PinkyCrafts is officially one!

Coconut birthday cupcake! YUM! 

Approximately one year ago, I had just moved across the country in search of something to make me happy.  I had found where I wanted to be geographically, but it was time to decide what I wanted to do to fill my time.  I had just experienced a messy break up - with my previous career.  I knew I didn't want to go back to it, but I didn't really know where else I could go.......after weeks of daily job-hunting, I knew I had to do something immediately to keep myself from dying of boredom.  I had a good friend who was selling on Etsy, and I thought that maybe I could list a few of my scrapbooks and scrapbook pages online.  When I asked her for advice, she made it clear: "It's hard work! Don't expect this to pay your bills!".  I thought, "Well, how hard can it be?  I like my products, I'm sure there is at least one person out there in the world who will like it too!".  All I wanted was to sell a few things, make a little spending money, and keep myself busy while I planned my next career move. 

I created a few new things, took some photos, and sat back to await my first customers.  It didn't take me long to realize there was a LOT more to selling online than I realized!  I had no idea how much competition there was just in my market.  I realized my photos weren't up to par. I realized I needed to get established so buyers would trust shopping with me. I realized I'd have to work extra hard at getting noticed by search engines.  I realized I had no idea what I was doing.

It became a goal of mine to be successful at this thing I originally thought was so easy.  I read every article about Etsy selling that I could get my hands on, I networked with other sellers, I joined the Etsy D-Listers Team. I learned everything I could about SEO.  I advertised on every free website I could find.  I started learning about my target market. I learned when my site received the most traffic, and where they were coming from.  I blogged.  I tweeted.  I Facebooked.  I held a sale and sponsored a giveaway. I studied keywords. I re-wrote my listings and re-tagged my items more times than I can count.  I attended Virtual Labs on Etsy, I took and re-took all my photos in every lighting condition imaginable (ok, I did this many, many times!).  I constantly worked on new products.  I basically threw my entire heart, soul, and all of my waking hours into my shop. 

4.10.10:  First Etsy Sale!  What a HORRID photo! EEK!!!

After a few months, I realized that I had put far too much effort into my little business to just keep it just a little business. I wanted to make it big; I wanted this to be my main thing.  I was having a great time learning about this new project!  I was feeling fulfilled, I had made a few sales, and I wanted more.  With the support of my husband, I decided to make it happen.  I was working harder and more hours doing this than I had been at my previous career, but I was happy - something I hadn't felt in a very, very long time.  There were, and still are, people in my life that don't understand what I'm doing or understand just how much effort goes into PinkyCrafts.  This is a real thing, I am a small business owner!

I had also realized that working from home was a little lonely. My husband found a job shortly after I opened my shop, so he was gone all day.  Its great to wake up and work in your PJs, but I could go days without needing to leave the house, and most of my conversations were between myself and my bunny!  I decided to take on a part-time job, and started working at a local pet hospital.  Originally, it was only a couple days per week, and easily fit into my life.  In recent months, I have struggled to balance that job and my business, but it's something I'm trying to address.  Part of PinkyCrafts is having a personal shopping experience, and I want to remain available to my customers!

In August, a friend of mine suggested I create a line of drink glass tags that party-goers could write their names on. Once I introduced my first two styles, my sales started skyrocketing, and I started creating all kinds of party accessories. Everything fit right into my shop philosophy: helping my customers celebrate the good times in life.

My party accessories put PinkyCrafts on the map!

Fast forward to today, and I've just celebrated my very first Etsy anniversary.  I made my goal of having 100 sales in the first year - something I am insanely proud of.  I've sold to over half of the states in the US, as well as several other countries.  I sold at two different holiday gift shows. I was featured on the Etsy Front Page in March, and I've received the most generous compliments on my work from my amazing customers. 

Several friends have asked me how to start selling online, and I see so many new sellers post for help with how to increase sales.  I always tell them the same thing:  it's so much more work than you think, but its worth it.  You get out of it exactly what you put into it. You need to be fully committed to what it is you're selling, and be ready to throw yourself into building this business.  You've got to check your fears at the door.  If you are, and if you do, and if you can, you've got a good shot! 

My goals for the next year: beat my first year sales number, in both number of sales and dollars made.  I also want to start approaching local boutiques about wholesale contracts.  I want to finally reach 100 item listings!   Most of all, I want to keep having fun and keep being my own boss.  This really is the very best job I've ever had. 

Cheers to my second year!!!

A Must-Enter Giveaway!

Embroidered Kitchen Towel

One of my favorite Etsy shops is run by Christy at the Hippie Chick Boutique.  She creates all kinds of home accessories - towels and finger tip potholder mitts are her specialty right now. She's also a fantastic person, and I love supporting fantastic people.  I've got her towels in my kitchen and bathrooms, use the fingertip mitts several times a week, and have gifted towels and fingertip mitts others..  Suffice to say, I'm a fan.  When I heard that she was having an amazing giveaway, I had to shout it from the rooftops (well, not literally, I might get arrested for disturbing the peace!). 

Christy is giving away TWO items of the winners choice, including the option to do custom work.  Do you know what that means?! You get to pick two things, any two things, from her shop.  For free.  And she can embroider them for you, design something in custom colors - whatever you want.  How can you not enter this giveaway?!

Here's what you do:
1. Visit her shop, decide which item is your favorite.
2. Visit her blog, post which item is your favorite - that's 1 entry.
3. If you tell her how you found her (um, that would be from PINKY!), that's another entry.
4. If you choose to follow her blog, another entry.

Fingertip Pot Holder Mitts

5. "Like" her on Facebook, that's another entry.

In about 30 seconds, you could have at least 4 entries - I ask again: how could you not enter?!  On second thought, maybe I shouldn't share the news so I have a better chance at winning.......*grin*  Good luck to you - if one of my followers ends up winning, I want to hear about it! 

Happy Birthday to Pinky!

Can you believe that PinkyCrafts has been up and running for nearly a year?  Maybe you can, but I certainly can't.  I look back at my early photos, at my early listings....man, a year really can make a difference!!

I do plan on getting sappy and reviewing the previous amazing 365 days in the world of Pinky, but for now, I just want to focus on the important part: the celebration! 

Although the official anniversary is March 29th, I'm offering FREE SHIPPING from now until March 30th.  Just enter code PINKYONE at www.pinkycrafts.etsy.com (US and Canada only, please!).  I've helped you all celebrate for the past year, and now its time for us all to celebrate!

Yay! My First Etsy Front Page Feature!



As seen on the Etsy Front Page, March 7, 2011!

I was down visiting my mom for a few days, and absently checked my email one afternoon.  As soon as I saw that I had an email from Statsy Featurator, I started yelling "OH MY GOD!" - I had finally made the Etsy Front Page! I had missed seeing it there myself by a mere hour, but thankfully, I was able to get the screenshot from CraftCult. 
For those of you who don't know - the Etsy Front Page is (currently) the collection of 12 items on http://www.etsy.com/ that every visitor to the site sees. It's usually a cohesive group of items with the same theme, color, hot trend, etc.  The Front Page collections are pulled from member-curated treasuries, which any Etsy user can create. Right now, there are 475,000 active treasuries on Etsy.  The folks that run Etsy, called the Etsy Admin, will select one particularly beautiful treasury to put on their front page, and the collection changes every hour.  The chance that a treasury you create, or a treasury that you are featured in, will actually make the Front Page is very, very small (except in the case a few, ok a lot, of Etsy Admin's favorite sellers.  These folks can hit the Front Page several times a day.  It's not fair.  But I won't go there, because for rest of us sellers, its an unexpected honor!).  Thus, if you are lucky enough to be featured, its a huge deal.  It's usually a screaming, jumping up and down, and texting your other Etsy friends kind of occasion - at least it was with me! 

Screen Shot! Courtesy of http://www.craftcult.com/

The funny thing?  I wasn't even going to list the St. Patrick's Day coasters that were featured.  They were one of those items that you initially create in your head, and when you actually make the item, it just wasn't what you had pictured.  I wasn't happy with them, but decided to photograph them anyway.  When they ended up photographing well, I decided to list them - and I've very glad I did! 

For those wondering what kind of exposure you really get being on the Front Page for just one hour - my item views for the featured coasters went up 2500% over the previous day's views.  Yes, you read that right - twenty five hundred percent.  I had a record -setting day for shop visitors - the most I've had in the entire (almost) year that I've been open.   Did the item sell?  No, but it did receive several hearts, as did my shop in general, which can definitely translate into sales later on. 

I hope this is the first of many Front Page features!

I heart the Happiest Place on Earth!

Mickey Mouse Party Confetti - $7

In addition to crafting, one of my other hobbies is saving money.  Most people like to save money, but there are some people that really put effort into it - and I am one of those people.  I like to think I can find a coupon for everything, and I follow numerous Facebook pages and blogs about couponing and deal-seeking. 

I get asked a lot: is it really worth it?  Spending all that time just to save a few bucks?  YES!!  Especially because I save way more than just a few bucks.  Not only that, it's actually really fun. I love to see the look on my husband's face when I find a smokin' hot deal. 

I will be turning the dirty 30 this October, and I decided that I wanted to spend my birthday in Disneyland - the happiest place on earth - with my mom.  No offense to my wonderful husband (love ya babes!), but the very first person I ever went to Disneyland with was my momma, and it's just not the same without her.  My mom grew up on the East Coast, and did not take her first trip to Disney until she was in her 40s and living on the West Coast.  She's a total kid at heart and fell in love with Disneyland.  She took me for the first time when I was 17, and even though we didn't have a lot of money, she'd save all year for us to take a special mother-daughter trip down every year (I think I learned a lot about deal-seeking from her!).  We haven't been there together since I was 22, so this trip will be a special one.

Why am I blogging about my love of couponing and Disneyland together in the same post?  Well, because I found this on one of my favorite blogs, FabuLESSly Frugal, about how to maximize your dollar in Disneyland.  I'm posting it here not only because I wanted to share these great tips from a former Disneyland employee, but I want to be able to reference it myself later - ha!

Oh - and in related crafting news, I just picked up some HOT deals on Disney scrapbook kits on clearance at JoAnns!  I used a free shipping coupon, and scored three kits for $8.98 each - regularly $24.99.  I haven't decided if I'll keep 'em for myself, or if I'll put them together for my shop.....maybe I'll do a little of both!

Are any of you Disneyland lovers like myself?   Do you have any frugal tips you'd like to share?  I'd love to hear them! 

Renewing Success! Preliminary Results......

Its been three weeks since I implemented the strategies outlined in nerd Jerk's article about being smart when planning your Etsy item renewals.  Even though its still early in my experiment, I was eager to see if it was working so far.

I ran the numbers comparing the three weeks of my experiment (January 19 - Feb 10 ) to the previous three weeks (December 28 - Jan 18), and was surprised to see that it *IS* working, even after just three weeks!  While a lot of my Etsy friends are reporting a dip in visits and sales, I'm experiencing an increase in both.

Here's what I did:
-Determined my highest traffic hours of the day using Google Analytics
-Used http://www.statsy.org/ to set at least two items to automatically renew each day during my peak traffic hours
-Edited most of my listings to cross promote my items by including a link in the beginning of each listing to a similar shop section or matching/coordinating items

Here's how it went:
-My unique visitors have increased by 11%
-My page views have increased by 14%
-I saw a 38% increase in the number of first-time shop visitors

Here's how that translated into sales:
-My number of sales increased 200%

-My revenue increased by 65%

WOWZA!!!  Yes, it is still early, but I'm thrilled to be seeing these statistics thus far in my process.  I'll definitely keep analyzing.  I also learned something about my peak times, which happen to be around noon and then again at 7pm.  I saw better results when I only renewed items during the noon hour, as opposed to splitting them between noon and 7pm.  I now only set my items to renew during the earliest peak hour of the day.  However, when I renew items very early in the day (at say 8am instead of waiting until my peak time of noon), I had lower shop/item views.  In summary: renewing early in the day doesn't necessarily bring more visitors for me, but renewing at my first peak hour of the day does bring in more visitors, even if that happens mid-day. 

Has anybody else been trying this experiment?  How has it been going?  If you haven't done it yet, are you planning on it? 

Caution: Serious Sweet-Tooth Action!



This shop is one of my current Etsy obsessions - because I am addicted to sugar!  Tookies is one of my TreasureMe Team teammates, and there isn't anything in that shop that I wouldn't eat.  Check out a few of my favorites - and maybe find some new favories of your own!  YUM!!  If I ordered anything, I know it would be gone by the end of the day, but I just might have to order anyway! 



Sweet Snickerdoodles, 1 dozen, $16



Heart Shaped Brownie CookieWitches, 1/2 dozen, $15



Smores Ganache CookieWitches, 1 dozen, $25





Chocolate Lovers Sampler Pack, $40