Preparing for the Holidays - Segment 2 - Marketing

Here's a super important area we need to address - Market your work - but don't spam! There is a fine line between keeping past and potential customers updated and throwing a big ole' can of spam at their heads 24/7. Be smart with your marketing.

•DO create a newsletter and ask your customers if you can add them to your mailing list.

•DON'T add every email address you have to your mailing list - you must obtain permission first!

•DO send newsletters out periodically with the latest news as well as incentives - offering an exclusive sale through your newsletter will tell you how effective your newsletter is and will keep subscribers looking forward to seeing an email from you in their inbox!

•DON'T send daily newsletters with buckets of links begging your customers to check out your site. Desperation is not your friend and you'll lose subscribers. Try and send out a newsletter no more than once or twice a month.

•DO at the very least try social networking before you write it off. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, they all have quite a bit of power in driving your brand as well as keeping your name out there (exposure is important!) They might not all work for you, but mastering one is a good idea.

•DON'T twitter links to your items every 3 minutes. Short of being a porn bot there's no faster way to getting unfollowed. Temper your business tweats with other content and interact with other individuals in the twitterverse. It's called social networking for a reason. Socialize!

•DO offer strategic sales from time to time. Because people are going to be seeking out deals on days such as Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) and Cyber Monday, you might want to offer your own sale - a percentage off, BOGO (buy one, get one), that sort of thing. Sales for smaller businesses though on days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday are hit or miss. Last year I only got one sale on Black Friday and zero on Cyber Monday. This year I will be trying out having a sale either right before Thanksgiving or right after Cyber Monday. Timing is everything! Remember - you're in essence "competing" with the big box stores. Sometimes it's best to tackle it in a more tactical manner. We as small businesses don't have the advantage of massive marketing budgets, PR firms, ad spots on TV, radio, and in print...we have to work with what we've got.

•DON'T have a sale every single week leading up to Christmas. You'll find after a while people only purchase on the days they know you'll have a sale. Sales are supposed to be special.

•DO carry around business cards and have them ready any time the topic of what it is you do comes up.

•DON'T scatter your business cards all over the place like some new age Johnny Applesead. It's tacky and really, it's littering :P

•DO leave your business card in targeted areas (depending on what you sell and who your target audience is.) Not on the floor. Not on a desk. Pinned to a public board maybe?

•DO purchase your domain name, even if you aren't going to create a website just yet. You can at the very least redirect your domain name to your blog or online shop until you feel you are ready to get a website set up. A domain name helps with brand recognition and legitimizes your endeavor to your patrons. An actual website takes that legitimacy one step further and creates trust.

•DO secure your username on as many sites as you can. It's all about branding. Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Blogger...and then all of the online venues - Ebay, Etsy, Artfire, 1000 Markets, Zibbet, DaWanda, Shop Handmade - You might not ever sell at any of these places or utilize the websites passed laying down your profile, but you don't want another business taking your name. Here's a nifty little guide of a bunch of popular sites and their classifications I found - http://blogs.oracle.com/jobsatoracle/images/SocialNetworking.jpg

•DO create business profiles on sites like LinkedIN and Ning. The more your username is out there and linking back to your website / domain address, the more traffic you will get streaming in. It's not guaranteed, but with millions and millions of websites on the internet, you have to do what you can to be recognized!

•DON'T then go into those sites and spam the hell out of the public spaces. It just pisses people off. You definitely don't want to piss off potential customers!

That's all for now. Watch for the next installment focusing on commissions and holiday deadlines! Till next time, kittens.

Preparing for the Holidays - Segment 1

A couple of weeks ago I hosted an Etsy virtual lab on the topic of getting ready for the impending holiday season as a small business owner. I know I'm a little late in getting this up, but as we still have a few more weeks to prepare ourselves for the fabled "Black Friday" and even more mystical "Cyber Monday", I think this post will be timely just the same.

I've been selling on Etsy under the name sagittariusgallery since January 2007 and I've been selling online fulltime since April, 2003, so I'm going into my 7^th holiday season. But, I gotta mention I actually have more holiday retail experience than that – when I was 10 my mom managed a Christmas store in the mall, she did so for a few seasons, and my sister and I were faithfully by her side every chance we could get (we even found inventory to be fun!)

I've worked black Fridays at the mall and I've seen Cyber Mondays online, so, I know a little about the holiday season in retail :)

Today I'm going to talk to you about the holiday season and what to expect. This is geared more towards new sellers who are entirely unfamiliar with the online holiday shopping season, but of course, there might be nuggets more seasoned sellers may find useful :)

The first thing I want to stress about the holiday shopping season is that it is not the busy season for everyone. Truth be told, my busiest months are traditionally January, April, and June. So my number one bit of wisdom? Be ready for anything and assume nothing!!

I see it in the Etsy forums a lot where there is a prevailing myth that for all shops during one magical time of the year sales rain down like gum drops from the heavens and paypal accounts overfloweth with extra income. Not so. December is traditionally one of my slowest months. Usually, for me as an artist, commissions stop by the end of November (I do have a deadline for commissions to ensure I don't over extend myself - will talk more on commissions later) and December ends up being a trickle of orders here and there. I have found my art is more of a personal purchase so orders pick back up in January when people are spending Christmas money on themselves.

Everyones business is different. It's important, especially during your first season selling within any venue, be it here, another online site, or offline, to pay attention to your traffic. Learn your customer. And again, it is super important to have no expectations but to be prepared for the unexpected.

It is smart to be over prepared if you can, rather than under prepared. This starts with inventory and accessibility. Here are some tips to maximize your customer base -

• Offer products are varying price points. One upon a time I only offered larger work from 100.00 and above to potential customers. Needless to say I was cutting out a wide demographic. Once I opened my product line up with more economical options such as smaller work at a lower cost as well as inexpensive prints of my originals, I tapped into a whole new audience who previously hadn't considered my work because of the cost.

Do not compromise the quality of your products to lower the price. Quality is paramount. Be creative when considering new product lines that open you up to a wider customer base.

• If you don't already, do consider opening yourself up to accepting commissions from patrons. Quite a bit of my business is from custom work. People want that personal connection. Sometimes they want something you offer only tweaked to suit their individual needs. Make it known you are open to discussion custom pieces with prospective patrons and make sure either your website or (if on Etsy) your alchemy page includes all of your terms. The less questions a customer needs to ask the better. And outlining everything before hand ensures anyone pursuing a commissioned project is on roughly the same page as you. It's all about making the process flow easily for both you and your patron.

And remember, if there is a request you don't feel comfortable with, be up front and open with your client.

•If you don't already, consider offering international shipping. Really folks, customs forms are not difficult and there is a whole wide world out there - a significant market you aren't tapping into if you are only offering your work domestically. Remember, ecommerce is global. There are certain restrictions with certain areas. Like, I know I can't send anything larger than a 22x28 inch painting on the stretcher bars to countries such as Australia because of size limitations. The postal service website has all of these limitations outlined on their website. Dip your toes in. If you're on Etsy you should at least be shipping to Canada, Australia, and the UK as well as the US, *bare minimum*, as those countries have the most customers shopping on Etsy. Acclimate yourself with those countries first and then begin to explore offering shipments to other regions. Once you get a few international sales (and customs forms!) under your belt it will be a piece of cake, trust me!

Because there is a lot of information I am going to split this up into different segments. Easier to chew on and swallow, me thinks. Next segment? Marketing do's and don'ts! Until next time :)

On shipping....

Ok. Since my Quit Your Day Job article was published on the Etsy Storque I've had a number of inquiries on how to ship paintings from new sellers. I'm going to post this here (mostly so it's easy to find as I get more inquiries) but maybe someone will come across it and find it to be useful :)

I know the shipping aspect can be intimidating at first and can seem rather daunting. I actually go back and forth between shipping through a local shipping place and doing it myself, it depends on the time I have and the size of the painting. I've built a repertoire with the place I ship through over the past 4 years or so and finally took the plunge a few months back and it's helped to have someone who can wrap up and take care of the really big ones instead of me fooling and fussing with it at home. When I do it I buy frame boxes and bubble wrap from them, there's a bunch of sizes to choose from and I buy a good amount at a time. I have an account with FedEX and USPS.com and I have them pick the packages up. The accounts were easy to set up and it's really convenient. You can also print shipping labels through paypal - hee's there help explanation on their site - https://www.paypal.com/helpcenter/main.jsp;jsessionid=KT0DSyptYvvv5wHXdQynbdQplDtrc4WJGzS52hfKb4G8KJQn5ppC!-685170754?locale=en_US&_dyncharset=UTF-8&countrycode=US&cmd=_help&serverInstance=9004&t=solutionTab&ft=searchTab&ps=solutionPanels&solutionId=10773&isSrch=Yes

It's really quite simple. You do need a scale - I got mine at Walmart for 10 bucks.

Larger paintings should really go through FedEX because of the cost and the shipping "zones". 16x20 I'd send through FedEX. 11x14 can go just fine through the postal service.

For all of my small shipments (anything up to 12x12 or so) I use the free boxes you can get through the post office. You can order some online for free - they are for Priority shipments though so if you plan on sending your paintings first class you can't use the free boxes. I always send Priority when I use USPS because it looks more professional and is faster for the most part. Here's a link to order free Priority boxes - http://shop.usps.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductCategoryDisplay?catalogId=10152&storeId=10001&categoryId=13354&langId=-1&parent_category_rn=11820&top_category=11820&WT.ac=13354

The place I go to for my other boxes orders theirs from uline and sells them to me at cost. It's good to start a relationship with a local place cause there can definitely be perks! Take a day and shop around. A really large box for me costs 16.00 - that's for a 36x46 box, unfortunately sometimes you gotta cut um down since they don't always have the size you need) I have heard some people go to Michaels and get their boxes on garbage day, but you have to be there at the right time - they wouldn't hold them for me and it was like 20 miles for me so I just broke down and bought them outright. But that is an option.

When I am wrapping it myself I wrap the painting in plastic and tape it to secure moisture from compromising the painting. Then a layer of bubble wrap is tightly wrapped around and taped. Another layer of bubble wrap is then wrapped around the first, bubble to bubble, creating a "pillow" that is extremely effective in securing the painting from damage. The pillow is then placed in a sturdy mirror box for shipment with more bubble wrap or paper if needed.

Please copy and paste this URL in your browser to see how these "pillows" look just before shipment - http://tinyurl.com/5ws4ah

Note that with international shipping, to most countries the largest stretched canvas you can send is 22x28 through the postal service. The postal service has strict dimensional guidelines - length+girth (a tape measure wrapped around the middle of the box gives you the girth) can't be any larger than 79 inches. This includes Australia, a popular shipping destination. For places with the 79 inch cut off I offer taking the painting off the stretchers and rolling it in a tube. This doesn't always work though. I can't do this with gallery wrapped canvas, only with canvas that has staples on the back - I can take staples out of the canvas. Can't rip it from that groove the higher end canvases have, and I won't cut the canvas from the stretchers. It's best to advise your patrons of these things so they are aware. That's why in my shop I only show US and Canadian shipping prices for larger works. Canada has a 108 inch cut off, so pieces up to 24x36 can go through USPS. Any larger and it has to be sent through FedEX or UPS - which for an international destination can be a couple hundred easy. If a patron is willing to pay the actual shipping cost then by all means. But it really is exorbitant!

It looks like a lot to take in, and initially it is - but after doing it a while you'll become a pro and it will be second nature :) Best of luck!