Ooo carla your collars are beautiful! Everyone has said go to Soho, my boyfriend is planning a stag day for the groom so I will be able to spend a whole day to myself finding craft fairs and cute little shops :)
SNS is a team and it stands for Saturday Night Specials. If you want to participate you offer a special in your shop, totally optional. The team is great! It has helped me boost sales and views on Saturdays that I have participated.
Thank you everyone, I will send your love and thoughts to my family. The positivity here as really helped me a lot.
SNS, I've never made a coupon but want to, I’m just not sure how to promote it or who to give it to. Do you think this SNS would help? Is that what you do? Or do you change the price in the edit section of the item(s) you wish to be on sale?
Evening all. First of all, Mori I send my condolences to you xxx
I have been quite productive today. Finished off filling in a huge form re: my health circumstances and finally got it posted off, posted an order for an ACEO (or rather my mum went to the Post Office as I am not capable of walking that far), finished off a pair of upcycled cushion covers for my bedroom, and cut some quilt squares for something I am making for a friend.
Quite surprised with all that I have managed to do today, will probably pay for it tomorrow!
Glad you had a productive day, Jen! I guess you just have to do what you can when you feel up to it, and rest your body when you can't. I have a friend who has fibromyalgia and often gets frustrated that she can't do as much as she wants to in her day.
I had my first day off in 12 days yesterday, hooray! I spent the whole day at my friend's house, it was lovely. Ended up talking about work, but she also makes doll clothes so we tend to bounce ideas off each other, and help try and motivate each other. I have a market in six weeks and I feel so unprepared, I hope I can get everything done in time.
I wanted to take today off as well but a heap of stuff sold out of my store over the past two days, so I think I need to do even a half day sewing.
I love productive days, when you feel like you have actually done something. I agree with Mon, you do what you can and take care of your health first. Its ok to rest. My aunt has to do kidney dialysis for 4 hours a day and she gets frustrated that she can not travel like she had always wanted to. But she is still an amazingly positive person and takes every day as a positive day. I admire her strength.
I have been actually working on something for myself. My first self project...ever. I am making a pillow that says coffee in Japanese and English. It kinda looks like one of my scrolls, maybe I will make a few to put on my store, after my candles and my hairclips, I need to clone myself!!!
Mori: We do SNS as well, haven't made sales from it, but our views and faves skyrocket each week, and we're quite lucky in that we get featured in a lot of treasuries. We put it down as free advertising and exposure, and it's a great place to chat on a sunday morning (for me, as we're in Australia), without having to wake the Mr up and annoy him instead lol As for how we do it, we just use a coupon code for 10% or 20% off each week, active it at 5pm etsy oclock and then deactive it at 6am the following morning (good for me as it's 830am then 930pm) :D
Kelly and Adam, how do you promote the % off? just at the SNS team? or do you repost items, post new items post about it on twiter or a blog? or everything you can to get yourself out there? I'm new to coupon codes...
I got out of work early today. I lost four hours of pay (boo) but I took the opportunity to photograph six items for my shop (yay). I'm going to get back on track with listing one a day. That gives me almost a week's worth of listings and time to make more during that time.
Speaking of getting out of work early, this is our slow period at work. I work in newspaper advertising and we were hit hard with the recession. Several people in my dept. were laid off. I thank my lucky stars that I survived every layoff. But, when the economy dips the local businesses tighten their belts and stop spending money on advertising. This is my plug to ask people to do business with their local, hometown businesses and read their community newspaper. They employ your friends and neighbors.
@Mori: We use our twitter and blog, plus add it to our shop announcement for the night. I also make treasuries which I then promote in other treasury teams that I'm a member of. Same with any other team that has a promotions thread.
Coupon codes are pretty easy to do, I find just doing a flat discount on the shop is the easiest way. We can't afford to do free shipping deals as it's expensive here in Aus. The help section has a great answer to how to make them if you haven't read it already :) http://www.etsy.com/help/article/349
Kelly and Adam, how do you ship your prints? I would have thought you'd be able to send at least the 5x7 as a large letter, even with some card to help keep it flat. I try to pac my items as flat as possible and send the majority of my items internationally as letter merchandise, and don't pay more than $5 in shipping, a lot of the time even less if I can get it under 50g (which ends up being under $3).
@Mon: Our 5 x 7 and 8 x 10's go as a large letter :) Rigid mailers (and they're not light, straight over the 50gm threshold there) with protective stuff on the inside. Free shipping to the US would cost us $8 though and we're not willing to take that hit :) Our 4 x 6 prints go as a small letter, but again, the rigid mailer is what kills us in weight.
That's fair enough. I rarely go over 250gm with my packages so the majority of things can be shipped for under $5.50 internationally, and that's the cost of shipping and the rigid envelope. Any other packaging of the item itself I absorb into the price of the item. I just thought I'd ask as I did a free shipping deal for cyber monday last year, and it ended up far more profitable to me than any 10 or 15% off sale I've done. Worked out to be less than 10% in costs of the overall sales that day
I have been doing some journaling this afternoon! Not something I'm going to turn into items as it's a personal project, but really good to get back in the creative chair so to speak!
Very tired now though and going to have a rest :) x
Hi guys, just dropping by the team and loving reading all the chats going on here! Jacque, I second Mori - treasury sounds interesting, could you give us a bit more info?
Definitely! I'm trying to set another one for March 1. Basically the treasury is a collection of shops who are giving away 1 item. We all promote the treasury which brings a lot of exposure to all of our shops. People must comment on the treasury to win. At the end, I pick a name at random and that person wins the entire treasury!
Afterwards, I'll contact all the shop owners and give them the name/address of the winner and we all send our items to the winner.
