Dear Diary, Goals Reached!

I hope all of you had a great Mother's Day weekend. I know I did! I had 12 items sell ! Yay! Great multi item buyers, but more about business tomorrow, I'm just bursting with some personal news that I know some of you may find boring, but it was the highlight of my weekend definitely, maybe my year so far even!

A lot of you know my kids play competitive junior tennis. In Texas there are three levels and a points system is used to "qualify" the kids from one level to another. Not only do you have to earn the right number of points but it has to be in a certain combination so that you reach that points level in a combination of 4 tournaments in a year time frame. Well Sunday on Mother's Day my youngest got runner up in the Corpus Christi Champ Tournament, but more important than that she reached her points by winning the semi finals and is now in the top level of junior tennis in Texas. She is a beautiful, smart and vibrant kid and I'm so proud of her.

Dear Diary, Little Did I Know!

Well it isn't reflected here but DawnCorrespondence's comment on Tuesday's post set off a storm of comments in the uwib forum. The consensus on relisting?

• Jewelry sellers and other sellers of stock items feel it is essential to their business. They can quickly relist topsellers.
• Some sellers use it to bring relevantly themed items to the top of search results when those themes are trending (I'll have to try that!)
• Sellers agree that ooak items are not appropriate for relisting if it has been done multiple times with no results.
• Some sellers take dead stock ooak items and remake them into other things that may sell.

Hope I got it right! Thanks for everyone for the comments, uwib rocks! 

Dear Diary....the Streak Broken..

Dear Diary, today my no sales streak for over a week ended! Yay! I had two sales. I was getting pretty jumpy since I don't usually go that long without a sale, so I feel better. And, it frees me up a little, with no sales comes no cash and no new inventory! I'm not a fan of relisting just to get views, so if an item hasn't expired I don't usually relist. Anyway how do I know if I want to relist an item or not? I mean if it has been on the "shelf" so to speak for 3 months with no movement, well is it a good item? is the price too high? is the picture bad?

How do you move your aging inventory? This last time I relisted items I lowered the prices of them by 50%. I felt they were all fab items like the earrings pictured. I sold one of the half a dozen or so I reduced. I asked her how she found the item and she said through google, she was looking for a sterling silver picture frame and the bangle bracelet showed up in the search results, imagine that! So she wasn't looking for it, she didn't find the price a reason to buy, I don't know.....

At any rate, at the end of this listing period these items won't be renewed. I liquidate my unsold items in lots, sometimes through craigslist, sometimes on ebay, sometimes if they are sweet and small things I'll give them away as gifts with purchases. But it is a problem all of us face, what to do with dead inventory? If you have a creative solution for either handmade or vintage items, leave it in the comments, I'd love to hear! Until tomorrow, Jamie.

Dear Diary, In Praise of Online Friends.....

One of the things business gurus encourage you to do online is to network. One way of networking is to join a group. There are lots of groups you can join both within and outside of Etsy. Some are better than others, some have different vibes, but I think they all have their place. A while back I joined a group that I found via twitter. It's called Unique Women in Business. They provide a great support structure for fledgling entrepreneurs. It is a forum that you can ask for opinions and advice. The wide base of members are almost always able to provide you with some kind of first hand answers.They also provide a platform to promote one another's work. You do have to make one purchase a month from another member but with the wide range of businesses and products you can almost always find something you would need to buy anyway.  

So explore your options, talk with other entreprenuers in your niche, see what groups they belong too. Explore your options, the forums are a great place to learn about groups and the etsy teams. 

On a sidebar, I'd like to thank these lovely ladies for all the kind words they have passed my way since January. Some people don't really get the concept of online friends, but I can tell anyone who asks that the relationships are real. Thanks UWIB! 

Dear Diary.....

Trying something new.....The listings I've done the last several weeks have been heavily fashion oriented. I have some paper ephemeral that has just been sitting about waiting to be listed so I changed tracks today and listed some of those pieces...

These are photogravure prints from an 1894 volume by Selmar Hess, Great Men and Women. I love the detail on the horses.....Wonderful pieces.. Also I've been so busy lately I seem to have lost some steam, I need to regroup, refocus, Think! My etsy shop has several different prints, I've also listed some vintage map pages for crafting or other uses, We'll see what happens!

Dear Diary....

Okay so today my usual bright and sunny disposition is not so bright. I am a believer in facing whatever comes your way with positive thoughts feelings and actions. I look for the best in each day and try to build on it. Sometimes all of us though just get in a funk, and today I'm in one. Wrecked car, lots of personal stuff to do and despite a plus of 800 views from Friday of last week until Monday I've had no sales. I even skipped posting yesterday, I was so busy with hubby computer probs, Avis rental car claims, etc.

I can't even think of anything fun or helpful to write about so that is why I'm writing about my funk!

One thing that my business group posted about yesterday was the Graphics Fairy. I'd never seen this site but it's pretty cool. So I guess I do have something to write about....Free Images, and some really great vintage ones....

Anyway you always hear if the same old thing isn't working to try something new, I'm off to think of something new. I usually don't go more than a day or two with no sales so this is discouraging. Until Tomorrow, Jamie.

Dear Diary, What Kind of Weekend Was This?

Well guys, my weekend was good and bad, on a personal note, Friday night we were on our way to Dallas in the rain when a speeding car sideswiped us. As we were going down the freeway on two wheels all I could say was "HOLD ON!" Once again we were super lucky, minimal damage to our car (the other was totalled) kids were fine, dog fine, us fine. Other driver? no insurance, something fishy going on with the car, Avis shows it was never rented.... Drivers info address, phone number etc looks to be bogus...

Sales, only the 2 I got Friday. Up 500 views in my shop from Friday with multiple new Hearts. So I'm wondering how your weekend was?

On a very interesting note I got a tweet from Oktak that there is a new etsy hack app that you can use to remove your expired listings... for someone who has a couple of years worth of those that is exciting! I'm installing it later today but Oktak assures me it works, I'll let you know my results, here is the link. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/75240

So until tomorrow gotta go, (have car issues to work out!) Leave me a comment on how your weekend was sales or otherwise, I'd love to hear! Jamie