As with most mums or stay-at-home parents who aren't quite in the same "league" as the alleged Etsy QYDJ featured sellers (tho' am not sure how most of us manage to miss that set of criteria since none of the SAHMs featured have actually quit their day jobs)(oh yes - don't get muted for a start I guess!) running an at-home craft business involves a lot of time-juggling and parental balancing acts.It is truly a work of art in itself.
For example, I'm clicking away on the old keyboard at my local Starbucks with my mega-mug of coffee and their wi-fi hotspot while my son attends a Spring Break clay class at the nearby Art Centre. He needs entertainment - I need to get on with marketing (which is what I'm doing right now - go buy my stuff!), photoshopping new business cards and making new inventory for an upcoming craft fair. Unless I fit all this necessary admin in and around my daily life I either end up with nothing or it all happens in the wee small hours of racoonmumhood.
I feel pretty smug about my portable crafting abilities now after a few years of practice but the marketing, admin, etc stuff is still lagging. I'm kidding myself somewhat into thinking that it will all take off once full time school (ah that holy grail!) happens in September. In reality I need to get a grip pretty darn soon.
So far I blog and do a bit of social networking. My Google Analytics and other tracking shows that my Twitter hits are effective in getting peeps to my shops. The Got Craft and Portobello West craft fair websites are also vg at sending visitors so hopefully adding the ArtFire Rapid Cart to my homepage will eventually result in some direct sales.
Otherwise, I'm not that fond of Ning, I'm getting used toFacebook (had a lovely chat yesterday afternoon with a couple of old high school friends I haven't seen in over 20 years) but I am falling totally in love with ByHand. I use the blog feature for a bit of shameless promotion. It drove a lot of lookers to a flickr photo I used and certainly seems to have potential for marketing at least the crafty supplies side of business.
But now I'm even more in love with the site. This morning when I filled in my sporadic blog post and hit "send (or whatever)" I was then asked if I wanted to post it to my blogger??
Wwwwwwwhaaaaaaat? Oh yes! No more blogging on three different blogs? I posted a piece on yarn bombing then sent it over to my portable crafting blog for good measure.
ByHand - you've made my life easier. I think I love you.
6 comments:
And we love you too! ;-) This is the kind of thing that we really are all about, making the life of artisans and buyers easier.
ByHand loves you too! Your rock our world. :)
Thank you both. I'm always looking at ways of using time more efficiently while trying to run my business. Right now I'm sorting thru emails while I eat breakfast and being urged to hurry up come play by my wee guy! You can see that time is precious.
I'll be doing more blogging about streamlining time for busy mums soon I hope.
thanks for leaving the comment Ruth. it's always great to hear from readers and I hope there is more to interest you and comment on in the future
richmond's post was removed since it was nothing but spam spam spam!
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