So this week I am combining week 5 & 6. I went to Chicago with family last weekend, so I catching up on my blog posts!
Here are the tasks for Week 5:
Check out 7 Lessons from Adam Braun - Adam has 7 life lessons. I really liked all of his 7 statements. One of them that stuck with me was "Become hopelessly optimistic about the things that make you feel most alive." I really thought this one could be applied to anything in life. I think if you truly believe in something that you will do the things necessary to get you there. I also really liked "To achieve unreasonable things, you have to become an unreasonable person." This one is so true too because to be successful in anything in life, you have to be willing to do things that most people are unwilling to do. So it helps to believe in what you do and the time and energy that you put in things will come naturally and won't seem like work.
Read Etsy's Guide to Photography - I read though this and know I need to get better on my pictures. I have been thinking about working with a photographer who has taken pictures of jewelry before to see if she can help me or swap out some pictures for jewelry! I am going to contact her and see if we can get something set up soon, so I have them in time for the holidays.
Shoot Photos of Your New Work - This totally goes with the previous item. I try to take photos of an order before I ship it out and post it on my blog, so everyone can see it. I am not always so good at this because I tend to work at night, when lighting is the best! I will be working on this, so everyone can see all my new designs.
Check in with your Boot Camp Buddy - I did check in with Tiffany to see how her first show went for her. Hope to hear it went great!
Post in the Boot Camp forum thread - I made a quick post on the thread.
Week 6Read This Week's Check List - This was an interesting article. While its important to keep up with trends, I think people will always want something personalized with their name, their children's name, their monogram, etc. But I guess there are different ways to do it, so here are the latest trends: The 70s are back! While the 50's have been huge this year, mainly due to the show Mad Men, which I love, the spring collections for 2011 have been featuring many styles from the 70's. I am not sure how I can incorporate the 70's into my jewelry, so let me know if you have any ideas! Another trend is geometry. Bold and minimalist designs follow this. I am not sure how I can implement bold, but I know a lot of my designs are simple and minimalist. A third trend is Fall Colors Recycled, which includes warm and neutral fall tones like greys, browns, beige, mint, and muted pinks and blues. I love all of these colors and especially them together! I am actually working on some new designs using flowers. Some of the flowers I have made are in these colors. Here is a preview of the flowers.
Check in later to see what I do with them! The last trend is Pattern Insanity. I am not sure how to use this one with my jewelry or if I even want to!!
Revisit your prices This is always a tough subject. You want to feel like your prices are fair, but you don't want to feel like you are doing your work for nothing, even if you totally love doing it! The basic formula used for determining your pricing is broken down two ways.
Your wholesale price = Cost Price (Labor + Materials Cost) x 2. Your wholesale price is the price that you charge for someone who is ordering a large quantity of your product, maybe 50 or 100 at a time. While this cost helps cover all the other costs to running a business, like website costs, credit card processing fees, etsy fees, business insurance fees, taxes, and the many other costs, it wouldn't cover all costs.
Your retail price is calcuated by taking your wholesale price X 2. This is the price that you would charge your retail customers, like ones at home shows, craft and art shows, and on etsy. So using the formula, let,s use a necklace for an example. For the labor cost, what do you think is a reasonable amount to charge for your time? Everyone thinks their time is valuable and it is! There are many things that you can do with your time, that is very valuable including spending time with family and spending time with family (I repeated that on purpose.) Sometimes it's definetly hard to take time away from them to work. So let's say you think your time is worth $15 an hour and it takes you 1/2 hour to make the necklace and your cost of materials is $15. Your wholesale price would be ($7.50 + $15.00)x2 = $45 and your retail price would be $90. This sure does seem like a lot to charge for a necklace, where the materials cost $15, but this is a basic formula for pricing. So the next time you are looking to purchase something that is handmade and think its not worth the price or that you could do that yourself, just know that its not just the cost of materials that matter, but someone's time and creativity and also that you will probably never make the time to make that item. Please remember your local artists during this holiday season.
Check out this reading list One of the articles on the reading list was about how to be a better blogger. It talks about how its important to "make yourself useful", meaning offer information on a subject that not a lot of your readers know about. I am hoping that these blog posts will give you a better insight into etsy and how it works. Most of my friends hadn't heard of it until they saw my items on it.
Connect with your buddy - With the busy holiday season, it is difficult to keep out with sales and shows, and keep in touch with other sellers, but I am hoping maybe Tiffany and I can connect sometime and share our successes.
Well that is it for this week. Until next time!
