image credit: fantaisiee

We snagged these tips from Etsy Wiki a few years ago, and have found that most clients have a ton of success with a few of these easy steps. Many you’ve probably heard and seem like no-brainers, but sometimes we need a reminder, right? While not for everyone, there are a few goodies that we think you’ll love! Plus, even if your shop isn’t on Etsy, most of these will still apply:

1. Join forums and put your Etsy store URL in your signature, if the forum rules allow it.

2. Find people to link to your Etsy store, and do the same for them in return.

3. Put your Etsy URL in your e-mail signature.

4. Advertise in free bulletin boards.

5. Do business card swaps with other Etsy sellers.

6. Vistaprint.com – free business cards and give them away like crazy.

7. Give free samples & business cards to friends & family – even if you’re shy about promoting yourself, your mom will likely brag you up!

8. Craft shows, farmers markets, etc. are a great way to show your stuff & hand out cards & brochures.

9. Talk about Etsy at craft groups (such as Stitch ‘n’ Bitch gatherings) Even if these people join up as sellers, we all know that sellers also buy! (Sometimes we buy more than we sell!)

10. Make bookmarks with your Etsy URL on them and give them to libraries and schools.

11. Ask shops, libraries, and any business with windows to have your advert on their window.

12. Give presents that you’ve made and accidentally give your business card with it

13. When someone needs your name, address or phone number give ‘em your business card that has all your details as well as your Etsy store URL!

14. Always wear items that you’ve made and have your business cards on hand to give to people who comment on your stuff.

15. Make up coupons for your store and leave them everywhere (people are more likely to visit your shop knowing that there’s a discount, etc).

image credit: luke stephenson

This is the story of how I learned one of the most important business lessons in my life from Erin just in December of last year:

Once upon a time, there was a blogging conference. I asked Erin if she was going and if so, that I would go, too, so that we could finally meet. She said no. Bummer. But, I always seem to get phone calls from Erin that start with “Don’t be mad, but…” Apparently later that evening, Erin had emailed them to say that we’d be more than happy to speak as a keynote (without consulting me, of course). Long story short, they asked us to be panelists and at that point, how could I say no when I (apparently) already asked to speak?

At said conference not only did I have a blast, but I met a bunch of brand new friends and was also able to network with some high-profile bloggers that I’d wanted to meet for years. It also increased my visibility as the blogger behind Design Milk, which I hid behind for a long time. Needless to say, it was totally worth going, and I would have missed out had it not been for Erin’s ridiculous email.

Most of my life I’ve been fairly passive, letting things happen to me rather than making them happen. For the most part, I thought, “why would so-and-so want ME to do X or Y for them?” or “why would they want to talk to ME? “Who am I, I’m just some chick from New Jersey — who cares?” If you have said similar things to yourself about you, your work, your blog, your shop, or whatever it is that you do, then it’s time to learn the very same lesson that I learned late last year.

Erin always says I’m the smart one, but she’s got it all wrong. Erin makes things happen. She asks for stuff I wouldn’t even dream of, often times getting more than she wanted. So, I’d say Erin’s the genius – I wouldn’t be where I am now if she didn’t have the balls to ask for it.

Here’s the takeaway: Don’t ever think “who am I” or “why would Martha Stewart/Oprah/The Today Show/whoever want to hear about my product/art/shop?” — the truth is, they DO want to hear about it. You just have to show it to them.

image credit: flickr, jereitman

“There is a difference between being arrogant about yourself as a person and being confident that your work has some value. The first is unattractive, the second is healthy and natural. Some people respond to the one as if it were the other. Don’t confuse them. Marketing is not bragging, and touting one’s wares is not evil. The baker in the medieval town square must holler ‘fresh rolls’ if he hopes to feed the townfolk.”

–Jeffrey Zeldman, Zeldman.com

image credit: jereitman2

So. You’re an artist, and you have a website with a complete portfolio, whether it’s through Behance, Carbonmade or whatever else you kids are doing these days. If you’re really into your artwork, you might even have a blog (which you should). But don’t start there. The key to gaining an online presence is wayyy bigger than having a simple blog address. It’s time to learn how to own your blog (yep, I said own!).

The best way to that? Get out there. Really. Get out there. Put your art, your name and your website address on anything and everything. Start with this list of over 120 websites for artists to become a part of!).

Ready? Go forth and present yourself!

Hey guys! Long time no blog — we’ll be back next year with some great new posts. But before we bid adieu to 2009, we wanted to let you know about a great event happening very soon: the Altitude Design Summit. It aims to bring together designers, design and lifestyle bloggers, stylists, photographers, artists and creatives, social media companies, and design companies to get together and talk, well, Design.

The first one is January 21-23, 2010 in Salt Lake City, UT, that just so happens to coincide with the Sundance Film Festival. This year’s summit will focus on growing communities, marketing and monetizing. What’s working and what’s not. Check out the amazing schedule of topics, speaker list, and keynote panel (did someone say DOOCE?). Yep, and Erin and I will be there speaking as well — so come join us and talk shop.

Who Should Attend Alt?

• People that love talking about design in all its iterations. What it is. How it’s changing. Why it’s important.
• Design or lifestyle bloggers who want to (finally!) meet their fellow design and lifestyle bloggers.
• People from across all the design disciplines: graphic, industrial, fashion, interior, product, textile. Plus illustrators and photographers too.
• Business Owners who make pretty things and want to figure out how to get their products on design sites.
• Advertising Agencies and Marketing firms that want help creating social media campaigns for their design-minded clients.
• Employees who would love to get credit for working while actually hitting the slopes.
• People who create inspiration boards and people who look at inspiration boards.
• Star-struck film fans obsessed with the Sundance hype who want to spend a weekend celebrity sighting.

image credit: eeva

Justine from The Etsy Business Blog is joining us today, as Jaime and I have our hands full with our first BAKERY e-course (which is going swimmingly, by the way! If you missed the registration deadline, shoot us an email and we’ll fit you into the next class!). Anyway, Justine is a social networking goddess and I’m thrilled to share her foolproof Twitter/Facebook tips with you all. Ready? Here she goes!!!

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Running a business is only half the program when it comes to success. Social networking sites allow you to be everywhere your potential clients are and at no cost to you but time.

Here’s a basic how-to guide for Twitter and Facebook Pages, which are essential to use in order to promote yourself and drive new business in your direction…

TWITTER
Concept:
In 140 characters or less, answer the question “What are you doing?”

That may sound silly, but “tweeting” your website, business, special links and tidbits about what you are up to is a very effective way to drive traffic to your business. Etsy shop owners find that when they add a link to a new shop item, their views go from zero to twenty in less than a minute.

Set up time:
Signing up to Twitter – Under a minute
Filling out your profile – Under a minute

How to use:
Once you have your profile set up you will need to start following users. My recommendation is to follow people who follow a similar minded business. For instance, Etsy sellers should follow those who follow Etsy. If you run an entertainment business, follow anyone that follows verified celebrities.

Tips and tricks:

• You can bulk follow users with Twitter APIs such as Buzzon and TwitSeeker. These sites also give you the chance to put in keywords so you end up following only those who would be useful to you.
• Reply to tweets (using the reply arrow) in order to get users to remember you and your business.
• A new feature rolling out slowly is the “retweet” button (two arrows) which allows you to broadcast a tweet from another user. Again this builds relationships and gives you extra content to talk about.
• Do not constantly bombard your followers with links to your business. Yes that’s what this is all about but if you make it seem that way, people will get turned off. Talk about your morning coffee and grumpy toddler too!
• You cannot follow more than 2000 users unless you have that many users yourself. What you should do is when you have followed 2000 followers, wait a few days, then unfollow those who are not following you. It will purge a large number of ‘disloyal’ members and allow you to start following fresh people.
• Asking questions to your followers is a good way to get people talking back to you!
• You can drive traffic to your business on the go with mobile updates.

FACEBOOK
Concept:
Create a Facebook page and any site user can become a fan of your business and get updates from you about new products, services, promotions and events directly from you. (You have to be a Facebook member to create the page.)

Set up time:
Signing up to Facebook: About five minutes if you want to add a photo of yourself and fill out the basic information.
Creating and filling out your page: Anywhere from 2-10 minutes depending on how much content you’d like to add to your page.

How to Use:
Once you have your page set up you will need to Publish your page so it can be found in the Facebook search bar.

Tips and Tricks:

• Use the Suggest friend button on a weekly basis to increase your fan base. A lot of times people miss the first few notifications and are happy to oblige when they finally see it. The current fans will be blacked out so you will not have to spam them again.
• Post a link every day. As long as it’s relevant, people will be interested and remain a fan of your work,
• Take your page link and plaster it everywhere including your websites and other social networking avenues.
• Try installing a widget on your blog or website to visually entice new fans to your page.
• Host a giveaway where participants must become a fan of your page to be eligible to win.
• Offer exclusives to fans only with special codes in order to see if sales or new business opportunities came directly from facebook.
• Visit fan pages of similar businesses and become a fan, write a friendly wall message and include a link to your own fan page. Their fans will see it and be intrigued.
• Approach other fan page owners for cross-promotions helping you both gain new fans.

Image credit: callie_b on Flickr

Basically, “brand visibility” is getting your business’ name or logo out there for people to see. The best way to do this on the web is to create content that goes viral, which means it is spread around the Internet quickly (like the wedding dance video).

1. Sponsor or host an event.

2. Create a fun or crazy video or two and post them on Vimeo and YouTube. Try to get them to go viral.

3. Sign up for Twitter and post fun facts or weird Internet finds. See if you can get lots of people to Retweet your content.

4. Create a newsletter with great content and be sure it has a “Forward to a Friend” function.

5. Be sure you’ve submitted your site to search engines and take a few moments to read up on search engine optimization. Trust me — time spent learning about it is never wasted. Here’s a great beginner’s guide and checklist to get you started.

It’s important to be in people’s faces often [er, but not too often] so that they don’t forget about you. That’s where e-newsletters come in.

You will probably want to offer your visitors an e-newsletter as a way to constantly keep them aware of what’s going on with you, whether it be a new art show or a shop sale. Even if you run a blog, it’s a good idea to offer a newsletter because not everyone wants to subscribe to your blog via RSS, but still want to know what’s new and interesting.

The positive thing about a newsletter service is that they take care of a lot including pretty template options, list management, subscription automation, and delivery statistic. The not so positive thing is that you have to pay for these services. However, we think it’s valuable and worth it.

Here are 3 top newsletter clients and their options.

Each of the below offers great subscription and list management, email delivery, template options, but some have additional features worth mentioning.

AWeber – www.aweber.com

Pricing: AWeber offers 6 different pricing plans starting at $19/month.

Nice features: You can use AWeber’s service to convert your RSS feed into a newsletter format. You can also integrate shopping cart functionality [e.g., PayPal Buy Now! buttons].

Cool: AWeber also offers a free test drive.

Emma – www.myemma.com

Pricing: Emma starts at $30/month with a $99 startup fee [fee includes a customized template].

Nice features: Offers form and survey integration when you need to get information back from your subscribers. Also a great option for agencies, such as PR firms, who are managing newsletter creation and delivery for multiple clients. Custom stationery rather than bland, email templates is a big selling bonus for Emma.

Cool: Emma plants 5 trees for each customer who joins their service.

MailChimp – www.mailchimp.com

Pricing: Plans start at $10/month, but if you’ve got under 100 subscribers, it’s free!

Nice features: MailChimp offers a 15% discount to non-profits and charities. They also have built-in translations for 25+ languages, so this is a great option if you cater to mostly international customers.

Cool: MailChimp offers pay-as-you-go pricing.

image credit: cwalker71 on flickr

Creating a blog is a piece of cake, but marketing your blog is much more challenging. You could make the most eloquent, moving, amazing, engaging posts on the internet, but if no one reads them then it’s just a tree falling in the forest.

Here are a few things you can do to get started:

Level 1: Easy
Comment often on other blogs that you read, and be sure to comment on blogs whose readers you think would also like your blog.

There is unspoken etiquette here, though: comment something of substance. Otherwise, your comments will be seen as spam by the blog owner. “Nice post!” doesn’t count, nor does it attract readers to you or your blog. Try enticing people with thoughtful comments.

Level 2: Medium
Linking to other websites. This isn’t limited to your blogroll! Think outside the box and inside the post! Take a tip from ProBlogger, and do a “speedlinking” post. This is a post that rounds up your favorite links or articles of the moment. You can do this weekly, monthly, or whenever you feel like it.

Level 3: Hard
Pitch a guest blogger spot to one of your favorite blogs in your niche. Wait until you’ve at least gotten 3-6 months worth of blogging under your belt.

A guest blog post will likely:
1) put you on your favorite blogger’s radar & give them a breather for one post
2) get you exposure to a new audience
3) get your name our there
4) get you a link to your site
5) allow you to show off your star blogging power
6) start a dialogue with potential readers

I just had a thought and it turned into this post. Let’s say you have a shop selling products and you place an ad on a fairly popular blog. Let’s say you’re tracking the clicks, and after 1 month you notice you’ve only gotten 15-20 clicks. That’s not a lot…so immediately you think, “Oh 15-20 clicks isn’t any good, so I should try advertising somewhere else!” and you pull the ad.

Bad idea.

Why? Here are two huge reasons why:

1) Maybe it’s your ad. Well, let’s be real here: you’re not in advertising. There are huge companies dedicated to the art of advertising. Unless you hired an ad firm to develop your ad, or messaging and such, then maybe you should take a look at your ad to see what it might be missing.

Ad design tip: Avoid placing a static jpeg ad of just your logo on a site as a “banner”. That says absolutely nothing to anyone. Try an animated gif or a static ad showing products that you sell. I’ve noticed that product-based ads do at least 25%-50% better on my site.

2) Give it time. I bet that you don’t realize that there are hundreds of new visitors coming to that very blog every single day. That is hundreds of new potential customers. Wait at least 3 months to assess performance before pulling an ad. At that time, you can get a better idea of whether your sales have increased or you’ve gotten more exposure. Clicks aren’t everything. For more info read this post or this one.

Need help with something or have a blog topic suggestion? Email us at thinkbakery@gmail.com.