Weekly Inspiration

From the new Flickr Group. Some nice packaging and photography.

My creation, originally uploaded by crossmyheartjwlry.

Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

Flickr Group

I just started a Flickr Group for the blog. Join and add your handmade business related pictures to the pool. I'll pick the Weekly Inspiration from the group as often as possible (hopefully every week but I don't expect that until the group has grown some).

Handmade Business Flickr Group

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

Link Roundup - Finances

This weeks links are all about finances. Learning to track how much your making and spending. I could easily make this a list with hundreds of links but I decided to pick just a few that have the most information.

Small Business Bookkeeping & Accounting
SBA Small Business Planner
Big List of Free Business and Office Software

Weekly Inspiration

Here's the first ever edition of the Weekly Inspiration. I hope to do one of these every Friday highlighting a few cool pieces of packaging, design, etc.

This week's find from Flickr.

Spring Time Felt Bird Brooch Hot Pink Yellow Aqua Polka Dot Vintage Fabric , originally uploaded by lova revolutionary.

Upcoming Plans for the Handmade Business Blog

I've been rethinking some things about this blog and how sporadic my posting tends to be. Since I don't think that's the best way to run a blog I'm instituting a schedule for posting. Hopefully I'll be able to stick to it.

• Monday - Link roundup or Quick Tip
• Wednesday - In depth article, book review, etc.
• Friday - Weekly Inspiration. This is a new idea I had to highlight a cool bit of packaging, business card, shop design, etc.

If you run across something cool you'd like the blog to feature please drop me an email at NoadiArt@gmail.com please include your name and shop link so I can credit you.

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.

Skepticism and Business

Generally I write about positive things you can do for your business but today I want to talk about things to avoid doing. There are always people out there willing to scam you (just look at the spam in your email account) and a recession really brings them out of the woodwork because people are desperate. To be honest here I am involved in the skeptical movement (though not as actively as I would like to be) so this is a subject I have a lot of personal interest in.

There's a lot of sketchy information and advice out there on business. You need to look at things with a skeptical viewpoint before jumping in. What does this mean? What it means is that just because someone says they are an expert you shouldn't automatically believe everything they say, you need to critically evaluate ideas before you put them into practice and if they don't work for you after a reasonable amount of time stop doing it. That goes for this blog as well, I'm simply sharing my thoughts on running a business and what has worked for me. Not every piece of advice I give out will work for everyone.

Some Basic Skeptical Tools

Skepticism isn't about being closed minded or rejecting things out of hand. It's a tool for finding the truth and to help protect yourself (and in this case your business) from being deceived. It involves thinking critically about claims you are presented with, requiring evidence, and spotting common arguments that obscur the truth. A good primer on skepticism in this great video by Brian Dunning called Here Be Dragons



Skeptical Links

• Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit
• Skeptic Magazine
• Federal Trade Commission (okay, this one isn't technically about skepticism but they do have news on scams and what to avoid)
• James Randi Educational Foundation
• Skeptic Blog
  

Some Advice to Be Skeptical Of

This is by no means a comprehensive list, just a few example of how unscrupulous people will try to play on your hopes to get money from you. A comprehensive list could (and does) make up many books.

Easy Money: Remember the old saying "if it sounds to good to be true it probably is"? Get thousands of sales in 30 days guaranteed without really trying! Just pay me X amount of money to get the secret! I don't think so, the only one possibly making all those sales is the person trying to sell you their plan. Running a business is work, anyone saying otherwise is either deluding themselves or trying to scam you.

Home Business Offers: It's tempting when you already have a business from home to add an extra source of income. There are some legitimate ways to make money working from home such as article writing, putting affiliate product links on a site or blog where you get a commission if someone clicks it and then buys something, and some others. However there are a mountain of scams, some big red flags are if they charge you money to get started or worse won't give you the full information on the offer until you fork over money. More information from the Federal Trade Commissions here and here.

Grant Money: The government really does give away a good bit of money in the form of grants and you may be eligible to apply for some. However you don't need to buy any book, software, subscription, etc. to find out where to get grants. The US government very kindly offers a website where you can get all the information for free at Grants.gov

Link Roundup

Time once again for me to share useful links I've come across.

Internal Tracking with Etsy Stats This article shows how to set up Google Analytics to track internal Etsy traffic. This will give you more information about Etsy Searches, and whether someone found you from the front page, Storque, showcases, etc. Make sure you follow the link to the video, it's worth watching for more info.

The rest of the blog also has a lot of good information on stats tracking.

Tech Update: Checkout Updates Details on the changes to Etsy's Checkout system.

Handmadeology: Handmade Directory A new directory for handmade shops, blogs, and twitter profiles.

Accepting Help

In the words of Douglas Adams "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space." The same could be said for life and knowledge. We don't know everything, our brains just aren't big enough and we don't live long enough to find out all there is.

Okay that's enough philosophy for today, what I'm getting at is that sometimes we need help. It can be frustrating to have friend or family say "I think you should do this" or "Maybe you could try that" about your business when the ideas aren't very helpful. However rejecting all help and advice because you think you know best is a dangerous thing to do.

There's nothing wrong with admitting you need some help. Of course you should find someone to help you who is more knowledgeable than you about your problem, a good place to look is your local Small Business Administration or Chamber of Commerce. Talk with other business people and bounce ideas off each other, not all of them will be good ideas but it often helps to have someone take a look at things with fresh eyes.

If something isn't working try to figure out why, if you can't you should ask someone else to take a look. Several times on forums I've seen fairly new online sellers complaining about not making sales, when told they need to work to bring in buyers and given suggestions on how to do so they get offended that someone would dare tell them how to run their business. These people are setting themselves up for failure. If you are going to succeed in your business you need to learn all you can.

Now this article is going to seem a little funny compared to my next article. Not all business advice is good advice, you need to evaluate all ideas critically and that's what I'll be writing about.

Some good links

• Small Business Administration
• Business.gov
• State by State Business Resources