How to Start

OK, so now the question is out there. How do I start?

Let's say you make a little doll. Let's get down to the nitty gritty and say 'clothespin dolls'.

There's hardly a market for something like a clothespin doll but that's what you make and you wonder if there is any possible way.

Actually, there is but you have to get even more creative. If you don't have the money to get someone to design and make you a heavy paper or cardboard display, maybe you can make the first one to get started. How about a heavy paper (something about half the thickness of cardboard. You've seen those displays.) Using the colored side, use a cookie cutter or any cylinder the right size, to use as a guide while you cut out holes with a Xacto blade. What you're creating is a display, to stand up your little dolls. Like those you see at the gas station, displaying cigarette lighters. You want to stand your little dolls, all in neat rows.

Fold the paper, so that it forms a shallow box, the sides and back folded down, to raise the display board up off the table. Then attach a back board that stands up behind the display. Just use solid colors to get you started.

Now you have a display. Fill that display with your best work then take a look at it. More impressive, isn't it.

Now let's say there is a gift shop nearby that can help you to sample out the product. That's exactly what you're going to ask, "Can we go at this more like consignment, long enough to test out this product. I need your help." There's bound to be at least one little shop that will give it a try. As long as they don't have to feel obligated, in case something happens, they will be more open to the idea.

Either that or a craft show, where you can set the display at the front of your table, to sample out the product.

You see, you just might have a product that nobody values, the way you do. If that's the case, you don't want to waste your time. Better to just make them as Christmas ornaments to give out, next year. If you're serious about wanting to make a living, using your own talents, don't invest in a dead product.

That, by the way, is my own terminology when designing a new product. Is it a 'go' or is it 'dead'? If it's a dead product from the get-go, I don't want to have anything to do with it. I'm not in the business of wasting money and time.

You literally have to be your own worst critic. At the same time, you have to give the product half a chance. Imagine it sitting on a shop shelf, along side other products similar. Will it look like junk or would it fit in nicely?

If you have a product that might sit in nicely, and compare with similar products, then run with it but don't bank on anything until you see that product perform for you.

One of the best ways to test out your product, is through friends, relatives and neighbors. Ask them, flat out, what would you pay for this item? Would it be desirable if you saw it in a shop? Would you ever want to collect them? Run this survey past as many people, as you can, before investing too much in it. Oh yeah, and be sure to tell your friends to be cruely honest.

So let's say you have a product that has come through scrutiny with flying colors but you don't have the money for things like shows. Can you make enough of the product, to make a nice display in a shop? Then go visiting to find the shop that will help you test out your product - sort of like partnership.

I've done it and with a very nice shop, in the bottom floor of an upscale hotel. All I had to do was talk with the owner. I let her know I was sampling the market. If she could handle just a few of a new design, and handle it like consignment (actually, we settled on handling it like an outright wholesale delivery BUT collection would happen after a few sales). This way, she didn't have to keep special books for me. I came back a couple weeks later, with more product, and to check on progress. She had sold everything I brought, I wrote out a receipt for her and she cut me a check on the spot. This way, she could handle it just like all her other buying.

Then one day, I took her a sampling of 2 sleep masks, for some folks across the country from me. I just told her, the folks wanted to test the market here and we could handle this the same way. That way, there was no problem with her tagging them and putting them out for sale. If they sold, she'd be buying them wholesale, when she saw me again and if not, I'd collect them and return them to the owners.

You have to be honest about what you're doing. It's not a sales pitch, it's a mini-partnership, to test the product. Most shop owners are willing to help, especially.....especially if you can promise them and exclusive, within a certain territory, in exchange for their help. They have competition and there's only so many ways to get out ahead. This is just one way to help them out, in exchange.

If you find yourself with a product that's moving, not only do you have your first wholesale outlet but you have testimony for the next shop. Go outside that promised exclusive territory, find a shop suitable for your product, and go visit. Tell them how well it's selling at 'so and so's shop'. Go from there and keep working it.

If you find that you can set up at a show, some day, make sure you aren't crossing your own customers. Don't sell the same product within that promised exclusive territory, right under their nose. If you do, you lose that outlet. Back scratching, all the way. Be friends with your customers and be on their side.

This was all my bright idea, I know

I'm beginning to wonder where my knight in shining armour went. I mean just because the going got tough, didn't mean he had to vanish into distant dream land. Right? Oh wait.....

I remember...this was my bright idea.

Now, if I remember right, this started back in 2006, after I got off the truck and came home. After driving 7 days a week, right through the holidays, for the past 4 years, taking an average of 3 days a year off at home, I suddenly found myself sitting like a stump and trying to remember what life was all about.

Let's see....I'll start with the right foot and see what happens next. :) No kidding, it was almost that bad.

Being so used to sleeping round constant noise; either my own truck idling, a reefer unit running, a truck stop full of idling trucks and reefers, slamming doors and street walkers banging on the truck half the night, I found it hard to sleep. It was too QUIET!!!! OK so the TV all night helped. There's an old joke about the truck driver coming home and having his wife sit on the side of the bed to keep it idling so the driver can get some sleep.

It took me 2 weeks, to start getting a grip on daily life again. The first thing I did was look around me to see what I could do to help around the house. The place got torn up, turned around and re-organized, shifted, shelved, what ever. Then there was all my ceramics business equipment, molds and tools, stored under the deck.

It all got reboxed, repaired, reorganized, thrown away, what ever! Ok so now I was tired. :)

There was this neat deck, out the back door (mountain living and a house built on a hill) and it was a great sunny spot to sit and write. I went down to Walmart and got one of those self standing umbrellas. I loved my umbrella and spent the majority of the day, sitting under it. Aah nice.

My grown daughter said, "You've always wanted to write. This is your chance". hmmmm It was a funny thing, but while I was tearing up my grandson's bedroom, feeling sorry that half my office stuff was stored in the corner in boxes, I happened across some old flopply discs.

One of them was labeled 'Mold Book' and I got curious. I couldn't remember what I had done almost 10 years prior. There it was, a whole book on 4 floppies, an instruction book about making ceramic molds. I remembered some photos I had taken for the book. hmmmm

On my trucking travels, I had picked up a Travel Scan and started using it to scan all those old pics. Now everything was rolling along, without my really thinking about it. I completed the book I had started so long ago. Now what?hmmmm

I headed out to the printer place and had them print out some copies, then I made little booklets...no wait....I had them do it. Well, I made a few and decided it was easier for them to do it.

I uploaded a pic of the cover onto ebay and listed it under an auction. Low and behold it sold. hmmmmmmm So I did it again.

I got a message, through ebay, from a young lady asking 'will this book help me to know what to do with a bunch of ceramic molds, my grandmother left me?' The answer was, "No but give me a sec". The next day, I uploaded a pic of the cover of the new instruction booklet, with illustrations. Dang, it sold!hmmmm

Well, now I had a problem. Teaching folks how to make molds, and talking about how to grow their business, meant they would need to know how to make their own master blocks, so that they could mass produce molds, so they could continue forever with turning out their own mass produced ceramics. So the next day, I uploaded a pic of the new instruction booklet, with illustrations and it sold on ebay.

So! Huh! Blink, blink. With instruction booklets, selling on ebay, I wondered what other mess I could get myself into. :)

Being a Christian and loving to write, I began writing articles for a Christian writer's website.

Pretty soon, I was building my own website. Why pay ebay? I wrote about the books and began selling through the website. Printing and mailing off the booklets, started getting to be quite a hassle and the decision was made, one day, to go all efile. That worked out great, because not only did it relieve me of a lot of work, it was cheaper on both ends.

Somewhere along the line, I started remembering the reasons I stopped working the ceramics and mold making and got mad, all over again. For sure, I didn't have the energy, any more, to keep up with the rat race but I sure could go to bat for other crafter's, who still needed to overcome the problems of marketing. Hey! Why waste the knowledge?

Let's see, now. I'll add an rss of my pics from the highway. You can see some of the things I saw along the way. Whether I ever go back on the road, remains to be seen. I've already had to go back for this past year. Yeah :) I was working the internet while on the road. My laptop goes with me everywhere and I've been constantly working toward building an online name, since 2006 (off and on). My last post on this blog, pretty much explains why. I've had you in mind for a long time, now.

I'll keep writing and posting and building. As long as I don't have to get up and spend all my time doing somebody else's work. :)

Market Yourself Not Your Product

Think about it. Who is your competition? Look on the shelves of your local mega store. When it comes to anything you can possible craft, how many of those items are stolen design? Where do you think those designs came from?

Here's an example.

This is the large Sunface nightlight, I designed in 1991. I showed it to one of my outlets, which happened to be a wholesale manufacturer, themselves. It was too big for their nightlight boxes.



I went back to the shop and shrunk down the size of 4 different night light designs, this one included.

This is a pic

of the Sunface magnet I designed. I don't seem to have a pic on the computer, of the small Sunface night light.

I made the first mold off that smaller sized Sunface night light, completed one whole piece and showed it to my customer. Why, I don't know, but they never did order this particular night light, although they did order quite a few of my other designs for night lights.

Very few people ever saw that smaller size. I did let a couple of local tourist shops try them out. About a year after I first began turning it out to the public, I walked into a Target store and there, just about had a heart attack.

In their little decor section, where you find things like small planters, was my night light design. Not as a night light, at all, but in blue clear glass, attached to the face of a candle holder. Not only had somebody just taken a print off the face of my night light, they didn't bother to change my litte mistake. So there it was, mistake and all. Where did this item come from? China!

You think the Chinese are just so infatuated with America, that they come here for vacations? Naw, people....they are infringing on the locals, picking up your products in the stores, taking them home and copying them to sell right back in our faces.

Here was my own design, stolen and being sold to my home front market. In my face. So who are we selling our hard work to?

I learned the hard way that when I designed something new, I had to sit on it, hide it even from my own customers, until I had a market large enough to flood my own home front market, hard enough and fast enough to have a name attached to that product, before China came to visit. Not only that but I had to beat their prices before they had half a chance to undercut my market with my own designs.

Does that turn your stomach? It sure does mine. Now when it came to music, our whole government got in on the infringing thing and threatened China. You think our government was going to care about one little lady in the middle of NM? Uh uh, I was fresh meat. That's just one of the reasons I finally quit feeding the enemy by stopping, all together.

So here's my point. To you, it's a small time local market. To your business competitor, it' a world market. They have and will take your product away from you, steal and walk on your face.

So where is the defense? YOU! Your name, your face, your reputation.

If you make jewelry, put your name on it some way, somehow and wear it. Turn yourself into a walking display and when you take pictures of your jewelry, model it. Put your face with your product. Put your reputation with the product. BE there! Let your market know, without having to say it, that to buy from you is to buy quallity and a name behind the product. That you stand behind your product while China won't be there for your customer. That China turns out crap replica's and you have the original.

If you make wood toys, be sure your name is on it. Make hang tags that brag about your expertise, tell the world all about yourself, where your shop is, what a wonderful person you are. YOU!

Remember the quilt of old. The quilt that still serves the family after 3 generations. And remember the rag tag fake quilt from Walmart and how they wear out and the seams fall apart Sell that!

Sell-my product is an investment even for your grand children while cheap knock offs, are meerly and investment for the next year or two. Sell THAT!

In every creative way, you can think off, get the word out that buying cheap China knock offs, has helped to ruin the economy of our own country. Don't bash people on the head. Find ways to drop the hint. "I build quality in my product, to make it last for generations"

Another thing, in every possible way, make each item distinct. Think collectibles from the get go by numbering pieces, maybe even dates and signatures.

You've heard it for years, "perfect your product". Always strive towards perfection. China won't. Why do I pick on China, when there are so many other countries doing the same thing? I suppose because of that dumb piece of blue glass that set me back on my heels, one day. It can, and probably has, happened to you.

Now get this. You have the same sort of problem on the internet. On the ground, your competition covers you up with quantity and selling to the 'big boys'. On the internet, your competition couldn't care less about your product; they care about your traffic.

Your competition, on the internet, isn't another crafter doing the same thing, it's the guy building hundreds of fake websites, using names and titles that sound like your crafty competitor, simply to get traffic to their page full of ads. I call it spamming in a mega way. They steal your traffic by getting up there on the number one page of the search, looking for your product.

In other words, somebody types in 'childrens wooden toys' (how much more detailed can you get?).That first page that pops up, will be half filled with fake websites, not yours.

While I was searching for crafter's to join in on the network at Judy's Corner, I discovered that more than half of the directories out there, AND the webrings, for artist's and crafter's, had among the list, huge numbers of fake websites. You try it. Go on a search of crafter's in http://dir.webring.com/rw

just browse through the crafty rings and see what you find. Like me, your blood will boil. These fake websites are stealing your traffic. Do half those crafter's understand who their neighbors are on those rings?

So how do we battle that one? By doing what I've been working on. Collecting the crafter's into a site that does care what's happening, by building a name on the internet, by flooding the internet with our collective name, by telling our story.

I'll tell you what I've been doing. You wouldn't believe what it takes. Check out these sites, all by me.

http://www.squidoo.com/crafting-corner

I'm constantly submitting about the crafter's corner here http://www.reddit.com/

and here http://delicious.com/red46

and here http://www.plaxo.com/profile/show/193273890522?pk=c6b65d52a7650912f2684a1e10c958214f762cb5

and here http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/red46/

and here http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1498758295&ref=profile

and here http://digg.com/users/red46

and here http://www.myspace.com/fishesandloaves

and that's not all, I just can't think of them all right now. :)

Why am I doing this? NAME!!!!! I post ads, comments on blogs, belong to google and all their programs that help to spread the name. All with links that bring traffic into a circle and right through the Crafter's Corner, where they will accidently bump into your links to your products.

And it doesn't just take that! I'm working on a name on the internet that people constantly just bump into. Every bump, bringing the traffic we need, straight to our front door. It's the only way, we are going to overcome what the greedy fake websites have done to us.

To be a crafter, these days, takes thinking ahead of the mega competitor. It takes neighbors, shows and local shops. It takes the internet and selling on every possible avenue. It takes thinking ahead of the 'alligator'. An alligator is something you feed and feeds on you.

Realtors call a house that sells for more than it's worth, an alligator. Why? Because before you can realize any appreciation in value, you have to feed that alligator for years, to overcome the value versus sales price. Let's say you buy a house for $100K but the actual market value is only $90K. What's more, the balance on the loan is $93K. Where does that leave you? If the appreciation rate is only 5% per year, how long will it be before you come out ahead? In the meantime, that house is 'eating your ass'. An alligator.

So today's crafter has an alligator to deal with. If they design something new and unique, you have to get out ahead of the greedy thief and today, that greedy theif lies overseas and doing business on your own neighborhood corner. Now that's an alligator.

So think wisely. BRAND your product and get it out there faster than the theives can steal your market. Name, name, name! When people see your product on the shelf, they need to invision your name, your town, your reputation. That's what we have, to push our product, in the face of the alligator.

For me, what this boils down to is; keep putting out the name on the net (both for myself and for my crafter's), collecting hundreds of crafters so that our online presence becomes immense. By immenseness, itself, we can bring more eyes to our own personal sites and products. So come join us. :)

I'm mostly retired. Now is my chance to help with these things. I'm not holding down an 8 hour a day job so why not put my time to use? Right?

New Feeds

At the bottom of the page, you'll find other feeds that I've incorportated into my blog. You might find them interesting.

If you click on a link, right click and chose 'open in new window', if you want to keep this page open.

We'll have to do it that way until I can figure out how to get the links to open in a separate window.

Everybody have a wonderful Christmas!

Unbelievable spammers

Because I’m being careful about who joins in the crafter’s network at the new portal, I will go (every now and then) searching the net for invitee’s.


Tonight, I was going through listings from DMOZ and made a nasty discovery. Not only on DMOZ,itself, but also in most of the craft directories, I found sites that weren’t craft sites at all. They use names like sheriesknits.com, I mean sounding very much like a personal crafter’s website but what they really are, are paid ads with links to more paid ads which have links to even more paid ads. Nothing even remotely akin to craft’s or handcrafted products or anything like that.They don’t even pretend but they sure are naming their sites to sound just like yours.



What this means is, they’ve muddied the waters on the very block where you are. That doesn’t help traffic, at all. In fact, it becomes a ‘bad neighborhood’ according to search engines and winds up losing you traffic. Everywhere you’ve posted a link to your site, take a look-you just might be sitting right next to one of those other links. Makes you look bad, and real visitors will give up looking for you because they can go through several links that don’t pan out. Just makes everybody mad.



I’m absolutely determined that’s not going to happen on our site. No way, No how! That’s dirty pool!

Total Frustration

It’s the weirdest thing. I built a site to help other crafter’s and artisan’s to sell their products and yet nobody is taking me up on it. Go figure.




I must be doing something wrong. Else, the site doesn’t seem suitable for a selling format or something. I’m working on it. Mainly, trying to figure out why no takers, when the whole thing is free.



I visit other crafty sites and it seems to me they are more interested in each other, than in marketing their products. Other, so-called, “craft links sites”, turn out to be nothing more than google ads, linking to google ads, with directories leading to more google ads. Dirty pool!



So I come along and offer something absolutely legitimate and all I get is silence? I don’t get this.

New Ebook

I just completed a new ebook called "From the flea market, to a 10,000 sq.ft.showroom and a million in annual sales"
This is a raw, realistic look at what it takes to make it big. Although there is some unscrupulous content, I don't expect the readers to use it as a guide but to see what sort of mind set, it takes to succeed and succeed big.
You can download it at http://judysbookshop.com/nuke
a new networking community for business crafter's. You do, however, have to sign up. After signing in, you will find the download at 'downloads/ebooks'.
Enjoy :)

Pricing

OK, so now I've been presented with that age old question.

I've been there, worked it and I know how the cookie crumbles :)

When you're ready to price your product (wholesale or retail), you need to approach it in 2 different ways. When you meet in the middle, you know you have the right price.

First off, you'll need a fair idea of what a comparable product is priced at retail. So when you see a doll, made of pretty much the same materials as yours, fairly close to the same quality, etc...check out that retail price. This gives you a fair idea of what the market will bare. bear? haha

Now, you sit down and figure the exact costs of materials. If you paid $3 a yard and you used 1/2 yard then, so far, you've put $1.50 into it. The same with the ribbon, glue,buttons...whatever you put into the product.
Now, if you have to turn on a light to get the work done, then by golly, figure that in. Get an estimate of kilowatt hours and cost and multiply the rate times the hours it takes to get the job done.
What are you going to charge yourself for that corner, you've monopolized for your work? What is that square footage worth? Seriously. If your paying rent of $1000 per month and using up 20 sq.ft out of 1500 total sq.ft, then figure out what that 20 sq. ft is costing you. That's the rent you charge to your product. Then if you can make 200 of that product each month, then divide the rent by 200 and that's what you need to add into your costs.

Once you have all the basic costs figured per product, then you need to think about yourself. Are you working for free? Let's hope not. If you were working for someone else, what do you think you'd be earning per hour? Everybody has to pay the labor. So if you figure you're worth $8 per hour and it takes you 4 hours, then the labor is $32.

Now there's a way to cut down on that labor cost, by making multiple pieces, at a time. In that case, you'd figure how many hours it would take to turn out (say) 10 at a time, then divide that time by 10 and come up with a labor cost figure per piece. It's usually a whole lot less.

Ok so now you have your overhead, the basic material costs and your labor figured in. Now how about profit? An overall 10% profit margin, is usually pretty good, so lets start with that.

Now suppose your costs look like this:
Overhead per piece $2.00
Basic material costs 7.00
Labor per piece 12.00
For a total of $21.00
Add a profit margin of 10% and you have $23.10

So $23.10 is your goal for a wholesale price (not a retail price)
Now let's say that what you've seen on the shelves, comparable to your product, is retail priced at $40. Hmmmm, well that would mean the wholesale price would be $20, $3.10 less than your figures.
Now the decision. Go for your wholesale price, or take a small cut in profit and price it at $20 to compete?

That's up to you. Is your product superior to what you see on the shelves? If so, demand your price.

Let's say that what you've seen on the shelves is retailed at $30! oops....Now what? Well, you have a choice:
Give your labor away for free.
Find cheaper basic materials.
Forget that product, it's a dead subject.

That's all up to you. Sometimes, we just have to bite the bullet and say 'it's a dead product from the get-go' and drop it. In which case, we back up and try for another product that's quicker and cheaper to turn out, saving a profit for ourselves.

That pretty much covers it. A lot of it is what you're willing to give away. Sometimes you simply have to demand your price and go for a higher market. In that case, be ready to prove the higher quality of your product or it's uniqueness.

There are many times, I've witnessed, where a crafter has developed an entire line of unique product, something in a class all its own. In these cases, you can pretty much set your own price, then push until the market accepts it as worthy.

New Networking Portal

OK....Judy's been a busy gal. I've been building and building and building......:)
Check it out at http://judysbookshop.com/nuke/
Now that's the address for now, until we're ready to go live as a real 'virtual shopping center'. And yes, it's free. Everything there is free.

This one is for the crafter wanting to market their own products. You can keep a blog, upload pictures, build albums, point fingers at yourself, submit articles with reference to yourself.... there's a classifieds section and I forget what all, I've added so much stuff :)

I'm struggling with a webpage builder, right now. Until I get it working right, you won't see it but as soon as I beat it into submission, I'll holler from the roof tops that it's ready.

Eventually, the address will change (for the shoppers, anyway). As soon as I get everything moved off the old site and into the new ones, I'll close the doors on the old site and redirect everything into our new home.

I'm waiting for the crafters to get in there and start building their presence. When I see enough to make the site look substantial enough, I'll go out into the world and bring the shoppers. I'm hoping all this will come about, in time for the Christmas season. So everybody, come on, lets get this thing done.

Again, if you need help building a webpage to include, just holler at me. I can get it done. Hmmmm I just realized I need to create a directory in the file mgr that you guys can get into to do your own editing, etc. An aha moment. :)

OK, so anyway....we go forward. Come on in.

Ebay

I remember the time when your only contact with other crafters, was through magazines,subscriptions and craft shows. It's amazing, what has happened in just a few years, considering the use of the internet.

With the internet, the whole world opens up to the most reclused of us all.

Ebay can be a wonderful tool, to help us make a living with our own talents. One word of caution,though, when it comes to ebay. Wait to open a store, until you feel more confident in your sales being enough to cover all the costs. You can find yourself buried in fees and puting out more than you're making. So just take it one step at a time.

Sample the market, at different times of the year, to see what is selling. Hit on those holiday themes. Be sure to try different categories to find out where your product is getting the most views.

Absolutely, you need a digital camera and good pics of the product. Be sure the customer is getting what they see and keep the quality up there. Building a following and making friends, makes all the difference in the world.

It has also become much easier to contact retail outlets with your wholesale offers. Look up the individual shops online, by searching out city websites.

Here's hoping for all the best for everyone.