I've decided!

     I was having such a hard time deciding if I was going to keep going with the madeitmyself site or not.  I really like the way that things are laid out on that market, but the forums are pretty much dead, I can't get any support questions answered, the views of my note cards are stagnant and when I do a search on google shopping for "handmade note cards" both Etsy and Artfire come up with my items pretty quickly, but madeitmyself does not.  Wow, that was a long, drawn out sentence lol.  Anyway, I've decided to not post any new stuff on madeitmyself.com which means I need to hope that my sales start coming from Artfire.com  they are free, no listing fees, no commissions and so far no sales lol.  If any one would like to take a look at the artfire site, my shop can be found at http://www.artfire.com/users/NoteletsByDesign .

     I'm still struggling with the dreaded S.E.O, I keep changing the keywords hoping that the items get more views are Artfire, but so far it's only creeping along.  I'm averaging one sale per week, which really isn't bad but I would definitely like to pick up the pace some.  I'm still stuck on week one of my "45 days to success" plan because I still need to populate my shop with 60 to 100 items.  The bookmarks and gift tags were a great idea, those I can make in about an hour and so far I've not run out of inspiration for them.  Surprisingly enough, the bookmarks take more thought than I had originally anticipated. Why? because a bookmark is meant to mark the page of a book, not damage it.  With that in mind, I have to be very careful what embellishments I use on the bookmark.  I need to keep them as flat as possible or at least a smooth top.  I know, that doesn't sound hard, but surprisingly enough, it is!

My second post...

Ok, well I've come up with a way to get my shop to the 100 items mark.... I'm going to make and sell gift tags and bookmarks.  These are much quicker to make and will allow me to fill my shop that much faster.

I'm feeling pretty confident in my newly formed business, I just got another sale today sooo hooray for me!!

I also went through the artfire site and re-categorized most of the note cards by moving them from the stationary category to the 'cards' category, hopefully this helps with the views.  I'm not really getting that many views on the artfire site and it makes me wonder if my tags.... the focus of the Search Engine Optimization part of the 45 days to success plan, are wrong.  I re-did most of them, let's see what happens.

I'm also beginning to wonder if selling across 3 different store fronts is a smart idea.  The thing is, I sell on Etsy, Art Fire and Madeitmyself but the Etsy site is a paid site (per item listing and sale), the other two are free.  My delimma? I'm only getting sales from the paid site, Etsy... lots of views on Madeitmyself but no sales and far fewer views on Art Fire and no sales.   Seems like a simple decision except that Etsy comes up the quickest in the search engines :( grumble grumble.