Catch-up and an Entirely New Handbag

Its been a while since I've written anything. It is spring and between cleaning up the yard, the day job (the one that pays the college bills!), buying fabric, creating a display, and having a show, I've been pretty busy! I've been busy lately creating a new style. I've seen this concept in several places so I thought I would take a stab at it. Its a purse which can have different style outside flaps to it. This gives both me the designer, and you the customer, a lot of options and flexibility. You can see the basic bag's picture here.  It has two side pockets, either one large enough for a cell phone.  I still have not made the cover flap for it.   More to come soon.

I spent a lot of time for my second show in late April. It was $45 for the booth - not cheap! I made a whole display and racks to hold my handbags. I took a day off from work to get it all done. Unfortunately, the traffic at the show was very poor and I only made a couple of small sales. Certainly not enough to cover my investment. Oh well, the next show will be a lot easier since I now have all the stuff I need. I did gat a few more names for my newsletter. The first one has still yet to go out. My day job keeps interfering with my creative job. Until I sell A LOT MORE, I think I better keep being the accountant. Creativity in that job though can get me in big trouble!
I've been buying too much fabric lately. I have more ideas and creativity than the time to get it done. I need to somehow secure more help from the family on some of this. I don't have a lot of luck with that one sometimes.
On the internet side things remain extremely slow. My husband created an ArtFire site a few weeks ago. So far it has not been worth the $12 / month fee to keep. I don't think my husband nor I anticipated how difficult getting noticed by search engines would be. You can not sell anything if no one knows you exist! We'll keep working on it.   I'm going to try to do a bit better on the social media side of this business.  We'll see if that really happens.   I'm always glad to hear comments - they help keep me motivated!

Blog Silence = Many new bags for Spring

My blog writing has frankly been pathetic. Sorry for my few faithfull readers.   My Etsy sales for the year also remain a pathetic zero.  I guess the good news is I've had a lot more blog entries this year than sales.  If I quit this though I'm going to go out in a blaze of glory.  I' ve made a couple of new styles and I really like my bags for Spring.   I've I have over 60 bags now on Etsy and my own web site.  Our own web site is up and running and we've loaded lots of bags into Google Merchant.   There has been alot of discussion on the forums about searches.  Some say that the searches are no longer linking well with Etsy.  I don't know what to think.  My husband who understand this stuff more than I do, doesn't really know.  He has tried keying on the word handmade fabric handbags and has linked this many times over.  If you type this into Google however you will never find us.  If one cannot find your handbags one will never even have an opportunity to but one.

     My first craft show a few weeks ago was a good learning experience but was not a good venue.   It was more of a school bazaar.  Perhaps a good thing came from it, I did get invited to one coming up here in two weeks.  My husband also had the idea of a newletter.  He now has a sign-up working here.    We're going to add coupons for those newsletters when he figures that part of Zen Cart out.  You can be one of the first to sign-up!     

   The upcoming show has me going full time at night trying to get more bags done.   I'm also in the midst of creating a display for it.  I've got the wood, now I need the time.   My husband has been collecting a list of handbag web sites to compare and learn.   Some are VERY good.  An idea born from this is "handbag" parties.  I  have been to jewelry parties, candle parties, basket partied, but never a handbag party.  It is something I am toying with.
    Our first tax filing as a LLC is done and our personal returns are completed.   A pleasant surprise was a nice refund based on all of our college tuition payments we made last year.   I'm not telling the kids though because I'm sure we would hear about how much money they "saved" us and how much of that refund should go to them!  The reality is the refund is being put back into savings for the next years tuition payments.  August is coming up real soon and I'm sure the tuition payments will be going up as well.
     

Quiet does NOT mean no activity

I admit it.  The blog has been pretty silent lately.  This does NOT mean that no activity is going on.  If anything the activity has been going up.  Due to this activity the blog has been somewhat silent.  One of the first things you might notice is our new store outside of Etsy.  This was built by my husband using the free Zen cart template and lots of additional addons.  Checkout the link at MiladyCreations.  I also have this on the upper right of my blog.  Let me know what you think.  This is a real departure from using Etsy and it s been a lot of work.   A part of this addition includes a new Pet Lovers Line of custom totes which you can order direct online..  We've tested it pretty thoroughly and we think it everything works.   It may end up being easier with the web site as we can load everything up in an ACCESS database and then upload all at once onto our site.   I'm sure my husband will write more about that later.  All of the information he is learning will eventually end-up on our website.  A lot of the Etsy stuff was included under Etsy tools there.  Check on this often as we increase the stuff there.
    On yet another note, if you follow this blog AND would like a FREE ad on my new website, give me a comment or note and I'll get back with you on what we would need to do that.   It should be a graphic image and the link to your Etsy store or anywhere else you wish.  My husband has already done one for us.  Its best if you have the image no greater than about 125x 125 otherwise he will shrink it down.  

       I've also signed up for my first craft show which is to take place next weekend.  My stock has been low and I needed additional styles.  Thus I have been busy sewing sewing and sewing.  I've included a few pictures here but the rest are either on Etsy or our new store.

Its past Valentines already ???

Hope your valentines was a good one !   My husband didn't forget (he knows better!) but my kids did - or so they said.   Despite the inactivity HERE, both my husband and I have been very busy.   The sales on the Etsy shop have went no where along with the views.  Views only come when I have a flurry of new items, and then only seem to hold for a few days.  I know, we should blog more often, but who has the time for all of that?  Excuses, Excuses !!   Perhaps its because the ground has been white for the last couple of months and spring fever is beginning to be though of.  My youngest son's school has Spring Break next week - that tells me its coming right?

      So I eluded to activity.  Yes, I have been making all kinds of bags to put up locally.    I've included a couple of pictures here.  My husband has been working to improve the pictures.   He has also been working on an inventory database with pictures.  The idea of this database is not only for our own inventory control but also to upload these to our Zen Cart store/ catalog.   The idea is to upload these into the Google marketplace.   All of our previous sales appeared to come from outside of Etsy when we were getting uploaded to the Google marketplace.   We also found another item which is very usefull  http://www.google.com/webmasters/   and to a lesser extent this site http://www.google.com/addurl/  .  This is not relly Etsy related but is good if your thinking about exposure with your own web site.  We will add these to our list here. 

        The fact that Etsy is not uploading our shop to the search engine is disappointing.  Thus the activity to take this into our own hands.  We cannot upload the Etsy items per Google rules but we can if we run our own shop.   My husband has slowly gotten this up and running, but there is little there.   It's a real pain to get inventory up there by hand, hence the inventory database to get the stuff transferred into Zen cart.   If we get this running correctly we'll post more about it.

A web page list for Etsy Tools, Widgets, and Helpers

A quick post to let you know what my husband has completed today.  All of the links and etsy helpers in our blog have been uploaded to a web site page,   The tools can found at miladycreations/etsytools and general site information at miladycreations/sitetools.   A few new ones have been found and they are listed there.  Perhaps the most interesting is an Etsy toolbar which can be found here.   Thanks to Kim at SewKim for featuring this in her blog.  My husband thought these kind of things get "lost" fairly easily and what better way than to post a piece of this on our web site.   Our current web site is mainly just a "redirector" to Etsy, so this gives a real purpose!   Post a comment or email to me if you know of other tools and sites you think belong in this list.
     Around Thanksgiving my husband activated through external sources the merchant upload into Google.  Due to changes by Google this was deactivated the first of the year and this upload was supposed to be taken over by Etsy.  You can check your syndication status here: http://www.etsy.com/syndication.php .Active means you are syndicated.
Pending means you are still waiting to be added.  If you are not added (like me) this means that your items are not easily found by google searches.  Not particularly good.   My own sales did much better when I activated the Google merchant upload and fell off when I was deactivated.   I'm doing some more research into this now and I'll blog about it when I find out more.

Updated : Etsy-related Infomration and Tools

I have compiled here some interesting Etsy-related sites in one location.  This is not meant to have every site or combination, but some of the better ones that I've come across.

Information & Stats

Probably the most cited on, which can give you information on hearts and item views

http://www.craftcult.com/heartomatic.php
A similar site to this which is well done is at  http://statsy.org/vutrac.php The latter site has very nifty view tracker which I use.  You can also find your biggest fan!

An interesting Etsy craft site where you can look-up the top sites and sales for various categories.  It is always good to check out the competition and learn from these really successful shops.

http://www.craftcount.com/index.php

 A shop stat and tag finder can be found at this site. http://www.craftweasel.com/
 A list of the current give aways going on at Etsy .http://twitter.com/etsygiveaways
 Find out what treasuries you are in:  http://www.craftopolis.com/
 A site where you register and put your shop in a revolving list.   This is sort of free advertising

http://top100etsyshops

Tools:

Etsy keeps a list of many tools which can be found at  http://developer.etsy.com/applications/
A group of useful tools can also be found at   EasyEtsy.com  The ones I like and have found to be the most useful are the following::
http://www.etsyhacks.com/  The swiss army knife for Etsy!Yaami.com puts out a nice revolving display widget of your items on the Etsy site.
 www.cr8tivity.com has several tools and statistic widgets which you can use to show your sales and items for sale.  I use these on my own blog.  Both of the gadgets are easy to add to a blog.
http://www.esellerads.com/index.php  Another revolving display for you blog and web site
 Etsy Fee calculator : http://www.rolbe.com/etsy.htm

Misc.

Not related directly to Etsy, but interesting if you have a web site (first site) or a blog (second site)
http://websitegrader.com/
http://blog.grader.com/ 

This has all been added to our online web site for easy referral.  See
miladybags.com/etsytools for etsy tools and sitetools for the list.  Leave a comment if we are missing a useful resource.

Busy Tax Time, New Followers, and Funny Pictures

The title says it all - a blog for just about anyone.  I've been busy getting things ready for tax time.   I feel like I've been at my "real" job loading up all kinds of things in Quick Books.   I'm not sure calling it a real job is correct, how about the job that pays me!   I would rather be creating new stuff, not doing books; and the owner of this company doesn't pay me anything for doing them.   Since I spent a good chunk of the weekend doing accounting and went out with friends Friday night, no blogging occurred.   In the time I didn't blog I picked up a bunch of new followers.  Welcome!   Now I feel REALLY guilty not writing about anything.   All these new followers and then I go "dark".  I do want to have a special thanks to AlmostPrecious for NOT allowing that lucky number 13 to exist too long.
I'm sure no one wants to hear all the details about what accounting I did other than I caught up and I was seriously far behind.    I also didn't quite realize I have a lot of fabric just screaming to be "upgraded" into some type of bag.

    I do get a lot of funny emails, and since I don't have a lot of creative things tonight, we'll go more silly.   I thought it best to avoid political silliness, so I went with a couple that everyone should like.  Check out the Tiger Woods Family photo.  I really love this one.  Then another one that just gets you going Uh? is the elephant picture to the left.   It makes you wonder what someone was thinking when they did that one.  I wonder if the kids realize what they are sliding out from?