tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87637739887684991592011-12-29T07:59:25.376-08:00adshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00803330479103816397noreply@blogger.comBlogger2681100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8763773988768499159.post-22295787938385515102011-12-16T12:06:00.000-08:002011-12-29T07:56:18.879-08:00

pompod-123-copmetallic-1, originally uploaded by 11BOLDstreet.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Many handmade sellers are skeptical of free shipping, because free shipping isn't free for the seller. This attitude though ignores the psychological aspects of how you set your prices. Here are the two most common scenarios for free shipping:Always Free - The seller offers free shipping all the time. In this scenario the seller has to build the cost of shipping into the price of the items.Free

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button clutch :: interior, originally uploaded by Saídos da Concha.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Christmas tree soap ornament set, originally uploaded by AquarianBath.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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With Black Friday and Cyber Monday at hand here are my tips to running a successful sale. Feel free to reply with your own ideas.ON ETSY OR OTHER SHOP1. Edit your shop banner to announce the sale. This can be fancy or just adding a line of text in an eye catching color.2. Also add text describing your sale to your shop announcement AND your Etsy profile3. Edit your profile image to announce the

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Women today are more fashionable in their dress for women and all the dresses look good and in this article, we'll see on the wear women's clothing on all interior, lingerie, shape, sportswear and more. Women have to give more importance to inner wear underwear instead on other garments. While inside the dress will not, but plays an important role. Women need some clothing that covers and

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Socks are one of the garments to be fading into the dim past. Today, many office workers do not bother to "dress" for work as they did 30 years ago. Today in office environments more than to see men and women in jeans and t-or the majority of women wear a blouse, but the days seem to have passed when most women wore stockings, corsets, skirts and blouses or dress. Is this a byproduct of the

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To see if the bra fits, ask yourself. How do you feel? Do you feel pressure in a certain area around your chest? Or is it too loose bra? Every time you raise your hand in your bra below to upload? From these tests a few, you will be able to judge if the fit is right or wrong. Some bras are on the side panels and cable, which can make you feel uncomfortable, because if the setting is not correct,

adshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00803330479103816397noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8763773988768499159.post-44311379323324885522011-10-30T11:05:00.000-07:002011-10-30T11:05:31.663-07:00

Many meetings, organizations, families and individuals who disagree on this subject: "If women wear pants?" Many are of the opinion that Christian women who wear pants are not saved. Others think that any of that. So where this division and resentment come from? Is it a question of hermeneutics, how should we interpret this Scripture? "Women do not use that" belongs to "a man, not man wear

adshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00803330479103816397noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8763773988768499159.post-41294815885638342202011-10-21T12:43:00.000-07:002011-12-29T07:56:18.880-08:00

110bch, originally uploaded by River Valley Design.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Before Etsy switched their default search to relevancy you could pay $.20 to renew an item and get bumped to the top of the search results (which benefited larger sellers who could afford to spend the money to renew dozens of times a day). Relevancy search hasn't been a benefit to every seller but it is a much more fair system for sellers of all sizes, the quality of your titles and tags matters

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hello..

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I originally wrote this as a section of my Squidoo lens "Using Etsy Search Ads to Promote Your Shop" but I think it's so important I want to post it here too. While this is written for the new Etsy Search Ads it applies equally to Google Adwords, Project Wonderful, or any other advertising you run. To get the most for your money and to be the most effective you have to look objectively at the

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Blue stripes stud earrings, originally uploaded by KooKooCraft.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Search Ads on Etsy started this morning. The grand experiment has begun and I hope it's a grand success as well.I've put together a tutorial lens on Squidoo all about Search Ads including a lot of how to set them up and my personal thoughts on choosing keywords and evaluating your ad results (seriously, I put a lot of thought into the evaluation section and I think it's a good method for a more

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It's an unpleasant fact of life that things aren't always fair. As a small handmade business you have to compete with bigger businesses with bigger budgets and lower prices, more successful and experienced small businesses, and sheer diversity of products available on the market. It can be frustrating and depressing at times. There's also nothing you can do about it.What you can do something

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When I first posted about looking at Etsy Relevancy objectively it was about a week later. It's now 45 days out and how is my shop doing? Well sales are up over this time period last year but there were things going on last year that affected my ability to make, list, and relist items so it's hard to tell how badly that affected my sales over this time frame last year. My sales are also up over

adshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00803330479103816397noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8763773988768499159.post-65162005759609511022011-09-21T20:40:00.000-07:002011-12-29T07:56:18.882-08:00

Etsy is launching their new search ad program but there seems to be a lot of confusion about some basics on online advertising so here are some definitions of common ad terms. Etsy's new ad program works a lot like Google's Adwords search ads so you can apply a lot of information about Adwords to Etsy Search Ads.Impression - When your ad is seen. So 5,000 impressions means your ad is seen 5,000

adshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00803330479103816397noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8763773988768499159.post-63813119896686882172011-09-08T13:23:00.000-07:002011-12-29T07:56:18.882-08:00

The helpful folks at Handmadeology (another great resource for handmade business owners) have ut together a free report on Etsy Relevancy. You do need to give them your email address for their mailing list but you can unsubscribe after getting the report if you really don't want it.

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I put off writing this article for a couple weeks to see how relevancy is working and work out what I think works and doesn't work. First of all I want everyone who hasn't read it yet to go read my posts SEO and Your Customers and Being Seen is Not Enough for some more background on my thoughts on how your writing effects your customers and why ranking well in search shouldn't be your only goal.

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Digging into the statistics for your business can give you a lot of valuable information. Today I decided to figure out what days of the week people buy the most from my shop. This information can help me better plan when to list new item, run ad campaigns, and whether a sale is likely to be successful. I took all my sales data from the last year and broke it down into the percentage of sales for

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Back around February I started making some changes to my Etsy listings. I started adding cute little stories the the start of every listing. It was a disaster.My traffic didn't change, the number of visitors didn't change, my Google rankings stayed about the same but my sales tanked. For the first month or so I chalked it up to being a slow time of year but then one of my usually busy months was

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Bird Tango Mirrors with Packaging, originally uploaded by Hi Ni.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Are you panicking over Etsy's change to make relevancy search the default? Should you be? Visits can fluctuate widely from day to day for reasons that have nothing to do with Etsy's internal search. To really see what's going on you need to look at only visits coming from Etsy's internal search. Here's a quick way to check if it has helped or hurt you. For this you need Site Search tracking set

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There's recently been a lot of stress in the Etsy community over the search being switched from Recency to Relevency. I'm not stressing. Why? Because the same things that help you in the Etsy relevancy search are also the things that help you in Google searches and if you've read this blog enough you know that I think Google is what you should be focusing on.The first page of any Etsy search is

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Large Landscape Pendant - Pearl, Carnelian and Black Moonstone, originally uploaded by grayraven.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Users come first. That should be your number one rule whether you use Etsy, Artfire, or a self-hosted webstore. What this means is that while you should be using important keywords in your titles and descriptions, those are useless if your customers are turned off by the way your titles and descriptions are written or how your photos look they aren't going to buy no matter how well you rank in

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I'm currently working on a wholesale jewelry order however it's not one of my standard designs. Not even close in fact. My usually jewelry designs are sea creatures not food however I was contacted about doing a large number of vegetable earrings. One of my twitter friends who also makes jewelry (but not in polymer clay) wanted some pieces to sell at a local festival that was geared towards it's

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Bridesmaids Earrings - Opal, Chalcedony and Iolite, originally uploaded by grayraven.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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I'm giving the Handmade Business Blog it's own twitter account. If you follow my personal twitter account @Noadi I will still announce there new posts but I'll now be posting not just new blog posts but also business how to related stuff on the new account @HandmadeBizBlog. I hope that this does two things A: gives people more access to me about business related topics and B: keeps my personal

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SEO is something people are always confused about on the Etsy forums and elsewhere that handmade business people hang out. I'll be honest, even to a total web geek like me it can be confusing. SEOMoz which is a great SEO consulting company has a Free Beginners Guide to SEO on their website and it's really free, you don't even have to sign up for anything to get it.I also highly recommend

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I've written before about how important it is to keep reevaluating what you are doing and keeping your business fresh. I like to go through my shop every 3 months and make sure everything it as good as it can be and see if anything needs changing. I generally do this at the end of March, June, September, and December (after the holiday rush). Well I got a little behind so I'm just now working on

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It's been a while since I've done a Link Roundup but I thought this was a good time to do one with the launch of Google+ (yes, I'm on) and many sites on Google and elsewhere launching major redesigns. In fact Blogger which hosts this blog and is owned by Google has a fantastic new look if you use the Blogger in Draft feature that lets you try new features before they roll out to everyone.So this

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I'm a big fan of using video to promote your business. We humans are very visual animals, this is one reason good photos are so important when you're selling handmade products. When the photos are also moving that grabs our attention even more.Now one of the problems with using YouTube for promotion is that usually the only place you can put a link is in your description and many users ignore the

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Happy 4th of July to all my US readers! Not much of a post today just a quick announcement. I've started a resources page that has links to business supplies, books, and websites that I recommend.

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Borboleta amarela, originally uploaded by Juh Vivá.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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This trick is something I just set up on my own site and is specific to blogs and sites running self-hosted Wordpress. Unfortunately I don't have an alternative for other platforms or wordpress.com hosted blogs. However if you have wordpress installed on your own hosting read on for a very cool trick to get more people to click from your site to your etsy shop.I've been using a widget here on

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Three Roses Ring, originally uploaded by KitandCaboodle.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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I know a lot of people prefer to shoot their product photos in natural light. I however don't have much luck with this for a couple reasons A) I live in Maine where 6 months of the year days are very short and dark and B) I'm a night owl so even in the summer I'm more likely to be shooting my pictures at night. So I have a light tent setup that I use for taking my photos. This short video shows

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Set of 4 Retro Napkin Rings..., originally uploaded by Arzu Musa.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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It's been a while since there's been a studio inspiration so here's a really lovely one.Untitled, originally uploaded by la vida compartida... {RosaMaría}.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Etsy recently broadcast the Etsy Success Symposium Writing Workshop. This is good stuff regardless of where you sell so give it a view.Watch live streaming video from etsy at livestream.com

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If you have a good network of twitter followers, facebook fans, or email list subcribers you can use them to research ideas. I did this recently using SurveyMonkey to create a simple survey asking people to rate some photos of my jewelry. SurveyMonkey's basic service is free and it's very simple to use. I created my survey then posted the link to it on twitter, my facebook fan page, and my blog.I

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The I ♥ Art folks in Baltimore and Portland have been producing some great videos. First up is Baltimore with a workshop on Web Marketing which is available on YouTube and embedded below.Next is Portland with a two-part video workshop on Speed Branding. Part 1 and Part 2 are hosted on Etsy's livestream account. NOTE: Part 1 had some audio problems so sound doesn't start until about 9 minutes in

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Várias poses, originally uploaded by Juh Vivá.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Two part presentation by Megan Auman of Crafting an MBA on how to find and develop your niche.Part 1:Part 2:

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Blue Gemstone Mosaic Pendant, originally uploaded by grayraven.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Snarky craft blog Regretsy recently targeted a seller violating copyright. This post discusses the response they got from Etsy and the frustration caused by it. The thing is that Etsy acted entirely how they have to in response to unrelated 3rd parties reporting copyright violation. In this post I'm going to discuss how to handle when you discover someone ripping off your work. Why Etsy responded

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Jasmine, Lilac & Freesia, originally uploaded by Milk and Honey Naturals.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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cuff-138-rosecabsilvgauze-2, originally uploaded by 11BOLDstreet.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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neck-154-rolledbeadrose-6, originally uploaded by 11BOLDstreet.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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I've written before about Etsy Hacks and how useful they are but today I want to talk about digging into Etsy's options that you may not know about that make running your shop much easier.Your EtsyBy default clicking the "Your Etsy" link takes you to your currently listed items if you're a seller. If you go to the Account link and click the Preferences tab you can change this to go to your Sold

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For this installment of the Handmade Interview we have Anna Clifton, her website is at annaclifton.com.You can also find her on twitter and facebook. Please introduce yourself and your businessI’m a 34 year old mum of 2, wife and designer/maker of jewellery. I have a degree in jewellery and silversmithing and design and make innovative pieces of jewellery, using precious and recycled materials.Q

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Here's a compilation of useful articles on improving your product photographs.Shop Makeover: Before and After With Photoshop Small Object Product Photography for your Online Shop Photography Tips for Crafters How To: DIY $10 Macro Light Tent for Handmade Artisans Batch Processing Plugin for GIMP - Speed up editing your photos by batch resizing and converting file formats using GIMP.

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♥ Valentines ♥, originally uploaded by la Naváa.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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No, this isn't a post on google analytics or any other stats program. It's about how to increase your exposure on blogs by getting organized. You will need only 3 things for this: email, spreadsheet software (excel, open office, etc), and this article from Modish on how to approach blogs. Optional tool: Google alerts.In your spreadsheet you will need various columns to track blogs that have

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Crocheted Bluebell Flowers Bookmark, originally uploaded by Joyous Treasures.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Email signatures are great. They get attached to all your outgoing emails and can be a simple, passive, means of advertising. There are definitely more effective ways to market, but since creating a signature takes all of 5 minutes at the most it's worth the time.If you use an email program like Outlook or Firebird you already have easy tools to create an attractive signature but if you use web

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So you have some business goals for the new year. How are you going to keep yourself on track to complete them? Here are a few ideas for managing your goals.Time: Say your goal is to blog 3 times a week but you're good at forgetting. Google Calender to set up recurring event reminders that are sent to your email a set time before you want it done (e.g. 2 hours).Sales: Tim Adams of Handmadeology

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As you've probably noticed the blog went on unplanned hiatus for a bit. Things just got way too busy both personally and with the business over the holidays for me to get posts written. I hope everyone had a great holiday season and welcome to 2011! What are your goals for the new year?

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colliers, originally uploaded by florence chabrerie.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Recently Etsy replaced the old "Relist" option for sold items with two new options, "Renew" and "Copy". These new options both have their own pros and cons and you need to choose wisely which to use for each of your items.CopyThe new Copy option works just like Relist did, it makes a copy of your listing which you can then edit. This is a brand new listing with a new URL, no hearts, and no

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Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!Snowflake Bow Gift Boxes , originally uploaded by la Naváa.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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What time of day people are viewing your shop can be a valuable bit of information to know. You could time new items to go up during the busiest time, and make changes during the slowest times. If you post frequently on twitter or facebook you might find the trend correlates heavily to when you are posting to those social media sites and make an effort to spread your posting out more to

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The holiday season (I'll save my defense of using that phrase for another post) is a time of rampant consumer joy in the US and most businesses want to take advantage of it. Many B&M stores deck the aisles with lights, trees, and Santas, and many online retailers do the same to their sites. Now I see nothing wrong with capitalizing on this to increase my business but I think you should do it in a

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Etsy has finally released the long awaited coupon codes. As of the time I'm writing this they haven't been rolled out to everyone but I was one of the lucky people who got it. This is also why I'm posting twice in one day, I already have posts for Monday and Wednesday next week and didn't want to wait to post this.  I did a quick test run of coupon code yesterday and it seems to work great.There

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Shopaholic Giraffe, originally uploaded by hobotariy.org.ua.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Welcome to the very first interview for the Handmade Business Blog. I hope to run one interview every two weeks until I run out of them. If you would like to be featured go here to get more information.This weeks interview is with ArtsiBitsi, you can find her work at ArtsiBitsi.com and ArtsiBitsi.etsy.com. Get in touch on Facebook and Twitter too. Introduce Yourself:Bits and Blanche, hard at

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I just created the Handmade Business Team on Etsy. It's a place for Etsy sellers to discuss business topics in a place other than the Etsy forums which have a tendency to get a bit off topic.

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This is another video from I ♥ Art Portland. Amanda Siska from Bread and Badger talks about wholesaling your products. It's an hour and twenty-four minutes long.Level Up! Wholesale and PR from I Heart Art: Portland on Vimeo.

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Fox die cuts, originally uploaded by tiffzippy.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Sister Diane from Craftypod leads a class on Social Marketing. It's almost 2 hours long so grab a cup of coffee or cocoa and sit back to watch, it's full of great information on using social media tools like Twitter, blogs, and Facebook. She explains it in pretty straightforward non-technical language.Social Marketing for Handmade Businesses by Sister Diane from I Heart Art: Portland on

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I'm looking for volunteers to be interviewed for the blog about how you run your business and advice you would give to other handmade business owners. Please contact me if you're interested. I hope to make this a regular feature every couple weeks.

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6.Here's another great new tool using Etsy's API from Craftopolis. It lets you do a number of bulk editing tasks like change prices or titles.

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Autumn Delight!, originally uploaded by la Naváa.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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It's that time of year, holiday shopping season. Here are the holiday shipping deadlines for the 3 major US shipping companies:USPS Holiday CalendarFedEx Last Days to ShipUPS Holiday Calendar (.PDF)

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As the holidays approach it's worthwhile to take some seasonal photos of your products. Whether it's holiday items like ornaments or cards or just your usual items a few props can make your product listings or advertising a little more fitting for the season. Here are a few ideas for simple props you can get at your local dollar store this time of year.Mini artificial tree, those between 6-12

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kk4a, originally uploaded by glassimo.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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PendantWireTwist3_4, originally uploaded by EarthlyJewels.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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A few weeks ago I blogged about a greasemonkey script to quickly change prices on Etsy for sales. Well now there's an even better tool for this: Etsy on Sale. It uses the Etsy API to edit the prices on either all your listings or just those in a section and then automatically returns them to their previous prices when your sale is over.You can even schedule your sale in advance to give you plenty

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ship and ship, originally uploaded by memohelen.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Chubby gecko, originally uploaded by WiredOrchid.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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I always like to take a look at what tools Etsy is featuring in their Handmade Code series on the Storque blog. Usually I either think it might be useful and add it to my Squidoo lens on Etsy Tools or bypass it if I don't see it as very useful. However they recently featured a tool I had to try out and I find it really interesting because I love stats.Metricly lets you see data about your shop in

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I hadn't planned to write any posts this week, I have a bad foot injury and the doctor put me on serious painkillers that are messing with my head a bit. However I came across this tool and have to share: Clockbot is a new tool from Statsy that lets you schedule item renewals. This is perfect if you work a day job and want to have items renewed during the day, or when you're out of town, or at

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No weekly inspiration this week because I just came across a wonderful Greasemonkey script for Etsy. Those of you who already use the EtsyHacks know about Greasemonkey, it is a wonderful add-on for the Firefox browser that lets to install scripts that modify how you can use websites (I also use some for gmail, squidoo, and a few other sites).Today's useful script is by Etsy seller krtwood and

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Jennifer Swift is a stay at home mom and artist living in Plymouth MN. She has been published in several national art publications, has an etsy shop, and is soon to be a published author. Her book, Creative Bloom: Wire and Fabric Projects and Inspirations (North Light) will be released this November. To read more of Jen’s writing visit her blog at http://blog.birdfromawire.com. I know it's

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My name is Marie Young. I believe everyone has a creative spark, but sometimes life pees on it. I writea blog “Creative Sprinkle,” to help people reignite their spark. I find exploring the broader topic ofcreativity helps me design for my online shop, Young Creative.“A relaxed mind is a creative mind.”This is my favorite quote on creativity. It is attributed to Yogi Bhajan, but I’m ashamed to

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Rock & Roll Tin - Blue, originally uploaded by RenGalSA.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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My name is Kaelin Cordis, and I love everything to do with metal. I feel very strongly that a piece of jewelry should be personally made, reflect a unique design, and preferably an abiding beauty. I really think that every person in the world who wears jewelry should own uniquely elegant pieces of jewelry without breaking their piggy-banks!" Kaelin is Mom of two, Metalsmith, Blogger, and

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fd-5b, originally uploaded by floydagain.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Actually seeking co-writers and guest posts for the blog. Regular readers may have noticed I haven't been publishing very regularly, partly because I'm busy and partly because I'm searching for good topics. If you have a handmade business and would like to write a guest post or even become a regular writer here please contact me. Also if you have a question you would like answered please let me

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I'm about to embark on my 3rd straight weekend of art/craft shows. After this weekend I have several weeks free so things should be getting back to normal.In the meantime enjoy this adorable mini-cake. Looks delicious but it's really polymer clay.Mini Cake, originally uploaded by Alliesminis.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Funky Retro Fabric Adjustable Hairband (Green, Brown, Yellow & White Pattern, Green Binding) 1, originally uploaded by Kaiser Tia.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Morphologica has a great article on the Sellers Assisting Sellers blog about using yourself to model your products. This is something I plan to do next time I get to the ocean (what better backdrop for my sea creature jewelry) as promotional shots for banners, ads, etc. I can't do it for every piece of jewelry I make it would be far too time consuming. So think about how you can use photographs

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I came across this fantastic article on setting up post purchase customer surveys with paypal. I just set one up for my account and it was extremely easy. Also while your setting up the survey consider customizing the payment page with your logo or adding some of the other available options.

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Set of 2 One-of-a-kind Oriental Flair Handmade Buttons..., originally uploaded by Arzu Musa.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Midnight 2 - Lapquilt, originally uploaded by PioneerValleyGirl.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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I've briefly touched on this subject before when talking about making video slideshows but I want to talk about another avenue to using video to promote your products: How To Videos. This is a brief overview not an in depth tutorial, I'm still learning the process of shooting these types of video myself.Many people enjoy seeing how handmade products are created and this is a great way to get your

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May 8, 2010: Handmade Festival London Ontario, originally uploaded by She's Batty.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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Golden Pine and White Eyeglass Chain, originally uploaded by Gilliauna.Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

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