Where to start? Blue Dot Shops is done, I mean, some stuff still needs to be listed but the site is done and the blog post is up and I've had my first order. It's here http://www.bluedotshops.com/ and I'm very proud of it and the work that went into it.
What it started as and where it ended up, wow, pretty amazing. I am blessed to have a wonderful group of very talented, down to earth women who make me feel very lucky to have them along for the ride.
You know a ride where buckets of money will rain down on us, preferably.
I spent an hour or two with Quickbooks actually entering inventory. Yeah. And like, cost and stuff. I did this because my plushies are invited to be sold here at http://www.artspringsilverspring.com/ which is a pretty big deal. Now I just need to make thirty pieces by October 7th (insert mad cackling here).
I have decided to concentrate on Blue Dot and locally. I am beginning to believe that whole beat to death "eggs in one basket" philosophy has been really misrepresented when it comes to online shopping.
At one time I had a shop on Zibbet, Artfire, Etsy and my site. You now where I sold? Etsy. You know why? Because of the forum. In other words because I mingled or whatnot. I think the whole actual customer contact 'thing' got lost. And I sold, and sold well, to people I actually had contact with, even though it was virtual. Not because I spread my eggs all over the damn place.
The whole 'having a presence on the web' it must work for some, but I'm not convinced it works for most. I'm still pretty sure Twitter is basically a bunch of folks shouting over one another. The virtual sea so vast that I'm not even convinced SEO is the magic end all be all.
What I do think, is that it's still very much, very real contact and interaction. That maybe some of us are so busy being 'a presence on the web' that we don't see the people around us, locally, who would make a fine customer base.
This dovetails into my whole technical alienation nation thing but I won't go into that....
I do know that the sheer hassle and aggravation I've experienced in venue after venue, drama after manufactured drama, made me sit a spell and ponder just WTF I was expending, on what and why?
I'm not sure just where I'll end up, but I do know it won't be juggling eggs.
Spreading oneself thin just ends up as a lose/lose situation. It took me a while to figure out just which venues I wanted to sell by (my own web site, particular craft shows) and I'm so much happier having ditched all the others. I was driving myself crazy wondering which was THE best one and decided I'd never know if I didn't stop and focus.
ReplyDeleteGood post.