My First Award It's Called The Liebster Award!

Shasta from In The Old Road  (love the name of her blog you can read here what the name means to her) has awarded me the Liebster Award.  If I had to pick an award that would be my first to win I would of picked this. It's fellow bloggers helping fellow bloggers get a jump start on their blogs. It also encourages friendship to develop and I really like that.

What's the Liebster Award you ask? It's an award that is given to bloggers with less than 200 followers (I qualify with 21 followers with head held low) to promote and encourage new friendships among the blog community.  Liebster is German and means "dearest; beloved; favorite".


Part of this award is to pass it on to others. Here are "the rules":
     1.  Post the award on your blog
     2.  Show your thanks to the blogger that gave you the award by linking back to them.
     3.  Reveal your 5 picks for the award and let them know.
     4.  Bask in the love from the most supportive people on the blogsphere....other bloggers.
     5.  Finally, the best rule of all, have fun and spread the love!


Here are my picks to win this award

  Tami at Curb Alert

Wendy at Her-Ballistic Garden

Shabby Loco

Pam from Threading My Way

Kim from Twigs and Twirls

It would so hard to pick just 5 but I wanted to honor the rules of no more than 200 followers.

So it would mean a lot to me and them if you stopped by and say hello. It's how friendships are started.  Again thank you Shasta for passing me the award, I'm honored.

Where To Sell Part Three Brick and Mortar

Brick and Mortar is my favorite way to sell, can be your own store, a flea market booth  or space in an antique mall.

Source

 Having my own store involves a lot more than I'm willing to do right now. Because of the expenses and commitment to the amount of days to work  I opt to not open a store.

Back in the 80's in Syosset, NY I had a store with my sister called Once Upon A Gift. Then in 2005 I opened 2 stores which both were called Soapier in Tarpon Springs, Fl with my adult children as my partners.  Having experienced having my own store right now I'd rather spend my time doing what I love and that's FIND then RE*PURPOSE.

Source

A flea market booth is a great idea, you can grow a business with some very affordable rental rates. Usually the cost for rent includes everything except insurance and payroll.  There is a commitment of someone manning the booth each weekend, I'm not ready to do that yet. 

Back in November I rented a booth space at an antique mall in Dunedin, FL called Knot On Main Street.  You can read about it HERE.

So what's so great about this you ask?  I pay rent $3.00 a square foot and I believe I have about 110 square feet. Commission rate is 10% plus I'll also pay a percentage if the customer uses a credit card.  Stock my booth, do a nice display and the rest of the work is done for me. Love it! 

My focus for my Plan For Business will be to increase my sales at Knot which will be accomplished with more inventory in my booth and marketing using the free classified of Craiglist which I'll talk about in my next post.

Found Camera Leads To Show and Tell!

Camera found! So I was wondering what photos I should take to show the world?  My new Subway Art? No not yet, My Dictionary Stryfoam Balls, no not yet, My Afghan Turned Pillows, no they aren't finished. Okay I'll show you my new guest bedroom, sewing room and all around craft room.

You might need to be sitting to take in all of this mess.  

The desk area

One side of the room overloaded with stuff

So the plan was to fit all of the stuff you see plus other stuff into a closet that I had my carpenter fix with shelves.  At the time of these above pictures it looked like this

Looks pretty full, right?

So in the middle of the closet the desk that you see in the above picture will go. The closet is already just about full and I still have to deal with all that other stuff.  The dresser you might of noticed is also full of fabric.

So as life would have it I was watching last night a show on OWN called "Extreme Clutter" and the lesson was "you don't need all of that stuff."   Okay Peter Walsh,  I hear yay.

I realized I have so many books that SOMEDAY I'll use in collage, they can be sorted and then some discarded.

In one of these file type boxes I've given a small crock pot that's used for melting bees wax, it's own little space.  You should know that I did a collage (one) about 4 years ago that I used the melted wax and never did it again. I think it's safe to let it go.

Ribbons, upon ribbons. My thought was you just never know when one of the hundred ribbons I have will come in handy. It will hurt to do it but some of them have to go.

There is quite a bit more stuff that I think I can safely let go of  which will make the closet the perfect fit for all of my stuff.  

What will not get the heave-ho is my fabric, not a yard, not a scrap, it all stays.  Really no amount of guilt, or shoulds, or don't you think could get me to part with any of it.   They all get to stay in their new home the 5 draw bureau and not complaining that they are a bit squeezed for space.

Okay, I'm off to get started and will pop my head up to say Hi in a few days.

Where To Sell Part Two I Do But I Don't

I do but I don't like Flea Markets, Farmers Markets and Craft Shows.

They are similar in the fact that you pay for a booth, set it up and wait for customers and are organized by promoters. Each type of show might attract a different customer base.

First let me explain what I LIKE about them.

Display, display and display. Did I mention I love displaying. Display is one of the most important things you can do for your business when doing shows. It's crucial to success. If you do shows start watching how people react to your booth. Notice how maybe 1. they gravitate to a certain part of your display. 2. they ignore your booth all together. Then step outside of your booth and try to see what they see. I then start switching things around and then again I see how those walking past my booth respond. It's fun, and interesting.


I like a good promoter who makes sure the right amount of marketing is done to get the customers to the event and hopefully to your booth.


I like meeting new people at these events and getting to know them. I love talking to people.

I like the weekly flea markets and farmer markets with their very affordable rates. You can rent a space with a table here in Florida for $10 for the day, can't beat that.

I like the idea of a flea market that is indoors and you don't have to set up a tent and you can also rent the space permanently. It's almost like having your own brick and mortar store. Plus you can grow the business with the proper marketing.  



What I DON'T LIKE.

Sitting around all day waiting for customers. So what happens to me if business is  slow,  I talk my neighbors ears off until they start to yawn,  I then move on to thinking about all the stuff I could be doing at home. No sales, low sales I then wonder what the heck am I doing here?   I tend to be a very antsy person, find it hard to enjoy just sitting doing nothing.

Not a big fan of packing up the car, unloading, setting up a tent and then repacking up at the end of the day and hauling the merchandise back in my garage. Of course this is all relative to how sales have been.

I don't like spending my money for a booth and the promoters is scrimping on marketing. This  happens a lot with not for profit organizations.

 I think that pretty much covers what I don't like. So here's the verdict, in my Plan For Business,  drum roll please!

About 30 minutes north of my home is a town called Mt. Dora and they host these antiques &  collectors xtravaganzas 3 times a year. People come from all over and the vendors sell products very much like my own which means there is a market for it. The flea market portion of this place charges $70 for the weekend. I can see myself doing this. I will need to hire help, rent a truck and buy a tent. I'll also need  lots of inventory. In my Plan For Business this is my goal for  fall of 2012. 

Did I Tell You I Moved?

On December 5th I moved from my condo in Palm Harbor, Fl to a house in Clermont, Fl. It's been a month and I'm still unpacking. I'm telling you all this because I can't find my camera and I'm itching to take pictures of some of the new stuff I'm doing. You need pictures to really see it.

I had a new closet set up with shelves in my guest room so that I can unpack some stuff and have a place for it. I'm hopeful the camera will appear. I really miss that camera.

So pictures will be coming soon, I'm predicting.

Moving is tough, the packing is the hardest, finding places for stuff as you unpack, that's also hard.

Where To Sell Part One

These next few posts about where to sell are from my own past experiences with these venues. My Plan For Business needs me to re-look over these ways and make a decision that feels right for me today.  My hope is that this information will be helpful to you as well.   

First you need to know that in the past I've been beguiled by the promise of making money.  You know those guys who say "read my ebook for $49.95 and you too can start making big money"? I was one of those who forked over the money, I'm ashamed to say more than once. 

You know that expression Jack of all trades, master of none well that could very easily describe myself. With all the jumping around I never focused on one thing and did what was necessary to make THAT successful.

So now after all the confessions lets first discuss the web. What's interesting and exciting about the web is the amount of potential customers.  A brick and mortar store could never get the amount of traffic that the web gets and to me in a business stand point this is it's best attribute.

1. Etsy  is a great site with very affordable rates filled with creative artistic people selling their wares. Etsy generates a lot of traffic, maybe not as much as Ebay but still a lot. The advantages to this site is the low fees, the traffic, the place to go for handmade and vintage items, and you can price your items higher on Etsy then on Ebay. It's a different customer base on Etsy than on Ebay.     
2. Ebay  you will hear the complaints about the outrageous fees etc but I have to tell you that nowhere are you going to get the potential traffic that Ebay generates. Logically if you had a brick and mortar store what do you think your expenses would be and does the customer traffic match up?
3. Own Web Site  Nothing like having your own web site, and you might be thinking why bother paying those other guys those fees when I can have my own site. Might be a good idea but remember someone has to make the web site, you need a shopping cart and gateway and all that takes knowledge, time and money.
4. Amazon  is also is a great site with lots of traffic. High fees, higher than Ebay.

For all of the above you can't expect to be successful by just listing your items. There's way more to it than that. It's called marketing and each one might need a different approach.

 For me right now the web is not where I will be putting my efforts. First off it takes a lot being successful on-line.  You have to take great pictures, write great copy for your listings, learn how to get your listings noticed but the real big reason I don't want to do the web is because I HATE shipping things.


Remember how I said in my previous post that I want to get up each morning raring to go, loving what I'm doing, well if shipping some sold items was on my list of things to do for the day I'd opt to just stay in bed.


I've learned from the past to never say never but for now it's absolutely been down voted. 


Am I the only one who hates shipping items? 

Tomorrow I'll go over my ideas for Flea Markets, Farmers Market and Craft Shows.

Plan For Business!

This post is not about doing a business plan or marketing plan like the experts recommend. My eyes tend to glaze over and I suffer an out of body experience when asked to do one of those.  Just can't seem to grasp the whys and hows of it.  I'd like to think I'm more the creative artist type than a numbers person.  One could hope, right?

This is more about doing what I love to do and finding a way to make money doing it. I don't need much, just to supplement what I already get.

So I love to paint small items creating a vintage aged look.  I love to sew, pillows and curtains, and tabletop dressings.  I love to write because I think I might have something to say.  I love thrift store shopping, finding items that might of seen their day and giving them second chances.

So the first part of my Plan For Business is to commit to doing what I love to do.  If..... I want to awake each  morning with a smile, raring to go then I'd best be doing what I love to do. Seems simple enough.

Step one of  Plan For Business is done. I know what I love to do and I plan on doing it.

Come along on this journey with me of discovering how to make it all work. Should be interesting.

Next I'll post about the areas that are available for me to sell my wares. Stay tuned!