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



New year, new banner!

You may remember how much I agonized over changing my banner last summer; would you believe that I'm already tired of it?!  I decided it was time for a little change, but I kept most of the elements. 

I was getting tired of the green background, but still wanted a little pop of green.  I debated on having the off-set text, but I think it makes it a little more visually appealing!  

What do you think?  Is a little change a good thing?

Long time, no see.....

I promised my friend Amy that I'd post something that appealed to the masses, so here's my attempt at doing so!  You can only get away with posting links to other blogs for so long; its definitely time for some original content.

It's been a very busy few months, but I'm sure most of you can say the same.  I finished up craft show season (thank goodness), and have set my sights on entering the wholesale market.  I'm coming up on my one-year business anniversary - the end of March - and sales have been pretty steady.  It makes me absolutely gleeful to contribute a good chuck of change to the joint bank account that I share with my husband, because honestly, I still feel guilty that I'm no longer the breadwinner in our family.  I was making a very comfortable living at my previous career, and while I've taken a part-time job in another field to cushion to financial blow, I'm still only making about 40% of what I was before.  And there are times when I don't feel good about that.

Before I started this endeavor, before I committed to being a business owner with all my heart, my husband and I had a very long discussion about whether or not this dream of mine could be a reality. The conversation was short on my husband's part, as his only contribution was "Do it. I just want you to be happy", while I kept making points on how different our financial situation would become, what luxuries in life we could (likely) no longer afford.   Most people work their tails off at their handmade business in hopes of quitting their day job; I had already quit mine!  Note: I did not quit my day job with the hopes of striking Etsy gold; I hadn't even considered opening up shop at the time I decided to leave my career.

While we've revisiting the topic several times over the last 10 months, my husband still says he wants me to be happy and hasn't asked me to rejoin the full-time working population.  I sometimes wonder if my happiness comes at a high price: his happiness.   There are difficult days when he lets it slip that he misses the days when we had a lot more money, when we didn't have to worry so much about staying on budget, when we could travel more without passing out over the cost of airfare.  I think he just has bouts of homesickness and wants to visit home, but forgets how miserable we actually were back then. Then he'll say that he realizes that money can't buy happiness, and we made these changes in our life knowing what we were getting into. All in all, I don't think he'd want it any other way for me, and I think that makes him content.  Especially after one particularly scary evening - back when we were still staying in the hotel waiting for our apartment to be ready - when I practically hyperventilated while bawling and screaming that I couldn't go back to my career, no matter what.  While it was not an intentional ploy to keep my business dream alive, I think it did the trick! 

What does all this mean?  Why am I going on and on about this?  It brings me to my current life challenge: trying to balance my marriage, my health and fitness goals, my shop, and my outside job.  I spend nearly every free minute working on my business, because I feel guilty if I don't.  I started to really despise my outside job because I was being scheduled for substantially more hours than I had thought I'd be working. I feel that if I'm not working on my shop, I'm not making money.  And if I'm not making money, I'm not pulling my weight.  Ok, so I can get sales while I'm sleeping or watching TV, but I can't add new products or improve my shop while doing those things.   While I do make money at my outside job, I essentially have unlimited income potential with my shop, but I can only get out of it what I put into it. 

I really need to find a balance and let the other aspects of my life in.  Over the last few weeks, I've accepted the fact that despite my asking, I will always have more hours at my outside job than I'd like; apparently they meant to tell me I'd be working 3/4 time instead of part-time.  While this definitely takes away from my free time and energy to work on my shop, I've started to really enjoy my job, now that I don't feel like it's keeping me from something more important (although I definitely do feel that way on difficult days!!).  I've just accepted it and moved on.

The area I'm most neglecting is my health and fitness.  I was really overweight several years back, and had managed to keep off 60ish pounds until last summer, until I let my business take over my life.  Instead of getting in my morning run, I'd dive into my business to-do list.  Instead of eating healthy snacks, I filled up on sugar and junk.  The result?  I've definitely put on a few pounds, and my jeans are begging me to get on the treadmill again!  I've had a few good weeks of regular exercise and healthy eating again, and I already feel lots better, but its always frustrating when it takes a lot longer to drop the weight than it did to put it on. 

I suppose I'm a little farther along on the path to finding balance than I thought, but I'm nowhere near where I should be.  Its really funny how I have less free time now than I did when I was working at my full-time job.   It's also funny how people don't realize just how much effort one must put into an online business in order for it to be successful.  I know I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't thrown myself into it with everything I had, but I hope I haven't gotten so sucked in that I let everything else get out of control!  I think I had a self-intervention before it got that bad, and I hope I can continue making progress, while I continue making good sales and working with fantastic customers.  That is why I continue to do this.

More on the science of renewing your Etsy items....

Its a new year, and I'm hoping you are all making the most of it so far!  I have definitely neglected my blog, but I wanted to pop in quickly and share an amazing article with you Etsy sellers out there.


Mini BobOmb by nerdJERK

The author is an Etsy teammate of mine and an amazing shop owner, nerdJERK.  When I first met Steph, she was itching to break her shop full of geeky awesomeness into serious sales and has become uber successful - in what seems to be a very short time (although she would probably disagree!).  I feel like I can say "I knew her when!", but seriously, her story is really inspiring.  She did her own experiment on the item renewal concept, and was kind enough to share her results with the rest of us, including how you can find the same success she has found. 

She increased her page views by about 500% just by being smart about her renewal process, using several free seller tools websites.  Sound interesting?  Go check out her article, and the rest of her blog too!  If you're interested in her geekery, like this cute mini BobOmb, check out her shop!

Direct link: http://nerdjerk.blogspot.com/2010/11/increase-traffic-in-your-etsy-shop.html

More Adventures in Business Owning

I would have assumed that this holiday season would be less stressful for me than years past.  After all, I only work outside the home at a part-time job (as opposed to full-time), and I'm back living in my home state.  Unfortunately, I am MORE stressed this year than in years past - which is how I managed to go three weeks between blog posts.  Between shopping, working, improving the shop, getting ready to wholesale, craft shows, and prepping for the arrival of my in-laws - I'm surprised I've found free time at all!  Are the rest of you feeling like you're pulled in too many directions this holiday season?  *takes deep breath*

I did want to report back on my 2nd craft show from last weekend.  I took everything I learned at the first show into consideration, and made several changes to my display's appearance.  I think it actually went quite well, and I've got a few new tweaks planned for next time.

My main goal was to get shoppers to realize that PinkyCrafts is more than scrapbooking. 



Loving the new banner!

First, I changed my banner (thanks to Vistaprint's wonderful email deals) to say "Party Accessories & Scrapbooking", as opposed to "Scrapbooking & Party Supplies", and added my tagline.  I love how it turned out!  I wasn't able to put my banner on the wall behind my booth, where it would get seen the most, but I think it still made an impact on shoppers. 

I also learned something that may have been obvious to others: always bring table cloths!  My first show provided them, and I didn't even think about bringing my own to this one until the last minute.  I grabbed what I could find, but I would have liked to use something prettier!

I think it turned out perfect.

Second, I revamped my drink glass tag display.  I added rustic-looking crates to the middle of the display to hold each glass, attached only one style tag to each glass (to avoid confusion - although it still existed, more later)!, and added tinsel and a battery-powered votive candle to draw the eye to the display.  I also made new signs for each item - and I made the sign for the drink glass tags the largest one.  I hoped this would make it very easy for folks to tell what I was selling.


My mom - the best booth helper ever!

 I also worked to organize my display into three separate sections, with the scrapbook section first, followed by the party accessories and drink tags, and finishing up with the framed pages section.  Shoppers will naturally glance at a table from right to left, so I wanted to give their eyes something non-scrapbooking to see right after they noticed the scrapbooks, so they realized I was more than just that before they walked away.

So with all the changes, what was the verdict?  It worked.  I didn't hear one shopper say "Oh scrapbooking.....I have all the stuff to do that" and walk away like the first show.  People actually stopped and looked. The drink glass tags display was very eye-catching, and several folks commented on how beautiful they thought it was.  I didn't do too badly in sales, but I could have done better.  I took a custom order and seriously discussed some large scrapbook orders with a few others. 



Creative business card display!

 Its worth noting that (come to find out), the local newspaper had printed the wrong times for the second day of the show.  It printed that the show ran 5:00-8:30pm on Friday and Saturday; the show actually ran from 5:00-8:30 on Friday and 9:00-4:00 on Saturday. Traffic was slow on Saturday, but the signs out front still drew some folks in, and the school's parents already knew the real hours. I had several folks tell me they stopped by Saturday evening, only to find the show closed.  BUMMER!  This makes it hard to judge my true success, but I still felt I did well.

Now that I fixed my first problem of showing shoppers that I was more than just scrapbooks, I came up with some new tweaks to try next time to solve a new problem - folks were still a little confused with my drink glass tags.  I had some customers ask if I was selling the wine glasses (despite the "Drink Glass Tags" sign right in front of them).  Others were confused because the tag packs weren't on the table - as they would have really cluttered it - and they didn't understand that the samples indicated which styles they could purchase in larger sets (again, despite the sign in front of them!).  On the second day, my mom suggested that I put some of the packs on the table, so it was clear what would actually be purchased.  I think this helped, as folks would rather be presented with the facts, rather than read them on the sign I posted.  Next time, I'm going to use large binder clips, and clip the tag packs down the side of the crate display.  This way folks can see what they're purchasing, and hopefully it will make more sense. 

All in all, it was another success.  I'm moving towards Crafter Utopia, and I'm hoping these latest tweaks will help get me there! 

Here's wishing everybody a very happy holiday season - may you take the time to enjoy the most wonderful time of the year with friends and family.  See you all in 2011! 

Hoppy Holidays from Pancakes the Bunny!