Life Just Got Busy!

Well, how embarassing! There I was in the last post, congratulating myself on keeping up with the Day2Day theme and promptly missed the next 2 weeks! Oops! Well I do have a good few reasons - straight after that last post, I found out the following week would be my last on my current temporary assignment. Lots of calls to various employment agencies, talking things over with hubby, trying to work out what to do and obviously, a daily photography challenge that didn't rank very high in my priorities.

The week ended quietly after one of the busiest weeks I can remember and the lovely people I have been working with for the last year bought me a huge bouquet of flowers and got me a lovely funny card - one of the noisy ones - which made me jump out of my skin when I opened it!

The following day, I had arranged with the lovely ladies of School House Arts to try to teach them how to photograph their products and projects. I loaded my studio kit into the car, charged camera and laptop batteries and tried to think of everything else that we might need and then set off for a day of playing with my camera. We're all fairly outgoing so although I don't really know them very well, chatting and explaining camera stuff took care of any nerves I had.

Nickie has the most amazing quilted, handpainted, embroidered artwork thingies (not sure of the correct technical term, sorry) I've ever seen, Debs does wonderful things with fabric including little felt doggie brooches, Sharne had a beautiful quilt which she said has a minor imperfection so it just sits in her attic (!!!) and Margaret quilts, patchworks, character dolls and makes bags too. So much talent in one small old village school - and they all managed to get some improvement in their product photos at the end of the day, except Margaret who definitely needs a new camera (are you listening Margarets' hubby?? LOL).

I also showed them some basic photoshop bits that would help once they got home to practice but I've a feeling we were all a bit tired by then so I don't know how much sunk in. I know Debs has been having a go at home, keep going Debs, it just takes a bit of practice :)

So for the last week, I have been at home all day - not lazing around, eating sweeties and watching daytime TV - oh no! My to-do list has grown considerably over the last few weeks so I have been working my way through that.

I've written and submitted 3 blog feature interview questionnaires, ordered new cards and envelopes (square this time), printed 40 mini cards and a pile of bookmarks for promo items, ordered card display stands, designed and ordered new business cards, taken a couple of orders on Etsy (yay!!), started work on my tax return, organised my stock photo records and had lunch with Mum several times.

I've also been working on Technorati ratings and getting links organised for a new project I'm involved with (details coming soon) and for several other things that are going on behind the scenes, as it were.


What I haven't done, is take any photos (of anything), written any blog posts, listed any new items on Etsy, written anything for the UK Etsy Street Team blog, done any housework or tidying, got dressed everyday or done any gardening!

Oh well, nothing has turned up for next week so it looks like I'm going to have to make a start on the housework :( but I have promised myself to get some new photos up on Etsy but also to print a load of cards and re-photograph them for existing listing - good practise for easy listing in future.

Sales & Marketing

I've been a bit busy this last week or two, reading various posts over on the Etsy forums about ways of advertising/marketing your Etsy shop. I've made a list as long as my arm of all the suggestions and various websites that are out there in internet land but so many of them are community/social sites - I just don't have the time to build relationships everywhere that might help get the word out!

So what to do? Well, I've been concentrating on blog related stuff initially - I already blog and have wondered before how to find out blogs of interest to me and how to get the word out about mine. I also knew nothing about RSS feeds. Well, that orange icon that you see everywhere these days - if you're using internet explorer, just click on the icon and it lets you subscribe to a feed. You'll find your feeds under the favourites but on their own tab. If it's in bold, there's a new post to read. No more hunting down a long list to see if someone has updated - Yay!

If you haven't visited for a while, you'll notice various widgets and clickable thingies in my side bar. I've found statcounter for a visitor count and that was the easiest I think.

Next came blogcatalog which seems to be a directory type site where you can not only list your own blog but also choose categories, then you can go looking through the directory within your category and hey presto - lots of blogs with similar interests to read. If you start adding friends and joining neighbourhoods, your blog rating goes up so eventually you end up nearer the top of the category listing and more people find you. I seem to be having a few hits from there in just 10 days so something is working :)

Then I decided to add Technorati to my list of sites to learn about. Haven't really got to grips with that one yet but it's the one most people say you should have. I've only been on there about 4 days so haven't investigated it too much yet.

Also from the Etsy forums is Stumbleupon - basically download a toolbar then wherever you go on the internet, if you like a site, click on the thumbs up icon. You can also use it to randomly surf the net - choose some categories that you like and it will randomly bring up sites within those categories. So how can we use Stumbleupon to market? Well, if we all thumbs up each others shops, when a non-etsy person goes stumbling, it increase the chances of our shops being one of the random sites.

My favourite so far though is Feedburner - you sign up (yep, another one!!) then'burn your feed' - just follow their instructions, it's not too difficult at all. So why is it my favourite? - because one of the things that feedburner does is to give you feedback on how many people out there in internet-land have subscribed to your feed - yes, I have readers :) I'm not talking to myself after all!

So what sort of photo could I add to this post to

a) break it up a bit and

b) make it pretty! LOL

Had to be some of my stock photos - PC innards for the techie bit, coffee and biscuits 'cos I've usually got a mug of coffee next to me at the keyboard and mini eggs 'cos it's Easter :) Hope you're having a good one with lots of choccy.