65 and Off To Sellers' Bootcamp!

This blog post is for all the iCrafters who ever entertained the idea of joining Sellers' Bootcamp, a Marketing Program for iCraft Sellers.

The night before bootcamp started, I was excited and couldn't sleep, wondering what have I gotten myself into? 

The first assignment was to critique each store one at a time.  There were six of us.  During the first three stores, I started to apply all that I was learning  - to my store.  Such as rewriting the store description, return and shipping policies and adding more tags.  So I had three sleepless nights working on my store - you see I have a large store with many products which produces many tags and coffee.  So during this assignment we critique each others stores and then the teacher has last word and more critique.   I continued every night to fix and improve my store. Coffee got me through week one.  Hey, this bootcamp thing isn't bad!

Then there was the assignment on keywords and google tool.  Ugh!   It took all day to wrap my mind around primary and secondary keywords and the placement of them.  Now granted, there is a lot of typing involved in this bootcamp thing, which might be ok for most of you, but I'm a two finger typist, and needed extra time to type everything.  Good thing wordiness is not my strong point!  Everyone made their links 'clickable'. Now how did they do that?  After agonizing on that one for a while, I finally figured it out. Yeah!

Then there was all this listing of urls.  This is frightening for a slow typist.  I made sure I typed slowly so I would get it right so it would work. Only to find out a week later, from my son, how to copy and paste. Where was he when I needed him? All that long typing produced lots of coffee and sleepless nights.

Still reeling from all of this, here comes the assignment of blogging.  Here I was weak in my product descriptions, all too short, and you want me to write a blog about someone else's store?  There went more sleepless nights dreaming of back links and such.  There, I finally wrote it, and I am typing onto the screen and I realize that I sort of understand a back link.  But I don't know how to do it on the screen.  Stress!  Finally with some help, I posted my first blog and no matter the critique, I'm proud! You can read all our blogs at blog central.

Coffee and a sleepless night got me through our last assignment. To promote our store using twitter, google and pinterest.....Pen what??  More coffee as I signed up for these accounts and after confusion, frustration, stress and coffee, I now tweet, google and pin everyday!

I recommend Bootcamp to all those iCrafters who want to improve their store.  Now that bootcamp is over and I'm well rested, I can reflect on all the things I learned about optimizing and promoting my store.  It was a lot of hard work and stress, but I would do it again for all the knowledge that gave me the store I have today.   And sleep....... Kat