I submitted my first request for a deal when the Craftzine article about Heartsy was published, right when Heartsy’s population surged. When I submitted my deal the rules where simple, get 30 “yes” votes from potential customers, and then if we can agree on a deal, you will be featured. PERFECT. I submitted my deal, got 76 “yes” votes and soon got an email saying that another email with the “next steps” was on its way. Wonderful, this couldn’t be easier. I sat back and waited and waited and waited for the “next steps” email. It never came. A vacation that I had planned started to creep up on me and I was worried that my deal would be scheduled for when I was out of town, so I emailed the Heartsy staff. Congrats on your 76 votes they said! We will be flexible on the time frame of your deal, don’t worry we will be in touch soon.  So I waited some more.

About 3 weeks after my congratulations email, I received another email from Heartsy saying too bad, so sad, we changed the rules. No! I was Heart broken. Turns out, too many people received 30+ yes votes so they asked a handful of their most frequent customers to secretly vote on my deal and they voted a big fat no. A secret vote? I was betrayed.

As a consultation prize they gave me a $5 gift certificate to their site which I huffed and puffed about and then eventually used.

I brushed off my bruised ego, read the new rules and resubmitted my JamJewelryShop Etsy store for consideration.

Heartsy has anywhere from 400-600 artists “competing” for a chance to have a deal with them at any given point. In order to be considered for a spot for a “daily deal” one has to submit pictures of their handmade work to the site and then customers “vote” on what items they would like to see a deal on. After 3 days of voting, based on the number of votes a shop receives, they either proceed to a manual evaluation by Heartsy staff and ‘frequent customers’ or they get denied all together and the artist can decide if they would like to resubmit their deal for consideration.

When I first became aware of the site a deal had to have 3o “yes” votes in order to be considered for a deal. Now, the minimum number of votes has gone up to 60 and I suspect they will soon be increasing that number.

So, what’s the verdict on Heartsy? I think it’s a kick ass idea. I know there has been a lot of debate on whether or not Heartsy is good for the handmade community, but I believe it is. I do not think that it devalues handmade. In fact, now with money tighter than ever, I think it’s a great way to be seen by many and give people the opportunity to sell off their over stock. I have bought 2 Heartsy deals and have been very pleased with the process and the items I have received. What are your thoughts?

Instead, try adding a PayPal Gift Certificate Button to your Facebook Fan Page. Paypal will do all of the work for you including designing the Gift Certificate, mailing it to the customer and managing the gift certificate balances.

To see what the end result looks like (or to purchase a JAM Jewelry Shop Gift Certificate) click here:

http://www.facebook.com/craftychick101fans?v=app_4949752878

Steps for Selling Gift Certificates for your Etsy Shop through your Facebook Fan Page:

1. Log into your PayPal account and click the “Merchant Services” tab near the top of the screen.
2. Towards the center of the page you will see a section that says “Create Buttons” and underneath that a link that says “Gift Certificate”.  Click the “Gift Certificate” link.
3. Paypal will then give you step by step instructions on how to set up your gift certificate. Here is a helpful hint: You can customize your gift certificates to have your Etsy banner or logo on them to give them a more personal touch. Under the “Gift Certificate Style” section there is an option to “Add URL for logo image”. To do this, go to your Etsy shop and view your public shop. Right click on your banner and select “View Image”. The web address of this next page is what you want to add as you URL Logo Image in PayPal.
4. When you are done imputing all of your information, click the “create button” button at the bottom of the page. This will lead you to the link you will import into your Facebook Fan Page.
5. Go to your Facebook Fan page and on the administrative side under “Applications” click “Browse More”.
6. Search for “Static FBML” and click the first option that comes up.
7. On the left hand side click “Add to My Page”.
8. Follow the directions Facebook gives you from here. You can name the tab anything you like, I have named mine “Gift Certificates”. Enter the code you got from Paypal on this page as well as any text you want to include that your customers will see.

That’s all there is to it! Now you can easily sell gift certificates to your Etsy shop online.

I hope you found this useful! If you liked this Etsy selling tip please comment and share with your friends!

The show was in Burlington MA, at a hotel convention center and ran from 12-4.

We walked in and were immediately greeted with an explanation of the process and a tray for holding my strands of beads. When I walked into the room, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were tables lined up with strands and strands of beads.

The whole thing was a little overwhelming and Justin and I decided to step aside to have a quick “team meeting”. We decided we would go through all the tables and put anything we were considering on our trays. Once we had what we liked, we would go through again and narrow the beads down to what we would actually buy. Let me tell you, in the initial round through the room my bead tray filled up very fast.

I went through my tray several times and finally narrowed down my selection, but I knew I should probably narrow it down a little more. I use Swarovski Crystallized Elements and Sterling Silver in all of my designs and unfortunately, they had a very small selection of both of those things. That meant my tray was filled with items I didn’t need.

Justin and I discussed it and we decided that it would be OK to expand the jewelry selection in our shop, but the new jewelry would have to meet some very important criteria:

1. The new jewelry would need to fit in and flow nicely with all of the other jewelry currently in our line AND
2. Quality is still our number #1 priority. We are not expanding into plated metals and whatever beads, gemstones, etc. that we find must be top notch.

It was painful, but I put all of my gemstones back. The pretty purple Jade, the dyed blue Agate, the small Peridot beads that would be great for spacers… all went back onto the tables.  Sad, but necessary.

At the end of the day we still ended up with quite a haul. We decided to expand our shop to include some Cubic Zirconia beads… very sparkly and high quality… like the rest of our shop.  At the last minute we also found a stash of Swarovski Crystallized pearls… something we had been meaning to try anyway.  All in all, it was a great experience for our crafting business!

Interested in attending the Rings and Things Bead Tour when it comes to your area? Check out this link for their schedule:

http://www.rings-things.com/Show/index.html

From spending time in the forums and chatting with other Etsy sellers, I can see that many people have the same problem I used to have, and that is where to focus your energy. Marketing your handmade products online can often make you feel like a dog chasing its tail. It’s an endless cycle of checking your email, responding to threads on forums, checking your email, tweeting out a link to a new product you have on Twitter, checking your email, listing a new product on Etsy or Artfire, checking your email…. you get the point. A lot of this time and energy can be focused into creating and listing new items and finding more creative ways to get your items seen.

When you’re in a rut try some of these steps:

• Don’t waste your time replying to forum threads just to be seen. These responses add no value to the conversation and will often be overlooked by potential customers. Only respond when you have something interesting or of value to say. Don’t waste your time in threads where you can’t either a) learn something or b) teach something to someone else. When you are a valuable player in the forums, that’s when people will take the time to visit your shop and see what it is you sell.

• Check Craigslist. Creating an ad is free. List your item in your state and include pictures. Let people know they can contact you for more information.

• Look up relevant blogs. Is the blog owner willing to write a feature about you or your shop? You won’t know until you ask. This is a great way to get different people looking at your items. If they don’t want to do a feature, maybe they will sponsor a giveaway of one of your items for you. This will bring more traffic to their blog and will get potential buyers looking at your shop. Just do your research to find out if the blog has a lot of followers and/or readers to make sure this venture is worthwhile for you too.

• Tweet, but don’t spend too much time on Twitter. Add new followers – find people who have similar interests and follow their followers. This will get new people looking at your shop as well. Tweet out new items you have in your shop with a link.  Also join conversations with people who are talking about things you can relate to. Then get off Twitter. {To follow me: @craftychick101}

• Most importantly, keep updating and improving your craft. Often we handmade sellers take so much of our time marketing our items, we can often forget to look for new and interesting ways to create. Look for inspiration in local stores, online, and around your house. It may be an interesting color combination you want to use, or even a new crafting technique. Just make sure you keep it new and interesting. This will keep people coming back to your shop and will make your marketing job a little easier!

*Be professional at all times. One woman who bought a pair of earrings asked me if I do home parties. I became a deer in headlights as 100 things ran through my mind…. I ended up telling her that I had never done a home party before but I would be happy to set something up for her if she was interested and I gave her my card. She did not look pleased and just walked away. Maybe not the most professional answer, but an honest one.  *Note to self: come up with some concrete policies for doing home parties*

*Be prepared. Had my booth not been set up in front of a hardware store I’m not sure what I would have done when my jewelry displays started falling over. I would have had to have Justin run out to find some wood while I stood at an empty table waiting for him. I know it can be a pain, but set up a mock booth at your home or in your yard before attending your first fair with new displays. This will give you a better feel for precautions that might need to take place (like bolting down your displays or better securing your tent) and give you a chance to view your display from all angles and make some final changes without the pressure of trying to set up your booth with customers walking around. It’s better to take care of it when you actually have the time and not the day of the fair.

*Know your policies and stick to them. I told myself going into the fair that I would not be discounting my jewelry (as people often try to get a bargain at fairs). Most people actually did not try to negotiate but then there was this one woman who was persistent. She bought a pair of earrings earlier in the day and came back to say that she was leaving the fair and that she regretted not buying more earrings. She asked me what my best price was on the earrings and I told her that I was not negotiating today. “Really?” she asked. “Even if I buy 5 more pairs?” My head started to spin, she happened to come by at a slow part of the day and I thought to myself how this sale would really help me out, so I said OK. We went back and forth on the price and finally ended up settling on a discount.  She bought the earrings, and as the day went on and my booth got busy again I started to regret going back on my no discount policy. Those earrings ended up being my best seller for the day and I think I could have sold them all for full price to someone else had I stood my ground.

*Know your stuff. One potential customer at the fair came up and asked me to prove that my crystals were authentic Swarovski crystals because she had never seen the designs I had anywhere else before and because my jewelry wasn’t stamped with the official Swarovski logo. I explained to her the difference between Swarovski jewelry and jewelry made from Swarovski Crystallized Elements. I gave her a website where she could get more information on these types of stones and told her that I only buy from reputable dealers. It turned out that this customer didn’t realize my jewelry was handmade and hadn’t head of Crystallized Elements before. She thanked me for my explanation and bought a pair of earrings.

*Have fun. Even if sales are slow. No one wants to come over and shop at a booth while the person who is running it stands there was a puss on their face. Smile, relax, enjoy the day. If things are slow, reorganize your table to give it a fresh look. Greet customers and start a conversation with them. Even if you don’t have sales immediately people may like your demeanor and take your business card for future purchases

We got our new tent set up fairly quickly and easily which was a relief. I started to put out my necklace displays but I had some trouble when the wind blew and knocked over the entire necklace board. Luckily no jewelry was on it yet and I had my family there to brainstorm some ideas for making the boards heavier and sturdier. Eventually we screwed some plywood into the back of the boards to weigh it down and that ended up being the perfect solution as it kept the boards in place and customers couldn’t see the wood from the front of the display.

After we were done setting up I took a step back to look at my entire display and I was very happy with how it all came together. The new black crushed suede cloth I had bought for table cloths from Joann’s really made my jewelry pop and the display pieces I got from the Finding King made everything look very professional.

My sales started early, my first one happened while I was setting up. I love that, it always puts me in a positive mindset for the rest of the day. I had originally planned to start a newsletter mailing list at the fair, but no one was interested in signing up. Even when I mentioned there would be a drawing with the names for a $10 gift certificate to my Etsy shop, people still shied away from singing up for anything via email. I ended up taking the sign up sheet away after about an hour.

The rest of the day went smoothly; sales picked up around lunch time and then dropped off in the late afternoon.   I was really pleased with the amount of oohs and aahs our jewelry inspired and we got a tons of compliments which also helped reinforce that we are on the right path with this new shop. At the end of the day sales were good and I was pleased with the amount of business cards I had given out.

So, after my day of selling at the fair I came up with some tips for others who are considering doing some craft fairs and street fairs this fall which I will post next week. Stay tuned!

The fair is on Long Island so we drove down last night. Both of our families live here (which is how we heard about the fair in the first place) and it’s going to be great to have everyone there to support us.   I showed my mom and my sister all of the jewelry this morning and they were both really excited about it, so of course now I’m even more excited and hope that everyone else will have the same reaction tomorrow.

I just finished making my last pair of earrings. I just need to price them and then we will officially be done! We took some pictures yesterday right before we packed up the car. The tables, our tent and the majority of our merchandise are all ready to go.  The tables we are borrowing from my parents and we got an affordable tent from Target for under $100.

Because we’ve never done a fair with our jewelry before we needed to buy all new displays. Thefindingking.com has some great affordable jewelry displays and we were able to buy most of what we needed from them. They were very good to deal with, we did have some problems with merchandise coming in “not as ordered” – but the items that were substituted were in a sense upgraded, so we weren’t too concerned.  I’ll post pictures of our items displayed at the craft fair in the next post.

If you live on Long Island you can come join us!  Sunday September 5, from 11:00am – 5:00 pm on Hawkins Ave. in Lake Ronkonkoma.

My name is Michele and I live in Massachusetts with my husband Justin. We are newly weds – married October 17, 2009!  My other loves include fashion and making “stuff”. I sew and crochet, but my latest passion is making jewelry using crystals and sterling silver…. ooooh, shiny! You can take a look at my newest Etsy shop linked on the right side of my blog.

I currently have 4 Etsy stores – yes, 4! It keeps me very busy and working at a full time corporate job makes it that much more challenging. I hope one day to leave the corporate world and work full time doing what fulfills me most, but in the meantime I will be recording all of my entrepreneurial pursuits here for you all to see!

This is the story of a newly wed, crafting TrendyGal who is recording her experiences while fighting her way to the top…. enjoy!

~Michele~