10.30.08
Check it out
I am feeling rather more pleased with myself today than yesterday. I concentrated almost all of my efforts today on getting items loaded onto eCrater. I got 22 items loaded and lack 20; I figure I can knock out the last 20 tomorrow. Then that will be that project done. I also got my website submitted to 5 more web directories, although I still have 85 more to submit to. I figure I can knock those out next week.
I also found out that Google has a checkout system, which works like PayPal—only the fees are slightly cheaper. I’ve signed up for it and will work on converting my eCrater and Etsy stores over to the Google checkout system this weekend. I also found a shopping cart which is only $15 a month. That’s much better than Yahoo! Wanting $40 a month. I don’t have enough sales—or site hits—to justify a shopping cart on my website just yet, but it will be a lot easier to get enough sales to justify a $15 a month expense versus a $40 a month expense. And I can run the cart through the Google checkout and keep my low credit card processing fees.
Also, there appears to be some sort of deal where I get free order processing based on the amount of money I’m already spending on advertising on Google. If I understand it right, I can process orders up to 10 times my monthly spending amount for free. So, if I pay Google $20 in advertisement fees, I can process up to $200 in orders without paying any fees at all. At my current rate of sales, I’d not be paying any fees.
AND, ever sweeter, the Google checkout has a coupon feature! I was planning on offering a holiday sale (stay tuned to my website, or sign up as a friend on MySpace), and this will make it easy; no having to charge people and then refund the amount. I can tell Google to give a discount to certain orders and it’s done right then. If PayPay has that feature, I haven’t seen it. Which is a testimony to Google’s site design that I saw it right away.
Oh, and I found a new networking site today—Mycraft.com. Saw it advertised on MySpace. It’s basically the exact same thing as MySpace—even the button arrangements are very similar—but it’s for crafters and hobbyists. So rather than talking to a bunch of 14 year olds in the forums and chatrooms, you are talking to people who like to make things. It’s so new, in fact, that it’s not officially launching until 11/15, so there are only a handful of people on it at the moment. But I daresay the news of it will spread pretty quickly. I’m going to add a link to it on my website, and anyone that wishes to talk shop with me can contact me there.
So, all in all, a productive day from a marketing standpoint. It looks like I will need to continue to hit the computer hard until late next week to get everything done that I want to get done, then I can resume working on my texts—like Squidoo articles and my Psalms—and do a little networking in the evenings, and go back to spending my days actually making stuff. I expect my dummy head to arrive next week, and I’m sure I will be anxious to make some more veils now that I have something to display them on. Not only that, but I want to play with my new apron pattern. I want to make one for myself, and then work on cranking some out for sale. They seem like just the sort of old-fashioned thing to sell on my site.
I’ve also started doing some research on medieval toys, and I may offer things like rag dolls dressed in medieval clothes in the future. One of the things I found a picture of is a wooden horse made from a plank of wood. It was a Viking find, although I’m sure they were probably everywhere throughout the entire middle ages in some slight variation. It’s such a simple design, I think even I could knock it out of wood, if I can get some that’s not pressure-treated. Don’t want a kid sticking chemical-laden wood in its mouth. I think linseed oil (which my husband has in abundance due to leatherworking) is what they used to seal wood in the middle ages, but it would take a bit more research.
