Day 2 Wednesday May 20 2009

[PillowThrowDecor]

Day 2  Wednesday, May 20, 2009

PROMOTION

1)  Get your business cards out this morning and at the breakfast table explain to your family that you need their help getting your cards out there.  Put 3 cards in husbands wallet, wife’s purse, children’s lunchbox (extra chocolate bar for them if they can give teacher or adult your card  ).  My husband and my sister are so good at getting my business card out there and getting me (drapery) jobs.  My mom is a big supporter too.  YOUR FAMILY IS YOUR BEST SALESTEAM… REWARD THEM RICHLY WHEN THEY BRING A LEAD HOME FOR YOU. In the next couple of days we are going to have a Julie Hampton talk about ways to use business cards and she has the slickest gizmo… she has a surprise for us too!

 2)  Craigslist – Post at least one free AD.  Then post SAME AD in 2 other sites OOdle, Lycos or kijji for example.  It is maybe a good thing if we try some different sites so that we can compare notes on views. Use your icraft store address where allowable and your new  Gmail.  Remember to avoid spam by making your contact email like this …PillowThrowDecor (at) gmail (dot) com.  By the way I don’t think Craigslist allows your store address in your ad… that’s why you should write your store Gmail in it and you will get contacts! Other stores allow it but not a link unless you pay them money. We don’t want them yet.

SHOPKEEPING

1)Create a new listing in your store.  If you don’t have any new product to list then let’s work on one of your existing ones.  Pick the worst one and “clone it” (This recreates it as a “new Listing “ and therefore will go to the front page. Go through that listing line by line and improve your copy.  How about your tags? Are your words relevant? Retake some pictures .  Once you are finished, submit it and then go back to delete that original listing. Go to our Bootcamp critique thread and line up to have your store evaluated.  Or go to our photography expert Sarah and have her look at your pictures or picture (include url for specific pictures).  By the way I think we have another photography expert coming aboard so we are going to have lots of help.  Don’t be shy.

Networking

1) Add a live link to your icraft store to your website and blog.  I was having a tough time doing links in my blog because I am still new at it.  Any volunteers out there that would like to assist dummies like me? Either private message me or better yet volunteer in the forum under WHAT HAPPENED TODAY.

2) Make a point of hanging out at another forum today. Brag or encourage others about one idea that you have already implemented such as inserting your signature line and store link in your emails.  Or get everyone talking about goals… whatever you can manage.  Get other sellers curious about icraft and even Bootcamp …tell them to come and have a peek.   In a few days we want to start “gently “recruiting.

3) We need another 5 or 6 sellers willing to sign up on the buy and sell list in the Bootcamp forum. Lopy4ewe is coordinating this.  This is so cool.  Start your Christmas shopping now and be on a list where someone will buy from you. Newbies take note of this… Bust that fat zero sales in your store and get some good feedback too.  Buyers like to see that they are not shopping at a virgin store.

Miscellaneous

Put your thinking caps on.  Icraft is putting some PR material together that we can start circulating to the dotcoms and blogs so lets give them really good material.  List all the things you can think of that are so positive AS A SELLER AND AS A BUYER  about icraftgifts.com and post it in the WHATS HAPPENED thread.  Example … what I like about icraft is that I can have my Canadian shoppers still feel like they are shopping in Canada.  Also, I can sell some things that are only for local pick-up that I could not do at any other store.  I can post my prices in Canadian or US dollars, I like their slick one page listing system.  I know many of you are not-Canadian so your point of view is going to be different… which is very good too.

By the way it was wonderful to see such positive comments in the forum. It is so helpful to me to see how you are doing.  I know there were many boot campers that weren’t on the forum so lets keep them in the loop and hold their hand if they need it.

Cheers  Christine

[mountaindreamers]

checking in, keeping email to 15 minutes is hard, wasted time, plan to check into craigslist, added items to www.byhand.me, added a turquoise blog to the site, and added a widget to the sidebar, preparing for ship for the sales yesterday, waiting for payment to clear paypal, enclosing business card with 10% off coupon next purchase. checked my indiepublic page. need to replenish stock , ; ) laura

[The Gifted Nest]

Goof morning. Just checking in. Is polkadotpixel on iCraft? I need help with my business card. Already posted a few ads with kijiji. Working on a business page on facebook. Will add an ad on Craigslist (cringe).  Even got the .com and .ca domains for my business. So if you enter thegiftednest.ca on the address bar it should bring you directly my iCraft store. Enough bragging and back to work for me.. Have a great day!

[The Gifted Nest]

oh no... it should be good morning and not goof morning...
Where's my caffeine?

[GalleriaLinda]

Good morning...(afternoon here).

I am squeezing in CraigsList listing plus those other classified sites.
Blog post.

That is all I can do today and hope I can accomplish that!

I love seeing what others are doing. It gives us all ideas!

[Rohini Wahi]

Hi Gifted Nest,

You can get in touch with Polka Dot Pixels here

[Trish]

Still in recovery mode from total computer meltdown. Now have a completely new machine...and have been replacing, installing, backing up, and trying to get to  where I was before my other computer just quit.

I had done some of the Day 1 things. Still haven't done business cards. No money. Will do when I can. Did do the ad on craigslist - which I have done before with no success - but this is now, and I'm thinking positive.

Did a small promo on my blog, and hopefully tomorrow will not be so crowded with other stuff, so I can do more here!

I'm loving reading what to do, and how others are doing. It is an encouragement to me!

Trish    

[StudioduSoleil]

I'm done! I have a quick question? Is there a way to add a promo box like an "Etsy Mini" to your blog using iCraft? If so, can someone point me in the direction to the instructions??  Thanks! Hope it was a great day for everyone else! I'm having camera problems (it has intermittently stopped focusing in the last 2 weeks...since we flew to Edmonton), hoping for a quick/easy exchange at London Drugs tomorrow and not servicing! Otherwise I'm being forced to learn my husbands camera quickly.