The frustrations of starting up a business

Often the most frustrating part of getting your sewing business underway is just getting started. Having a business is more than just wishful thinking and a few sales on eBay. It takes a knowledge of how businesses are run, a business plan and how to put it together and how to manage your finances.

So where can you find out more about how to get that knowledge? You can take a few college courses, dig around online and teach yourself or try Elearning. Elearning is an online course taking system that costs under $10 a year to take online courses that can help you with business development. They have one course that is just about developing, running and expanding an online business. There is also a section of free courses. They are also looking for people to write courses for their site.

If you are an expert at what you do, can you teach others? Elearning is looking for people like you. They currently do not have any crafting courses so the field is wide open. Here is a chance for you to make some extra money by creating an online course for them. You create for free and they promote it. You get paid as people take the course at a rate of 70% of the sale. They will review the course before it is offered to make sure everything is just right.

So if you are looking to learn or have some knowledge to share, check out Elearning.

There are many things I would do to improve my own sewing business. In fact my business is far from ideal. My ideal business would be that my ebooks and sewing designs sales would run on automatic without me doing anymore marketing. I would also have enough income generated from by business to hire a few local people that I know who are looking for work. I want not only to have a money generating business but also be able to help others.

The holiday craft sales will soon be here

Are you ready to sell your items at local craft fairs? If you are like me and have attended more than a few craft fairs over the years, you know which ones to attend and which ones to stay far away from. Craft fairs, church sales and school fundraisers are all out to make a buck some how. They either charge a high table or area fee for the day or they sell food to the people attending. The price of the table is not the best way to gauge the success of a craft fair, in fact far from it.

I have several friends that attend the larger craft fairs in the area and one of those fairs charged $50 a table last year. After miserable sales the friend that attended said she will not be back. It turned out that the craft fair did very little in the way of advertising, they were hoping the people who had purchased a spot would do the advertising for them - wrong thinking on their part.

So how can you tell if a craft fair is the right one for you to sell at? I have a method of finding out the best craft fairs in my area and since I run across many people with the same question I am putting together a booklet on the subject. It started out as just a few paragraphs that I was going to put into one of my newsletters but it has grown up to 3 chapters so far and I just have a lot to write about. I will let everyone know when it is ready.

Need recommendations for etsy stores

I need you, my readers to help me out. I have been asked to recommend 5 etsy jewelry stores to a website. Here is your chance to publicize your etsy store. Do you design and make jewelry? Leave a comment and tell me just a little about your etsy jewelry store and of course the URL. I have a deadline of 3 days from now, so I need your suggestions pretty quick.

The dog costume business is BIG money

As a crafter I am sure you are well aware that the pet industry is flourishing right now. Even in this depressing economy, stores like Petsmart are opening up new stores. I find it ironic that people are spending as much as they do on dogs when times are hard. That is great news for us who want to cater to the pet business.

Just looking at all the opportunities there are to make and market that you can whip up on your sewing machine. Check the company that is offering these dog costumes, they have done a fantastic job of designing their own costumes. The taco dog costume below is on the page that I just put the link to. The detail of the lettuce sticking up and the fact it was modeled on Chihuahua was brilliant.
As you can tell, presentation of a product or design will make or break a sale. If those costumes were just presented on a coat hanger or some other way that the customer could not get a good idea of what it looked like without handling it then they might lose a sale. They took the extra step to photograph a dog wearing what they make.

Stuffed dog patterns

I saw these cute stuffed dog patterns and just had to have them in my online store. Yes they are the patterns to make these dog breeds and 13 more. You can find them on my stuffed dog patterns page.

Are you ready to make Halloween costumes?

Halloween is now one of the biggest celebrations in the USA and Canada. What use to be a night of mischief making 40 years ago is now a big dress-up party. Not only are the costumes becoming more and more elaborate but pets are now joining in on the fun. This little guy below is wearing a ready made costume found at this site where they have 11 other equally cute and idea generating dog costumes.


So after seeing that page I decided it was time to look around for some pet costume patterns for you to sew. I found a few and added them to my sewing supplies store. You can find them here. McCall's, Simplicity and a few others also make dog costume sewing patterns. What I can tell you is the difference between the mediocre and great pet costume is the accessories that are added to them. Let your imagination run wild.

Promotional items

I had just mentioned in the post before this one about using your domain name on promotional items. Promotional items can be almost anything from ready made custom shirts with your company name or logo on to pens with your name and phone number.

You can made your promotional items yourself or buy them already custom made for you. I purchased a preprinted T-shirt with my company name and website address on it. Everytime I wear it I get noticed and people ask me if that is my company on the shirt.

Promotional items are a great way to start conversations about your business when meeting new people - use them.

Choosing your own domain name

One of the most important items you will ever purchase for your business will be your domain name. It is something not to be taken lightly. You want to convey to your customers what you do in as short as name as possible. It should be easy to spell for your customer as it is they who have to remember it, not you. Ask yourself, each time you think of a domain name for your business, what impression will it give to your customer? Unless you have an unlimited advertising budget you can forget those catchy names like Google or Yahoo, both of which were meaningless before their ad campaigns.

Try to pick a domain name with the .com or .net suffix. The other ones like .us, .biz and others are not remembered as well. Some companies have done well with the .biz suffix but they were very well established brick and mortar businesses before they developed their websites.

So where to purchase that domain name? You can purchase your domain name as part of a package from your web hosting company. Often times they will offer the domain name free when you pay for their hosting. It may or may not be a bargain. Google offers domain names for $10 for use with their blogger platform. You can also buy your domain name separate and then go shopping for the right hosting company. GoDaddy is of course one of the cheapest ways to purchase a domain name with the prices as low as $1.99. You can find out more at this godaddy review website. While shopping for your domain name keep in mind it will be used on your business cards and any promotional items you may want to use as advertising. It will be your brand on the web so pick it carefully.

How not to get visitors to your blog or website

If you have been following right along with my blog you would have known that I recently wrote an eBook titled Easy steps to having a popular blog or website (currently taken down for a major re-write). There was one very important fact that I forgot to put in the book. Don't worry, I am going to tell you what it is. It is that many people are destroying their chances at having new visitors to their blogs with photos and videos. Now before you get all defensive, let me explain.

No doubt you have seen blogs with those famous "wordless Wednesdays" or just having a few photos with the title "my latest creations" or maybe just a video with no written words or explanation. Those are wonderful posts for your current regular readers but they do not entice new blog readers and that is what you want - more readers and more readers = more income.

What brings more readers to your blog or website is content, written content. The search engines can only perform searches on your photos and videos if you have words associated with them. For example if you have just designed a beautiful new necklace to go with a gown you just designed and all you put up on your blog is a photo of the necklace and another photo of the gown with a title of the blog post "my newest creation" you won't get many new readers to that post. Just try typing in the words "my newest creation" into Google and click on images to do the search. Your little photos will get lost in the vast photo library that is indexed by Google. You need to make your creation stand out from the crowd. Mention the name of the creation, what it occasion it would be great to be worn to, who would be the ideal person to wear it. Be specific as possible.

Learn to be wordy with your blog posts and websites. Be as descriptive as possible of your items. If you are at a lost for what to write about that day then skip writing. It is best to have a well written blog post or website article that is fairly long (at least 300 words) than 20 short, 30 word articles with a photo here and there. There are only a handful of blogs that can get away with that and they already have 10K or more visitors a day.

Don't cheat yourself of having more readers to your blog or website.

A video on how to make a pattern

I would just like to share the video below. It is a quick 2 minute video showing the fundamentals of how to measure yourself and how to apply those measurements to a paper pattern.

Starting a sewing business, making that first step

Starting your own home sewing business has never been easier. With lots of great advanced sewing machines that are well within a reasonable budget how could you go wrong. I have heard lots of talk about how in this economy it is a bad time to start up anything. Those people are so wrong. Just look back at the Great Depression and all of the businesses that came about simply becasue they had to.

Not only are there some great bargains on sewing machines but many fabric stores are having some rock bottom sales and promotions too. The great majority of the world's population does not sew and just because all your friends know how to sew is not how the rest of your community is. Your sewing talents are valuable, cash in on them.

I hate to sound like a broken record and act like a cheerleader but many of you are just in the "I don't know if I can do this" stage of the game. If you don't go ahead and at least make the effort then how will you know? I have actually heard some big name convention speakers talk about "do you have what it takes to run a business?" types of talks. They have people questioning their own abilities. I say hog wash, everyone is capable of running their own business. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

You have to make that first step. Go to that craft fair and be a seller instead of a browser. Put that first listing on eBay. Find that local craft mall and rent a booth. Do what it takes to get your items out in the public view.

Costume design and sewing

Are you ready for Halloween? How about the local Renaissance Fair, which normally takes place in the autumn. Could you sew or design an outfit like the ones pictured above? You probably could with a little practice. Many of the major sewing pattern companies make such elaborate patterns with very detailed instructions. I have also run across an online store that has 3 pages of period costume patterns for women. It is called Ladies of the Realm and they even have Japanese noble costume patterns.

Networking with other craft and sewing blogs

I am sure you have noticed by now that I have an EntreCard widget on the right side column of this blog. For those of you who are unfamiliar with EntreCard, they are a social network of bloggers. You can have your blog appear on other blogs and when people click on it you get some traffic. I have personally discovered many great blogs that way.

There of course is a down side to that type of networking. You see EntreCard gives out "points" for people to visit and click on the widget in those blogs displaying a widget. This promotes just hits to your blog and not true visitors. Sure it will look like you got loads of visitors but what you need is loyal customers - right?

In the last month or so I have witnessed a mass exodus from EntreCard. I am not sure why. I have also noticed a greater and greater amount of the remaining blogs seemed to be abandoned. The blogs have not had entries made in them in over a month or more.

It is my humble opinion that many bloggers started up their blog with one thing in mind, money. Of course that is just one goal of a blog. You should not be thinking that the blog will make you money but that the blog is a marketing tool for other ways to make you money. As a crafter your blog should be your advertising tool to connect with your customers. Your blog IS your social network. Your readers are the people you are socializing with. If someone leaves a comment on your blog and their URL, go and visit their blog. Get to know them. They are a potential customer. If they are not a potential customer they could be an ally in your network. You want people to write about your blog or website on their own blog or website. That is free publicity. You would normally pay $50+ for that kind of work online.

Learn the ropes of online socializing and your business will flourish.