Show it Off Sunday

As usual, you must be a follower of Rabbit Hollow Prims, in order to participate.
2.) You can post up to 5 items this week. Take advantage of it.
3.) You can link directly to your store and post the price of your item.
4.) All items posted must have been handmade by you.
5.) Please visit each others stores. Spread the love.
6.) This party is only as good as the people participating make it. The more that people support it, the more traffic and sales we all get. Please spread the word about it and pay it forward. Write a post, grab a button, start a thread, invite your friends, whatever you want. It's all good.

I love Large Dolls!

I love to receive and make large dollies, the bigger the better.  My favorite holiday is Halloween so I decided to make a grim reaper type dollie and called him Mr. Midnight.

Look at that face.  AWESOME! That is all I can say about this guy. He is huge! Roughly measures 35-38 inches tall depending on if you measure his cape. Hand-painted, extreme prim hand-embroidered face, great black washed wool cloak, jute string tie with skeleton bodies of the dead collected, and handmade wire staff. Pattern by Soft in the Head.....

Here is where you can find Mr. Midnight ...he is in my  Handmade Spark Mini Site Shoppe


http://www.handmadespark.com/myspark/RabbitHollowPrims/51195780/primitive-mr-midnight

Tips for a Successful Blog Giveaway

feltmeupdesigns says:

Hi I am a well established etsy seller and have just ran my latest blog competition/giveaway to celebrate my 500th sale. Quite a few people have been asking me if it works so I thought a post here would be a good idea. Why Give it away? Is probably the first and most obvious question. Why do a giveaway at all? Well there are many reasons, first of all is it's fun... if you don't enjoy it don't do it, personally I love running giveaways... I like the warm feeling inside when I get to make someone smile and you get feedback on your work and your shop! secondly one of the main reasons you run a giveaway is to increase traffic to you shop/site/blog/twitter/facebook thirdly, what does traffic equal? well... sales hopefully! Setting up your giveaway. I try and create a bit of a buzz before a giveaway, this time I posted on my facebook and twitter for a couple of weeks in advance saying things like "2 more sales and I'll start the next blog competition" or "I'm running a giveaway soon, what do you think I should giveaway?" Asking a question means you are involving your fans/followers... they aren't just sat there passively. My followers demanded an owl giveaway this time... they were most insistent!  Think about your prize(s) You want to giveaway something with a value too, something people will actually want... no point in offering a gift certificate for $10 for your shop if everything you sell is $30! When you set out your blog post for you giveaway be very clear about what the rules are and what your prize is. Does the prize have a value? Make sure you mention it. How will you draw the winner? What date does the competition close? How does a person enter this wonderful competition? Make sure your rules for entering the competition/giveaway include visiting your shop... "visit my shop and tell me what your favorite item is" this means people will spend time browsing your shop and hopefully have a chance to fall in love with items, heart them and come and buy them later! I include a link to my facebook fan page and twitter and offer extra entries if the person becomes a fan and/or twitters the giveaway. DON'T (and this is important and a rookie mistake which I made on my first giveaway!) DON'T ask for email addresses if your comments are public. I ask for people to leave a facebook, twitter or etsy user name where I can contact them... if people have to leave an email address make sure to let them know to do it in the format myemailaddress (at) whateverdotcom... this will protect peoples privacy a bit.  Promote your giveaway... you can't just post it and rest on your laurels. You need to work at it and bring people to you and your shop... post links and announcements on facebook and twitter daily... but remember to limit it to a few a day, there's nothing worse than a whole facebook feed full of someone spouting about the same thing over and over again. I limited myself to 1 in the morning and one in the evening and no more than 1 per hour on twitter. I find it's good to give people updates on the competition too. Post in forums you frequent, teams you are in etc... the more exposure the better. Also there are many sites that will promote your giveaway for you http://etsygiveaways.blogspot.com/ is one i use... but there are many more. Drawing your giveaway... use a random number generator or the good old names in a hat method which always works... I had more than 300 entries when all counted up so I used http://www.random.org/ Announcing the winner... First contact the winner to congratulate them asking for address and if you have a choice of prize the prize they would like. The make a big announcement to say who's won, you want people to look at your blog again so when you announce the winner on facebook or twitter be enigmatic "We have a winner, is it you? Visit the blog to see!"  Then this is where you make it all worth while... you offer the people who didn't win a consolation prize of a discount at your shop. I offered free postage with a discount code to be put in notes to seller. So then, does it work? Well... I have 15 more blog followers, 104 more facebook fans, loads more twitter fans... loads more shop hearts not to mention the item hearts... oh and I have had several sales using my code. So yes... it works! Source: http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6551580&utm_source=bronto&utm_medium=email&utm_term=http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php%3Fthread_id%3D6551580&utm_content=etsy_success_070810&utm_campaign=etsy_success_070810

The Art of Pricing Your Handmades

Story by daniellexo  Published on April 16, 2009 in How-To	Photo by  sisterbutterfly

How do you know if you're pricing your handmade work correctly?  There's a lot of info out there, including right here in our Art of Pricing series.  The trick is to keep learning and evolving, not only in your craft, but in your pricing strategies, too.  I've put together three exercises to bring focus to your bottom line.  These exercises are here to make you think about your pricing, hopefully they can help you create a formula that works for you.  I hope they help you as you continue to work on pinning a value to your items.

Exercise 1: What's It Worth to You?

Imagine if you will, a complete stranger asks you to create an item (something you currently sell in your shop). That's not all, they want you to photograph, list and promote this item as well. Whew! "Is that all?" you ask. No, they have one more request: package that item, print a shipping label and drop it off at the post office. Now imagine they want you to do all this for the price you currently have this item listed for in your Etsy shop. Would you do it happily? Would you grumble? Would you deny this task altogether? Reality check: It's up to you to determine the value of your time and efforts. Make sure you take a step back from your work and your prices and look at it from all angles.

Exercise 2: Get to Know Your Customer

Close your eyes and think about the ideal person you would like shopping in your Etsy shop. How old are they? How do they dress? How much disposable income do they have? Do they shop online? What type of handmade items do they love? Now that you have a clear image of this shopper, ask yourself, "How much would this person spend on a unique item?" How do the prices in your shop compare? If this is a hard exercise for you to imagine, get a clipboard and hit the streets! Find someone who pops out to you as your ideal customer and ask them a few questions. Yes, I am instructing you to talk to strangers. Feeling shy? Get your local Etsy Team together to survey as a group.

P.S. If you are brave enough to do this, leave a comment below and let us know what happens!

Exercise 3: Number Cruncher

1. Decide what you would love your yearly gross sales to be.
2. Figure out how many items you make per week, and how many for an entire year.
3. Divide your gross sales goal by the number of items you can create. (For example, perhaps you work on your shop part time and you'd like to sell $12,000 worth of goods. If you make five items a week, your yearly total will be 240 items. Dividing $12,000 by 240 items would give you a $50 price point.)

This equation will give you a suggestive price. Keep in mind this is just an exercise, some items may be more and some less, depending on time and materials. Also, you (most likely) won't sell every item you make, but with this average amount as an indicator, you'll know if you're on your way to your yearly goal!

Source:

http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/the-art-of-pricing-three-helpful-pricing-exercises-3788/

Craft Cult Etsy Tool

Story by juln, kutty, magicjelly, TechUpdates, Vanessa  Published on May 29, 2009 in Spotlight	Photo by  Craft Cult

As part of our Handmade Code series, we're bringing you news and how-to's about the innovations emerging from the Etsy Developer Community. Located atdeveloper.etsy.com, the Etsy Developer Community serves as a hub for third-party software developers who are making neat and helpful programs for Etsy shoppers and sellers. In this edition, magicjelly presents her and juln's site, Craft Cult, which includes the incredibly useful apps The Heartomatic for sellers and The Vault for shoppers.

The Heartomatic was first developed by Julian, a.k.a. juln, back in 2007.  He really only intended it for his own use, but told a few of his Etsy friends about it, too.  One of them posted about The Heartomatic on the forums and word spread fast — soon there were thousands of people using it!  In November 2008, Julian and I launched Craft Cult, a collaborative project. Julian is the programmer, I’m the designer, and we have lots of plans for new features.  I think one of the reasons for Craft Cult’s success is that we are artists and Etsy sellers (and buyers) ourselves.  I think that experience has really helped us develop tools that Etsians find useful. 

What's the basic idea of the application? What need does it fill?
The idea behind Craft Cult is to enhance the Etsy experience for both sellers and buyers.  Utilizing Etsy’s public API, The Heartomaticprovides sellers with statistics relating to their shop hearts, item hearts and views in a time-saving, user-friendly format, as well as providing information that isn’t readily available via their Etsy shops. The Featured page also shows sellers when they’ve been picked for Etsy’s home page, Gift Guides or in The Storque so they never need miss the excitement.  We often hear people comment that Craft Cult is totally addictive!  

Our utilities are a lot of fun and very easy to use, but from a more serious business perspective, they also provide shop owners with invaluable information about their shop activity that can really help when it comes to product development and market research.

We haven’t forgotten about buyers. We recently implemented The Vault, which is an archive of all the home page featured lists.  The Vault is pure eye candy, very inspirational, and a great place for window shopping.

Our newest addition to The Vault is a “Share This List” button that takes you to a page where you can create an animated widget featuring items from Etsy’s home page, which you can embed on your blog.  It’s a fantastic way to add some visual appeal to your blog while spreading the word about Etsy, and it’s a way for Treasury curators and sellers to preserve their moment of home page glory and show it off to the world.

Where do we go to find it? What's the URL, etc?
You can find us right here… http://craftcult.com

Who is it for? How many people are using it right now?
Craft Cult is for Etsy addicts and people who love handmade and vintage. There are a LOT of them using our site, about 45,000 unique visitors and 2 million views a month, and growing steadily.  Since installing Google Analytics a couple of months ago, we’ve had over 90,000 unique visitors using Craft Cult!
 
How do you use it?
The Heartomatic is really easy to use, just input your Etsy username or id number and hit “Enter.”  

There are tabbed sections to the Heartomatic where you can check your hearts and views, as well as check to see if you’ve been on the home page or featured elsewhere. 

One of The Heartomatic’s benefits is that you can see at a glance who has hearted you, what time they hearted you, whether they’re sellers or have buyer accounts, and you can see all of your item hearts listed without having to view each of your listings.  We also show you how many new hearts you have, “new” being hearts accrued in the last 24 hours. The Heartomaticalso calculates a views per heart ratio for your items — that is, how many views it takes on average before someone hearts you.  This information can give you great insight into the popularity of your products.

The Vault is just as easy to use.  You can search the archive by member (list curators and featured sellers) or by date.

Are there any costs or further opportunities/ways to get involved?
Anyone can use our site and it’s totally free. Craft Cult serves a dual purpose because, in addition to the Etsy-related utilities, we also offer sellers the opportunity to benefit from our high site traffic and promote their shops and products. Our advertising space helps fund the site so we can devote time to customer service and developing new features, and it’s also really gratifying to know that it’s providing independent artists and crafters, who usually have a modest marketing budget, with good quality, affordable advertising.  Each of our advertisers receives in excess of 10,000 impressions per day, and we hear lots of good feedback from them about the results they get from their ads.  If you’d like to take a look at our advertising info, you’ll find it right here.

What should one do if there's a bug or a problem? Who should one contact?
Julian is the brains behind the technical side of the site, and he’s very helpful and obliging when it comes to customer service, so please don’t hesitate to email him at julian@craftcult.com with any tech issues. He’d really appreciate the heads up if you run into any difficulties.  We’re also on Twitterand post news and updates there.  Come and say hi!  

What's one surprising/fun/amazing story you've heard about someone using your app? Or what is your favorite part about the app?
Every time I hear back from our advertisers that their ads are working for them, it makes me really happy.  One of our regular advertisers recently emailed us to say she’s been able to quit her day job and run her Etsy shop full time, thanks in part to her Craft Cult ads.  The idea that we may play a part in people’s success is so amazing!

Anything else you'd like to add?
Thank you for the opportunity to tell Storque readers all about Craft Cult!

source:

http://www.etsy.com/storque/spotlight/handmade-code-craft-cult-4087/

Wanna See what your Etsy Shoppe will Look like in Wide View

If you want to see what your etsy shoppe will look like in wide view copy and paste this code to the end of your etsy shoppe URL

?shop_override=2


that's it and you can see what it will look like

Where Country Folk Create Blog Party

So when asked to do this blog party, I was a bit leary as my workspace was very organized but as we all know after you get bogged down with life and orders it becomes a bomb shelter very quickly LOL
My space is actually my office and studio and it is a very tight fit at moment ie small room.

Ok  this is where the magic happens.  As you can see it is a mess at the moment.  I have patterns laying out on the chair, my cup o joe, order board and more.  Oh and my  cat Clyde decided he wanted in on the action so he is in bottom left part of pic LOL

Ok this next pic is all my patterns I own.  They are separated by holidays and seasons and labeled.  As you can also see one drawer has paint which I really need to move as I need more space for patterns :) The dresser below it has all my supplies for dollie making. On the walls and on top of my computer armoire are other gals work I either bought or swapped for....

Here is the lovely HP touchsmart computer I email all of you on and list dollies. It is very dirty at moment from kids touching it hmmnnn school time yet????

Ok now this is where it gets messy.  I had this all nice and organized and then mom came down in June and dropped off some boxes and I have nowhere to put em so they been sitting on the floor.  The white crate has more dollie making supplies and all these dollies are from swaps I have been in over the years.....
The curio has all my antique mohair bears inside as I love to collect them.

This final pic is of an armoire.  This is where I keep most of my materials for dolls.  What doesn't fit is in the closet where my witch broom is hangin and let me  tell you it is full to the top too LOL
The santa is one of my first prims I bought made of paperclay.  I was so upset 2 years ago as his face broke in half and I had to reglue it but I did a good job as you can barely tell :)

Sooo that is it.  I hope you enjoyed the tour.  please be sure to visit all the gals workspaces here: TA-TA

http://primitivepeddlerblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/its-party-time.html