Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Notes from the end of a year

First off, thank you for all the good wishes regarding my house hatred.  We're better now; it's forgiven, but it won't be forgotten.

New plumber came out, looked at the problem, figured out what it was, fixed it and was gone in 90 minutes, having cost less for the entire visit than the old plumber would have cost to walk in the house.

I have a new plumber.

I also have to do something serious about the grout on the bathroom tile, because it looks awful with all this new shiny chrome!


Today was spent trying to get things organized for next year.  When you start a business (handmade, online, anything I'd assume), no one really tells you how much of that business is no longer doing the thing you liked doing.

So today I made new banners for both my Etsy shops, and I'm working on rewriting my shop announcements.  My goal for 2015 is to continue to build my handmade business, and to do that, I need for my online presence to look more professional.  Etsy is enormous, and getting bigger all the time, and if someone drops into my shop to look at one item, I want it to be attractive enough for them to stay and ramble around a bit, and maybe find something.

The handmade banner is a stock freebie that I found, and I'm going to change it at some point soon to colors that I like better, but I really liked the layout so I did it anyway just to have a new one.  The vintage banner is actually a slice of a photo from the Downton Abbey exhibit, because I'm still not over all that luscious beading.


I recently joined a group called Thrive, for people trying to grow their Etsy shops.  I don't generally like to spend money to be told how to do something, but the first set of suggestions have been really helpful -- I rewrote a lot of tags and titles in the handmade shop, and while I haven't gotten any more sales (but it is the week after Christmas), when I do a search using terms people would use to describe my items, I'm generally now on the first search page.

So that's something.  They have to find your work to be able to buy your work.

Tonight will be a quiet evening in on the couch, something good on the Netflix with a bottle of prosecco and a pint of Cherry Garcia.  It's the simple things.

Have a Happy New Year, everyone.  See you in 2015!

4 comments:

Linda L said...

Happy New Year to you and best wishes in growing your Etsy business.

Carolyn (Diary of a Sewing Fanatic) said...

Have a wonderful new year too! See you in 2015!

Vicki said...

Best wishes to you too. Hope 2015 brings all the best things!

KellysSewing said...

Happy New Year!! Best of luck with your shop.