Interview on Handmade Packaging and Etsy

I had a chat today with Sara from CrochetBusiness.com and Squidoo about packaging, craft shows, and other business stuff. Watch the video below or on YouTube.

Getting more traffic from YouTube

I'm a big fan of using video to promote your business. We humans are very visual animals, this is one reason good photos are so important when you're selling handmade products. When the photos are also moving that grabs our attention even more.

Now one of the problems with using YouTube for promotion is that usually the only place you can put a link is in your description and many users ignore the description, even more so since YouTube redesigned the video pages to hide most of the description. There is a way around this, using YouTube's Promoted Videos you can put what YouTube calls a "call to action overlay" on your video that can contain a link to your shop. This will cost a little bit of money, because it is an advertising program, but there are ways to minimize how much you spend.

Here's a video that describes how to set up a Promoted Video and use the call to action overlay. YouTube gives you very few characters to write your message so choose your words carefully and be creative.



Here's an example of one of my videos using this overlay (apparently it doesn't work on embedded videos so you'll need to go click the link to the video on youtube to see it in action). If you have ad blocking software you might need to disable it to see the overlay.

Space Cephalopod Jewelry

Tip: YouTube also gives you the option to use a 56x56pixel image. I used a .png of the cuttlefish in my logo with a transparent background. Just take any image you want, crop it square, then scale it down to 56x56, save, and upload to an image hosting site like Photobucket. You can then use it on your overlay to add just a tiny bit more branding. I recommend using your logo or a portion of it like I did.

Video: Walkthrough my Photo Studio

I know a lot of people prefer to shoot their product photos in natural light. I however don't have much luck with this for a couple reasons A) I live in Maine where 6 months of the year days are very short and dark and B) I'm a night owl so even in the summer I'm more likely to be shooting my pictures at night. So I have a light tent setup that I use for taking my photos. This short video shows how I have my photo studio set up.

This is my photo equipment:

• Panasonic Lumix FZ35 Camera - This is the only expensive part of my photo setup, it's a higher end point and shoot camera. It has full manual controls plus a ton of preset controls for lighting, shutter speed, aperture, etc. but isn't quite as nice (and expensive) as a Digital SLR. You really should get the best camera you can afford, it makes a big difference.
• 16 inch Light Tent - Bought on Ebay for about $20, I also have a large 36 inch one but I use it rarely. The tent came with the blue backdrop I use (and also white and black which are better for most items).
• 2 Desk Lamps - Your basic variety that can be found at any Walmart, Staples, etc. each with a daylight compact florescent bulb. The lamps is less important than the light bulbs used, you want daylight bulbs because the color temperature is a more pure while than most indoor bulbs (which are yellower).
• Reflectors - Made of cardboard covered with aluminum foil.
• Various props - Jewelry display bust, piece of coral, etc.

Video: Improve Your Writing

Etsy recently broadcast the Etsy Success Symposium Writing Workshop. This is good stuff regardless of where you sell so give it a view.

Watch live streaming video from etsy at livestream.com

Video: Finding Your Market

Two part presentation by Megan Auman of Crafting an MBA on how to find and develop your niche.

Part 1:



Part 2:

Social Marketing for Handmade Business

Sister Diane from Craftypod leads a class on Social Marketing. It's almost 2 hours long so grab a cup of coffee or cocoa and sit back to watch, it's full of great information on using social media tools like Twitter, blogs, and Facebook. She explains it in pretty straightforward non-technical language.


Social Marketing for Handmade Businesses by Sister Diane from I Heart Art: Portland on Vimeo.

Note: The video is pretty high quality so run it fullscreen if you can to see the presentation screen better.

Using Video to Promote your Business

I've briefly touched on this subject before when talking about making video slideshows but I want to talk about another avenue to using video to promote your products: How To Videos. This is a brief overview not an in depth tutorial, I'm still learning the process of shooting these types of video myself.

Many people enjoy seeing how handmade products are created and this is a great way to get your name out there. A good video tutorial will get picked up by blogs and shared, if you remember to include a link to your shop in the video description this can lead to traffic and name recognition.

So what type of tutorials should you make? Well I wouldn't suggest showing step by step how you create your most popular product, that would invite copycats to steal your design. Instead I think you should either create a brand new project that you don't intend to sell or do what I've done in my tutorials and teach a useful technique. I've made videos on created a silicone press mold for polymer clay and on using Ice Resin in a necklace to seal objects underneath.

What do you need to get started? The basics are a digital video camera that can shoot high quality video with a microphone, a tripod to hold the camera while you shoot, and a well lit space to shoot in. The good news is if you already have a good quality digital still camera it probably has a video shooting function that will be sufficient for the job, if not a small digital video camera like the Flip Mino HD will run you around $150. After you shoot your video you can upload it as is or use a very basic video editor like Windows Live Movie Maker or iMovie to add titles, credits, or combine multiple video clips together.

After you've created and uploaded your video to a site like YouTube you need to get the word out about it. Embed the video in your own blog, create a Squidoo lens with even more info, post it to Facebook or Twitter, or submit it to crafting blogs that share tutorials.

Video Pick: GIMP Basics

GIMP is my choice for image editing and it's free. With it you can color adjust photos, crop, scale, create banners, business cards, etc. It is quite powerful but takes some getting used to so here's a nice little introductory video. For more advanced stuff check out the rest of the GIMPTricks channel.

Video Pick - Writing Better Ads

Here's a quick little video from google on improving your ads.



Sorry I don't have a longer post for you guys this week. I'm feeling sick and wasn't able to get the post I had planned done.

Video Pick - A kinder, gentler philosophy of success

Nice perspective on society's view of success and failure and why we should move past that. Just a little philosophical today.

Some Great Videos

Next week things will be back to normal with posting because I will be done with art shows for a bit. Since I don't have time to write a long post this week I pulled up a few great videos from YouTube.

Learning from Failure

Here's a wonderful video of a talk by Adam Savage of the Mythbusters all about the things he's learned from failure. The talk was given at Maker Faire Bay Area 2009.



Just a note, there may not be a Wednesday post this week because tomorrow is my birthday and I'm not sure if I'll have time to write anything.