The Overall Challenge: Part I

The Overall Challenge: Part I

Good evening and my sincerest apologies for being away so long! I will promise to do better; I must do better! Whew, 60 days blew by like the piano tie trend of the 80's! I cannot believe that I have to announce a winner of this challenge tomorrow! Being that I've been away from my blog for a little over a month proved to me that this wasn't as easy a task as I initially thought. but I should've suspected so....

During this challenge, the key thing that I have realized is that time is truly of the essence and you have to become savvy on how you choose to use this time. Time and the timing of certain situations is critical and key to the success that I am looking for. I've experienced some great milestones throughout the past 60 days. More could have been accomplished but, this is what setting continuous goals are all about and the gift of the "present" and the beauty of tomorrow, if so given to us by our Lord. I won't be too hard on myself as I have made some great strides to reach out and connect to many and get the word of my handiwork our there. Sometimes, we as artist, must take a look at what we've accomplished thus far rather than what we would like to accomplish so that we can see the path we have taken to see the path that we are going (more accomplishments). Things seem to become much clearer sometimes when you take a look back and review. So, allow me to begin my review.....

Social Networking

Allow me to say first off, someone needs to be paid to keep up with all the social networking sites that are out there! I HONESTLY do not know how on Earth these kids can keep up with all of these sites let alone, find the time to do this with all the school work they are "supposed" to be doing, ;-). This metric here proved to be the toughest one for me as I became very overwhelmed in trying to keep up, including my blog. Social networking is so very crucial to getting your brand out there for the lovely masses to see. It is a necessary entity, very necessary. For all the sites that I signed up for, I made sure that I took advantage of the back linking features they offered, if available. If I tweeted one line, I also needed that one line show up on my Facebook timeline without me having to physically log into my Facebook account to resubmit it. Back linking saves time and also allows you to become more productive as it relates to your online visibility/activity. Overall, I signed up for 8 social networking sites and I am still not completely finished. For me, I find that I need to remain faithful to the sites for which sincerely pertains to what I am doing, which for the most part are simplest to utilize and navigate. I still haven't quite found the formula for which I need to use for creating a great balancing act with social networking, my full time job and my full time love, jewelry making. I know it would help if I had a phone that was quick and capable of handling the necessary apps......to all you techies, I am working on this, :-). My phone really sucks!

Online Store, My Etsy Shop

Every time I turned around, here comes a new month and I needed to make sure I had some newly created items to post. You take just one picture for an item and the work begins. The pictures must be taken, processed, edited, listed and posted to every social networking site you have available. That is very tedious work but when it is all said and done, you can look at your store and just gleam about the radiant colors reflecting onto your eyes from your computer screen. When I started this challenge, I only had around 30-34 items in my store, most of which were older items. I noticed that I had errors in some of the spellings of my words, all my tags were not used and most of all, I noticed that I still had my former jewelry name, Curveology Jewels, still noted on some of the older listings! Without this challenge, I probably would not have caught this error and would have allowed my online store to remain that same, expecting sales galore. Not an option. I knew that my store needed new life to be breathed into and she needed consistency. Currently, my shop stands at 93 items listed, 7 items short of my goal of 100 items to be listed. However, that isn't bad considering I have several sales during this 60 days span. Needless to say, 7 short with having had 7 sales breaking even in my eyes. The sales began as I started a new makeover for my store adding more colors, consistency of photos and frequent listings. I experienced have 2 sales back to back, twice, while working on this challenge. I really credit this to working on my reach and thinking strategically about the key words for the items that I would begin to list. Every possible descriptive word I could use as a consumer, I edited my tags to reflect the same. I notice that my shops views rose considerably because of this subtle change and for linking my page to every possible outlet I could find. Pinterest has proven to be a second best friend next to facebook when pushing word of my work out here.

Taking the best photos of my work became more important that ever. Since I began taking more photos quite frequently, I began to learn something about my camera and the text of my photos. The work to get my photos to become front page worthy on Etsy has been a task all by itself. Taking photos for your shop on Etsy is so much more than just capturing the shape and color of the piece but, you want to offer your client an online experience. I made the conscientious choice to take most of my necklace pictures on a very human like mannequin to show my clients what the piece may look like around your neck. The point of this move was for me to connect on an online level and personal level. I noticed that my shop began to look more cohesive as I placed my more bold and colorful pieces at the front my store (yin) and I the softer more delicate side of my jewelry (yang) towards the end. Once again, techies, don't get me, I know now after reviewing my photos, I need to invest in a camera with greater pixel quality and the ability to have manual manipulation. I am very convinced that if I produce better quality photos that can jump off the page, the client will wan to jump up to catch the piece! My Etsy shop will continue to be a work in progress.





Part I to be continued on next blog tomorrow.