There is quite a difference between hoping and doing. Hoping is waking up each morning and hoping that something different will happen to change the direction of my desire to succeed. Eventually, each day would drag me down and hoping never seemed to work.
Doing is quite diffferent from hoping. Doing is setting up a plan for success and actually doing something about it. Doing is not placing all eggs in one basket. Doing is setting up a plan to maximize the ability to succeed. Doing is not just having a shop on Etsy (as some people do succeed quite well with just Etsy, but I haven't figured Etsy out quite yet as it is my worst performing outlet).
Doing, for me, is having retail (Etsy, My website: www.gumpcards.com), wholesale (to numerous stores), consignment and direct sales. Only, with a balance of all thoses efforts, success came to me.
With wholesale, I am able to visit all the shops that carry my products and move product around to maximize the shop's success selling my products. Some products sell better in one shop than another, so I will swap products from one store to another.
Also, I write a successful Blog (www.enjoyestespark.com/blog), have a twitter account (www.twitter.com/enjoyestespark) with almost 4,000 followers and also have a Facebook Page (www.facebook.com/enjoyestespark) with over 23,000+ friends following my Facebook Page. I also have another 2 websites, one for my town (www.enjoyestespark.com) and Outdoor Eyes (www.outdooreyes.com) that promotes all of my products.
Having a reach with many different websites and social media is a helpful key to success.
I also run contests on my Facebook Page and I will write another post on that topic for my next post.
Hope the above has helped someone with some of my ideas.
Mel
