New year, new direction

As I reflect on 2014, I realize what a massively marvelous year it was for my business. I started the year with 502 sales & what I thought was a lofty goal to hit 600 total orders by the end of the year. I ended up almost doubling that goal! Lu & Ed, my monster making business, hit 700 total orders with two weeks left in the year! Here is a run down of some of the other exceptionally wonderful tidbits from 2014:

I won an logo & branding package from Oh My Handmade! & Lu & Ed was rebranded. Isn't my new logo so cute?! 

I made & sold a total of over 350 monsters. And went through over 10,000 yards of white thread in the process, guys.

I was voted one of the Top Three Indie Crafters in Kansas City. 

I had some super duper fantastic opportunities come my way (that I can't wait to share with you guys!).

I struck up my first wholesale partnership with Greener Life Market in Lees Summit, MO. 

I hired my first employee.

And this summer, I paid for a down payment on a new car with monster money. 

And then I realized I have so much more to offer you guys. 

You see, I had been operating Daft as a separate business entity, something totally separate from Lu & Ed. I had been writing generic business advice, trying to be all-encompassing & trying to please everyone. Trying to make some one size fits all content for all you amazing makers out there. And the more I've thought on it over the past several weeks, I realized you guys deserve better. You guys deserve the rawness & honesty about this industry that I have been aching to share somewhere. I should be using this space to weclcome you guys with open arms into my studio, chatting with you like I would a friend over coffee & sharing all my knowledge with you. I want to provide you all with the tools you need to thrive & live a positive life as an indie business owner while also collecting & sharing experiences to help inspire, motivate & encourage. I want to fill this space up to the brim with goodness & maker magic!

So as I embrace the winter slowdown & wrap up 2014, I am also preparing to step into 2015 with a new direction for this cozy little space on the web that I am oh-so-excited about & hope you are too! Things are going to get more personal over here, guys. There is going to be more juicy content about the things that matter to indie makers, more insightful marketing analysis & case studies, more transparency about the indie industry & most of all, more inspiration, encouragement and tools to help you marvelous makers succeed!

But first, let's just kick back & enjoy the holidays, huh? In observation of the holiday, there will be no new #happyhandmade this week, but the collection from week ninety-three is up until the 31st so be sure to get your items linked up!

Happy holidays to you & yours!

Your friendly monster maker, Cody

How to Gain Loyal Customers through Creative Packaging

Today's guest post is brought to you from Anne McOmber from Totally Design

Creative packaging may just be one aspect of the experience you provide for your customers, but it's also the last and final step of their purchase. And believe it or not, your unique and carefully wrapped package could make the difference between a customer that you never see again and a customer that keeps coming back for more.

As creative entrepreneurs, your time and your resources can be stretched incredibly thin... to put it mildly. However, I absolutely, positively assure you that it's worth the little extra time and expense to make your product packaging memorable. 

A package that has been thoughtfully put together and includes the time and effort of a thank you note, not only portrays a professional, yet personal image but leaves a positive impression and fosters a genuine, lasting relationship. Your packaging has the potential to say, "I don't just care about the sale. I care about your experience. And I appreciate you choosing me." Building a relationship is key to creating loyal customers that will repeatedly come back to your shop. 

I'm convinced that what our customers see when they first open that shipping box is just as important as what's being sent. 

A couple things to think about when figuring out your packaging:

Use colors and materials that are consistent with your brand and product. If your logo is pink and black, consider incorporating those colors in your product packaging. If you identify your business as being eco-friendly, then be sure your packaging is also made of eco-friendly materials. A photo or description of your creative packaging should be able to fit seamlessly into your shop. 

Your packaging does NOT need to be elaborate or expensive. You're not just selling a handmade product, you're providing a genuine handmade experience. Rather than sending your product off in a glossy custom box, focus on the small details and personal touch that will make your packaging memorable. 

Always include a thank you card. Your customers are the people who adore your products most and bring success to your shop. If you ask me, I'd say that deserves a big thank you! A hand-signed thank you note is the perfect way to express gratitude for their support and appreciation of your passion. 

Remind them where to go to get more. If your thank you card doesn’t have your name and website on them, then be sure to send a business card or something else that does. Once they see your incredible packaging and product, you don't want your wonderful customers to have to go searching for your website.

And now, I'd love to hear from you. How do you treat your customers to a creative and thoughtful package?  

3 keys to cohesive branding

Today's guest post is brought to you by Dana of Cereus Art.

I’ll admit when I first opened my Etsy shop I didn't give it a lot of thought.  I've heard about shop owners who research products, competitors, create logos, hire professional photographers, and develop product copy rich with SEO keywords before opening their shop. My style is a little different.  I tend to jump in and fly by the seat of my pants. I was passionate about the items I created. I was excited about this new venture. So I took some photos with my camera phone, posted them to Etsy and waited for the sales. I was fortunate; even with embarrassing photos, horrible product descriptions, and very little advertising I managed a few sales. I soon realized that if I wanted to at least cover the cost of my supplies I needed to bring my “A game”.  

While we are all dedicated to our craft; we are, in fact, in business. Crafting cohesive branding assists in highlighting the benefits and experience of purchasing your products. It lends professionalism to your company and is an essential element of a successful marketing strategy. Your brand sets you and your business apart.  It communicates your company’s personality and energy. Marrying together the visual aspects of your brand through product photography and sneak peeks into your life, along with a cohesive social media strategy, can put you head and shoulders above your competitors.  Over the years as I've learned more I've made some improvements along the way.  Here are three major keys to a successful brand that I learned after undergoing a major review of my shop’s branding & working with professional designers and photographers.  

Logo

Your logo should match your style and help set your product apart from others.  It should be unique and easily recognizable with appealing colors.  Give some thought to where your logo will be found.  Will it transfer well to business cards, emails, websites, and social media profiles?  I’ve purchased pre-made logos from graphic artists on Etsy, but none of them transferred very well on the online advertising ads I've purchased.  I couldn't use them for business cards either. Learn from my mistakes. Consider all of the places your logo will appear and ask the graphic artist for the highest quality image files and ask them to size them appropriately for you if they can.  

What began as a simple logo revamp has turned into a major project for me. I sat down with a graphic artist and reviewed colors, font choices, and images that help convey the overall look and feel I hope to achieve in my shop.    

You can carry your branding from your logo and colors to your product packaging, which provides you with another opportunity to delight your customers. Customers want to feel good about their purchase.  Personalize your packaging and use it to tell your product’s story, develop brand recognition and to encourage repeat business.  

Visual Aspects

              

Photography done at home

Photos done by professional photographer

Excellent product photography is the cornerstone to building a credible brand.  Here’s where I’d suggest you invest in a good camera or hire a professional photographer.  If you decide to take your own product photos, visit the product photography section of Daft & learn as much as you can about balance, texture, color, lines, symmetry, and scale.  Work with different backgrounds and when you find one that you like stick with it.  All of your product photography should have the same look and feel.  As you can see from the photos above, my best option was to hire a professional photographer.  But this can be expensive!  So we negotiated and have have settled on a combo of paid services and bartering. She is currently re-photographing every product in my shop and our joint goal is to have my entire inventory completed by mid-October.  

Cohesive Social Media Strategy

When you’re looking to find your authentic voice defining your tone is key. Are you trendy and hip? Are you humorous and lighthearted? Speak to your ideal customer. Hold her in mind when communicating and you’ll find it easy to strike the right tone. Make sure that you've identified all of the features and benefits of your products and consistently communicate them to your audience. Highlight your company’s values. Showing behind the scenes, snippets from your life, and fun peeks into your studio can help communicate your company’s persona and strengthen the bond with your audience.   

Social media can be daunting.  There are so many social media platforms out there.  It can be overwhelming.  But even this can be easily accomplished.  Simply put, what social media platforms does your ideal customer use?  Find those platforms and schedule consistent product messaging.  There are many tools such as Buffer, TweetDeck and Hootsuite that can assist in automating those messages. They’ll help you work smarter, not harder.  Pepper in some “on the fly” communication so that your posts are stale and reflect current events. Be sure to engage in conversations with followers, ask questions and encourage followers to offer their opinions on your products via social media. This is an invaluable way to collect data -  for example, asking them which shade they prefer, long or short chain on this necklace, pink and green together, or pink and blue? This helps you cater your products specifically to your target audience's taste.

In conclusion:

Presenting a purposeful & well branded business identity can impact buyer decision-making leading to greater sales success.  

connect with Dana

facebook/g+/shop

pick the right prop for your photos

This post is brought to you from Melanie of Violet's Buds. Melanie has Bachelors of Science in Photography and provides product photography advice and services to entrepreneurs.

Product photography can be a tricky thing. You want to emphasize your product, but also give a context of what it is for. Props can be a useful tool for showing that your product is unique.Adding the right props can make a huge impact on how people perceive your products. Photographs with the right props can be what turns browsers into buyers. When selecting your props, you want to make sure they convey these three things:

The use of your product. 

Twisted Thread and Hook has chosen a prop that makes sense with her work, demonstrates it's purpose and intended use and it also does a great job of showing the size of her product by scaling it with items that relate to it's use.

Twisted Thread and Hook

The size of your product.

Lu & Ed has chosen props that suggest a use for her Mon-stors, while creating a dynamic composition & demonstrating the size of her monstrous toy eating storage solutions. 

Lu & Ed

The need for the product

People are more prone to make a purchase when listings have lifestyle photos, especially when they can picture themselves using the product at home. When selecting your props for photo styling, make sure they are relative to the every day life of your target audience.

Something as simple as adding keys onto a keyring for GipsonWands keychain wand and showing the key unlocking the door make a big impact. This passive action shot is relative, conveys the function of the product and makes the product more desirable.  

Using your hand as a prop for a functional object is another good way to show scale and give a sense of action, as demonstrated in this series of GipsonWands products in use.

Crocheting using a handmade hook

Pulling on the mini-wand light pull chain to suggest use

Holding a wand shows scale and action

If you have a hard time coming up ideas, write down all the uses for your product. Think of who would use it and how, why, and what it will be used for. Then associate different accessories that fit in these categories that could flatter your item. The best thing to do is keep experimenting until you find what works!

free printable thank you cards

With these free printable thank you card templates you can add an extra special, personal touch to each order you send out! I know receiving a handwritten note with my purchase from makers gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, and who doesn't love free especially when it comes to reducing your business expenses!  ♥

Click each card to head to the source for the printables! :) Enjoy!

Thanks So Much Cards from  Creative Mamma

Four Free Printable Thank You cards from The Casual Craftlete

Bunting cards from74 Lime Lane

Modern Card from Love Vs Design

Thank you cards from B Nute Productions

Thanks Typography Cards from Minted Strawberry

Dainty Thank You card from Gent and Beauty

A variety of cute mini thank you cards from Do It Yourself Inviations

 What sort of goodies do you tuck in with orders from your shop? 

learn to easily watermark your product photos

As indie shop owners, it's important to watermark photos. Not only carry your branding over to your images, but it can prevent photo theft and always give an image source in case someone Pins your item without the source link. This guest post by Melanie from Violet's Buds shows you how to easily watermark your photos using Photoshop and Pixlr (It's pretty much the same in both) or with PicMonkey. 

I use Adobe Photoshop to add watermarks to my photos, but you can easily do the same in other photo editing programs. The following is the step by step method I use.

I start with the watermark that Retro Rocket Graphic Designs created for me, along with my logo. The watermark I use is a .png on a transparent background which makes it very easy to add to any image.

Step 1: Start by opening up the watermark file, and the image you want to add the watermark to (now referred to as photo), in Photoshop.

watermark file

Step 2: With the watermark file on top, go to Select--All

Select All

Edit- Copy

  Step 3: With your photo now on top, go to Edit- Paste

Edit- Paste

The image of the watermark will now be a new layer on your photo. 

Step 4: Using the move tool (see arrow) move your watermark to its preferred position on the image.

 

Step 5:  In the Layers tool box (see arrow) choose the Opacity meter. Then use the slider bar to select the opacity (aka transparency) you desire. For this particular image I selected 24%.

change opacity

Step 6: Once you are happy with the watermark's appearance, go to Layer-- Flatten Image. This makes the watermark permanent on the photo. Now you can go to File- Save As to save the image in your preferred format, such as .jpg or .png file types. 

And here is the finished photo! 

You can use a similar method to add text watermarks to your photos. Choose the Text tool and type your desired phrase or shop name.

Next, like Step 5 above, go the Opacity menu and change the transparency level of the type layer until it looks the way you'd like. Then proceed with Step 6.

You can also add text watermarks to your photos for free using PicMonkey.
Upload your photo, click Tt on the left-hand side, then Add Text. Chose your font, color, and type your desired name or phrase. Then using the text box tool, use the Fade meter as you would the Opacity.

Hope you find this post helpful!

How important do you think it is to watermark your images?

domain names

Editor's Note: This post is brought to you by Megean from The Individuality - our professional branding, web development and graphic design consultant. 

A custom domain name is an essential branding tool. It allows your company to be found easier and shared quicker. A customer can often remember a domain name (businessname.com) much quicker than they can remember businessname.freehostingsite.com or hostingsite.com/shop/businessname. 

twitter tips for handmade businesses - engagement

After I began to seriously use Twitter as a marketing tool for my handmade business, I saw a slow but steady increase in the amount of views in my store. As my followers and my knowledge of how to use this platform grew, so did my views. I recently compared numbers of views in my shop from the month before I started using Twitter as a marketing tool to my numbers from the last four weeks. There is a growth margin of over 10,000 views. That is how integral Twitter has become to my marketing campaign! Sharing is so simple on Twitter that your content can easily reach a much wider audience than on other platforms - but not if you don't take the time to use the site properly. That's why I decided to create a series of posts that help people understand the site and how to use Twitter to grow their handmade business.

Twitter Tip: Engagement

If you only utilize Twitter by clicking the "tweet" button from your product page or by having your Twitter account linked to your Facebook page for easy sharing, you are losing opportunities to turn people in followers, fans, customers and even friends.

are you ready for the rush?

November. Ah, crisp air, pretty leaves, and the beginning of the holiday shopping season.

The pre-holiday rush stress can keep you from enjoying the little things in November, like a coffee date with a friend, the first snow, or warm baked goods (which nothing should ever keep you from enjoying). If you had a successful holiday season last year, you've probably started to work on extra inventory for the holiday rush, possibly feeling a bit overwhelmed, drinking too much coffee and probably not getting enough sleep.

And that's no good for anyone. Take a step back, take a deep breath, and relax!

Just because the holiday rush is just around the corner doesn't mean you need to be stressed out! Here are some tips to help you stay sane during the busiest season of the year!

do you find yourself asking "how can I get more sales?"

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