Buy Your Domain!

Okay, lets say that by now you have established your business or maybe you're just getting started but do intend to take this seriously, then do this one thing that costs money: BUY YOUR DOMAIN! 

When I say buy your domain I mean buy the right to www.yourshoporbrandnamehere.com! 

How do you do this? There are a few different companies you can purchase this from. 

-GoDaddy

-Wordpress

-Domain

-Cira (for Canadian domains)

If you can not find your domain with the .com at least try to purchase it with .ca, .org, or .net because it's better to have a form of it than not at all.

This applies even if you don't plan to have a website for a while. People will notice your shop and it's success and purchase your name domain so that it will cost you more in the future to purchase. 

Why is it so important? Well first of all like mentioned above, if you because successful there will be someone out there that will want to profit on that. Either in the form of selling your domain back for hundreds or thousands of dollars, or just simply copying you with your domain and selling a similar product. People also tend to feel more comfortable purchasing from someone who has a website that at least says a little something about themselves and their business outside of the website they sell through.  

It's also very easy to build a free website in the form of a blog. There are websites like:

-blogger (powered by google)

-wordpress

-tumblr

Once you have one of these sites hooked up you will be able to connect your domain to your blog. This way it will read www.yourshoporbrandnamehere.com vs. www.yourshoporbrandnamehere.blogspot.com

In the next post I will show you how that works and how to set up a website style blog through Blogger!

Packaging

An important part of selling things online, is the packaging of your orders. Why is this important?

People LOVE receiving their orders and having that feeling of opening a present when it arrives. They like to feel special and that you spent time and effort on their purchase. People also love freebies and want to feel like they are getting more for their dollar.

How I wrap an order:

1) the item is folded up nicely (this only really applies to some objects)

2) it's wrapped in nice tissue paper then tied with string, rope,  or twine

3) I then include an invoice receipt, and a business card. I also often include a vintage photograph as my thank you to the customer. I do limit the photographs to re-peat customers or orders over a specific price point. It's also nice to have a hand written note that says "Thank You" or at least have it written on the package somewhere!

4) Once your order is packaged up all nicely, it's time to put it in an envelope and send it out. If you're shipping from Canada you will start to get to know these customs forms very well. Top left is within Canada (and not always necessary), bottom left is for air mail to the US or international, and the bottom right is expedited to the USA / there is also the same form for international and similar one for "xpresspost" for those locations as well. 

If you want the expedited options (which is a slightly cheaper option than xpresspost) then you need to get a Venture One card. They are free and save you money at the post office!! 

As far as added "gifts" to your customers, I've known people to add little things of dried flowers, feathers, little mini prints of their art work, and so on.

Here are some great examples of packaging I've gathered up recently:

A gift I received from Machine Dance Vintage yesterday: includes two vintage photographs, one with a note on the back, and a feather, wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine! 

 Excellent packaging from Jean Jean Vintage that looks lovely but also does a great job of advertising who they are. Note the little gift of an "R" charm on the box! (this image is from AdoredVintage's instagram)

 I've also noticed that Allen Company has great packaging and tends to post images on their instagram all the time! The following 3 pictures are from them and might be a good site to follow for ideas! 

 This is their packaging for jewelry. Clear boxes and shredded paper to keep the items safe. 

 They also created this great "tootsie-pop" style wrapping! This one might be a little more difficult to package into a mailing envelope but definitely looks amazing! 

 This envelope came from Our Wild Abandon who are travelling gals taking amazing photographs. They sent me the post cards in a cute envelope with a piece of tape with the print of a map, and a thank you post card personalized with my name! How sweet is that? 

Lastly, here is a beautiful example of sending an item in a box from Adored Vintage!

Now I know some of the packaging looks a little intimidating, but the effort and thought is what is truly important. People want to feel like their purchase matters and that they are special! So make them feel special and make sure they know you are thankful for their purchase!

Shipping

You might be asking yourself, "How do I know how much it will cost to ship this item?".

Since this blog is mostly dedicated to Canadians, I will let you know the best way from the Canadian Postal system: Canada Post.

One simple way of finding out if you do not have a scale at home would be to take a few of your items in a variety of sizes and weights to your local post office. Have them ship it to a postal code within Canada but the furthest away from you, then do the same with the US, and then pick somewhere internationally. Now, I will say that internationally the prices can vary which is why it's important to try to test ship it to a few places and get the average or more expensive option and use that one. You can always refund extra later but it can be awkward to ask for more money. 

From my experiences if you can ship something in an envelope or bubble mailer envelope it will be slightly cheaper than if you ship something in a box. So if you have the option, use an envelope. I've also come to realize that size only plays a small part in the price but mostly relies on the weight. If anything is over .5kg it will trigger higher prices. 

If you are sending anything that can fit in a mail slot, it will also be cheaper and has a different mailing option.

INSURANCE!

The importance of insurance or at least letting your customers know ahead of time that they will not be receiving insurance:

-You do not want to have to pay for a mix up at the post office. If the item you ship does not make it to the customer or gets damaged along the way, you want the post office to pay for it, not you!

-If you let your customers know ahead of time that it does not come with tracking / insurance and you do not take responsibility for lost, stolen, or damaged packages then it becomes their responsibility. Just remember that some people will still argue that and have the upper hand when leaving feedback and so on. 

For smaller and cheaper items like cards or small prints, it's a little bit less important to have insurance. For larger more expensive items, it definitely becomes more and more of something to think about. 

Tracking is also nice for customers to feel secure about knowing where their orders are while it's in transit. 

The post office will have many different types of envelopes and boxes for shipping, you can also try bulk shipping suppliers, or the dollar store for some cheaper options. Remember to factor in the cost of packaging and the mailer you use in your shipping price.

Canada Post's online site also has a place where you can look up shipping prices if you know the weight and size of the item once packaged. 

Next we will go over packaging: how to, what to include, and how important it is! 

How do I price my items?

There is a bit of a formula that goes into pricing your items. Here are some things to keep in perspective when coming up with a price. These are some things to think about

1) How much did it cost me in supplies? ex) canvas, paint, card stock, ink, beads, findings, etc. 

2) How long did it take to create, photograph, and put online? And how much do you think is fair to be paid for that time at an hourly wage? ex) if it took 2 hours total and you would like to be making about $15 an hour than you should make sure to factor in $30 into your cost  

3) What are other people charging for similar products? ex) if you are selling small 5 x 7 prints of your art, how much are other people charging for their 5 x 7 prints? What is reasonable and what is too expensive? You can research your market by searching etsy for prints of art work and so on. 

4) You can also factor in a "mark up" on your items. Sometimes this blends with your hourly wage. You can find out how much most people charge for something similar. You will occasionally find that it is even higher than you expected so go for it! You may also find that with some items you may have to charge just a little bit less than expected due to the market. Just make sure you make up for it with some of your other items and it should all balance out.

5) Don't forget that most hosting websites like etsy or ebay take a fee on every sale, as well as all payment websites like PayPal. Factor this into your cost as well as to not lose out. 

6) Shipping costs: most websites make this separate so that you do not have to include this in your listing price. But something you may not realize is that websites like PayPal will charge a percentage of all money transferred including the shipping charge. So remember to factor that into your item cost, or charge a little extra for shipping to make up for it.

I will go over shipping in the next post. 

Is it time to have a Sale?

A question you may find yourself asking is "when should I have a sale?" "is now the right time for a sale?"

Well first of all, what are your most popular days? If you're not sure and don't have the time to do the statistics yourself, as I mentioned in the last post: Sundays & Mondays. But if you do have the time to figure that out (refer to the last post for the how-to). So try to have your sale on your popular days, days you know people are already buying and may buy 2 things instead of 1 if you're having a sale. So maybe you're having a really slow month and could use a few extra sales; try to make sure you plan your sale for your most popular days, or a full 3 day weekend. Try to have a sale for at least 3 days to give people time to find out about the sale and pick out the things they want. 

Secondly: Holidays. Holidays are a really great excuse to have a sale. Seasonal sales work as well for example "Fall Sale". Shopping Holidays are the most important of those of course including "boxing day" and "back to school". If you don't know when all of the holidays are, look it up and mark it on your calendar to set up the sale at the appropriate time. 

Having a shop sale or even a sale on select items is a great way of selling off some old stock, while also making some money. It's also a good way to bring in new buyers that may have been a little too nervous to buy when it was priced at x amount but now that they bought it on sale and trust your product they might spend the real money next time.

But remember: Don't have too many sales. If you find yourself having 1-2 sales a month, people will notice and start only shopping during your sales. So remember to space out your sales appropriately so that people will continue buying on regular days and just be excited when they luck out it's on sale. 

It may also be interesting to pay attention and see if something only sells when it's on sale. In the scenario, maybe re-price that item a little lower than before and it may start selling when not on sale. 

How much should you discount on your sale? Well that's really up to you. Only you know how much it cost you for those items and how much profit you are making. Just make sure you are still making enough profit that you are satisfied and happy when they sale is over. 

Have you thought about having a "Sale" or "Clearance" section in your shop as well? So instead of having continuous shop sales, you can also have a few marked down items in a sale / clearance section for the items you are trying to clear out. For example: Last season's collection, a product that didn't do very well but have lots left over, items your just sick of looking at, and so on. 

Keep your stock moving. People love seeing new things, and they also love getting a good deal. Keep that all in mind when pricing. Next we will chat about pricing items. 

(notice how there are out of season cards in their sale section)

Shop Stats

Since the last few posts seem to be very statistic oriented, I thought I'd also show you how to navigate some of the easy statistics to find.

Etsy has a section called "Shop Stats" in the drop down menu from "Your Shop". 

Here you won't find out when all of your attention is, but you can easier find out when your sales happen and what time. You can choose "today" or upwards of "one year". 

If you'd like to know the time of your sales choose "today". If you hover your mouse over the sale in the graph it will let you know within what hour the sale was made. 

There are many other things you can discover with the stats given to you by etsy. You can find out how many views you've had within a month, a day, a week, or even the whole year. You can also compare this to how many favourites you've had, and how many sales that has turned up. 

Here are some other important pieces of information it gives you and how this information can help you:

1) Traffic Sources & Traffic Sources on Etsy

What does that mean? This tells you from which websites, links, blogs, etc people are finding your shop. Or, how they found your shop through etsy. 

How this helps you: Find out which sources are the highest and try to focus more on things like advertisements on those sites, or for example: Some people are finding me through "pinterest" so I should probably focus on posting even more to that site because it's helpful. 

Also "direct traffic" is someone typing in your website directly; which could tell you your business cards are working, or maybe they are finding your link through instagram and check it on their computer.  

2. Key Words

What does that mean? Key words are the words that people used to find your shop or listings in search engines. 

How this helps you: When you are tagging your listings and you are unsure which tags are helping and which are being wasted, this lets you know which tags are being helpful. This way you know which tags to always use in your listings. 

3. Pages Viewed

What does that mean? Pages viewed are the pages viewed within your shop. Meaning your main front page, or individual items. 

How this helps you: This lets you know how many people search your main page, and how many people are searching individual items. It also lets you know which items are most popularly viewed. Once you know which items are hot, you can take a look at aspects like how you've worded things, what tags you used and so on to find out if you can add that information to not-so-popular listings.  

4. Listing Favourites 

What does that mean? This lets you know which items in your shop are getting the most admirers.

How this helps you: With this information, especially for those of you with hand made goods, will let you know which items are most popular. You might find that your most viewed items are not your most admired items. So try to find out why those items are getting to many admirers. If you are selling hand made goods, then you know that those are likely the things you should be focused on.

Update

So as I've mentioned, I've started recording the activity of shoppers to my etsy store. By doing so I hope to discover the best days and precise hours to post new listings, or renew old ones. So far I've completed three weeks of data that I would like to quickly share. I plan to continue this for a full year with continuous updates throughout the months. I also plan to start posting during the "heightened" activity periods and see if this results in more activity and most importantly more sales. This I will also record and continue to share. 

Discoveries so far:

(these hours are in PST)

Days with most activity: Mondays & Sundays

Days with most sales: Mondays & Sundays 

Hours with most activity: 10:00AM - 11:00AM, 12:00PM - 1:00PM, 5:00PM - 7:00PM

Hours with most sales: between 10:00AM - 3:00PM, and between 5:00PM - 9:00PM 

Slowest activity times: between 11:00PM - 5:00AM  

Now chances are these numbers will start to change ever so slightly as I continue this study due to situations shifting from month to month. 

An interesting discovery that might be helpful to those who have very little time; Mondays from 10:00AM - 1:00PM would likely be a good time to post as well as Sundays from 12:00PM - 3:00PM. I say this because if you can at least set aside an hour on Monday and /or Sunday to post a few things during those hours, it might be helpful!

Also, if you have the time and are interested, you can do this study for yourself. 

First step: print this sheet or create your own variation.

Remember to write / type the date as well so you don't lose track of which sheet is for which month.

From here you can reference back to this post:

http://anewstartonline.blogspot.ca/2013/09/when-to-post.html which will tell you how to find out when people are liking your stuff. Remember that these stats are not completely accurate because some people have their settings set to "private" which means they will not show up as some one who admired something. These stats only show customers with open profiles. 

Another important thing is to check every few hours because once it reaches a certain point it will just say "1 day ago" and you will not longer know which hours they are from. 

More tips and tricks coming soon!

:)