Do you Blog? Mention your Blog link here.Yes, I blog on Blogger and I paid 10 cheap bucks to get it as a .com without the blogspot.
http://www.fairycardmaker.com/I aim for an average of 1 post per week. I don't blog weekly religiously. Some weeks there's none and other weeks there's two or three. I'm happy if i have 52 or more posts by the end of the year.
I have the widgets on my blog for Etsy and iCraft plus a "SHOP NOW" page which links to Etsy and iCraft.
Which social media sites do you use? Please mention specifically Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google +Blogger.
My target market is not the hyper-connected Facebookers and Twitterers who are more likely to send E-cards (and interactive ones at that) than traditional cards.
I have a Google + page but I never log in to it because I can't get it to work. Somehow, it's linked to my real name and when I tried to add or invite people from iCraft it said I have to be invited first or something. I don't get it.
Are you a member of any crafter groups or forums on other sites? Please list them here.I am a member of two forums: Two Peas in a Bucket (largely a scrapbooking forum) and Splitcoast Stampers (a stamping and cardmaking forum). I check and post a couple times a week. These are my peers, not my target market.
Can you or have you done videos before?Yes. I have a channel on Vimeo. I made a video to enter a crafting contest. I also made a video of a mini album I donated to charity which will be going up in an online auction October 26th!
Here is my Vimeo Channel:
http://vimeo.com/user10010154/videosNot updated for 4 months!
I have another prototype mini album video in the works. It's filmed, but not edited.
I use the same digital camera that I take my product photo's with to film my videos. I watched the tutorial on Vimeo on how to edit with Windows Live Movie Maker. Movie Maker is free to download and my Vimeo channel is free, although there are paid options. I have not learned how to set the starting thumbnail picture. It seems to randomly pick some point in the video as the thumbnail. I learned about Vimeo from a paper-crafting blog I follow.
Have you done link building before?I'm not sure what that means. I wrote a guest post on another blog once about Etsy shops and that gets me referrals to my Etsy shop. Is that what you mean?
Do you promote offline?Yes. I teach cardmaking (and sometimes other paper crafting) workshops to a fixed set of family, friends and coworkers. I donate half the workshop fee to the dog charity I support, so they are fundraisers. I get *some* word of mouth out of it. My mother-in-law was talking to all the nurses about it during her chemo treatments. She made some cards to give them at the end and said she learned it from me.
I teach in my home to people I know only because of the insurance issue. I like doing the workshops but they are a lot of prep work. I considered asking to teach a class at the local scrapbook store, but they require X number of classes committment. They do not offer single guest teaching spots.
List any other promotional activities you've done in the past.I have an account on Project Wonderful. I try to find other handmade blogs to advertise on. I have started to use a particular product as my advertising shot and then the link is to that section of my shops (specifically birthday or babies or wedding, for example instead of generically to my shopfront). I do not bid more than $0.03 per day so I get low traffic blogs, but it brings in a FEW views cheaply. I have not been managing it very often though because I am too busy. (I have a full-time professional career and I am straddling two departments right now, so it's 100%+ until I can transition my work in one department to a new manager - that hasn't been hired yet.)
I belong to the Kards for Kids smiley team. It's the closest thing to a design team that I can do. Again, I do not have the time committment required for design teams on creative challenge blogs or papercraft manufacturer blogs. Kards for Kids makes cards for the children at Toronto's Sick Kids Hospital. Deliveries are made each quarter of the year. So, my cards get in to the hands of families and hopefully bring smiles. I donate up to 5 cards per quarter because they have to be specifically made (due to the restrictions on embellishment). Other team members produce 30+ cards per quarter. I don't know how they do it.
Being on this team and participating in blog cardmaking challenges a) allows me to link my blog to other blogs and b) inspires me to make something new for the shops. When my challenge entry is something I am listing in the shop, I make sure that the image I put on my blog links to the shop's listing.
I consider charity donations as a form of advertising. The key is finding a charity that shares your target market. I'm not sure I have done that well, but I at least have a feel good feeling about promoting myself by helping someone else at the same time.
I am afraid of doing a craft show. I have NEVER seen a card table do well at one. Even at the BIG One of a Kind show in Toronto. The card booths are empty of shoppers at every show I've gone to and it takes A LOT of single cards to make a booth fee back. Of course, I have bought some things from them because I appreciate the work that goes in to them.
I have no idea how to source out wholesale or consignment. I would prefer wholesale over consignment.
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