Confused

[ldkeesee]

Hello everyone. I am a little confused on the promoting & marketing yourself. I opened my first website this year. I read a lot about building, promoting, marketing, etc. Before I leaping in with both feet and built my own site (still a work in progress).

When reading about the promoting & marketing for my business, everything I read said to share participate in social networks, share information, tips, etc. But to only post your handmade items no more then 3-4 times a day or people will consider it spamming.
So that is what I have been trying to do, but not with much luck, hardly get any traffic to my site. (I know it will take time) but I'm starting to wonder should I have jumped in like I did.

So over the past month I been checking out sites that post their items they have for sale quite a bit on twitter and in groups on Facebook. A lot more then 3-4 times a day. Well they are saling their items. At least the ones I see on Etsy . But they post & post & post. I never did well on Etsy, but then I didn't post a lot either.
The other shops I can't see there sales. So I don't know how they do in other shops.

So should I be posting more? Does posting a lot seem to get y'all more traffic, sales. And if I should be posting more, I have a slight problem. I can post links to my sites different pages. But I can't post to just one item. I can post to my bracelet page, necklace page etc. Will that hurt me not being able to send customers to just one item but to whole page of items.

So if anyone has any pointers, tips. Anything. I would greatly
appreciate it.
Thank you,
Linda

[trusk4u]

I would say do what's comfortable for you. I know I see many who post constantly all day, every day. Personally, it's to the point where I don't look anymore for that very reason. I think it's overkill and looks really desperate.  I've heard many times too that it's better to promote a section of a shop rather than a specific item. The section will always be there, but if the item sells, it's gone. When you do post in social media, include a link to your site when you can. Even when you post here, you can add your links to your signature  and it will show up everytime you post. Hope that helps you some.

[ldkeesee]

Thank you trusk4u.

[MichaelaJewelry]

I agree with truskfu.  If I see somebody posting constantly and not really participating and commenting about other people's work then I don't bother even looking at their work anymore - it totally comes across as desparate. 

There are however certain websites - Flickr, Craftjuice and some Groups on Facebook that are solely for posting your work but I think that everybody is too busy posting their own pieces that they are not really looking at other artist's posts.  Before you join a group/forum read the rules. While I LOVE making jewelry I actually find it more fulfilling giving (and receiving) advice than spending the time posting my work.  But do what feels comfortable to you and read the rules.

Also, links to your website are good - the more links you get heading back to your website the better - although the quality of the links is better than the quantity sometimes.  By that I mean larger established, older sites tend to be higher on the authority scale and have a higher page ranking.

Hope this helps. 

Margaret

[ldkeesee]

Thank you Margaret. I really appreciate the help. I just don't see how anyone gets much jewelry made. It takes  a lot of time promoting and marketing. Hopefully I will get better where it don't take so long.

Thank you,
Linda

[MichaelaJewelry]

Hi Linda, I've been working soooo much on the computer over the last couple of months trying to market myself - and yes, not getting much jewelry made.  But I think it's a process that takes time.  You'll find the more you work on it the less time (believe it or not) you'll need to spend just 'wasting' time on the internet.  You'll find what forums work for you, if you blog, blogging may start getting easier as you begin to feel your way around.  While I still spend way too much time on social media - I'm finding it's getting easier - and therefore I'm not on it as long as I was - at first I was spending almost ALL day! Now it's just half my day! I hope to narrow it down to about an hour (or two) a day. Each day is a different day and each day brings different challenges, experiences etc.  We WILL get there I promise.  Hang on in there.

Margaret

[Colette]

Thank you Margaret. I really appreciate the help. I just don't see how anyone gets much jewelry made. It takes  a lot of time promoting and marketing. Hopefully I will get better where it don't take so long.

Thank you,
Linda

You made a good point. Sometimes, I have to draw the line and decide that I only want to spend X amount of hours on the net and that's it. Otherwise, you'll be there all day long.

[Chainmaille By MBOI]

Trust me when I tell you it is not easy to get a site going. I did a similar site to the one you have now using yahoo site builder and scraped it. We tried website tonight through godaddy before that and scrapped that as well. Honestly one of the best website platforms for a site like yours is self hosted wordpress. They are easy to build, thousands of templates out there, and most importantly google loves wordpress. Chaninmaille By MBOI, Makin the Best of It, the handmadeartistsforum.com are all wordpress blogs. We even just added one to the shop here http://handmadeartistsshop.com/blog/ , this one has a custom template from our developer. But one thing I know is if you set up a wordpress installation right google will just eat it up. Not that google will be this shallow, but you are using yahoo sitebuilder, their competitor, google I do believe will not like it as much.Next websites need content, lots and lots of content. Then you need to get as many inbound links as you can. Posting on forums, social media, link exchanges, commenting on blogs, on and on and on and on. It is truly a full time job. My wife and I crack up everytime we see that intuit commercial and websites. Just pick a pattern list you stuff and get found!!! LOL It just doesn't work that way. It takes huge effort. Google Alexa, they look at everything, even how long you bought your domain name for. Say you bought your domain name for a year, they may think your not serious, the last time I renewed the shop domain name I bought it for 9 years and bought everyother .net, .biz, .info ect. ect. name out there.
The real key is to not give up, but I would consider starting over with a self hosted wordpress platform instead of yahoo site builder, just my opinion from my experience. The yahoo site builder was a waste of time for us for about a year.Hope all that makes sense

[MakinTheBestOfIt]

Promoting is rough...and my least favorite part of this business.  I am not, by nature, one that likes to pimp myself and my work out there.  I have found that we actually had a large increase in sales when we pimped out other peoples stuff!  (Here that Andrew, you are officially a pimp!    )
Another trick that has been working is setting up a schedule and really making an effort to stick to it.  I use a spiral book and list daily everything I have to get done that day and another page of those things that need to get done eventually.  I set time limits for myself for work and computer so that I can fit it all in around my other job and the kids schedule.
Basically, the entire thing is one big balancing act and we all fall off the tightrope sometimes.

[ldkeesee]

Thank you Margaret, Colette, Kimberly and Andrew. I just get so frustrated, all the work I've put into my site and then someone ask how's your business going. All I can say is I'm still trying to get my name out there and market myself.

Andrew you suggested getting a wordpress blog. I did finally get one. It's free through, the yahoo site builder offers the wordpress blog. But I am having a heck of a time with it. Yahoo doesn't offer support for it though, you have to go to the wordpress site for any help. I'm having more trouble getting it to do what I want it to do. And when I try to post something to test it out, it disappears. I've posted several times and same thing so I quit. And I have a big square on main page have no ideal what it is. I finally bought me a couple of books. So hopefully that will help. So hard to find the time to work on it with my weird work schedule, but in a few weeks I'll be back on normal schedule then maybe I can figure it out. Thanks for your help.

I am so glad I found this forum, everyone is so friendly and helpful.

Thank you,
Linda

[Chainmaille By MBOI]

It must be something with the yahoo site builder. The wordpress site can sit right on the root of your domain. It sounds like it is siting in a folder and working through the yahoo site builder somehow. The wordpress site can actually be the main site. For example the main site here is http://handmadeartistsforum.com is a wordpress site, the forum actually sits in a different folder. Or the http://handmadeartistsshop.com is a custom built site but http://handmadeartistsshop.com/blog/ is a wordpress site that sits in a different folder. So it goes both ways. My suggestion would be to get away from yahoo site builder completely. How are you hosting your site through yahoo?

[ldkeesee]

I thought my wordpress blog was separate. But maybe not. It is one of the yahoo third party apps it offers. I have made a couple of pages and put some link categories on it. I even got widgets but not quite sure how to make them work.  And I picked out my templet. I know wordpress has a free blog and a paid. Not sure what mine is. I assume the free one. It's www.MixedKreations.com/blog. I guess I need to go to the wordpress site and see about getting one directly through them.

Not sure what you mean by how is it hosted  I just paid for another year for my yahoo site builder hosting. It's not the
merchant account with all the perks but the next one down.

I will have to look more into the wordpress blog that I have. And go to the wordpress site.

Thank you so much for all your help.
Linda

[Chainmaille By MBOI]

No it looks like they loaded wordpress in a separate folder. Wordpress is completely free. Just so you understand there is wordpress.com which is like blogger, they host your blog. There is wordpress.org which is just the site that represents the wordpress software for self hosted wordpress sites, like your blog. You are hosting your blog on your own dot.com which is called self hosted wrodpress. Basically wordpress is a blogging software but it is free and the most popular around. By selfhosting your own wordpress blog you will get more attention from google than blogger will ever give even though google owns blogger. If that makes any sense. Once you understand how the software works there are tons of free plugins that you can use to enhance your site. You should probably use All in one SEO plugin, which is one that we use on all of our wordpress installations. It helps with meta data for each post which is important for SEO. The only thing that is paid about worpress is if you want to buy professional templates or plugins, but the base software is free and 99% of anything you want with wordpress is free as well. We paid quite a bit for this template http://handmadeartistsshop.com/blog/ as we wanted it to be custom and match the main shop. So it is all that you want. But self hosting your site even if you stay with yahoo is the way to go. Basically your yahoo site is ok, having the blog attached to it will help. I think you'll find google will pick up your blog posts quicker than your html work on the main site, it is all one, but it is really sort of two, if that makes sense.

[ldkeesee]

Andrew,

Wow there is so much to learn. And so confusing. I surprised myself getting this far.

Ok, so my site is self hosted which is good. I am using the wordpress software from wordpress.org not wordpress.com (I was wondering which it was)  If I drop yahoo, will my blog go away too, since I have it through yahoo? Do I need to maybe go ahead and switch and go through wordpress? There is a code/key or something that you need for some of the plugins to work, can't remember which plugin, but I contacted yahoo text support and they had no ideal what it was. So I guess maybe through them not everything for wordpress is available. (I think it was registry key, or something like that).

I really appreciate all your help
Thank you so much,
Linda

[Chainmaille By MBOI]

yes you need to keep yahoo now as you site is hosted through yahoo, which is fine for now since you started that way. I'm not sure how much you pay but that would really be the only consideration now. The registration key or whatever is I'm assuming for Akismet. I've never used it and I'm not sure it works on self hoseted wordpress. I use http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/spam-karma-blacklist-ban/ for spam control and have no issues.