Quick Tip #30 - Gift Wrapping

The holidays are the busiest time of year for retail, and it's pretty busy for customers too. Why not help our your customers by offering free gift wrapping? It's one of those extra touches that a small business can do so much better than a big store.

For Etsy sellers, since we don't have any way for a buyer to select gift wrapping directly, make sure you include gift wrap information in your listing along with instructions to add it in the note to seller or to send a convo. I also suggest putting that information in your shop policies and if you want your shop announcement as well. If you are using your own shopping cart and can add a checkbox or other direct way to request gift wrapping that would be the best way to do it.

For all handmade sellers online, make sure you are promoting your gift wrapping option on your blog/website and all your social media accounts. Offering gift wrapping can be a great selling point for your products but only if people know it's available.

For some other thoughts on packaging check out Making your Handmade Products Stand Out.

100 Post Anniversary!

I can't believe I've already written 100 posts for this blog. To celebrate here are the best of the first 100.

✎ Photographing Your Work Part I
✎ Photographing Your Work Part II
✎ Creative Packaging Ideas - The Basics
✎ Google Analytics for your Business
✎ Why is SEO Important for my Shop?
✎ Etsy Hacks Review
✎ Quick Tip #10 - More Etsy Hacks
✎ Packaging Large, Fragile, and Other Difficult Products
✎ Ad Basics I: Creating Effective Online Ads
✎ Skepticism and Business
✎ I Create a Shipping Center
✎ From Muse to Model (Guest Post by Jen Kiaba)
✎ Two Very Easy To Make Displays

Link Round Up: Labels for your Fabric Creations

Here are some links for making your own fabric labels for clothing, bags, plush toys, etc.

Label Tutorials
Iron-On Transfer Labels
Printed Labels - Labels printed on special ink jet fabric
Washable Printed Labels
Embroidered Labels - Using machine embroidery *required computerized sewing machine*

Another Option
If you've had custom rubber stamps made you can use fabric inks to stamp labels.

Buying Labels
Here are a few links to Etsy sellers who offer custom fabric labels.
WorldwideLabel - Woven labels
Custom Couture Label Company Multiple styles of fabric labels
Herjodren - Washable printed labels and other print products

Book Review: Craft Inc.

Welcome to the first ever book review for the Handmade Business Blog. I'm a bit of a book addict so this is fun. I know I said there would be a guest post this week but it's not ready so it may run instead of the usual Friday or Monday post instead.

I recently bought a copy of Craft Inc. Turn Your Creative Hobby Into a Business by Meg Mateo Ilasco. This is a very well written book, the author has an approachable conversational style of writing which I enjoy.

This book has a breakdown of various issues a person starting up a handmade business needs to consider. I think the strongest chapter is called "Your Business Mind" which covers things like registering your business, accounting, writing a business plan, etc. These are topics that no one really enjoys and so there's a tendency to want to ignore this area.

Pros:

• Good interviews with entrepreneurs
• Covers a variety of important topics like pricing, marketing, craft shows, selling online, etc.
• Emphasizes the nuts and bolts of running a business without being boring.
• Discusses how to stay moptivated and having realistic expectations.
• Delves into how to handle growth and when you should consider delegating some of the work.

Cons:

• Not as in depth in some areas as I would like, such as the press kit section.
• Doesn't give references to check out for further information. For example: when talkign about trademarking a link to the US Patent and Trademark Office would have been useful.
• I think some visual examples would have illustrated some of her points better than just describing them.

Overall I think the book is worth buying as a primer for getting your business started. Now you can find a lot of the information elsewhere but having all the information gathered together is worth the $12 just for time saved.

Establishing a Theme

This week's long post isn't going to be very long. I had planned to do a book review but my books didn't arrive in time for me to be able to finish reading and absorbing the information. So instead I'm going to write a few ideas about branding.

Is there something special about your products that you want people to associate with you? This can be a tough question. For me it was pretty easy, I make jewelry of cephalopods (squid, octopus, cuttlefish) and so I would love for people to think of me when they think of an octopus.

So once you've answered that question it can be used as a starting point for your branding efforts. We'll use the example of someone who makes bags with screenprinted daisies.

White, green, and yellow are colors associated with daises, you could tailor your website, banners, business cards to have that those colors.

Design your logo to have daisies working into it.

At craft shows have vases filled with fresh cut daisies.

Shrink down some of the designs from the screenprinting and have them made into rubber stamps. Rubber stamp them on your packaging, notecards, invoices, etc.

Want to Write a Guest Post?

I could use some help from my readers. My area of experience is in selling jewelry and sculpture, so I would love to be able to feature articles about selling other products.

Type of topics I'm looking for:

• Hiring and working with a model (or how to convince friends to model) for clothing photography.
• Getting started selling candy or other foods online.
• Sources for sewn in clothing tags or how to make your own.
• Wholesaling your products.

Those are only a few examples. So if you have some knowledge to share please drop me an email with a short description of what you want to write about. Guest writers will get a short intro paragraph about them and a link to their shop.

I Create a Shipping Center

This article is being written as I do what I'm writing about. I'm tired of scrambling to gather all my shipping stuff when I get an order. It was all more or less in one place just as a big messy stack of stuff with no organization. So here we go.

I'm only working with what I currently have and it has to fit in a corner of the room.

Before
I'm a bit embarrassed to put this picture but we need a before.


Storage
So since I'm committed to doing this with what I already have I need to consider the storage I have available.

• 1 wide plastic set of drawers 24 inches wide 36 inches tall
• 1 narrow plastic set of drawers 12 inches wide and 36 inches tall
• plastic shoe boxes
• Various cardboard boxes
• Various other storage containers
  

What I Did
I'll spare you the horrendous photos of how messy my living room got during this process. Suffice to say you can't organize anything without first tearing everything apart to sort through it.

1. First of all I need a flat surface to construct the packages on and keep my scale. The top of the wide plastic drawers works great. The shipping area is directly across from my computer so I can just wheel the chair over when I need to pack things.
   
2. On the top of the drawers are my postal scale, box with gift bags, receipt book, calculator, packing tape, scotch tape, scissors, box cutter, business cards, box of brochures and promo packs. Also some packing paper that didn't fit anywhere else.
   
3. Small flattened boxes went in the bottom drawer. Larger flattened boxes tucked between drawers and wall.
4. Tissue paper saved from orders, gifts, etc. in a cardboard box. Box then went into the top drawer.
5. Bubble wrap in the top drawer.
6. Envelopes, extra packing tape, small box of saved packing peanuts, and other miscellaneous small items in the middle drawer.
7. Assembled boxes arranged in a neat stack. Larger boxes stored in downstairs closet until needed.
8. Less frequently used items stored in the smaller set of drawers that has been moved to where the larger one used to be. In it are gift boxes, ribbon, wrapping paper, etc.
9. Next to the small drawers are some more boxes.
10. Hung my t-square on the wall, I use it for cutting down over sized boxes.
11. Packed up the art paper, mat board, and other stuff that didn't belong in boxes and they're stored downstairs as well. Organizing my paper is for another day.
12. Threw out a lot of trash and broken boxes. The stool with my pasta machine went back where it belonged next to my art desk.
    

After
Here's the result of my efforts. It's not pretty but it's neat and functional. I hope it inspires you to consider how your shipping and studio is organized.

Some Links on Organization

• Home Office: Organization and Productivity
• Life Organizers: Home Office
  
• Office Organizing Tips

Etsy Assistance

I just joined the Sellers Assisting Sellers Etsy Team. This is a great resource for Etsy sellers, members are all willing to help out other sellers during SAS Critique chats in the Virtual Labs or directly answer questions via convo. Check out the blog which is packed full of good information.

Remember my post on earring cards? Well I took the template file I had and designed a bunch of new ones that you can customize on Zazzle along with adding some ideas for using them on this Squidoo lens: Get Customized Earring Cards on Zazzle.

Little Extra Touch

Here are some ideas for little extras to send out with orders to make your products more memorable for your customer and hopefully become repeat customers.

Everyone: Include a thank you note or card.

Candles: Include custom printed matchbooks. There are a number of companies online that print them but most sell by the case (2500 matchbooks) which may be more than you need or out of your price range, if you want a lower cost solution consider buying plain white matchbooks and rubber stamping your logo on. There are several companies online that make custom stamps, RubberStamps.net has pretty good prices.

Jewelry & Clothing: Print up a notecard or pamphlet that includes care instructions.

Kids products: How about including stickers related to the product. As an example, if you sell sock monkeys include some stickers of monkeys. Dollar stores are good sources of large quantities of sticker books. Just cut the sheets into strips of 3-4 small stickers or 1-2 larger ones.

Bath & Body: Include a small sample pack of your products in some scents that compliment the order.

Supplies: Include a few extra beads, buttons, findings, etc. as a bonus. Also a way to use up odds and ends.

As always including business cards and nice packaging regardless of what you sell is a big help.

My Thoughts on CPSIA

I've stayed away from this topic so far because I didn't have enough information yet to consider myself well informed. However I really think this is potentially disastrous new regulation for anyone selling handmade children's items. Etsy has a few good articles up here and here that do a better job than I could explaining concerns and new updates today that are encouraging. You can voice your concerns on Change.org and by all means contact your Representatives and Senators in Congress.

Please don't panic about this and close up shop. There is little chance that handmade sellers are going to face a crackdown when the big companies importing from China are a much bigger concern but the truth is we shouldn't be facing this law at all. Work to change the law, if thousands of small businesses and their customers raise their voices we'll be heard.

Is the Recession a Benefit for Handmade Businesses?

I don't have the answer to that question, it's much too big and complex for me as a single businesswoman to draw a firm conclusion just from my experience and talking to other business owners. My sales this holiday season have been much more than I expected and I don't know if that's a result of more people buying handmade or the effect of my marketing efforts or luck or some combination of that.

However one writer for the New York Times does think that the recession and people wanting to save money has had the effect of helping craft businesses and suppliers. Go check it out here: For Craft Sales, the Recession Is a Help

Quick Tip #1 - Fee Calculators

If you accept paypal payments this is a great PayPal Fee Calculator. There's also one for Etsy but I've yet to find one for Google Checkout so you still have to do that math yourself.

My Thoughts on Business Cards

If you read my site review of Zazzle you know how happy I am with my new business cards. Why have a business card though? My business is online you say, I do lots of marketing online. That's true but I don't want to limit myself to just marketing online. For example I often wear my jewelry designs when I go out and if someone compliments them I want to be able to hand them a card. So what do I need in a business card? Contact information of course, it needs to communicate what I do well, and it needs to be memorable.

So lets break down my card:

Business Name - Not surprisingly I put Noadi's Art in the biggest font size on this card. I used the same font for this as I do on my website for the title, partly because I love the font and also to have consistency in my designs. I also picked a gray-blue color instead of black to soften the look a little and pick up on the background of the photo.
Description - I wanted to keep the description simple and too the point so I listed what I sell with the cuttlefish jewelry first because it's my most popular item but also kind of funny. I used the italic version of the font I used for the contact information.
Contact information - Since I sell primarily online I listed my web address and email prominently under my name and put my address and phone number at the bottom.
Image - I wanted to pick a photo that was beautiful and illustrated my work well. I didn't take the cup full of cuttlefish photo specifically for the card but it really turned out to be the most perfect for that spot.
Back of card - This photo I did take specifically for the card, I wanted to show a wide variety of things that I make and my sorceress sculpture made a nice centerpiece for it.

Here's the business card template I used. I loaded it into the GIMP (a free open source image editor) as the background layer and built everything on top of it to make sure the positioning worked well and then hid it with a solid white layer. I kept the original file with all the layers in case the next time I have cards printed I need to change anything, then I exported it as a .jpg at the highest quality setting so it would be nice and crisp then uploaded to zazzle to make my card.

Links to articles on designing cards:
Business Card Design in Photoshop Video Series
10 Step Guide to Designing Awesome Business Cards
Leave a Creative Calling Card
10 Steps to a Stupendous Business Card

Here are a few ideas for using your business cards:

• Include you business card in all orders
• Fill a basket or card holder for people to take one at art/craft shows
• Post them up on public bulletin boards and other places that let you leave your card (or a small stack of them)
• Include your card with everything you mail out. I've even heard of people including them with their bills!
• Get your friends and family involved, have them post your card where they work or have a few to hand out. My mom is a teacher and since my jewelry often appeals to science teachers she has some cards to hand out at conferences.
• To sum it up, don't be stingy! Hand out your cards all the time, if someone asks for extras give them extras. You want as many people as possible to know about your business.

Creative Packaging Ideas - The Basics

This will be an ongoing series because I really think having great packaging helps a handmade business stand out and be memorable to your customers (you want repeat business right?).

This post is on the basics of what I think is important for good packaging. Make sure you check out my Squidoo lens Make your Handmade Products Stand Out! Using Creative Packaging for even more ideas.

The photo to the right shows some of the packaging that I use. It's a mix of fabric gift bags and boxes but you can see that they have a consistent look to them. There are many ways to package your products depending on what you are selling. Small bags and boxes work well for small items like jewelry, paper strips wrapped around handmade soaps with a label are simple but look great, if your products come in a jar or bottle have custom label stickers printed up for them, custom tags for fabric items, the possibilities are endless. Wander around your favorite store looking at how products are packaged or check out the Die Line blog for ideas.

General Tips

• Include photos of your packaging in your shop, let your customer know how their items will arrive.
• Plan your packaging ahead of time and keep all your packaging materials organized in one place (I just use a large box).
• Keep things looking consistent, I don't mean everything has to be the same, but the style and theme of your packaging should all have a similar feel.
• Make the product and packaging match. If it's retro styled give the packaging a retro look. If it's Victorian don't put it in a tied-dyed box.
• Make it professional. Make sure glued items don't have edges sticking up, corners aren't ripped off tags, all text is correct and spell checked.

Photographing Your Work Part II

This part of the series we're going to talk about setting up the display for your jewelry before you photograph it.

Backdrop

You don't want to be taking your photos against a background that makes your work look terrible so a good backdrop is important. They're also very simple to create. The best backdrops are either fabric or paper because they are the easiest to handle and find. The best backdrops are simple, a solid color or subtle pattern/texture is best to not distract from the object being photographed. Colors shouldn't clash with the object being photographed either, I recommend neutral or soft colors because you can use them with the widest variety of colored objects so you won't need multiple backdrops.

Props

You can of course just photograph your work against the backdrop and I do that often but props can really help show off your items well. Here are some options you can try:

• Display stands. Most jewelry supply stores sell display stands for necklaces, bracelets, etc.
  
• Dishes. I use a pretty wine glass to hang earrings from in my photos, you can also use bowls, jars, etc.
• Books. A stack of nice hardcover books or an open page can make an interesting display.
• Branches, driftwood, etc. Hang ornaments from a branch, drape a necklace over a piece of driftwood, there are plenty of interesting ways to use these natural items.
• Rocks. A pile of river pebbles or a large smooth rock would contrast well with metalwork jewelry.
• Dressforms and Mannequins. If you create clothing you can either get a model or use a stand-in. In particular many people are squeamish about buying hats that have been modeled on a real person.
• Fabric. Tulle netting can be used to hang earrings from, you can run a piece of fabric through a ring or bracelet, it can provide a splash of color to a neutral backdrop.

This is just a small list of props you could use, just look around your home and see what you have that would set off your creations well.

The next part of this series will talk about composing your shots.

Photographing Your Work Part I

Photographing Your Work Part I

If you're selling your handmade products online your photos are the best way for your customers to judge your work. So you need the photos to be good. This first of 3 parts on photographing is about how to set up to take good photos, Part II will cover composing the photos against a backgrop and with props, Part III will cover editing.

Cameras

Digital cameras have come a long way and now even a fairly inexpensive digital camera can take good resolution photos. The only requirements that are a must is a minimum of 4 megapixel resolution, a macro setting, and basic manual white balance settings. I also prefer a time delay setting, just 2 seconds is enough for me to get my hands away from the camera to prevent shaking.

• Resolution: It's best to take your photos much larger than you need them so you can more easily edit and crop them, then resize down the the dimensions you need.
• Macro Setting: Macro usually indicated by a flower icon or button and is for taking crisp photos are 3 feet away or less. This is essential to photograph any products smaller than about basketball sized.
• White balance: This is how your camera processes the lighting when you take a photo, you need to set this to match the current lighting or your colors will be off. For example if you try to take photos in incandescent lighting with sunlight selected for white balance everything will have a very yellow cast, alternatively take photos in sunlight with incandescent light selected and everything will be very blue.

Tripod

And absolute must is a tripod or some other way to stabilize your camera such as a box or stack or books. When taking closeups with the macro setting on any tiny shaking in your hands will make the photo blurry.

Lighting

Lighting is the most essential part of taking good photos. Here are some tips:

• Don't use flash. Ever. Flash will wash out your photos and cause bright spots anywhere that reflects.
• If possible use natural light. A room with large windows is great as is taking your work outside if the weather is favorable. A few things you should avoid though are bright direct sunlight, early morning and late evening light (it will give your photos a colored cast).
• If using lamps you need to diffuse the light. The best way to do this is with a light tent for small objects which can be easily built. Large objects you'll want diffusers, these can be made with milk jugs, paper, or fabric. I'll include links to tutorials on light tents and diffusers at the end of this article.
• The best light bulbs I've found for lamps are daylight compact florescent bulbs, the color is close to natural light.
• How many lamps you need depends on the brightness of your lamps and the size of your object, small jewelry may only need a single lamp while a large ceramic bowl may need three. Generally though you will not need more than three (see links for info about 3 point lighting)
  

Obviously this is only a basic overview of what you need for taking good photos but if you're just starting out this is a good place to start. Experimentation with your camera and lighting is the best way to learn what works best for you.

Resources
Taking Successful Photos of your Artwork
Tips for Photographing Your Handmade Jewelry
Making a Soft Light for Virtually Nothing
How To: DIY $10 Macro Photo Studio
Making a Soft Light for Virtually Nothing
DIY Light Panel Diffuser
Build a photo studio - Collapsible Light Diffuser Frames

Photographing Your Work Part II