My Etsy Shop is Live!

I did it! I opened an Etsy shop! You can see my hand crafted items on the side bar over there. It's been a lot of work putting it all together. Like I said in my post, "Planning Today," I want to do it right, if I'm going to do it.

There's a whole lot more to opening an Etsy shop than one would think. Not only do you have to make what you're going to sell, you have to list it, and promote it. Okay, that did make it all sound simple, but when you get down to the nitty gritty, there's really a lot to it.

Etsy suggests listing 10 items to start with. Well, for me at least, what I want to sell requires a lot of thought, sewing, drawing, assembling, and supplies. For example, one piece I made to sell requires upwards of $70 worth of supplies and equipment just to make it.

Hey Diddle, Diddle!

Given all that, and the time it took me to make it, I decided to make smaller pieces to help even the scales.

Twinkle, Twinkle little Star!

Hubby and I discussed the cost of overhead, time, and the "what ifs" prior to opening shop. The idea of starting with 10 items flew out the window. However, I'm working on more inventory anyway.

So, in an effort to help with branding, I started a blog just for my Etsy shop: Truly Unique Baby. (Notice how the new blog and my store have the same name? Cute huh?) Check it out if you have some time. Right now there's only a couple of posts. But, I'm working on creating more.

Along with all that, I'm still cleaning up this blog. The Internet has evolved so much since I started it, a lot of the old links don't work anymore. If only there were more hours in a day...

Well, if I'm going to get anything done, I better get to it.

 

Take care!

It's Friday! Fabulous Fun Friday

It's Friday! We've got another busy weekend ahead of us. We will be hosting a birthday party for my brother-in-law. I've got a lot of cooking and prep work to do today.

I wanted to mention Squidoo. I put together another lens on boats: How to Flip an Old Boat. That lens went together rather quickly; I was surprised. I found a funny you tube video to go with it pertaining to the joy of boats--there sure is a lot of funny stuff out there. I had seen some of this video on one of those funny home video shows. I love how they put the videos together with the theme from "Love Boat."

Speaking of Squidoo, I still think its a great venue for promotion. My next lens is probably going to be about fishing on the Guadalupe. I've got tons of pictures I could put on it--of the scenery not fish I've caught (fish avoid my line for some reason).

This week I managed to get myself in gear around the house, write a couple of articles and reviews, and keep up with my three posts on the blog. I'm proud of myself. I think I finally have this time management thing down

I better get to cooking. If I don't, there's going to be a mess of angry guests here tomorrow. I hope everyone has a superb weekend!

More Stuff Added on to the Blog...

You know me, I like to change and add to the blog occasionally. Okay, more than occasionally. I've known about this for quite some time, but I've only just gotten to adding it here: Add This. It's for social bookmarking and blog promotion. You should be able to see the drop down button at the bottom of my posts.

To get the button you have to create an account. They don't have a email verification process, so it's fast. They do require an email, user name, and password for registration. It is free--you know how I like free. The site provides usage stats also.

Adding the button to your Blogger blog is really simple. Add This gives you all the instruction you need for several blogging platforms. For Blogger, you insert the code in the template html so it will show on each blog post automatically.

Why do you need this? So people can bookmark your posts. The more you are bookmarked, the more readership you gain. We've discussed this before here mostly, but I discuss it a lot throughout the entire blog.

My next find came while I was playing around on the forum at AC. I came across a post about custom widgets. There's a pretty neat site called Sproutbuilder that lets you build and customize your own widgets. Note my new AC widget on the top right--it matches my avatar.

Sproutbuilder is still in beta. I have had some minor issues like slow loading and linking issues. I changed the settings to avoid using pop ups to link as a temporary fix. The slow loading is something I just have to deal with.

The site is super easy to use. You can begin building widgets instantly, but if you want to save and use them, you must register. Registration is typical: user name, email, and password. You do have to do email verification. The best part about it is it's free!

You can build calendar, news, video, and music widgets. Whatever you want to promote, you can make and have it be customized with your own photos, artwork, or designs. Pretty neat stuff.

The last two adds came from BlogCatalog. I used to have a visitor widget, but when I updated the blog it got deleted. I put it back on. They have other networking widgets available, like neighborhoods, communities, discussions, groups, and news. I chose visitors and communities. The communities widget lets others know where else you can be found on the web.

I know there is a lot to swallow here.

Have fun!

Planning My Blog Face-lift...

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas! We certianly did. Today I've got a ton of cleaning, present sorting, and blog maintenance to do. I'm going to tackle the blog details first because the girls are sleeping and I don't want to wake them.

I'm going to find a new skin for my blog here. I like pyzam and all their layouts, however I'm looking into some others. There are so many out there. I'm hoping to find one that will give me style without having to sort out the widget details.

I've noticed that this layout is rather slow loading, even on my DSL. I want to find something fast, yet custom. I may just go back to the Blogger layout, it didn't lag. If you stop in today you find a new look, or a variety of new looks until I find the right one.

Write What You Know

To continue my coverage from my content marketing post, I'm going to lump the next two themes together.

Find a niche and make your information useful!

According to Wikipedia, "a niche is a focused, targetable portion (subset) of a market sector." Okay, like I said, a piece of the big picture.

In the Strategic Profits blog, the post "Jersey Boy Cracks The Code And Transforms Into A $50 Million Maven - Here’s How He Did It…" there was a discussion about niche marketing. The interview was with Gary Vaynerchuk, the wine guy, he used sunglasses as an example in developing a niche.

He basically said, for the longest time you could pick up a pair of sunglasses at a store, like Wal-Mart, and still can. Suddenly someone in the sun glass industry realized that sunglasses needed a store of their own and little kiosk and sun glass shops popped up everywhere selling special sunglasses.

Vaynerchuk did the same thing with wine. He's video blogging wine tasting, giving away his information as a "maven" (expert in the field), and gaining fame and fortune in the process.

When it comes to useful information, I can't tell you how many times I searched a subject and clicked articles that fell short. They lured me in and all I found was a sales pitch offering me the information for a small fee. Don't offer your self up as a source unless you're going to give up the goods.

I hate to say it but, I've even seen this tactic on my home site. I read an article or two that offer links to other articles that are supposed to give more information. The link would be to a site selling some "informative" ebook. Well, that's fine, if that's the way you want to play.

I don't buy ebooks. Not anymore. I bought one once and it was full of links to other "sources" where you could buy more ebooks.

Once you've found something you know, that you are interested in, and can specialize in, make it your own. Think benefit, will the content be beneficial? Learn everything you can about it and keep it up to date. If your information is useful, you will gain popularity. If you become an expert, you will be sought out.

Common Themes Throughout Content Marketing

Yesterday I opened myself to discovery. I've been working toward a goal. Learning and practicing everything I write about here. What is my goal? To be a published author.

In "Personal Goal Planning-Steps to Making Your Goals a Reality" I laid out my plan. Now it's time to act. Can I bring it to fruition? I think I'm on the right track.

There is a wealth of information out there. The who, what, where, when, and how is abundantly clear. When it comes to content marketing, here's what I have found common throughout:

• Believe in yourself

Look inside of yourself and draw on your inner strength. Set your goal and make it happen!

• Find a niche

Niches are branched segments of the tree, little pieces of the big picture. Make it something you are an interested in, learn more about it and become an expert.

• Make it useful

If what you are providing is not beneficial, then you are dead in the water

• Create a buzz

Get people excited, be a cheerleader.

• Promote

Put your content out there and keep up the momentum.

• Don't stagnate.

Be prolific, consistent, and up to date.

• Network

Share what you know. Participate with the community. Don't be a wall flower! Communicate, join groups, do what it takes to make yourself known. Take advantage of the tools available today, write, photograph, or video tape your information, and put it in a blog. Brand yourself and make your content accessible.

Throughout my blog there are several links to references for you to peruse, but here's the latest that I've come across:

• Strategic Profits
• Web Ink Now

So That's How You Do It...Changing My Skin

I hope everybody had a wonderful holiday. I sure did. After I recovered from my Turkey Coma, I began decorating the house for Christmas. Since I was on a roll, I decided to make a few changes here too.

Changing the backgrounds for your pages is not hard at all. For my Blogger blog, as you can see, I use Pyzam. You should check them out. They have a variety of backgrounds, not only for Blogger but for many customizable sites.

One problem I have come across with Pyzam, once you upload your new template code to the custom html, you are left with having to re-do all of your widgets--it only inserts the posts, archives, and 'about me' automatically.

Here's my solution to that: I've found that if I open a blank document, copy and paste all my little widget html codes to the page (labeling each one and leaving plenty of spaces between), then I have the html all in one spot. I don't have to jump from site to site to get my codes back. I'm sure there are coders out there that will roll their eyes at that and say, "why don't you just do..." Well, I only know basic html so I can't.

For my me page I use a little different process. Check out my eBay marketing tools article to see what I do to get it that way.

Change is good! I hope you like the new page.

Where's My Branding Iron?

(Today I've been working on a few marketing and promotion things. I registered this blog with BlogCatalog, Jiglu, and BlogRush. I have to thank a fellow Associated Content producer for her help and the links to get me there, so "Thank you Momie Tullottes!" (Give her name a click to read her terrific work))

What exactly is branding? Do I have a brand? I'm not marketing anything aside from my content, can I call that a brand? When I first heard about this I thought, "what?" So I'm here to say I have read a lot about it. What I gather it's all about what you're selling. The better your brand (content) the better your sales (page views), as applied to my work at Associated Content.

From "Bringing Sexy Back: The Eight Steps to Content Marketing Bliss" by Joe Pulizzi I gathered a bit of information and applied it to my own version of branding. He lists 8 steps and from those I pulled out what I wanted to use.

While weeding though this article, I began to get discouraged because I don't target my AC articles to one group (niche). Then I thought, wait a minute, I may be targeting several audiences, some may consider that a pitfall, why not work it to my advantage. After all you are Eclectic Muse.

In step 7 Mr. Pulizzi says, "Start out with niche content and build from there." Well I can't very well do that since I don't necessarily have a niche. But I can concentrate on delivering "focused...valuable content."

There are several great ideas that can be drawn from this article. I took step 3 "invest in design" and personalized this blog to reflect the season, added personal information, and added widgets and links. I also took the strategy over to my eBay page and changed it to include links back to my articles, my blog, and a few other ventures I have taken on.

Do I understand branding? No. But I know it relates to marketing. Am I a brand? Well, I'm not yet. But I'm learning.

Busy, busy, busy

I've been so busy doing research lately that I have not been able to post as I'd like to. I really want to make this work at home thing go. I've been adding to my html knowledge, building up my me page on eBay, writing reviews, writing articles, and tending to family...Whew!

Given all that I may have to just post here on a weekly basis until I can get all my ducks in a row.

Learning html has been going on for a while for me. I started to learn bits and pieces way back in time. I actually bought books on the subject. It really comes in handy now because of all this widget stuff. Adding those things everywhere and making sure everything is as it should be is not as easy as it seems.

The writing is rather slow going right now. I've been doing a lot of research and promotion. The promotion seems to be working on what I have published so far, which is good. The research is slow. There is so much information. I don't want to make mistakes. I already made one in my work and I don't want to make any more.

Funny thing about that mistake, it's something I know, knew, and have known for a long, long, long time. I'm just calling it a brain fart for now. I don't know if I want to bother the editor and ask that it be changed. I already admitted to the error on the article in the comments, so I may just leave well enough alone and try not to bring any more attention to it. Maybe I'll do something like the magazines do and publish an apology to the parties involved. We shall see.

I find my inspiration in the fact that everybody makes mistakes, it's human nature. Just admit it and move on.