Handmadeology

As we are all crafting and in business, our time is valuable—we build our careers with our own two hands. You’re probably starting the year off with new goals and resolutions, so it’s a great time to review these 7 productivity pitfalls to avoid:

Natural Coral Branch on Clear Base from: GallivantingGirls

A gorgeous pop of color for any shelf, this natural coral branch is in excellent condition. On a solid clear base. The perfect mix of natural history and hollywood regency.
Measures 6.5″ tall x 6.5″ wide

We all know that maintaining a lively and exciting Facebook page is a great marketing tool for your handmade craft business. So, you create your page, spread the word about it, attract your first likers and then you post your first status updates.

  This is a nice sappy card! Front: “you me” Inside: “we were made for each other” • CARD : one 5 x 7 folded card • ENVELOPE : brown fiber envelope, size A7 • INK : archival quality pigment inks (water and fade resistant) • PAPER : 80# kraft brown cardstock (recycled) • PACKAGING [...]

Tax time will now be made easy for any artist, crafter, or anyone that makes handmade goods. When it comes to bookkeeping, we’ve heard the requests of our community, and developed a one product solution to all of the handmade community’s bookkeeping needs that is specifically designed for the handmade artist and is very affordable.

I believe that businesses DO grow organically, but I also believe that you can fertilize your business for a more aggressive growth rate

Now is the time for Etsy sellers to take action, but if you don’t have a clear strategy–all the work of renaming your titles and tags can be meaningless. A well defined relevancy strategy will help you set clear goals and the ability to make sure your title and tags are working together.

‘If only a celebrity wore my item or purchased from me… that would get me so much attention and sales!’

Handmadeology Pro is looking to hire members from the Handmade community as independent contractors for various work this year. Depending on the project, work can be consistent weekly, monthly, and ad-hoc.

This tool was designed to be a replacement for the old poster sketch that was available on Etsy. The Treasury Blueprint allows you to create Etsy Treasuries and save them for a later date.

Anyone can become an expert. It doesn’t take a diploma or for Oprah to say you are {that may help though}. It takes practice, knowledge, skill, & recognition.

For the handmade world, Twitter can be like hanging out at the water cooler. It gives you a chance to have conversations with people who share some of your interests and offers an opportunity to broaden exposure for you and your products.

So, Lesson #2 is to have realistic expectations of what you will get out of the show. Sure, there is always one exhibitor who does tons of business their first time out – but it will probably not be you, no matter how fabulous your work or how well you plan and execute your display.

I try to give the customer my best honest guess as to when I will get their order out, and then I try to stay on top of that order. More often than not, I cannot accurately estimate how long it will take to get to an order, so I just have to give myself enough time to force that order out when I said it would go. I am still a work in progress when it comes to this.

As handmade businesses, we want a lot of bang for our advertising buck. I am as attached to the dollars in my Paypal account as you are to yours, and so I’m happy to answer questions about my strategy and share my wins and losses. As handmade business entering the advertising world, we have a few options for cost-per-click ads