Tis the Season

As October seeps in , many are gearing up for craft shows, church bazaars and holiday home shows. With that comes the soft hum of sewing machines and the frenzie of creative hands working hard to increase their inventory of handmade goods to fill their booths.

Does this sound like you? For many the routine of show preparation starts early in the season, even in the summer months. But for others, October marks the time to get the creative juices turning. With each craft show season, crafters want to offer customers a new and unique product that is sure to be a "best seller" at their next show.

Some crafters opt to create small, inexpensive items such as ornaments, bowl fillers and other small handmade trinkets. While others relish in offering highly detailed wood creations, dolls, paintings and other extrordinary goods for the descriminating tastes of their clientale. No matter what type of items you prefer to offer, a good source for finding that perfect pattern to make your creations is http://www.patternmart.com/ . With almost 3,000 patterns at your fingertips, it's highly likely that you'll find just what you are looking for.

Patterns are a great investment for your crafting business. The creative designs of others affords you the ease of detailed instructions on how to make those "best sellers". Not only will it save you time, but buying a pattern also affords the elimination of having to think up a design concept yourself. Many people find this a great way to go and a time saver.

Pattern Mart Facts:

* The largest instant download craft pattern website with almost 3,000 craft patterns.
* Gift Certificates Available (upper right of main page).
* Free Pattern for signing up to the newsletter.
* Abundance of Craft and Craft Business articles.
* Advertising options for website owners.
* Main sponsor of Creative Times Magazine, Instant Printables & ECraft Classes.
* We also offer craft supplies.
* Sponsor of the Giving Project which gives back to the community.

Complete Guide To Marketing Your Craft Business

This is a powerful resource book for anyone getting started in a online craft related business. Or even those that are looking for new ways to market their existing business. It includes a bonus of 200 resources as well.





Only $9.99!

To order click the Buy Now button and make payment through Paypal (Do NOT use e-checks or it won't download for you). Once you get to the page on Paypal that says YOU'VE MADE A PAYMENT, on the bottom right there is a button that says YOU MUST CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD. Click that. A blank page will come up. Don't X out of this page, it takes a few seconds before the eBook will start downloading.

Holiday Email Marketing

Creative e-mail marketing tips to increase your holiday sales or just let your customers know they are on your mind this holiday season. They are all simple to do.

Remind customers about gift cards. Whether you own a retail store, e-commerce site, restaurant or spa, you can use e-mail to promote your gift cards. You could offer a discount or an added bonus to those who purchase gift cards from you. For example, you could offer a free ornie to the purchaser of a $25 gift card.

Offer gift ideas. Some folks just go blank at the holidays when they pick out gifts. Make it easy for your customers by giving them great gift ideas. Everyone's trying to figure out what to buy their friends and family. Highlight gifts that would be great for dad, mom, brother, sister or the friend who has everything.

Send a customized holiday e-card. A great way to connect with your customers or clients is to send a personalized holiday e-card. You can include a photo of your staff along with their signatures. You can also include a poignant thought, poem or short story that helps express the sentiments of the season. Show them how much it has meant to you to have them as customers.

Tracy(Cedara)Dunn of http://www.thrutheatticdoor.com

Start Talking!

You made the jump and started a business from your home. You weren't sure but you figured word of mouth would have been spreading quicker somehow, right? Don't wait for others to do all the talking..... get out there and be shouting loud about your business.

Sure, your friends and family members will for the most part be supportive of what you are doing but they may not be the best way to go for spreading the news about what your business can offer. Consider who would make a good customer and then go look for them and ways to meet them. Chamber of Commerce meetings; the local PTA meetings; anyplace that will have folks you can talk to about your business. Drop samples of your product off if possible. Even a well placed phone call can work wonders.

Do some online networking as well through message boards and mailing lists. Don't spam the forums as that is greatly looked down upon. Join them and really participate and contribute to what they have to offer. You can make some fantastic connections online that really can help spread the word quickly.

Carry busines cards with you at all times and really start looking for ways to hand them out. Place them on bulletin boards in shopping centers. Place a business card down on the table when you leave a tip at the next resturant you eat at.

What ways have you been talking about yourself to others?

Tracy(Cedara)Dunn of Thru The Attic Door

Marketing Your Crafts - Part 3

Online Marketing

~ Create a blog at one of the blogger websites. Do your best to update and blog with new articles and content a few times a week at the very least.If you are able to blog daily....that is best!

~Exchange links with other similar blogs

~Add a mailing list sign up form on your blog

~Offer tutorials, tips and articles of interest on your website.These can also be mentioned in a blog.

~Have a "Post the Most" contest on your message board.

~Offer a freebie with every order on your website. Everyone LOVES something that is FREE.

Offline Marketing

You may be wondering why we would suggest offline marketing if your business is online. Offline marketing can actually bring in additional traffic to your website and therefore more potential customers.

Here are some creative ways to market your website offline:

~Include a paper flyer or business card with your information and website URL in all your outgoing snail mail and packages.

~Exchange paper flyers or business cards with other online business's and include them also in all your outgoing mail and packages. They in return add yours in with their outgoing mail and packages.

~Place flyers with your information and URL on bulletin boards at grocery stores, doctors offices, daycare centers,schools, church, local business's. If you do crafts make sure and have a bunch at craft shows to put in every bag, place them in your booth in an antique mall. If you have a garage sale include a flyer in every bag when people make a purchase.

~leave your business card on the table at a resturant with your tip

~Place white cling lettering with your URL to the back of your car.

~Ask neighbors,friends and especially family if they'd be willing to have a sign with your website logo and URL placed in the window of their cars as well. They might even allow the cling lettering!

~Contact your Chamber of Commerce and see if your business can be listed in the Welcome Wagon mailings.

~Place a listing in your yellow pages or local business directory

~Have an open house! Place an ad in your local paper for a time on a weekend or evening and allow customers to visit your home to view and purchase your crafts. Have a snack available and also a registry book where they can write their name, address, phone number and email so you can contact them in the future with notices of upcoming home shows, craft shows, online sales etc.

~write related articles and submit them to several submission websites. This is a great way to gain exposure for your site and bring additional traffic to it.

Marketing your crafts is an ongoing endeavor. When you have a website where you sell your wares, especially a new one it can easily get lost amongst all the others on the Web.Your website is a grain of sand on a very large beach.......you have to do everything in your power to make your website stand out from the others.

Its important to make marketing your website a weekly priority.Just do a few of the above tasks each week so your not overwhelmed and so you still have time to do your creating. If you stick with it, in time you'll find you will have built up a customer base and some nice traffic to your website. All new business's online or off take time to grow. Be patient! Its not unusual for it to take a year or more to really find yourself established. Even then....you have to keep working hard at it.

Kelle Arvay of Pattermart

Tracy(Cedara)Dunn of Thru The Attic Door

Marketing Your Crafts - Part 2

SEO(Search Engine Optimization) and Link Exchange

This is one topic that you can never seem to know enough about.Getting your website submitted and accepted into a search engine can be challenging to say the least. Especially places like Google and DMOZ directory.We'll talk more here about Google because with DMOZ its more a matter of if the people reviewing your site decide to include it.With Google though there are certian ways you can help their robots crawl your site more often and increase your chances of your site being included in the search listings. Of course the goal here is to improve your rankings so your website shows up under searches on the first page of listings. The top 5 listings is even better, but more difficult to obtain.

Here are some ways you can increase your chances of getting indexed in Google and also improving your rankings whether your listed there or not.

1. Do a search for similar websites to your own on Google. Look at the top 5 websites and contact them to see if they would be willing to do a link exchange with you.Maybe they offer link or banner advertising. Some will and you may have to pay a fee but trust me, a small investment can reap huge rewards.

2. Concentrate on gaining 1-way links. These are links and banners placed on similar websites that point back to your website. This is not a link exchange. A good way to approach other website owners and make it worth their while to have your banner on their website but not their banner on yours is to offer to add their banner or link to your mailing list newsletter instead.

3.Stay away from link farms.These and some of the topsites Google can actually frown upon and it can hinder your site getting indexed and can effect your rankings.

4.Consider signing up for Adwords through Google.This will place your advertisement on similar sites and visitors can click your ad and go to your site. You can chose how much traffic your willing to spend for clicks.Its another lower cost way to build traffic.

Kelle Arvay of Patternmart

Marketing Your Crafts - Part 1

Marketing your Crafts

Whether you have a new website or an existing one, you can always benefit
with more marketing idea's and tips to draw in more traffic with potential
customers to your website.

Here we'll cover several ways I've found to be very successful in increasing
exposure to your website, increasing traffic and building repeat customers.

Mailing Lists:

Mailing lists are an invaluable tool to gaining and keeping customers. You
may already have a mailing list and right now may be thinking why am I
mentioning even mentioning this as it's not a new concept to you. Well,
while many people have mailing lists only some of them know how to use them
to their full benefit. Let's start by the task of getting people to sign up
for your mailing list. Try some of the following techniques and announce
them on your website:

-Offer discounts exclusively to mailing list subscribers

-Offer a free product with orders from members who are on your mailing list

-Offer contests exclusively to your mailing list members

-Offer preview sales to your mailing list members so they can see your
product before it goes on your website.

-Offer online "Yard Sales" exclusively to those on your mailing list. This
is where you can host pictures of items either on a page on your site known
only to your mailing list members with yard sale priced items for them to
purchase. You can also host a yard sale on many of the free picture hosting
sites and simply send that link to your mailing list when your sale begins.

-Insert tips, links to articles, links to other freebies, etc on your
mailing list



Next lets talk about building your mailing list subscribership. There are
several ways to do this and these are what I've found to be the most
successful:

-Exchange links or banners with other business's mailing lists. This is
great additional exposure for both of you. Say you have 800 members and the
other business has 800 members, you just doubled your exposure. Do this with
as many business's you can that are willing to exchange with you. Be sure
and sign up for that business's mailing list so you can make sure your link
or banner is correct. You can agree to exchange for any time period you
would like ie; 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, etc.

-If you have a Blog, insert a mailing list sign up form on it

-Post on your favorite message boards telling members about any specials
you'll be offering to those that sign up for your mailing list

-Post on your favorite message boards asking if anyone would like to
exchange mailing list links or banners.

Kelle Arvay
Patternmart