fill the cabinets with all my bead boxes. There are 3 huge cabinets all filled with bead boxes, and bags of buttons.

And these bead boxes are 2 deep, meaning there are just as big of stacks BEHIND all of these. PHEW! I always joke I have my own personal bead store but I really do.

But even those cabinets weren't enough so then I bought some plastic organizers with like 10 drawers. Those drawers are organized by material. The top drawer has all my wire in it, the 2nd drawer is nothing but different types of glues, the 3rd drawer is filled with a boatload of seed beads etc. It makes things extremely efficient for me to know exactly where things are when I need them, and to have everything in one area.
Check out my seed beads:

Each bead box I have is organized by the material. The box below is filled with all kinds of jump rings. Angela (http://www.angelaspaperart.etsy.com/) asked if I had one jump ring for a pendant she wanted. I had to laugh, I am not sure if I have one to spare :)

And I have told many how many buttons I have. I have been lucky to have people give me their stashes and then I of course found a ton myself. Check out this small stash:

So that is how I work. I try to keep it organized, I kind of have to since there is such a large inventory to track. I hope you enjoyed seeing this. I can't wait to see what space you guys work in!!!

Have a good week.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/
I am listing a lot of these supplies in my supply shop to try to downgrade a little:
http://www.galla15whatnots.etsy.com/

Driver's Education - HELP!!

2011-03-08T23:12:00.001-05:00

Ok so this post is a little bit of a detour from my normal blogging. I am not writing about business, marketing, etsy, or jewelry today. In the last month I have started driving 45 miles in the morning and 45 miles in the evening for a new job. I used to LOVE driving. I would drive from Connecticut to Norfolk, Virginia for 8 hours and just love it. It was time to relax, to have solice, to listen to my favorite music... ahhhhhh
Now... not so much. Now everyday I think I am lucky to still be alive and not in an accident!
I just can't get over the total lack of regard for someone else's life and safety and the amount of ignorance and selfishness out there. I truly dread my drive every single day.

So here is my vent.... my list of pet peeves that are going to kill, injure or drive me insane over time.

The "Fast Lane"- I will try not to make sweeping generalizations but it seems the majority of the people I encounter just have no clue what this term means. The fast lane actually has nothing to do with speed, it has to do with the flow of traffic. If someone wants a leisure drive and to go on the slow side, they can go about their business in peace in the right lane. The "fast lane" or left lane is supposed to be the PASSING lane. You are not supposed to travel in this lane endlessly. If you want to go faster than someone else on the road you should be able to go in the left lane, zoom around the car on the right... THEN move over to the right yourself to continue traveling at whatever pace you choose. It seems that many people think that they are somehow the one to set a reasonable speed by pacing the rest of the pack of cars on the road. I know people who as soon as they are merging on the highway they go straight from the merge lane, to the right lane, over to the LEFT lane and just sit there no matter what! To me it is incredibly selfish to just do whatever you want while there is a line of 20 cars behind you. If you aren't comfortable riding in the right lane because there is too much merging of traffic then maybe you should consider that you aren't capable of driving! If you think you should be the one to control the speed of others on the road then maybe you should become a police officer and do it the right way, the safe way! And the most frustrating point is that much of the rush hour jam up is because of one or two selfish people traveling in the passing lane. These laws were made to help keep traffic flowing so get the Hell out of the way and let people go!

The next pet peeve is merging. Look I understand wanting to be nice and slowing down gradually to let someone in. I mean why not if you are in traffic anyways, what is one single car length? Let them in. What I don't understand is why a person going 60 or 70mph on a highway with only 2 other cars on the road decides to jam on the breaks to let someone merge. It is downright dangerous to just slam on your breaks like that and completely unncessary. And if you are the car merging then that means you YIELD to the rest of the traffic. You don't have the right away to just force your way in, I shouldn't have to dart over to the left lane to let you in or slam on my breaks. Again if you can't figure out how to blend with traffic then you should consider that you aren't capable of driving.

Which brings me to the next point. BLINKERS!!! A blinker flashing doesn't mean you now have the right to come over. Using a blinker doesn't mean you can now ram the car next to you because you called that space!

I am seriously just amazed that if someone is coming over and there isn't room for them, I hit the horn and they come over anyways. The horn is a warning that there is a problem and you shouldn't proceed.

It is just terrible how people drive. OH, and this is really quite minor but I really wonder why do cars have to go WAY out to the side before making a turn? I mean really it isn't some 16 wheeler, tractor trailer that needs the clearance for the long backend it has!! And for goodness sake if a car is turning GO AROUND! Why do we have to stop dead for a car to turn??

I guess I should bring this back to some sort of business point... And that is with the cost of gas skyrocketing, and the terrible driver's education we apparently have you should strive to work from home!
Make Etsy work for you... anything BUT having to drive out in public. LOL

The stress relief of not driving and the money you will save from not using all of that gas is such a HUGE benefit of working from home. So re-focus and get those shops selling!

Have a great week everyone.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Etsy Shop SEO! Get Found by The Search Engines

2011-03-01T22:46:00.005-05:00

So I am breaking this down into as small of bites as I can, and not using all kinds of terminology. I am not going to explain what a meta tag is, because for most of us we don't care.

What you need to know is where in your Etsy shop can you make changes that will help with Search Engine traffic and indexing of your Etsy shop? How to find your most optimized keywords for your shop? If you should repeat keywords in your shop or not? If so how much? (keyword density)
If you can learn a few of these keys and then adjust your shop you should see a change in your traffic.

First, before we dig in.... you should all have Google Analytics set up for your Etsy shop! Make a note of your current traffic and trends before you do any tweaks to your shop. Find out where is your traffic coming from? What are the top 15 referrers to your shop right now? How much traffic are you getting from each of those referrers? Get a notebook out and make a note of it, so that in a few months you can recheck and see the changes!
**** NOTE **** You can change your shop to make it more SEO friendly but the changes will NOT happen overnight. It takes time for Google and other search engines to crawl your shop and re-index items, and even then you may have missed the mark on which keywords will work best for you. This is an ongoing process, that should be tweaked regularly and will bring gradual results to you!

WHAT KEY AREAS OF YOUR SHOP TO CHANGE?

So there are certain locations of our shop that we can actual use to feed information to the search engines. Here are the areas you need to focus on when tweaking your shop:

1. Shop Announcement

2. Shop Sections/Categories

3. Listing Titles

4. Listing Descriptions

5. Listing Tags for Etsy's search engine

6. Item Materials for Etsy's search engine

Which Keywords Should I Use?

I use Google's Keyword Tool Tracker.

https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__u=1000000000&__c=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS#search.none

Just plug in the general topic of your Etsy shop, and you will have to enter a word verification once during that session.

For example, I can plug in Button Jewelry into the search. Since this is one of the main things I sell. Notice you can change the location of your search by country and language too! If you have something you are targeting for a specific culture play around with different countries to get more specific keywords.

So after I plugged in Button Jewelry the 1st result given is button jewelry. It shows me a little box with a bar that tells me how much competition there is for this term. It shows the bar mostly filled in (more than half), meaning there is a lot of competition. (see the picture below, the column below the Red Arrow) The next column tells me that over 8000 searches are done a month for button jewelry. (see the picture below, the column with the blue arrow) As you can see button jewelry can be confused with belly button jewelry searches!

So here is what you have to do when looking at the results. You should search for the terms that have less than half in the bar for competition. The less competition there is for your keyword the more times the searches will return YOU in their searches. Once you pick out say 10 options with low competition, now you want to look at how many searches are done monthly. If there are only 200 searches a month, then you won't get much traffic from it. Although you will show in the results for most of those 200 searches, you want bigger traffic then that right? So look for those terms with the least amount of competition but the highest searches done. THOSE words that fit that criteria would be keywords you may want to focus more on. For example, my Button Jewelry search shows that Antique buttons has a low competition rate but over 6,000 searches per month. Since many of my rings are made with antique buttons I will want to emphasize those keywords to gain the best traffic possible.

Play around with it to find the best words. I have a notebook that I keep a list of keywords I want to use.

Once I have the top 5-10 keywords under the Button jewelry search, then I could search another category from my shop like Crystal jewelry. The more specific keywords you use, the more targeted traffic you will gain. Why do you want targeted traffic? Because this will increase your odds of converting your traffic to sales. This isn't just about gaining traffic but gaining SALES!

What good is it if someone puts in Crystal jewelry and gets your shop, but they wanted belly button rings? They aren't going to buy then, so you want to get them in your shop for what you sell to achieve maximum sales.

How to Use Your Keywords in Your Etsy Shop

So now you should have a list of 30-50 keywords at least! What do you do with them?

You want to start putting those keywords into the key areas of your Etsy shop.

You want to place them naturally into your listings, do not do keyword stuffing... meaning don't just say "button crystal pearl antique vintage jewelry rings".

Keywords should be placed as close to the beginning of titles and descriptions as possible.

Also, your shop announcement is CRITICAL in your shop SEO! If you just put welcome to Trinkets N Whatnots. The search engines will never pick that up. The first 30 characters are the most critical so try to get some keywords into that space!

Next your shop sections! Instead of just putting Necklaces, put Button Necklaces... use your keywords and be specific in which you use for your shop sections. Also, search engines like longevity... the longer something is around the more reliable of a source it must be. So try to think of the best way to divide your shop up and name those sections, and try not to change them often.

Now for the internal Etsy searches you also have to consider your materials and listing tags. Use tags that will represent what your item is, and what a person would search for when looking for your product. They say you should have around 3% keyword density per page. Meaning I shouldn't have button jewelry as every other word in my listing, because the search engines will consider this spam and you will descrease your visibility with this. I generally try to put a keyword in my title and description, and my tags. This will help you with the "relevancy" searches on etsy and with search engines.

****FINAL NOTE**** Search Engines frown upon duplicate content. So even though I want to use button rings as keywords if I have 40 listings that all say the same thing Google will only index ONE. This is to prevent someone from doing a search and the entire 1st page being all the same item. They strive to provide variety in their search results. So even though you want keywords in certain places and near the beginning it is ok to switch it up some to get maximum results.

I hope this helps you guys a lot! Please leave your thoughts and comments, and come back to let me know how your Google Analytics has changed after you make your changes!!

A special thank you to: Kelly Designs who helps me get that graphic up there for you guys!
Check out her shop for help with your banners, avis, any graphic design solutions you might need!!!
Thank you!!

Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Swarovski Ring Contest Winners!!!

2011-02-15T19:45:00.001-05:00

So if you missed it I had a Treasure Hunt Giveaway of one of my Swarovski Rings in my shop!

Here is the link to the original details for this giveaway:
http://galla15.blogspot.com/2011/01/treasure-hunt-contest-win-swarovski.html

So, I wrote down a list of all entries in the order that they were submitted. Each entry received a number based upon the order of submissions. And about an hour ago I submitted the numbers to http://www.random.org/ to figure out our winners!

1st place winner: www.bijibijoux.etsy.com !! CONGRATS MIMI!!!!

Mimi has her choice of any Swarovski ring in my shop that she wants! I can't wait to see what you pick out!
Right now there are 47 Swarovski rings in my shop!!
http://www.etsy.com/shop/galla15?section_id=5561353

The 2nd place winner: Jaclyn - http://www.etsy.com/shop/jaclyn1423 CONGRATS!!!

Jaclyn has received a special code to receive 20% off of her order with Trinkets N Whatnots!

CONGRATS Mimi and Jaclyn!

BUT that isn't it. I really truly appreciated all of the support everyone gave me and all the help to promote this event. To show that appreciation I wanted to extend a special offer to all entrants.

Use Coupon Code: Treasure at the checkout to receive 10% off of your order with Trinkets N Whatnots.
This coupon code ends March 1st! Take advantage of this code NOW while you can!
So everyone wins!! This was a huge success and I plan on having more contests and giveaways in the future so keep an eye out!!

THANKS everyone!
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Petite Hermine - Fertility Bracelets and Gemstone Jewelry

2011-02-01T21:55:00.001-05:00

On Etsy I am a part of a wonderful team, The Promotional Frenzy Team:

http://www.etsy.com/teams/7512/promotional-frenzy-team

This team is filled with AMAZING shops but I am going to highlight Petite Hermines shop today:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/petitehermine

Jen the owner of this shop told me this about her inspiration and shop:

"I love semi-precious gemstones, which is why they're my medium of choice when creating beaded statement jewelry. There are so many different kinds and each one is beautifully unique. I love wearing strings of gorgeous stones and decided to make my own when I couldn't find exactly what I like in stores. What can I say? Gemstones are so natural, timeless, and classy."

She has a unique jewelry product because her bracelets aren't just pretty gems... they are useful. She has created fertility bracelets that help a woman track her cycles to assist her in getting pregnant! How cool are these?

http://www.etsy.com/shop/petitehermine?section_id=7389191

Rose Quartz, Jasper Gemstone Bracelet

One of her other creations that I just love is this Aventurine gemstone necklace:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/66713474/venus-rising-from-the-sea-necklace-pink

I hope you will check out her shop. She is a wonderful seller, with high quality pieces.

Thanks.

Janet

http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

New Line of Jewelry! Crystal Pendant Necklaces

2011-01-26T14:59:00.000-05:00

So part of my 2011 goals is be able to offer full lines of jewelry in my shop. I have had swarovski crystal rings in my shop for quite some time now. I recently added crystal earrings to match the rings.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/galla15?section_id=5478517

And now I have Swarovski Crystal Pendant Necklaces to match!!! I use all sterling silver accents, so the bail and the chains are sterling silver.

Check these out:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/galla15?section_id=5478520

There are a lot more of these necklaces to come. In many colors and shapes, plus more earrings too!

And in a few months I hope to be listing button bracelets that will match my button necklaces:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/galla15?section_id=5478518

So another new line of jewelry coming soon! Please keep a close on my shop :)

Thanks so much for looking.

Would love to hear your feedback on this new line of necklaces, so please leave your comments.

Janet

http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Kater's Acres - Toy Story Nutty Featured Shop

2011-01-19T17:54:00.002-05:00

Today I want to take the time to introduce you to an amazing Polymer Clay artist.

Katie the designer said, "My designs are generally whimsical and "geeky" in nature. I have several "series" of items in my store in addition to our animals, robots, and geekery. Monster Series 1 (find info on my blog), Pet Rock Series 1 (Series 2 coming soon), and Monster Series 2 (in progress, 5 of 12 pieces listed)"

How exciting is that, to keep an eye out for her latest you can find her shop, blog, facebook page etc. as follows:

Etsy: http://www.toystorynutty.etsy.com/

Blog: http://www.katersacres.blogspot.com/

FaceBook: www.facebook.com/katersacres

Twitter: www.twitter.com/#!/katersacres

Look at this Heart Monster!! Hardly looks like a monster it is so cute!!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/65732061/haisy-the-heart-monster-whimsical

From her more whimsical side is this amazing Sheep!! I think this is adorable!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/59919465/cookie-cutter-sheep-lamb-whimsical

It is hard to choose which items to feature because they are all amazing!! But I wanted to include at least one pet rock and couldn't resist this one!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/65507626/valentines-day-keepsake-edition-love-pet

Please take the time to check out Katies shop. It is amazing. Her quality of work is wonderful and the prices unbelievable!!!

Janet

http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Solo Frenzy on Etsy

2011-01-16T22:32:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I had my 1st solo frenzy on Etsy. If you aren't familiar with what a solo frenzy is you should definitely check out this thread in the Etsy promotions Forum:
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6740094&page=1

I also did a very detailed blog post with all the details of each activity the thread has;
http://galla15.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-promotional-frenzy-thread-huge.html

So, all the shops in the thread spent 30 minutes on Saturday promoting my shop as much as they could throughout the internet. EVERYONE in the thread was incredibly supportive but several really went above and beyond.

First, I tried to highlight as many of the thread mates in this beautiful treasury.
http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4d32710b82516d91442ad3ad/on-fire-over-1500-views?index=0

AMAZING shops in that treasury!! And now I want to try to highlight a few of the shops that

One shop actually started promoted me a few days before the solo frenzy, in order to help get items onto Stumbleupon so others could rate those listings! Incredibly generous and nice.
Her shop is really amazing. She is a paper artist...

http://www.etsy.com/shop/AngelasPaperArt?ref=top_trail

Look at these beautiful keepsake boxes with roses on top!
http://www.etsy.com/listing/65850062/small-blooming-heart-keepsake-box

And one other item that I think are really nice are her paper beads! They are lightweight, unique and very affordable!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/65444073/on-fire-paper-beads

Another shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/bijibijoux

She likes to work with, high-quality glass beads, Swarovski crystals, gemstones, freshwater pearls, and wood. She partnered up with another shop (the 3rd one I am going to feature here) and help promote and organize the promotions the entired day!

Look at these amazing earrings!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/65985604/white-and-red-faceted-crystal-dangles

She has a matching necklace to go with it too;

http://www.etsy.com/listing/65984497/white-and-red-faceted-crystal-necklace

Last but certainly not least... http://www.etsy.com/shop/jQjewelrydesigns

She specializes in an eclectic variety of high quality gemstones.

Check out this amazing bracelet!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/35217267/kyanite-and-fine-silver-bracelet

jQ is a really organized, detail oriented person. She created list after list yesterday to organize what had been promoted and what still needed promoted! I mean not a single inch of my shop was left out!

THE RESULTS

Well the results are absolutely phenomenal! I had over 1500 new views on the very 1st page of my shop. Over 30 item hearts on those items on the first page and since yesterday 10 new shop hearts!!!

The 2nd page had over 700 views!

3rd page over 300 views!

The rest of the pages had 300 views except the last 2 had about 100.

There were around 5-10 hearts on each page!!!

The question asked the most is how many sales... well I had one from a friend in the thread that was very kind to buy a pair of earrings but no others directly related YET.

But I can't emphasize enough, that there is NEVER an instant thing you can do to bring in a boatload of sales.

The amount of promoting done through so many sites on the internet such as blogs or stumbleupon.com provides very valuable backlinks to my shop that will help in the long term with visibility and search engine rankings. So over time this will help a lot. I am positive sales are coming LOL

I can't thank you all enough. I am sorry there is no way to feature over 20 shops in this blog at one time. But the treasury really represents many that aren't featured here. And to the left of this post is a list of all of our participating shops!

THANK YOU EVERYONE!

Janet

http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Treasure Hunt Contest - Win a Swarovski Ring!

2011-01-14T16:11:00.001-05:00

Trinkets N Whatnots - http://www.galla15.etsy.com/ is holding a contest NOW through February 14th!

One month to enter and spread the word for a chance to win a Swarovski crystal ring from my shop.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/46421256/swarovski-red-magma-button-ring-baguette

There are 2 prizes, and 2 ways to win!

1. The 1st place prize is a Swarovski ring of your choice from the shop above.

In order to enter you have to go to the Etsy shop: http://www.galla15.etsy.com/ and search through the Swarovski Ring listings. Find the one listing that has this in its description:

*********** TREASURE HUNT ************************

Once you have found the listing, please e-mail or convo me through the Etsy system with a link to that listing. PLEASE title the e-mail or convo CONTEST so that I will get all entries.

DO NOT POST the answer in the comments of this blog.
You can e-mail your answers too: galla15@verizon.net

I will keep a list of each response, in the order that I receive them. Then use http://www.random.org/ to pick a # from my list and that will be the winner. The winner will be announced here on my blog.

2. A 2nd Mystery prize will be given out through the same system with http://www.random.org/ but it will be from a list of people who have promoted this contest. If you blog about the contest, post it on your facebook, or tweet it etc. please leave a comment here to a link of your promotion. Your comment in this blog with your promotion will be your entry to the 2nd place mystery prize!

Have fun on your treasury hunt!

Follow me on Facebook if you like:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Trinkets-N-Whatnots/41217190843

Janet
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

Etsy Recyclers Guild Link Building Contest (Retro Chalet)

2011-01-11T17:00:00.001-05:00

First, I want to tell you a little about the Etsy Recyclers Guild. I have been having some very pleasant conversations with Retro Chalet: http://www.etsy.com/shop/RetroChalet
Her shop has the "The Best Vintage Kitchen, Melmac, Print Blocks, Letterpress, Porcelain Glove Molds Galore"

http://www.etsy.com/listing/43739208/50pc-vintage-plastic-buttons-purple

She has a 2nd shop too! http://www.etsy.com/shop/RetroChaletStudio

    Below is what she told me about this team:

Etsy Recyclers Guild is a global team comprised of Etsians who have united in the name of "green." Our group focuses on the below issues:
    a) Artisans creating handmade wares from recycled, upcycled, discarded, or vintage items in lieu of buying new materials.
    b) Vintage sellers re-purposing or offering retro or antique items to keep these items from the landfill whether it be for use or decor, again, to alleviate need for new mass produced goods.
    c) Greenies who have thought up eco-friendly green alternatives to modern day mass produced wares, or developed their wares using green processes.

     There are several different teams on etsy that focus on green, upcycling, or recycling, and some with no requirements for joining. We have found over time that our team benefits most by members who will be active and are on Etsy to stay. We expect our members to participate and promote our team's shops, and our love of recycling.

We do this by making treasuries, cross promoting each other on the world wide web outside of Etsy, and in our own shop banners. We have a team shop, and sell advertising on all blog wherein all monies go back into the team's ad campaign. Currently we're on Everything Etsy !

For us, this method of promote-on-promote has earned us several hundred backlinks between Bing and Yahoo alone and page rank on Alexa in just a short time. Some members have in turn had their sales increased with added exposure.

How to Join Etsy Recyclers:

We limit our membership to around 200 members, when some leave or close up shop, we have open enrollment periods. To see if we are accepting members, visit www.etsy.com/teams/6474/recyclers-guild-team.
Read more in this Storque article : www.etsy.com/storque/craftivism/etsy-teams-go-green-7798/

*********************************************************************************

THE CONTEST

The important part... I think cross-promoting has huge benefits. That is why a thread that I run in the Etsy Promotions is based upon us cross promoting our other thread mates.

http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6740094&page=1

The very same concept of building back links that I try to promote in this thread, is exactly what the Etsy Recyclers Guild is doing with their contest! So I would like to team up if you will and help with their contest.

Here is a link to the blog post with all of the details:

http://etsyrecyclersguild.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-contest-open-to-anyone-not-just.html

Please blog about this contest, tweet it, retweet it, facebook it, and ENTER into the contest.

The prizes are amazing!

$200+ Value Prize Pack:

Special mystery prize pack includes:

$75 value of products donated from Etsy Recyclers Guild Members shipped to you!

$125 value of a sidebar avatar/link to your hop, website, or siteon this site for 9months!

+Bonus: Feature Story written about you or your shop/site, to increase YOUR credibility!

The History and Value of Buttons

2011-01-05T21:09:00.002-05:00

I love buttons, and love learning about all the different options, designs and uses. Most buttons are collectibles and I strive to retain the value in all the buttons used in my designs!! I never cut off a shank and put glue on the buttons. All of the ones used in my designs are wire wrapped preserving all the parts of a button.
So here is a little history of how buttons have evolved and who used them. I hope you enjoy reading the history of buttons and can appreciate them.

http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

2000 BC- Buttons first appeared as decorations. If something needed fastened pins and belts were used then. The buttons seen then were bone, horn, and wood or even sea shells.

1200 AD- As clothing and fabric evolved pins were no longer the best option, and buttons were used as fasteners. The word "Button" first appears in the French language as bouton, for bud or bouten to push.

1250 AD- The Button Makers Guild is formed. The Guild developed elaborate, expensive buttons that only the wealthy could buy. There were actually laws passed to prevent the common person from owning any button!

1300's thru 1400's- Buttons continue to grow in popularity as they are used more and more. Many of the clothing worn during this time were covered in buttons. It is during this time that a new profession developed...the professional dresser!

1500's-A French king in this century ordered 13,400 Gold buttons made for a special outfit for his meeting with an English king. To his surprise the English king was equally heavy with buttons! Also the Elizabethan era brought cloth covered buttons.

1600's-We actually find diamond buttons on a suit designed for the First Duke of Buckingham! Silk, ceramic and silver buttons were seen during this time. In the 17th century, French tailors began making thread buttons for military uniforms. These were simple little balls of thread that. In fact, these thread buttons were considered an insult to all buttons and many tried to get laws passed to prevent them from being used again. Anyone caught using or making these were fined penalties!

1700's- Embroidered buttons developed. Wooden molds were carved and the embroidered material was stretched and crisscross stitched in the back to secure it. Towards the end of this century buttons got bigger and bigger. In addition, steel buttons began their use for men's clothing.

1800's-1900's In the year 1802 Abel Porter established a company in the Northeastern United States that began making metal buttons. He saw an opportunity for big business as the imported ones were scarce and expensive. There were also challenges with the types of metals used but when Porter created them he used brass loops cast in the back of the button, and solved those previous problems. This company became the famous Scovill Manufacturing Co. whose name we still see on the backs of many old buttons today.

The most popular button of the 19th Century was the black glass button. These were made for the masses in replication of Queen Victoria's fashioning of black jet buttons. These were also referred to as mourning buttons, following the death of Prince Albert.

These Victorian Glass Buttons are a favorite of many Button Collectors today. Beautiful ocean mother of pearl buttons were also made in the 18th and 19th century. They were dyed, engraved and embellished with metals and sometimes even jewels. These buttons were made in Germany, France and Great Britain but the shells they were made from came from Japan, Austria, Central America and even Egypt. The most expensive shell is the white massacar from the East Indies.

Modern Day Button Making - By the turn of the 20th Century, picture and novelty buttons were very much the fashion. Picturesque buttons for men's waistcoats were very popular. Animals and hunting scenes were vastly produced for this purpose. Many collectors adore them. With the introduction of plastics, buttons weren't quite so precious. However, since the arrival of the sewing machine and patterns for the thrifty dressmaker, they provided the finishing touches while dressing on a budget. Magnificent artisan glass buttons can be found at fine craft shops and craft shows today. Torch work or lamp work is used to create unique and often, one of a kind, paperweight buttons. My favorites to work with, as you can see by the jewelry I make, are carved Mother of Pearl Buttons. I find the most colorful shells to be abalone with their magnificent striking colors. Pearl buttons, both carved and etched, come from black Tahitian shells, cowries, helmet shells, pinna shells and conches.

Some Resources: National Button Society
http://www.nationalbuttonsociety.org/Home.html

The HISTORY OF Czech Glass buttons!!
http://www.beadandbutton.com/en/sitecore/content/Home/Community/Button%20Corner/NBS%20Articles/2009/07/A%20History%20of%20Bohemian%20glass%20buttons.aspx

The Czech Glass and Mother of pearl buttons are some of my favorites.

To find my designs go here:
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

New Button Designs coming soon!!!!

2011 Goals!!!

2010-12-26T16:25:00.001-05:00

I want to thank all of you who have supported me and followed me in 2010. I hope you all have a Happy New Year and wonderful Holidays.

This post is going to outline a few exciting new things in the future for Trinkets N Whatnots and also for our amazing Promotional Thread on Etsy.
And many of my goals and aspirations for 2011.

I hope you enjoy reading them, maybe are inspired by some of them, and will share your 2011 goals too.
THANKS!

2011 Trinkets N Whatnot Goals (http://www.galla15.etsy.com/ )

1. I really want to have over 300 items listed in my shop! Huge goal but be on the lookout for some amazing new products. New shapes and colors to my Swarovski Button rings coming soon:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/galla15?section_id=5561353

2. New Line of Necklaces coming out to match the Swarovski Button rings and Earrings!
http://www.etsy.com/shop/galla15?section_id=5478517

3. I will attend a minimum of 6 craft shows in 2011.

4. Find at least 4 local boutiques to carry some portion of my jewelry!

5. Sell over 300 items in 2011. An average of one item a day MINIMUM.

6. Improve my SEO knowledge and apply that to my shop!

7. Use Kaboodle more often, to its potential. (ezines, connecting, organizing etc.)

8. Blog at least once a week

9. To have over 1000 blog followers!!

I am sure there is more but I will continue to add to my list as I go.

2011 Goals for the Promotional Frenzy Thread!!!

1. I want our thread to have over 3000 sales in 2011. (may sound high but it isn't with the BNR's and promoting we are doing!!!)

2. Everyone to have a blog and to blog regularly (with a blog list of our thread mates)

3. I want to have more special events that focus on us coming together as a team at a specific time in the thread to help each other.

4. At least 50 members in the thread!!

5. Add NEW social sites to our list to utilize (kaboodle, stumbleupon, squidoo, many to come)

6. Continue our BNR each week, 70 + sales each time!!!

****************************************

One mysterious, misc. goal: I will be opening a THIRD shop in 2011!!!! Keep an eye out for the announcement but I am extremely excited and have receive positive feedback from the few that know!

Here is to a wonderful 2011.
THANKS
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/
http://www.galla15whatnots.com/

How Are Buyers Finding You?

2010-12-12T17:04:00.001-05:00

I have been doing a lot of research on my Google Analytics (GA). I know there is valuable information in those statistics to help me optimize my Etsy shop. I plan on having more posts in the future on other capabilities but today is about figuring out how your buyers found you!

I stumbled upon a great post in the Etsy forums written by: http://www.etsy.com/shop/cindylouwho2
If you haven't bumped into Cindylou on the etsy forums you have missed out, she is a wealth of knowledge.
She also has a successful jewelry shop on etsy.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/50603510/crimson-red-paua-abalone-shell-earrings

Her post in the forums is a wonderful step by step guide as to how to use GA statistics to see how your buyers found you. This is incredibly useful information because now you will know where to find your buyers. Cindylou was nice enough to allow me to repost this, thank you.

I hope you guys find this as helpful as I did.

1. If you haven't already, sign up for Google Analytics:
http://www.etsy.com/storque/media/bunker/2009/03/GoogleAnalyticsForSellers.pdf

2. Make sure you also enable the "Site Search" option, which tells you how people searched for you on Etsy:
http://www.etsy.com/storque/etsy-news/tech-update-etsy-web-analytics-enhancements-3350/

3. Then, after you make a sale (remember that it can take 2-3 hours for GA to update)

A: Log into GA, change the date to today (top right) and find the buyer's location by clicking on Visitors--> Map Overlay--> Country (menu on the left), then the region and/or city.

TIP: not everyone will have exactly the same postal address as GA shows them from. Look for nearby cities. You may have to google the town or city name they gave you to find out what it is close to.

B: If you find the city or town, click on it. You will see a screen like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cindylouwho2/4533385684/sizes/o/

Note the little arrow pointing to the drop-down menu that says "None" - that is called the "Dimension" menu

C: Click on the menu that says "None" - your screen will now look like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cindylouwho2/4532752007/sizes/o/

D: If you click on the menu option that says "Source", you will know which website they entered Etsy from.

If that is a search engine (like Google, Yahoo etc.) click on "Keyword" to see which terms they found Etsy with. Sometimes this will answer your question!

E: Unfortunately, GA only shows how people entered Etsy, not necessarily your shop, so if the source & keyword do not make sense for your shop, or if the source is "direct", you need to click on "Landing Page" to see what page they first arrived on.

Often you will get a result that looks like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cindylouwho2/4532752307/sizes/o/

(hover the cursor over the shorter title to see the long one in the box)
In that result, the person searched "In Canada" in the Jewelry-->Necklace category on Etsy, & found my "paua-abalone-shell-and-crystal-necklace" on page 54 of the search.

This page can help you decode the landing page data:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pXKD_gzPKRz7D1SS-RbgFPw
Although it isn't 100% up to date. Usually the codes are clear once you look carefully.

F: If you could not find the city your buyer listed as their address (maybe they are on vacation & shopping from another location), then you can still try to find them by going to the "Content-->Content By Title" menu (on the left), & locate the item they bought. You can use the "Dimension" menu the same way as before to find out how the people who looked at that page today entered Etsy, & which page they landed on to find your shop.

FINAL NOTE:
Sadly, GA cannot track every buyer, as people can block the tracking, & some computers don't have the correct software installed to track through GA. Also, if you have a very busy shop or generally get a lot of business from one region (like New York City) then it might be tough to narrow this down. However, I can track at least 90% of my buyers this way

Try it! it is easier than it looks!
Thank you again Cindylou for providing this valuable information!!!

Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Treasuries on Etsy!!

2010-12-10T22:50:00.000-05:00

Recently some really amazing treasuries have been made featuring my shop and of course other gorgeous shops on Etsy! I wanted to share a few with you.

Please check these out on etsy, click on some of the items, and leave a comment :)

Crystal Clear!

Basic Black!

Plenty more to come!!!
Thanks for looking.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Black Friday Cyber Monday Deals on Etsy

2010-11-24T15:34:00.002-05:00

So the biggest shopping weekend of the year is upon us!! This Friday the 26th through Monday the 29th will be huge sales and deals throughout the internet.

I hope that many of you will be doing the majority of your shopping through Etsy to find the most unique handmade gifts. Most shops are more than willing to customize pieces or do a special order just for you, all you have to do is ask!

There is a network of shops in the Promotional Frenzy thread that will all have deals this weekend, so I hope you will consider one of these shops. You can find their shops in the list of shops on to the left of this blog post.
<-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My holiday deals start TOMORROW, Thanksgiving and will go through Monday Midnight EST

20% off of any item except rings!! (These items will automatically be marked down on 11/25)

OR

If you are buying rings BOGO - Buy 1 ring, receive the 2nd of equal or lesser value at 50% off.
(To receive the discount, you put both rings in your cart and checkout. Then you pay through paypal and I will refund the difference to you.)

http://www.etsy.com/listing/53185258/swarovski-olivine-diamond-leaf-ring?ga_search_query=olivine&ga_search_type=user_shop_ttt_id_5195085

******************************************************************************
Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Promotional Frenzy BNR Mondays!!

2010-11-14T23:35:00.000-05:00

It is that time of week again!!! Monday, November 15th is our next Buy and Replace Treasury (BNR) for our Promotional Frenzy Thread.

Last week we had 79 sales in one day!!! Our goal is 100 sales this time!

Please help blog this, tweet our BNR, use stumbleupon, and tell your friends.

Cinnamon Promotional Frenzy BNR

http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4cdfda0f3c4f8eefc115d766/cinnamon-promotional-frenzy-bnr

THIS TREASURY WILL OPEN AT 4PM EST, THE LINK WILL BE LIVE THEN!

The treasury is 4pm Est (etsy) time until 1am.

Here is a list of the featured members:

Saturday Special Event: Selling A Story

2010-11-11T20:40:00.000-05:00

Lately, Etsy has been emphasizing the importance of each artist creating a mood/story with their descriptions.
To separate my product from the millions on Etsy I have to find a way of expressing the story behind each piece.

A wonderful storque article describes in detail the difference of describing an item as a "thing" or telling a story.

http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/how-to-sell-your-story-with-johnny-b-truant-10899/

For our thread on Etsy we are going to help each other think outside of our boxes. Each of us will get to write one description for another shop in our thread! Obviously you may not be familiar with my product, or the specific materials required to make it, or even the keywords that are important to my category.....
But the idea is for us to see our products from our customers perspective.

How do you view my item? What stands out to you? Can you picture it in a wedding, baby shower, on a beach vacation? What vision comes to mind when you see my item?

One shop on our thread: http://www.crochetedbycharlene.etsy.com/

http://www.etsy.com/listing/61005704/jack-the-many-colors-crocheted-teddy

She makes a lot of animals by hand, crocheted... and she always comes to the thread and asks for help naming them. I could never put a name to my creations, but for some reason I can look at one of her items and immediately get an imagine and name. The bear above reminded me of Jack of all trades because he has so many colors in him. It is easier sometimes when we aren't so attached emotionally, so let's help each other get a fresh view on our products.

Let's take our shops to the next level!!!

Saturday night 9pm EST (etsy time) in this thread:
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6663721&page=609

You have to check in Saturday with the thread and put one item onto the list that you want help writing for. We will spend 30-60 minutes writing, exchanging ideas etc. I will assign each person ONE item to do Saturday night. Have fun with this, and help create a backstory that will SELL our products!

Thanks.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Tagging Help!

2010-11-05T01:40:00.003-04:00

What is tagging?

Understanding tagging and the importance of tagging can help you become more visible.
Tagging on Etsy and many websites is a way to attach keywords to your listing. The tags are mainly used for the internal search engine of each site. Meaning your tags are for people using Etsy's search engine, not google or other search engines. Although it is said the top few tags can pop up on external search engines such as google. TAGS are important in your listings but also in your treasuries. Remember tags are how you will be found within Etsy.

So what does this mean for you and your shop?

The holidays are upon us! Shopping is happening now, so it is important to get your shop as visible as possible now!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/54279590/scrabble-tile-pendant-beaded-necklace

You need to figure out what do your potential customers search for? What words do they use to find the product you are selling?
I have this article on the etsy storque bookmarked and use it for almost every listing I make. It is extremely helpful in getting your mind working on descriptions you may not normally think of.
http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/seller-how-to-tag-o-rama-with-descriptive-keywords-5474/

I would highly recommend that you use as many colors and shades of those colors as tags. Use foods that are commonly associated with a color, like red could also be Strawberry and sounds so much more appealing doesn't it? One advantage to including colors is that you will usually be put into more treasuries on Etsy. Most people think of a treasury theme, based upon colors, so your tags help people find your items to put into treasuries. Treasuries mean more exposure and the possibility of a front page feature even!!

A few tips:

1. Use all 14 tag slots. Each tag is another avenue for your customers to find you!!
2. Don't repeat words. For instance if you say swarovski crystal in one tag, you don't need to put crystal into another tag. It is a waste of one of those precious slots because you will already be included in a crystal search since the word crystal was used with "swarovski crystal".
3. Include your shop name in a few tags, this way if someone tries to search for you at least a few items will pop up in the search
4. Vary your tags from listing to listing. Even if you have 20 cards of similar technique and materials try to use a variety of tags in each listing. Again it is about visibility.
5. If the keyword is in your title, or the 1st line of your description it doesn't need to be a tag too. Etsy uses your title and the beginning part of your description to help with search engine results, plus google views your 1st line of your description. So don't duplicate, it is a waste of space!

***** FINAL NOTE *** To me this is a nugget of information I do not give out much. But to help find other shades and colors and terms to use I go to Wiki Colors:
Huge list of every color you could imagine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colors

Also, check out this site for a tagging tool!
http://craftweasel.com/TagToolQuery.do

I hope this helps you some.

Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Operation Care Package! Support our Troops over the Holidays

2010-10-28T01:29:00.009-04:00

Many of you may not know I served 6 years on active duty in the Navy. In 2003 when the war in Iraq started my ship was deployed to the gulf. I was a corpsman/medic.

Most deployments were a minimum of 6 months, many are a year or more. It is an isolating time. Very little contact with family or friends, because the mail can take up to 5 weeks or more to arrive. They only deliver mail once a week or so depending on the location of your units, access and safety. When troops are out on jobs/tours they don't have access to run to the local store for some more toothpaste, or socks. They don't have the basics let alone any extras. They rely on those few packages that arrive. The arrival of packages is so exciting, it is a little piece of home and of love. The few reminders we have that someone has thought of us when most days we don't have a minute to think of ourselves let alone our loved ones.

It is that time of year again... Every year I try to raise donations for our troops through an official non-profit association. This is a Tax deductable donation.

There are MANY ways to participate. This is our chance to pay it forward and to make sure all of our deployed and injured troops feel our love during the holidays.
http://www.operationcarepackages.org/SupplyList.html

This is the website with TONS of information on their non-profit status and where donations can be sent, HUGE lists of items they could use etc.
http://www.operationcarepackages.org/SupplyList.html

Are you a school teacher? They LOVE receiving hand drawn/painted items from kids. Get your class to send a box of hand notes from the kids.

Are you short on money yourself and don't know how to help? Send your used books, and magazines. They love to read a readers digest, to US News, to a novel. Don't forget there are a lot of women deployed now too, so even your old romance novels could be sent. Help clean out your house, and pay it forward to someone in need.

The dollar store is a really good place to go. For 1 dollar you can find packs of things. They need socks, to handheld games, bibles, books etc. All can be found for one single dollar.

Another very affordable site that has 1000's of items is:
http://www.orientaltrading.com/

Do you sew? They need hygiene bags for the hospitals.
Support our Troops by sewing a Hygiene Bag

Free Patterns and Information:
http://www.thecreativethimble.com/FreePatterns/US%20Troop%20Bag.pdf

Other sewing projects include:
Cool scarves - Travel Pillows - Back & Neck warmers - Draw string Bags
Neck gators - Twin Size Quilts For more info contact:
Debbie @ proudarmysis4@sbcglobal.net

If you don't want to shop, or ship items you can simply make a cash donation to this organization for a tax deductible donation.

Things to keep in mind. There are extreme heat conditions in the middle east, so food shouldn't be meltable, everything should be individually wrapped.

This organization has a list of specific names of troops to send these donations too. As many of you know you can not send a random package just addressed to a base, or unit. There has to be a recipient named on the package, and this organization does that.
You can also submit the name of someone you know to be on their list.

All donations/packages can be mailed here: DEADLINE THANKSGIVING Nov. 24th. Have to arrive to them no later than November 24th!!
Operation Care Package
611 Wilcox St.
Joliet, Il. 60435

http://www.operationcarepackages.org/SupplyList.html

I live in Maryland so I also try to do my part for the local troops that are injured and unable to go home. Being a corpsman/medic makes me more aware of the needs of those in hospitals with injuries. I live near Walter Reed Army Hospital which is where most injured troops go if they are seriously injured. I also only live 10 minutes from Andrews Air Force base where they have 2 fisher houses. Fisher houses are literally houses where they have injured troops AND their families. This way the injured person isn't alone, they can go through therapy with their children and spouses. But they are unable to go home because of their injuries. I try to gather donations for theses locations that are frequently over looked by the big organizations.

If you are interested in helping some of the local troops please send me an e-mail
galla15@verizon.net for more information. The deadline for the local troops is December 15th. No later than Dec. 15th.

Last year I got boxes of crew socks, gym shorts, xmas stockings filled with goodies, handheld games, books, one etsy shop donated their drawings that were spiritual/inspirational. The women that helps run the fisher house was in tears. She said no one ever does that for them. It was one of the best moments of my life.

If you are unable to donate, or shop and ship... please at least help spread the word. Blog about this. You have permission to copy and paste this post to your own blogs. Tweet it, post it to your etsy teams, to your churches, to your schools! Just spreading the word is a huge help.

**** FINAL NOTE *** This has nothing to do with if you supported the war or were against it. Many of our deployed troops weren't aware this war would happen when they signed up and whether they agreed or not they answered the call to serve our country. Please don't let politics interfere with supporting those serving us during this special time of year.

Thanks everyone!!
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

2 New Lines of Button Earrings!

2010-10-25T00:34:00.003-04:00

My etsy shop is known for the unique Button Jewelry I make. Up until now I have mostly carried button rings, and recently expanded to button necklaces.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/57171558/pink-and-brown-mother-of-pearl-button

Now I have matching Button Post Earrings to go with these necklaces!

I also have a gorgeous line of Swarovski Crystal Elements button Rings.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/galla15?section_id=5478517

NOW a new line of Swarovski crystal elements Earrings to match!

I am very excited to be adding these new earrings and necklaces! So please keep a close eye on my shop as I slowly add more. I also have stunning Swarovski elements Pendant necklaces coming soon!

Thanks so much.

Janet

http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Customer Service and Feedback

2010-10-23T15:42:00.006-04:00

This post is about how to create a positive experience in your store both from the seller and buyer perspective. I will hopefully cover some basic Do's and Don'ts... and give some perspective as to how I personally treat my etsy store.

Etsy has a TON of articles on customer service and I will share some of those links in here as extra information.

The most important piece of advice I can give is to put yourself into the shoes of the other person and COMMUNICATE!

Scenario

Here is a scenario to help put this into perspective. Let's say you purchased several items from a shop, that has mostly positive feedback. It is something you really want, and are excited to get. After 5 or so days you start running to the mailbox each day, looking..... but nothing. A week since you ordered and you are still anxiously looking for a package in the mail, but nothing. Almost 2 weeks have gone by and still no order, and there hasn't been a single conversation between you and the seller at this point. You start to get nervous, they seem repuatable with their feedback, but why would it take so long and why wouldn't the seller contact you if there was a problem?? You review their policies and shop again to make sure you didn't miss anything. Their policies state, all items will ship within 7 business days and it has been almost 2 weeks now. So you contact them.

TIP

*******************************************************************************
***** At this point the customer is put in a bad position. If you know there is a delay or problem be UPFRONT. Don't wait for a customer to call you out. And do NOT lie about it. These will all lead to trust issues, and frustration. ********
*******************************************************************************

You feel uncomfortable to have to contact them and ask, but you want to know where your item is. The good news: the seller does respond and in a fairly quick timeframe, within 24 hours of your request. The bad news: they only write a 2 line message, as if they are being bothered, and they state that the order is going out in the am. Now you are completely disappointed, it hasn't been mailed yet? Why didn't they tell you this? Why do you have to contact them to find this out?
But, at least you know the seller is still around, and is mailing it and now within a few days you should finally have your goodies!! 5 days later and still nothing. You are checking that mailbox every day, and every day now for 3 weeks you have been disappointed. The frustration is building, and FINALLY the box arrives! YEAH! You notice that the postmarked date is 3 days later than the person said it would arrive. Now the patience is really running thin. The seller clearly didn't ship in a timely manner, then lied about when they were shipping, and never bothered to tell you what was going on....

You rip open the packaging, get to the 2 boxes inside and you immediately see damage. It is obvious from the outside that when you open.... this it isn't going to be pretty. In the back of your mind you are still hoping it can be salvaged, because you couldn't have waited just about a month now for this?? As you open the box you are still trying to remain hopeful but all hope is quickly gone when you see a big pile of mess.

How disappointing, to check and check every single day for just about a month for this package then you finally get it and now it isn't useable. You take pictures of the box and the contents inside the box and dread having to send this to the seller. You know that they aren't going to be happy with this, because their non-chalant response before shows a lack of sympathy. Plus they lied about when it was mailed. There is a pattern now that would make it seem like this is a careless seller. You write a thought out convo to the seller that you are really sorry to have to bother them but... you explain what has happened and attach pictures. You let them know you are very frustrated at this point to have the delays and now this. And the convo is sent with pictures within hours of receiving the package so there can't be a dispute. Now you have to anxiously wait for a solution/answer. Again the seller does respond, within 24 hours.... but the response isn't moving. Very unsympathetic. There is information about a personal situation, they do say I am sorry but the apology is just thrown in, right in the middle of I can't understand how that happened, I have been going through ____ (insert personal issues), I will refund your money.
That is the end of the transaction, you have your money back.
Does that sound like a positive transaction/experience? Would you be satisfied to just have your money thrown back at you?

TIP

*****************************************************************************
*** If you are truly sorry and want your customer happy then you don't make excuses and you sincerely apologize. A quick, well I am sorry thrown in the middle of other crap isn't going to cut it. Be sincere and show sympathy towards the situation. Express how you can relate/understand their frustration. Showing a compassion of your customers feelings and situation is most important at this point if you want to try to end things on a positive note.
******************************************************************************

So many lessons can be learned from this scenario. I am not one to say the customer is ALWAYS right. Just because we are a business doesn't mean we have to take abuse, so there IS a line between me and my customers. BUT the priority should always be the customer and doing all we can to make them happy.

So how could this have been handled? What could have been done differently?
There are so many options here that weren't done.

Suggestions

1. Don't make excuses or put personal things onto your customers. If you are having a rough time in your private life that should never be put onto your customer. Can you imagine walking into a home depot, or any major department store and them telling you I am sorry you want this, but we don't have it in stock and won't get it for 3 weeks because I had a wedding to go to, or someone died in our family etc. The show must go on in business, our customers don't wait for us, and don't have to wait with so many other stores available with just as nice items.   The competition is too good with a place like Etsy providing hundreds upon thousands of shops. Your customers don't need this and won't come back if they have to deal with this.

2. Come up with a plan: In etsy we have more options then most businesses. We can actually put our shops in vacation mode and take a break. Most businesses can't afford a break like that, they would have someone filling in and making things happen. So, I highly recommend taking advantage of this feature if you are overwhelmed. If you have outstanding orders and THEN a situation arises you can always cancel those orders explaining the circumstances, refund and profusely apologize. OR put your shop in vacation mode and get those orders out asap so that you can do what you need to do for yourself. Of course communicating with your customers throughout as you get their orders done. But don't mix personal issues with your business. It will never end positively if you do.

3. COMMUNICATION: Another thing that could have been done differently and is absolutely KEY in customer service is to COMMUNICATE. Anytime a customer is involved the absolute best thing you could ever do is to be upfront, honest and communicate. Of course you can always over-do something but it is imperative that you let your customer know what is going on. Especially when dealing with customers through the internet. Without face to face contact it is hard to truly connect with customers, and build trust. Communication is the key to building trust. How many of you would have cancelled the order if you received a convo saying, "I greatly appreciate your business and would love for you to have ___. I unfortunately won't be able to get this mailed to you until ___. If you are ok with that wait time I would love to do this. I will of course keep you posted if anything should change. Please let me know your preference, I can cancel the sale and refund immediately if you would rather not wait. Thank you."

If you know what is going on then you can plan and accept the situation. In the initial scenario one or 2 convo's could have gone a LONG way.

And GIVE OUT HONEST information!  Don't say you are shipping tomorrow if you aren't. If you say you are shipping tomorrow and now you can't, tell the customer the change in plans. Do not leave the customer in the dark!

4. GIVE OPTIONS.   Give your customer options. If your goal is to make your customers happy, and your business is based upon this.... then you need to make their needs the priority. Throwing money back at a customer does not make frustration, and disappointment go away. Especially if you don't even ask what the customer wants, maybe they do just want their money back. But you don't know unless you ask. My parents house burned down last year and I had several orders that were hard to get out. I convo'd each person and told them how much I appreciate their business and that I would truly love to do these orders for them but that I would need more time than usual. I gave them a timeline and then said, I want you to be happy. SO it is up to you, are you ok with waiting? Or would you prefer your money back at this point? Of course be apologetic, empathetic and sympathetic to them. I also stated that I would keep in touch throughout the next several weeks so that they would know I am around and working and have not forgotten them. 100% of those customers waited, and gave positive feedback. They didn't care about waiting, they cared about being taken care of. They cared about the fact that I made sure they didn't feel like I was scamming them, or ripping them off, or ignoring them.... and that they got what they paid for.
I also included a few nice extras in the package when it finally arrived as a special thank you for their understanding and patience. Because I truly appreciate each customer and especially those that were so understanding.

Feedback (as a seller)

With that said, let's say you feel you offered what you can and the customer isn't happy? What if they weren't happy? What if they decide to leave negative feedback? You will never be able to keep 100% of the people you come in contact with happy. It isn't possible. But the key is to remain focused on the fact that this is a business, and your reputation is on the line. No matter how wrong you think they are, you have to keep your cool and be professional. This doesn't mean you allow yourself to be taken advantage of but that you leave factual feedback. So close out a transaction that hasn't been resolved......

Keep in mind what feedback is for. It is for information on a specific transaction. It isn't about your personal life... it is about how did this transaction transpire? As a seller your feedback to the buyer is about the buyers responsibilities. Their end of the transaction. Did they pay you immediately?
Did they contact you within a reasonable amount of time with a problem? Did they give you the opportunity to fix the situation? If they did their part and left you negative feedback you can not and should NOT leave negative feedback for them. Being angry and retaliating will only reflect poorly upon you and your business.

It is hurtful to realize that YOU didn't do your part. If you didn't ship for 3 weeks, didn't communicate, didn't package well etc. It is very hard to accept that. It is probably embarassing or SHOULD be embarassing if you have any integrity.

BUT as a business you have to be responsible and accountable. You can't take it out on your customer now because you didn't do your part, or because they are rightfully upset with you. Man up, take your negative and then leave honest feedback in return.

Honest feedback would be feedback that only addresses the facts of the situation. For example, "I offered a refund, communication was sent on __ date and __ date.: Or, "A refund was offered in the beginning when I knew I would have a delay and the customer declined and wanted to wait." Then give a timeline, and facts such as each time you communicated throughout the process.
Honest feedback contains information that only applies to the CURRENT transaction.
Honest feedback speaks of only the facts involved. There is some debate over what a buyer's obligations are, and when to leave feedback...such as a seller should leave feedback once payment was made, since that fulfills the buyers obligations (just an example, not a statement that I necessarily agree with) that is not the focus of this particular blog post.

***FINAL NOTE*** Have you ever hesitated to leave feedback for an order you weren't happy with? Were you worried about the possible ramifications if you left negative feedback when it was warranted?
The feedback system is definitely flawed. It is based upon "integrity". This means I should be able to leave honest feedback if a seller didn't communicate and I had to wait 3-4 weeks for my order and then the order was damaged.... without worrying about retaliatory feedback. BUT obviously that is not very possible. So look at feedback with a grain of salt and give your customers credit that they are smart enough to see vengeful feedback that contains no facts.

And do the right thing, leave HONEST feedback.
If you don't leave feedback when you have a negative experience you are setting up the next person to have to go through what you just did. It is irresponsible to be dishonest in your feedback, because you put other buyers at risk when they think this seller is reputable and they aren't.
Feedback should be used to help other customers know what to expect. Don't allow me to be scammed, after you were scammed because you are worried about a few bad apples out there that will make it personal and retaliate. That is my personal opinion on feedback and the importance of it being honest, despite those that make us want to run and hide from it to avoid retaliation.

Here are some really great articles from the Etsy storque on more tips about communication, packaging, shipping policies etc. Make sure you are as detailed as possible to prevent these situation but know that sometimes things can not be avoided.

http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/service-tips-for-sellers-communication-1913/

http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/service-tips-for-sellers-promoting-repeat-business-2025/

http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/service-tips-for-sellers-creating-policies-that-work-2095/

http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/service-tips-for-sellers-everyone-isnt-your-sweet-aunt-kate-2120/

http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/service-tips-for-sellers-top-10-customer-service-strategies-2136/

http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/service-tips-for-sellers-building-bridges-2188/

http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/service-tips-for-sellers-what-we-can-learn-from-great-servic-2309/

http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/service-tips-for-sellers-the-buyers-perspective-2374/

Thanks.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Let's get Kaboodling!

2010-10-22T01:55:00.000-04:00

What is Kaboodle?

This is what kaboodle says about itself, "Kaboodle is the most fun social shopping network on the web! It's a place where you can express your own style and meet other stylish people by discovering, recommending, and sharing products.

Most exciting, Kaboodle allows you to add and save products from almost anywhere on the web to your shopping lists and wish lists with the easy-to-use Kaboodle button. The button automatically downloads the essential details of a product, including its image, short description, and price and saves it to your list of choice. To learn more about the Kaboodle button and all the other awesome features Kaboodle has to offer, Take the Tour of Kaboodle or jump right in by downloading the Kaboodle button now!"

I find kaboodle to be much more interactive then stumbleupon. So I hope you give it a try.

How to Use?

You can use kaboodle like you do stumbleupon. They have an easy to download toolbar.

Here is the link to the Toolbar:

http://www.kaboodle.com/zd/setup/setuphelp-ie.html?download=

If you don't want to download the toolbar you can share etsy items by going to the page you want to share... scroll down until you see the orange "share" button on the right. Once you click on that other options open, one of which is kaboodle. Use that.

In kaboodle you can create lists. Jewelry, fine art prints, holiday wish list etc. You name it you can make it and then when you share an item you can organize the items into your lists.
You are also given the opportunity to fill in a description and tags of the items you are sharing. It takes 30 seconds to do and can really help others find these items. So if you can fill those in when you are sharing.

Kaboodle also had ezines/blogs that you can do and share with friends. It is very interactive and fun.

*** Here are their facts and questions to answer ALL of your questions as to how to make a list, to how to share these items, how to bookmark etc.

http://www.kaboodle.com/zd/help/faq.html

*** FINAL NOTE *** I can not be held responsible for the content of this site, and we are not affiliated with kaboodle. As with most social bookmarking sites it is frowned upon to use them for self promotion or to spam with repeated submissions from the same place. Use these to share your favorite etsy shops and items but also use the site for all things you love.

Have fun with it!!
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

What is Stumbling and How you can Use Stumbleupon

2010-10-20T22:31:00.003-04:00

In our new Promotional Frenzy thread we are striving to promote each other's shops around the internet for maximum exposure to our shops.
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6656811&page=1

One site that is fun to use is www.stumbleupon.com

What is Stumble Upon?

It is basically a social bookmarking site. As you surf the web, or ETSY you can submit something you love to the site. It will store those bookmarks for you as "favorites". The nice thing is if you are on vacation you can go to any computer and still find your favorite items without having your own computer. Just log into your stumbleupon account to find them.

Once you have a collection of things bookmarked you can click on their green button "stumble" and the site will show you a list of items/sites that it thinks may interest you. This way you can find things you wouldn't normally "stumbleupon".

*** IMPORTANT** This site frowns upon self promotion. That isn't their goal/vision/purpose. And they can close your account if they find that is happening. They will close/disable your account if they believe you are abusing their site, or spamming.

How to Use Stumbleupon:

The easiest way is to download their toolbar. Here is the toolbar:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/download.php

You then go to the product page or website you like and want to share. Once on the page you want to share you can click the little green icon SU.

If that page or item has not been shared to the site yet you will see a screen asking for more input. The more information you provide the better visibility that item/page will gain. Keywords, and tags are important to be found. If you can enter some basic information and click save.

If the page HAS been shared to stumbleupon before then it is a matter of rating the item with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Doing this is just as important as sharing new items, because the more ratings an item receives the more visibility it will gain.

***You should be stumbling blogs you like, any website/product you like etc. Don't just stumble from etsy only, or only stumble a lot in a row because these habits/patterns will likely get your account closed.****

Without the Toolbar:

If you prefer to not use the toolbar they provide then Etsy does have a share feature within its site to make it easier. Once you are on the page you want to share, about halfway down on the right you will see an orange "share" button. Click on that and it will expand with a bunch of options. You can pick which venue you want to share with from there. Stumbleupon is one of the options, plus tumblr and several others.

When you are logged in, you can click on favorites at the top of the screen to see all the items you have shared.
If you want to find something new, click on the "stumble" button and it will give you a list of items that may interest you.

It is not required to have a huge following on stumbleupon to gain views. But let's face it, it will be more fun if we are able to network, connect and see things we all like. So if you want to find other stumblers, click on your username/profile at the top. You will see on the right "favorites" "followers" "following". Click following. Then towards the bottom right side is find other stumblers. Put in the name of each other to find your friends.

Stumbleupon has wonderful "help" tools to help you as you go.
Here is their guide on how to stumble:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/help/How_do_I_submit_a_site_to_StumbleUpon/

***FINAL NOTE *** This is not an endorsement of stumbleupon or stumblexchange and I am not responsible for their content.

Another site you might want to look at is: http://www.stumblexchange.com/
This site helps you exchange your stumbles with other users. So if you don't have a huge following yet you can use this site to help give a boost.

I hope this helps some.
It is fun, and exciting to see so many new items this way.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Tuesday - Promotional Frenzy

2010-10-19T00:08:00.002-04:00

Promotional Frenzies:

Find the Thread Labeled Monday Frenzy and read the 1st post of that thread to learn all the details.

Each shop will post 1 link to an item they want to get more exposure to. Please call out that you are adding an item to the list before editing the list. This way we can make sure that 2 people aren't editing at the same time and someone gets dropped from the list.

Things to Do To Prepare:

1. Pick out one item you want to have promoted and copy that link.

2. Go to http://www.craftcult.com/ At the very top of the screen there is "home" then "heartomatic" click on that tab. Below that is an option to sign in with your username, sign in. Then to the right of where you just signed in is a button "reset views" click on that. This way you will be able to see a clear jump in your views from this promotion.

3. Get ready to chat, have fun, and click some share buttons :)

Ways to Promote:

By promoting it can be blogging, tweeting, facebook, stumbleupon, kaboodle, tumblr, ANY social nework or in etsy threads etc.

1. Some choose to collect all the links and do one blog post highlighting all the items.

2. You can tweet or add the item to your facebook page but we do have quite a few links put out during this time I would recommend you use multiple venues to promote so that you don't overwhelm or frustrate your friends and followers.

3. Another site to consider:
Go to http://www.stumbleupon.com/ Sign up is real quick (free and easy)
Here is a blog post with all the details about how to use this site: http://galla15.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-is-stumbling-and-how-you-can-use.html

If you can download the toolbar then you will have a share button at the top of your internet screen. Anytime you are on a product page, click that share button and then put it into your favorites. Then over the next month as we keep doing this for each other, check your Google analytics and I bet you will see traffic from it!!

Here is the toolbar:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/download.php

4. http://www.kaboodle.com/ (again quick and free) Here is a blog post all about Kaboodle if you aren't familiar:
http://galla15.blogspot.com/2010/10/lets-get-kaboodling.html

Here is the link to the Toolbar:
http://www.kaboodle.com/zd/setup/setuphelp-ie.html?download=

5. http://www.tumblr.com/ The easiest way to use this is to go to the link you want to promote on etsy, then scroll down on the right side of the Etsy page you will see a "share" button. Click on that, and it will expand to a lot of options. Click Tumblr to share to it. It will walk you through the set up from there.

More options will be coming as we go. But this is a great start. You do not have to have all of these or do all of them they are just options.

See you on Tuesdays:
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6656811&page=58

Thanks.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

TREASURY Challenge

2010-10-17T23:35:00.005-04:00

If you have never done a treasury before I will help guide you through it. The hardest part is finding the perfect things to include. :) Please find our Treasury thread under team discussions and read the 1st post for all the rules.

You do not have to fill all the spots with shops from our team, but we require 12 of the 16 slots to be used from our team shops if you want maximum support and exposure. If you are unable or not quite ready to make a treasury you can still support by clicking on items in the treasuries, commenting on them, and help promote the links to your friends and on social networks.

How To Make A Treasury:

Etsy Storque article on how to make one:

http://help.etsy.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/82

1. On the etsy home page, page down until you see on the left, "ways to shop", under that is Treasury. Click on Treasury.

2. On the right of that screen you will see a blue button, "create a list" click on that.

3. Title: The next screen has a lot of blank options. 1st thing is to think of a title. Something catchy, unique, or meaningful would be good.

4. Description: Here you can write what inspired you to create the treasury. If you are highlighting our thread members you could put a link to our thread in this description.

http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6656811&page=27

5. Tags: To the right of description is a blue button that says add tag. This is just like the tags you use when you list an item in your shop. Use keywords to help people find your treasury. Add the tag and click add tag, repeat that until all the tag spots are full. Please put Promotional Frenzy into the tags to help us find all our treasuries.

If you didn't know this, Etsy puts out once a month, "Etsy Merchandising" articles.

http://www.etsy.com/storque/search/tags/from-etsys-merchandising-desk/

These articles discuss upcoming trends and holiday/events to be mindful of. Things like styles and colors to watch for are listed. Etsy tries to promote these particular lists. So if you can try to create treasuries based around those lists we have a higher chance of the treasury gaining visibility. These are the things Etsy wants to feature on the front page. So for example Octobers merchandising article talks about Halloween and fall items. So try to use those type of items in your treasury and then tag with those keywords.

6. Find the items: Now the fun part! Go through different shops and find items to use. Once you find an item you want to include you just copy the URL (www web address) and paste it into each box you see. There are 16 slots to fill. Once you fill all the spots Click the blue Save button at the bottom right.
For best results build your treasury around a theme. You can pick a color or a any theme you can think of like butterflies... then find photo's that all coordinate and look like a collection together. It is helpful to use photo's that have similar backgrounds for a more cohesive look.

It is always good to convo each person you include in your treasury that you have included them and provide them a link to the treasury. This way they can click, comment and help promote. They want the exposure and will usually help promote your treasury for you. If you have included non-team shops in the treasury, in your convo you could tell them the treasury if for a team you are on, and maybe help promote the team that way!

Helpful tips:

* Create a Mood

* Find Items that are well-made
* Choose some type of theme; colors, topic, and/or texture or material
* Try to fill it with a variety of mediums (to appeal to a wider audience), soaps, jewelry, food, knit etc.
* Make sure pictures are clear and the item is easy to see
* The consistancy of style of backgrounds in photos can make a difference too
* Also take into account the season and what seems to be in style currently (but not always necessary, sometimes your treasury can seek to SET trends)

Again you can use the etsy merchandising Storque articles for ideas of what theme, topic etc. to do.

Please have fun with this. Enjoy the opportunity to look through shops, discover new items, and promote.

Once you have saved your treasury post it in our TREASURY THREAD under the team discussions.

*** ONE FINAL NOTE *** Treasuries are used as a means to promote others. Etsy generally frowns upon treasuries that include yourself. You are allowed to put one item of your own in a treasury but they will not put that item on the front page. And many feel strongly that you shouldn't include it since the idea of a treasury is to feature others.

Etsy will not put items on the front page that have watermarks. If you put your shop name on your pics, or the date then it is unlikely you will get as much exposure.

Thanks.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Solo Promotional Frenzy - 30 minute Frenzy

2010-10-16T17:50:00.002-04:00

Solo promotional event. We will use the list on my blog of active shops, and go through it alphabetically for each person to have a turn.

Here is what you can expect. The promoting starts at 9pm Est time. It will last 30 minutes. Everyone in the thread will go to her shop, and post their favorite piece to the thread. Then everyone will help promote those items throughout the internet.

Ways to help promote:

1. Blog about this event and link to her shop.

2. Tweet about your favorite item from her shop

3. Share an item from her shop to Facebook

4. Share an item from her shop to http://www.stumbleupon.com/

5. Convo your friends to join us

6. Use any social network to help, and join in the thread to have fun.

There may be offers for specials during these 30 minute spot, so come out and join the fun and see what exposure and sales people get!

Janet

http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Blog Challenge Details

2010-10-15T00:03:00.006-04:00

For Blog Challenge day if you don't have a blog it is the day to start one. It is a day to update the list of shops from our team into your blog... and it is the day to BLOG! Write about something. Under our team, click on discussions and find the WEDNESDAY Blog thread. The very 1st post of this thread will tell you all the details you need to know about that week's challenge. It can change from time to time so please read that first post!!

If you don't have a list of our shops on your blog you should consider adding one. Here is a link to a blog post on how to add a list:

How to add the Shop List to Your Blog: http://artlifenewsblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-to-add-list-of-participating-etsy.html

You can write about any topic you like... but here are a few ideas to get you started.

1. Pick a shop from our thread to feature. Write what their shop sells, why you like them, and list 2-3 items that are your favorites. Post pictures to those items, and put a link below the pics.

2. Write about your experience so far in the thread. What you like, what you have learned, what there is to gain from it and why others shoudl join.

3. Friday Finds: Use the Etsy pounce feature, or a few of your favorite items in your etsy and write about those that you love. Write about the newest shop from pounce, and you enjoyed their shop. Always try to include 2-3 pics and links to those items.

4. Upcoming line/new Product - Write about the lastest creation you are working on and when they can expect to see it. Include some pics and links to your shop.
5. Highlight the next Frenzy for Tuesday, October 19th 9pm Est/Etsy in our thread.

6. Upcoming craft shows or other Events. BNR's coming up etc.

You can always write about anything going on personal, to give everyone a little insight into you and who you really are.

Good luck! Post the links to all of your new blog posts in our thread, and PLEASE comment on each others posts.

See you guys tomorrow night.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

New Promotional Frenzy Thread - Huge Opportunity

2010-10-11T20:53:00.007-04:00

Do you want more exposure to your etsy shop? Do you need more views, sales, and improved Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

A team on Etsy is starting to help you: "Promotional Frenzy"

We are a group/team of people wanting to combine our efforts to gain more than we could on our own. The heart of this group is for promotions. We are a very nice group, and supportive and will help each other as much as we can, but the idea is to gain more momentum to the shops who participate.

Each day I will post in the thread what to expect for that day, and you can find posts here in this blog that will describe in detail how to participate. So don't get overwhelmed. If this seems like a lot, just join in with the thread for that day and go one day at a time. This information is here to help answer all the questions that have come up but if it seems like too much it is ok... just join the thread and read about that days events. Take it one day at a time.

The ONLY requirement for this thread is that you are willing to promote others and can participate in at least ONE activity per week (approximately 30 minutes). Promoting can mean many things, you can help promote within etsy by creating treasuries of other shops, you can post within other etsy threads to help, or you can use social networks like twitter, stumbleupon, or a blog. It is NOT required that you do them all. But please understand that you get what you give. If only 4-5 of us within the thread do these things then none of us will see a noticeable impact on our shops. If you want to see a noticeable difference then each of these activites are highly recommened. And we wouldn't expect you to figure them all out and do them all in a few days either. It is ok if you don't have any set up to join us and get help with getting started.

There will be a variety of events to help everyone. The key is the more you give the more you will get. These events work best if done with consistency/regularly. So the more active you are the more you will see a difference. We will help walk you through how to read your google analytics and use sites like http://www.craftcult.com/ to see changes with your shop. If you already do some of these things on your own, we encourage you to join forces and do them with this thread. There IS power in numbers.

We encourage everyone to give 30 minutes a day to these activities. We will emphasize activites that will benefit YOU and your shop. As a way to help encourage and motivate people there will be opportunities each day to do something productive for your shop. Again these are NOT required, but highly encourage. And you do not have to participate every single day, just ONE EVENT PER WEEK. Most of us are online much longer than 30 minutes a day, so it is just a matter of setting 30 minutes towards the promotion of your shop.

In between these small events you are free to promote each other on your own, and chat and have fun.

This following is a list of goals we would like to strive for. Use this as motivation, and see the opportunity that these things could bring to you.
Again this is not required and can be done on different days but the more people who do these things each week the more impact we will all see in our shops. Don't freak out that you won't have time for this. It is only 10-30 minutes to do most of these. You do not have to do all of these all at once. Come in and try one or two and see how it goes and slowly work into other events as you go.

Monday: Promo Frenzy - Each shop will post 1 link to an item they want to get more exposure to, using the Monday Thread in our discussions. Just add the link to the bottom of the list that is started that day. PLEASE READ THE TOP POST OF EACH THREAD to learn the details. You must call out that you want to add to the list before changing the list. Make sure no one else is editing at the same time. Then we will each go through and promote that one item from each shop. By promoting it can be blogging, tweeting, facebook, stumbleupon, kaboodle, tumblr, ANY social nework or in etsy threads etc.

Tuesday: BNR Treasury Day. We have several people helping to run these. Right now the BNR is from 5pm - 9pm Est/Etsy time. We have 80-100 sales in these few hours, it is really hot. In our team, find the discussion for TUESDAY BNR thread and you will find all the details for each BNR. The rules may vary so you have to read that first post in the thread to learn what we are doing. This is a great opportunity to gain exposure within the Etsy Community
Wednesday: Blog Post day. This is a great opportunity to help spread the word about our BNR, thread frenzy etc. Write a blog post. The blog post can be about anything but try to mix it up and include the thread or shops from our thread when you can, since the point is to gain more visibility. If you don't have a blog yet this is a good opportunity to consider one, and to ask for help if you need it. We will have special blog posts from time to time so again, please READ THE 1ST post of each thread to learn what we are doing that week. You can find ideas for your blog here:

http://galla15.blogspot.com/2010/10/promotional-frenzy-blog-challenge.html

Thursday: List at least one item that day, relisting/renewing can count. But keep in mind that the more items in your shop the more visible you become on Etsy.   Find the thread for Thursday in our discussions, and post your new item to the list. Again please make sure no one else is editing the list when you add your item, so that no one is dropped off the list by accident. THEN go through the list and promote each new item through social networks.

Friday: Workshop Day!   Each  Friday will be a different topic. Find the thread for FRIDAY Workshop and read the very 1st post to find out what we are doing. The goal is to cover topics that will help us all improve our shops and take them to the next level. We will cover topics on improving our pictures, to tagging help, help writing descriptions, to how to read google analytics.
Saturday 9pm Etsy time (est):   OFF, just chat, post links, relax and recoup.

Sunday: OFF, just chat, post links, relax and recoup

We do have one other activity that runs every single day. TEAM TREASURIES! We have a separate thread in our discussions for TREASURIES. This thread will be restarted each week, so find the most recent date on the thread. This is a place to make and promote treasuries that are for our teammates. The rules to participate are on the very 1st post of the thread. It doesn't take but 5 minutes if that to help with these so please take the time each day to try to help.
Find tons of info. on creating treasuries here:
http://galla15.blogspot.com/2010/10/monday-treasury-challenge.html

Things you can expect from our thread:

1. Promotional Frenzy Hours (Mondays)- We will use these Social Networking sites to promote items in each others shops. We will most likely add others as we go.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/

http://www.twitter.com/

http://www.facebook.com/

http://www.kaboodle.com/

http://www.tumblr.com/

2. Blogging: We have set up a blogging network, where everyone has a blog list. The list is is a collection our team shops who have a list on their blog, we put their shop name in, and it is clickable to the etsy shop. This creates backlinks to all of the shops. The more backlinks you have to your shop the more search engines can find your shop and will help your SEO. You are not required to blog, but with this type of network you will see a huge difference from doing this. You are also NOT required to blog about the thread only. Although it is helpful if we do use our blogs to promote the thread and the shops within the thread since that will ultimately bring traffic to our shops it is NOT the only thing you can or should blog about. If you have never blogged before it is ok, again we are here to help you get started. Our list of shops is updated each Sunday, and only shops who have a blog and have the blog list of our shops will get onto our lists. This is about reciprocation.

How to add the Shop List to Your Blog:
http://artlifenewsblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-to-add-list-of-participating-etsy.html

3. Buy and Replace (BNR) Treasuries: The shops that participate in our events will be chosen for these treasuries. We will be holding a BNR often to help with sales and exposure. You are encouraged to help spread the links to these around the internet, click, and comment on these. Anyone can create a treasury and we encourage you to start one for the thread at any time. If you don't know what a BNR is.... basically we feature 16 of our team shops in it and they get to stay in the treasury until someone buys from them. Whoever buys from a shop will now replace that shop in the treasury and they will stay until they are bought from. It is a lot of fun, huge buzz, good exposure and we have 80-100 sales during these.
4. Treasury Frenzies: Even without front page hits, we will gain a lot of traffic from a treasury at the top of the "hot list". We have a wonderful system going on, where most of our treasuries are receiving 1000's of views! Find the Treasury thread under our discussions to participate.
Great info. on how to do this can be found here:
http://galla15.blogspot.com/2010/10/monday-treasury-challenge.html

***Feel free to share your social networking links, blog links, flickr links etc. And when someone posts a new item you can help promote that item then, you don't have to wait for an event to promote. The key is to stay for awhile and network and participate in all the events you can.****

Final note: if only a handful of us participate in these events there will not be a payoff. So nothing is required but if you want to see success it would be highly benefical to get involved and do what you can. The list of events is only a guide. You can still list any day you want, blog anytime you want etc. And please feel free to chat and have fun anytime.

Team Leaders that can help you with your questions:
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.angelaspaperart.etsy.com/
http://www.jqjewelrydesigns.etsy.com/

My Pledge for Holiday Boot Camp on Etsy

2010-10-08T16:08:00.000-04:00

I, __Janet (Galla15)___, pledge to participate in the Etsy Success Holiday Boot Camp to the best of my abilities. I vow to check in every week, do my homework and support my fellow Holiday Boot Campers. I will read the weekly newsletters and blog posts, check in on the weekly forum thread, read the weekly blog post, check off the checklists and salute the mascot. I promise to share what I've learned with those who need it, support my fellow Etsy indiepreneurs and, most of all, have a positive and persistent attitude. I understand that together we can spread the word about our handmade and vintage goods, making this holiday season a more unique and meaningful one to gift givers and give-ees everywhere!

How exciting is this? You are going to see huge changes in my shop over the next month or so. Please help support handmade and vintage goods by promoting Etsy shops for the holidays. Give your wish list to your friends and family.

I will try to write weekly in my blog as to what the new items are for my shop and what boot camp has us doing.

This week I am adding a new line of earrings to my shop that will match my Swarovski Rings.
Here is my 1st listing of earrings:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/58413443/peridot-crystal-galactic-dangle-earrings

These earrings pictured above will be added tonight!!
Keep an eye out for more button jewelry, and huge inventory influx.

Thanks.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Swarovski Ring Giveaway! Any Ring in my shop!!

2010-09-28T22:22:00.004-04:00

Very simple, easy giveaway. 3 ways to get entered.

1. You can also pop into this thread on Etsy and say Galla15 referred you for a 2nd entry into the giveaway.
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?page=998&thread_id=6624307

2. If you buy from someone on the list in that thread you will get 5 more entries into the giveaway. There is no minimum purchase requirement.

3. If you blog about this giveaway you will get 2 more entries into the giveaway.

This is for only 2 days, ends on the 30th at 1130pm EST/Etsy time.

I will make a list of those that leave comments, in the order of comment. Comment #1 ___ etc.
And then use random.org to draw the winning #. One comment per person, additional comments do not count.

If you win, you get to pick out any ring from my shop. Right now you can see my swarovski ring selection through my sold orders page the link is below. I will customize the size of the ring, and ship it to you Monday of next week.

Please share this blog, blog about the giveaway and tweet it between now and the 30th.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/galla15/sold

http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

Thanks.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

DIY Handmade Wedding Blog

2010-09-27T17:00:00.000-04:00

I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you about a new blog. It is a DIY Handmade wedding blog that will be promoting shops from Etsy that make items for weddings.

http://everythingweddingdiy.blogspot.com/

It is a beautiful blog run by http://www.bricheese.etsy.com/
She has gorgeous, natural home decor items in her shop.

Her wedding is in 2 weeks and she bought 100% of the items through Etsy and will be featuring those shops and items in her blog. So please check out her blog on a regular basis to see all the amazing things she has for her upcoming wedding.
I hope you love this blog and will follow her.

Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Ulixis Crafts - More Meaningful Gifts Etsy

2010-09-13T23:37:00.000-04:00

I recently stumbled upon a wonderful thread in the Etsy Forums called More Meaningful Gifts. You can find the details here:
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6624307&page=287

This thread has an amazing group of Etsy sellers, but today I want to highlight Ulixis Crafts who has been incredibly helpful to me.

She has 3 Etsy shops!
Her main Etsy shop is her jewelry. Beads, chains, wire, stones and glass!
http://www.etsy.com/shop/ulixis

http://www.etsy.com/listing/15459524/hold-me-brass-necklace-with-milky-white

Paper Ulixis is her 3rd shop filled with paper, ink, fibers, glues. Beautiful tags, and notebooks can be found there.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/PaperUlixis?ref=top_trail

Sew Ulixis is a shop filled with Fabric, quilt, cross-stitch and needle work.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/sewulixis

http://www.etsy.com/listing/56221306/connect-the-dots-tissue-cozy-pouch

Uli answered some questions to tell you about herself and her craft. I hope you enjoy reading about her.

Would you tell me how you got started in your craft?

Really, I've always been crafty. I remember spending days in the summer crafting with my aunt - my favourite used to be wreathes, cross-stitch & beading. But of course I sort of lost touch with my crafty side during high school - too busy with science, math & boys! But after spending some time in University, I was itching to get my hands on something.

Why did you pick your craft?

I started out with notebooks because I LOVE notebooks. I have at least half a dozen on the go right now - blank & lined. But then I soon gravitated back to my old loves: cross-stitch & beading... and eventually picked up sewing because I've always admired my aunt (who used to make her own clothes).

http://www.etsy.com/listing/30900248/harvest-gold-mini-notebooks-set-of-3

When did you start?

I've been crafting for about 3 years now (not counting my childhood days).

Any interesting tid bits?

--> My degree will be an MSc - I'm looking at the link between obesity & asthma. In other words, I work with fat & airway muscle cells, seeing how the fat will affect the muscle's activity.

--> I just recently started adding paint to my mixed media work & I am LOVING it!

--> I'm Canadian & a sheltered one at that. I've only been out of the country 4 or 5 times - and only driving into the US. Actually, I haven't traveled that much within Canada either ... & I've never been in a plane (except once - a small propeller plane from Toronto to North Bay - my aunt [not the same one this time :P] works for the airline & the plane was heading back empty otherwise).

--> I'm a member of the MSOE team (mad scientist of etsy).

--> Pat & I have been together for 9 years. :)

Thanks Uli for all of your patience, help and support.
Janet

Wonderful Etsy Shop and Etsy Forum Thread

2010-09-12T11:36:00.000-04:00

I wanted to write up a quick blog post about an Etsy shop I was recently made aware of.
Cyber Sewing Fairy: http://www.etsy.com/shop/cybersewingfairy

If you have kids you should look into this shop for Halloween costumes. The owner of this shop, Linda, was recently featured on
http://www.parenting.com/gallery/Child/Click-to-Buy-Homemade-Halloween-Costumes/15/

Please check out her wonderful feature, and leave a comment there.

Also, I wanted to take a minute to mention a thread through the Etsy forums again. It is a wonderful thread. There are over 40 amazing etsy artists participating in this thread. They have over 3,500 sales!!

It is amazing in there, like a family. Please check out the thread, and let them know you found them through Galla15. More Meaningful Gifts.
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6624307&page=133

Hope to see you there
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

An Amazing Forum Thread and Opportunity on Etsy

2010-09-10T14:17:00.000-04:00

I joined a thread in the Etsy forums about 4 months ago. It is called More Meaningful Gifts or MMG. The people in this thread are like a close knit family. This isn't like your other forum threads, they will literally read every single post and reply. They are incredibly supportive.

You can find the thread here:
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6622259&page=98

This is their 2 year anniversary. Over 3000 sales total!! To celebrate this 2 years of success they are holding a contest. The details of the contest can be found here:
http://www.myhandmaderegistry.com/group/moremeaningfulgifts/forum/topics/mmg-2nd-anniversary-contest?commentId=2464761%3AComment%3A37227&groupId=2464761%3AGroup%3A125

If you can post a HELLO in the thread, and say I referred you (galla15) I would so appreciate it. Just post a comment here if you did post in the thread.

If you buy in (no minimum purchase) it would greatly help me, but then you can also be a part of this wonderful family and join the contest!

I hope to see you in the MMG thread.

Thanks.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Swarovski Ring Giveaway Winner!!!

2010-08-30T19:50:00.002-04:00

Thank you everyone who supported me, and participated in the Swarovski Ring Giveaway!!

Thank you Vegancraftastic for hosting the blog giveaway. It was wonderful.
http://vegancraftastic.blogspot.com/

http://www.etsy.com/shop/Vegancraftastic?ref=top_trail

So here is the announcement of the winner: Ana Belen - fisiwoman

CONGRATS on your win. ;)

http://www.etsy.com/listing/54827775/handcrafted-swarovski-button-ring

As a special thank you to everyone who participated, took the time to look, post, and promote I am going to offer a special!

If you want 2 rings, I will do a BOGO! Buy 1 ring, get the 2nd ring of equal or lesser value at 50% off!!! OR 20% off of your order!!

Just put "giveaway" in the notes to seller during the checkout.

Thanks so much. Custom orders are welcome too.

Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Swarovski Ring Giveaway and Blog Feature!!

2010-08-24T12:56:00.000-04:00

I was contacted by a wonderful Etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/Vegancraftastic
Their shop specializes in handmade accessories for crafters, pins, notebooks, crafting patterns, and more!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/53902732/chubby-robin-pin-bird-button-by

They host Blog Giveaways and chose my shop as their giveaway this week! I am so excited about this joint venture. Vegancraftastic's work has been featured in both Knitty and Yarn Forward Magazine!

Please give their blog some love and check out the giveaway they are hosting. 47 entries in the 1st few hours!

http://vegancraftastic.blogspot.com/

If you follow their blog leave a comment because that is one way to enter the giveaway. There are 7 ways to enter this giveaway make sure you leave a comment on their blog with one of your entries to win a Swarovski Ring from my shop.

Thanks everyone.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

New Handmade Registry Website - My Handmade Registry

2010-08-22T17:57:00.000-04:00

I received a convo on Etsy today that I was featured on the front page of My Handmade Registry. You can find the website at: http://www.myhandmaderegistry.com/

It is a wonderful concept. Just like there are bridal/wedding registries and baby shower registries where you can create a wish list of items you want to receive... now there is a handmade registry. Can you imagine how wonderful your birthdays, special occassions and holidays could be, now that you can share a list of the handmade items you want? Now you can find that extra special gift for a loved one by seeing their handmade wish list! I am so excited about this website.

This site also offers interactive features such as groups. You can interact with others, and help find niches. For instance there is a group for "My $5000 handmade Wedding". The creator of the website Dorana had her wedding featured in an Etsy storque article from this! http://www.etsy.com/storque/article/9297/

There are opportunities to be a sponsor, to advertise, and see other members. Huge potential for fun and gift giving.

I hope you will check out this website.
This is the necklace that made their front page.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/53843918/agoya-shell-mother-of-pearl-button

Thank you so much for the feature.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

How to Improve your Product Photo's Part 3 of 3!!

2010-08-17T15:16:00.001-04:00

Staging and Styling Your Product

Backgrounds: Shoot against a background that will complement your item. I think one of the mistakes many make are having backgrounds that are too busy and distract from your product. The product should be the star. Go to the fabric store and just have fun searching for several options, consider different textures. Go to a scrapbooking store and try different patterns of pieces of paper.

Think about color: What color background will create the mood that you are going for? If you're going for a sophisticated look, a monotone look would be good . If your work has a more earthy feel, natural… then consider sand, or seashells and things of that nature. Simple white backgrounds can be great for just about any type of item as well, and this will put the focus on your item. Have fun, and experiment.

Think about unique props that could enhance your product. I have seen people use a sheet of music, to a book, the edge of a glass to hang earrings… take some time to search the internet and your favorite magazines to see what you like.

Consider including a photo that shows the item being used. This will give the potential customer important information, such as what the item is and how big it is. It will also allow them to envision the item on themselves or in their home. I have eyeglass leashes in my shop where I show the leash on a pair of eyeglasses.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/39394168/eyeglass-lanyard-green-gray-pink

Angles: This really just requires you experimenting. Take a necklace and carefully place the chain in a snake design, then experiment with where your camera will sit. Play with the height of the camera by taking pics straight on, take some looking down onto your piece, take them from the side on an angle. Try to create movement in the piece.

Cropping: Photos that crop in interesting places create movement in the photo. If your item is symmetrical, cropping off 1/3 of the item will still show what the item is, create intrigue and show more details of the item.

Avoid crops that are too "tight” this will make it hard for a person to imagine the full object, and will make the picture feel squashed. Etsy will automatically crop your photos for the thumbnails when you upload them. Consider while you are taking your pictures that vertical shots will crop mostly from the top, and a bit from the sides, and vice versa for horizontal shots.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/53767441/turquoise-mother-of-pearl-button

Another trick is to cross promote with your photos. For me I am planning on showing multiple rings in a shot. To show the variety, and choices and if the customer really likes a ring in the photo they can find it in my shop.

Additional photos: Your potential customer can't touch your item or try it on. Show them everything they want to know in the photos! USE all 5 slots on Etsy. Show a close up of the beads, show a cropped pic of the clasp, show the back of a piece, and sides. Show one shot of the entire piece as a whole.

Consider the 5 senses of humans. If you are selling soap or incense, that are strawberry… take a photo with a strawberry with a drop of water on it! Now that will get someone thinking of the smell and taste. When possible try to show the size, I see bead sellers place a coin in the shot to help convey size. Get creative though, and use any object that is very familiar, it doesn’t have to be an ugly coin.

Upselling: This is tricky. For jewelry if you are selling a necklace and have a separate listing for a matching bracelet use the photo’s to show both pieces together. And place a link in your listing to the other item. The tricky part is to be extremely clear in your description what a person gets in that listing. Showing both the necklace and bracelet could mislead a customer to think they get both for the one listing.

You can find the 1st part of this series here:
http://galla15.blogspot.com/2010/07/tips-on-how-to-improve-your-product.html

The 2nd part of this series can be found here:
http://galla15.blogspot.com/2010/07/tips-for-improving-your-product-photos.html

I hope this has helped some of you :) Please come back and comment and share how these have helped. Share your lastest ideas here in the comments!

Thanks.
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Swarovski Ring Twitter Giveaway Winner!!!

2010-08-15T13:27:00.000-04:00

Well I decided to do a giveaway on Twitter and had read about other giveaways..... I decided 1000 retweets would do it. LOL It took over a month to get there.

So this took longer than I thought it would, but it was a lot of fun. I think it helped me connect to more of my twitter followers. I appreciate all of you for helping, supporting and following.

So the winner is: http://twitter.com/wildflower00

Please contact me through my etsy shop - http://www.galla15.etsy.com/ so that we can work out the details.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/53202457/swarovski-elements-button-ring-black

Not to worry, if you didn't win.. because I saw that you were tweeting your little heart out I can't let you all go away empty handed. I am going to offer 25% off to any of my twitter followers as a special thank you.
You have to put "Twitter giveaway" into the notes to seller at the checkout to get the 25% off. I will refund the 25% off via paypal. This special discount is good for one week. Next Sunday the 22nd at midnight I will no longer offer the discount.

So if you saw something you just love, or that would make a perfect gift.... think ahead and get that holiday gift now! 1/4 of the price off!!

Thanks to everyone for your support! I hope to hold more of these, next time will be through facebook. I have people complaining they don't use twitter and they want to win :) So keep an eye out for my facebook contest.

Here is my facebook fan page if you want to follow:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/edit/?id=41217190843#!/pages/Lothian-MD/Trinkets-N-Whatnots/41217190843

Thanks everyone!
Janet
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

Tips for Improving Your Product Photos Part 2 of 3!!

2010-07-31T17:58:00.000-04:00

LIGHTING

Now that you know how to use your camera to get accurate pictures, you need to learn how to play with lighting to create dramatic photo’s.

Many people prefer natural lighting and will wait for the perfect, sunny day to go outside and take pictures. For me that just doesn’t work with my schedule, and I don’t want to go out in the heat or the cold. So I invested in a light box. A light box helps distribute the lighting evenly so it reduces harsh shadows. You can make your own lightbox easily or buy one fairly cheap on sites like ebay. They come as kits with the lights, and several backdrop options.

Here is a great article on how to make your own box if you would prefer that:

http://www.studiolighting.net/homemade-light-box-for-product-photography/

I have my lightbox on my kitchen island and two table top lights setup on each side of the box. The bulbs are daylight balanced compact fluorescent bulbs. The table top lights can hold 5 bulbs total, and each bulb is 5000k. This type of bulb is low heat and creates a nice natural light. Most setups are 3 main light sources, with 500 watts on the top and then 250 watt bulbs on each side.

Another important note is that other light sources can interfere with the colors in your photos. So it is important to only use the lights for your setup and no others. For instance, my light tent and light sources are on the kitchen island but I never turn on the overhead light in the kitchen while doing the photographs. I learned that tip in the forums a long time ago and I think it is one many don’t know about, but if your light sources are mixed it will affect the colors of your photograph.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/44538133/new-swarovski-elements-golden-shadow

You should experiment with where you place your lighting in relation to your product. For instance, when shooting pearls if you place your light on top it will actually help create more dimension. The pearls will appear more round and full with that type of lighting and only one light for pearls.

Did you know you generally shouldn’t you flash with your product photos? The flash tends to create harsh shadows, and reflections that are distracting. Especially when shooting close ups.

The key to getting a photo you love is to have fun and play around with the setup. Take 10 or more photo’s of each item. You will want to use 5 of those for your etsy listing so having a lot to choose from will help. Look at the shadows and reflections. Maybe you want a soft reflection of your piece in the shot, so experiment with that.

Here is a great tip, once you learn the best set up for yourself get a log book out and take notes on all of the details. If you have certain angles for rings, and other angles for necklaces write it all down. This will save you time since you won’t have to experiment every time in the future. Write down where you set the lights, how many lights you were using, where you positioned the camera etc.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/49832759/czech-glass-beaded-necklace-grey-brown

The next blog post is going to be longer. It has a TON of information on how to position your items, ideas on props, backgrounds, how to play with angles and create movement. Should be a lot of fun. Please comment on your ideas, and experiences so far with the tips.

THANKS
Janet
http://www.galla15.etsy.com/
http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/

Tips on How to Improve Your Product Photos Part 1 of 3

2010-07-28T02:17:00.004-04:00

Part 1: Things to do to Improve Your Product Photo’s

I am not a photography expert, but I have done an incredible amount of research in order to improve the photos of my jewelry. I strive for clear, crisp, professional looking photo’s where a person can accurately see what they are buying. Although most of my knowledge is in perfecting photographs of jewelry this could be applied to your own craft.

First, you have to learn about your camera and understand the features. Since each camera is different these ideas are just to help give you a direction. Look up your camera manual and look for these specific features and experiment. I am going to try to break down info and not use a lot of fancy terminology so please understand this is not meant to be technical, and again I am not a professional photographer.

Here is an example of one of my FIRST pics:

Here is a picture now of a product after I experiemented with these things:

http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

1. Aperature: This is simply the opening of your lens. It controls how much light will get in for your images. Generally the smaller the number is the larger the opening is. The aperature is expressed as an F (don’t ask me why LOL) so you should see something along the lines of F2.8 or F/2.9 etc. If you are shopping for cameras a good range to look for is F1.8 - F16. Basically you need to find where these settings are on your camera and experiment with which setting will give you the truest light. (reference: http://www.photoxels.com/tutorial_aperture.html )

2. White Balance: Have you ever had a picture come out yellow or with blue hues or other shades you don’t want and didn’t see in person? Then white balance is the issue. White balance allows you to tell the camera which object in the room is white and supposed to come out white in the picture, then the camera can tell the difference between the current color of that object and the correct color of a white object. And then shift all colors by that difference.

3. Macro Setting: Most cameras have a little flower icon on them. This is your macro settting. It helps your camera focus in on small objects. When trying to capture a close up this is the mode you should have your camera in. One note, it takes a little while for the camera to adjust when switched to this mode. You can help by putting your hand in front of the lens to get it to focus.

4. No flash! Most of the time flash will create a harsh lighting, or reflections, and shadows that aren’t very appealing. This is especially true for jewelry, sparkly items. If you use flash when taking a picture of a watch face you will see the glare in the watch face instead of the actually numbers and hands.

One last tip for this post is to use a Tripod. If your photo’s are fuzzy it could be from movement of the camera. Keeping the camera still will help a lot. Next week I am going to go into detail about lighting. Where to have your lights, what type of lights, how many lights!! Lights lights lights! I will talk about lightboxes, how to make them yourself or where you could buy them. For now, find your manual and experiment with these features. I would really love to hear what you find on your camera, and if these make a difference in your photo’s.

THANKS! This is Part 1 of 3. (Part 2 is lighting, Part 3 is staging/props)

Janet

http://www.galla15.etsy.com/

http://www.trinketsnwhatnots.com/