Being productive while sick.

The house may be falling apart, I might not be able to keep up with my son and I haven't run in two days, but one of the things I really love about making jewelry and running a business out of my home is that I can do it when I feel completely rotten. It's about the only thing I've been able to do for a couple of days now as I'm nursing whatever funk I've contracted.

I spent most of the day yesterday reading and taking notes (yay, lists!) about how to promote my Etsy store and my business in general. I really feel like I learned a lot and I'm looking forward to putting it into practice. It mostly has to do with things I already do on a personal level (social networking, being an active part of online communities, blogging, etc.). I just have to do it double time now to cover my business persona with the same blanket. I'm finding it a little exhausting to keep up two seemingly separate personalities, but I think this is the best, and possibly the only real way to do it. I've been careful thus far to link my personal life to my business but not link my business back to my personal life, if that makes sense.

One fantastic suggestion I read about was to provide freebies to customers with orders that kind of double as a business card. Magnets, buttons, or in my case, something like a charm or keychain can be thrown in with every order and people are much more likely to keep something like that or give it to a friend even than to hang on to a business card. It's so true!

I actually called a painter who left his magnet on our mailbox to get an estimate on fixing some rust and painting our chimney. Granted, when he got out here, I had the sneaking suspicion that he was just trying to get me to paint the whole house as well and quoted me an exorbitant price. I didn't give him a second thought after he left, however, his magnet sat on our fridge for another 6 months or so after he had made his visit. I just threw it away this week. Point made! It didn't cost him so much as a dollar to have that magnet printed up, I'm sure, but if I had gone with him, he would have gotten an $800-$1700 job. I've seen his truck in the neighborhood a lot and signs in yards of houses on which he's done work. Even though I didn't use him, a lot of people have as a result of his magnets, I'm sure.

Ditching traditional, text only business cards was another fine suggestion. Instead, there are services like Moo that will take product images from your Etsy store (or anywhere else you point them for that matter) and print up art cards, post cards, stickers, etc. with those images and your name and logo on the back. People then get to see what you do and have an instant reference to your work as well as your contact info. Being in such a visual business, that means a lot.

Say you go to an artisan show but can't possibly buy all the great things you see (isn't this always the case?). So, you pick up cards from every vendor you're interested in to hit them up on special occasions or the next time you're ready to splurge on a nice item for yourself. How are you going to remember which one had that fantastic set of earrings you were dying for if they're lost in a sea of text only business cards from 20 different "artisan jewelers" that were at the same show?

Let's take if from the artisan's point of view at the same show. Say you do a show, but you don't sell much. You hand out freebies and chat everyone up who walks within 10 feet of your booth. You're friendly and everyone likes free stuff, no matter what it is you're handing out (magnets, buttons, stickers, postcards, pens, whatever). You leave the show feeling bummed about your bottom line at the end of the day. But the next week, in your weekly rummaging for mentions of your store anywhere and everywhere, you notice a couple of bloggers have written you up or mentioned you in a review of the show. You make some sales through that word of mouth free advertising. Not to mention a reasonable percentage of the people you handed free stuff to will seek out your store and purchase from you in the future. Suddenly it wasn't such a bad show after all.

Of course there are other, more expensive ways of getting noticed, like buying ad space on community boards and relevant websites, Google AdWords and a spot on the Etsy Showcase. But all that will come later for me. Right now I need to focus on the cheap/free stuff I can do to get my store and my brand noticed. Just putting in daily face time on a few key communities will do wonders, I'm sure.

First things first, you really have to be ready for people to find you. My store is not quite there yet with 10 measly items and a thrown together banner. But I know now what to focus on to make it work. I sat down after outlining all of the tips and information I ingested yesterday and made a personal to-do list for myself to start practicing what I've learned. I hope to have some good reports on how it's working in the coming months.