I can be the same sort of boring about running a business. It’s such a huge part of my life that it seems to come up a lot. I know my non-business owning friends couldn’t care less about SEO and inventory tracking so I try to control myself, but sometimes I can be pretty damn boring. All bets are off when I get together with my friends who actually OWN businesses. You’ve never seen such nerdy drunks. Case in point: a couple of weeks ago we got hammered and talked about affiliate fraud for over an hour — then it was on to taxes and managing staff.

A business is no different; it needs all kinds of things that cost a fortune. You’ll be shelling out for office space, software, advertising, trade shows, manufacturing, staff, etc. As the company grows the expenses grow too. If things go well, the income outpaces the costs more and more every year, but the costs are always going to be there and when you start up they will probably exceed the income, in most cases for the first couple of years.

Takeaway: Launching a business requires planning and funding. If you try to operate without enough capital you’re going to struggle and miss out on important opportunities that could help you grow to your full potential. Before you go into business, look at the various costs associated with starting up and have a plan for how you’ll pay for all those expenses.

Takeaway: Owning a business isn’t that glamorous. You’ll probably have to roll up your sleeves and do some work you’d rather not be doing. You have to be the kind of person who’s willing to take on any kind of task, no matter how unsavory, in order to reach your goals.

My business often keeps me up all night and barfs in my hair, at least figuratively speaking. And while it doesn’t hug me and tell me it loves me, it does other cool stuff that makes it “so worth it.”  When I see our products flying off the shelves at an event or in our wholesale customers’ stores, I get excited. It’s satisfying to know we brought something into the world that people love. It’s great seeing our products in TV, magazines and other media and knowing that millions of people are seeing this thing we created. Every time our business has the equivalent of a toddler’s epic stomach flu it sucks, but the plus column always has more in it than the minus column.

Takeaway: Crap is going to happen and it’s not going to be fun. If you’re running a business you love you’ve got to accept the bad days along with all the great ones. If you do your job well, there will probably be more good days than bad.

Getting good materials and suppliers can make or break your product-based business, so it’s something you must learn to do well. Your competitors all have their sources and they probably won’t outright give you their suggestions. So how can you get the perfect suppliers? With a little detective work, you can find your own sources. Here are 3 sleuthing tricks I’ve used that have turned up great results for me:

1. Industry Forums and Tradeshows
Your potential suppliers and manufacturers likely have their own community, just like entrepreneurs. They talk amongst themselves, go to events, etc. If you want to find suppliers, go where they are. If you want to find a supplier for metals, go where the metal suppliers chat. If you want to find the perfect imprintables, check out an imprintables tradeshow. Tradeshows and forums are a great way to discover suppliers who might be terrific suppliers but terrible marketers (A.K.A you won’t find them on Google.)

2. Google in Supplier Speak
Suppliers use their own lingo for talking about the things they sell and it might not be the words you’re familiar with. This is too bad for them because if they wrote their websites using copying their customers use, they’d probably get more customers from search engines. On the other hand, this is good news for you, because if you are googling in their language you’ll find suppliers you competitors might not find.

For example, if I wanted to make dog tags and I searched “dog tag chains” I’d miss all the suppliers who are calling them “ball chains”. If you aren’t familiar with the lingo your suppliers use, check out forums suppliers hang out on and try to get proper terminology.

3. Sleuthing The Competition
If a competitor is using a material or supply you really want to use, you might be able to figure out where they got it by investigating their product pages. Here are a two clues to look for:

1. Manufacturer tags on their product photos. (You’ll have to look closely, but sometimes you can spot these.)

2. Product descriptions — some people use their supplier’s product descriptions for items they sell on their websites. This is bad for their SEO but handy for you. You can google some of the phrases in their product description and see if you find a match at a supplier site. You might also find industry-specific terminology in their product descriptions, which can help you find suppliers on Google. (Again this is a dumb thing for your competitors to do. Their customers probably don’t know what the hell cabochons are, but thanks to their use of industry jargon, you might come away with a good new term to google to find a supplier.)

I’ve found suppliers for my own company using those two pieces of information on several occasions.

Even though Christmas was just this past weekend, for retailers, it’s time to think Valentine’s Day. It’ll be here before you know it and people will start shopping for gifts in the next few weeks. To make the most of Valentine’s Day sales, I’m organizing a Valentine’s Day co-op.

If you’re new around here, this is how co-ops work:
1. Designers wishing to participate pay a membership fee to belong to the co-op 2. The co-op dues are used to buy ad space that directs traffic to IShopIndie.com 3. That ads bring the customers, who see your lovely products featured on I Shop Indie 4. The customers find what they want, click and are sent to your online shop to make a purchase Let’s face it, the holidays can be an awesome cash-fest when you sell online and January sales can be a real let-down. Marketing for Valentine’s Day is an easy way to keep the money coming in.

If you join the Valentine’s Day co-op you’ll get:

• TEN products on any category page of  ishopindie.com website.
• One product featured right on the home page.
• TWO bonus items can be listed on the “sale” page.
• Your products will appear on our IShopIndie.com until March 31st!
• Your promotions, sales, coupon codes, etc. promoted to our monthly mailing lists, we have over 3,500 opt-in subcribers! You will be able to promote on our lists for our January, February and March issues!
• Your news, promotions, sales, etc. promoted on I Shop Indie’s Twitter and Facebook accounts until March 31, 2011!
• Real-time access to your click-through data 24/7! You’ll always know exactly how many clicks your products are getting and you can add, edit or delete listings any time through our easy account manager tool. You can remove items with low click-through or promote items with high click-through right on the home page.

When/Where will I Shop Indie Advertise?
From January 10 though mid-February you’ll see ads for I Shop Indie’s Valentine’s day website on several high-traffic sites including Design Sponge, Design is Mine, and A Softer World.

How much does membership cost?
Membership is $65.00

Last week I talked about using package design and branding to sell products. Today I want to discuss a related topic, using props and staging in your product photography to help boost sales. The first thing to understand is that you aren’t just selling a product, you’re selling an experience. Your customers are buying from you because your product fills a need. It makes them feel eco-friendly or stylish or edgy or interesting. You want the experience with your product to be emotional from the second your customer engages with it. This means having great branding, a great website, a nicely merchandised table as a live event, appealing product photos, etc.

So today, I want to show examples of how other online shops have used staging and props to add to the experience of shopping with them.

Aromaholic’s branding concept brings together drinking and bath/body products. Everything’s more fun with a cocktail, even bathing! Aromaholic drives the point home in the photo above by photographing her soap with a cocktail. The photo conjures up sense memory of how a white russian smells, helping the customer imagine how the soap would smell.

Way Cool Shirts designs a lot of products for wine lovers, including the tote pictured above. They could have shot the tote on a plain white background, but instead they help customers imagine enjoying a glass of wine at a cafe after a day out, this stylish tote bag in tow. The photo helps the customer envision this bag being part of their every day life.

Pinup Revival poses their Rockabilly model with a vintage car. They could have easily put the dress on a dress form with a white background (which is how stores like Anthropologie present their dresses), but using a prop and a model styled the way their target customers want to look, Pinup Revival does a great job of helping their customers imaging wearing this dress to a vintage car show and feeling like a glamorous pin up girl.

Pottery Barn has staged its baskets as an essential and functional decorative element for a guest room. Their photo says “just imagine what a terrific hostess your guests will think you are if you own these baskets. You can stock them with comfy pillows, soft blankets and hip reading material. Your guests will feel right at home curled up reading a magazine at your house”. They’re not selling just baskets, they’re selling the promise of a cozy, stylish and well organized home. Compare that with this photo of the same item. It communicates what the product looks like, but doesn’t play on the customers’ desire to be a great host or have a beautiful home.

Lucky Circus has chosen to pose her printable calendars next to a bright bouquet of colored pencils. Adding this prop helps a customer imagine their organized and creative DIY life with this calendar. The colored pencils suggest that the owner of this calendar will spend hours adding colorful notes to their schedule. People who aspire to a more organized and creative life will be drawn to the photo and more likely to make a purchase. (This kind of imagery is the same thing that keeps me buying Real Simple magazine. Why yes, I would like an easy Make Ahead Holiday Menu, so my guests can marvel at my perfectly executed meal while I look made up, manicured and high heeled instead of frazzled and sweating over the stove.)

Honizukle has expertly staged their personalized stationery on a desk with a cute funky vase and some colorful twine. A customer who buys personalized letterpress paper is probably drawn to a DIY handmade aesthetic and considers herself a creative person with unique taste. Honizukle appeals to their customers’ sense of self by adding accessories like a funky vase and some twine. The image says “When you’re not out collecting antique pottery at the Sunday market or embroidering a gift for a friend, maybe you’d like to send beautiful letters with this personalized artisan stationery. Why not have everyone who gets your letters understand that you take great care in everything you do, and a simple off-the-shelf purchase of paper at Rite Aide won’t do for someone like you.” Honizukle isn’t just selling stationery, they’re selling a tool their customers can use to further express their sense of self with the people they keep in touch with.

Takeaway for you:
Really think about why your customers buy your products. They don’t just need earrings or soap or a bag. What are they trying to project about themselves to the world? How does your product fit with their lifestyle? By communicating these concepts with your product photography, you help customers relate to your products and imagine owning them and enjoying them. Getting your customer into that frame of mind is an important step towards making the sale.

I hope you had an awesome Thanksgiving (if you’re in the US) and that your holiday sales are starting to take off. As a thank you to everyone who’s helped me grow Smaller Box I’m offering a special sale, this weekend only!

Starting today you can save up to 50% on my ebooks and coaching services. Hurry though, sale ends Monday night at 11:59 pm EST. Don’t miss out!

Start Saving Now >>

One week from today I’ll be announcing a super awesome Black Friday special just for Smaller Box fans.

If you don’t want to miss out, make sure you’re signed up to my monthly newsletter! Plus, when you sign up you’ll get a 100% FREE copy of my SEO guide. A must-have resource for any creative entrepreneur with an online shop.

Sign Up Now:

No matter how carefully we plan it, we always end up with too much of one thing and not enough of something else when we do live events. We hate to tell a customer we are out of her size or we just sold the last one of whatever she had her eye on all day. The truth is we never run out of anything, we just can’t bring everything in the universe to a 10×10 square booth at a live event. We usually try to offer to ship desired items we’re out of and even offer free shipping. We’re better off losing a few bucks on shipping than losing an order.

The trouble is our booth is always a madhouse at live events. We need a way to efficiently and seamlessly take mail orders on the go. This is why we made “Out of Stock” sheets. Our Out of Stock sheets are professionally designed 2 part carbonless forms. They allow our customers to simply fill out their shipping information and order. When they’re done, the customer gets a copy and we get a copy.

Why have Out of Stock sheets:

• They make you look professional and trustworthy
  Sure you could scribble down the customer’s info on your notepad, but it makes you look like an amateur. It doesn’t inspire confidence that the customer’s shipment will arrive and it doesn’t give the customer an instant copy of her receipt.

• Gives your customers a transaction record
  Your customer wants to walk away from the transaction feeling confident in your business. An instant receipt gives her a feeling of proof that the transaction is legitimate.

• Saves you time and headaches
  If your booth is busy with customers flinging cash at you for stuff you have on hand, you don’t want to take time out to write down the details of a mail order. You don’t want to be trying to remember what details you need or scribbling in your notebook. You want to just hand your customer a clip board, pen and a form that collects all the info you need. You hand her the form, she hands it back completed and the transaction is done. She walks away with a receipt. You leave with a properly prepared order sheet.

What to include on Out of Stock sheets:

• An attractive professional design
  If you aren’t any good at design, work with a design professional. Having a nice looking order form instills confidence and reinforces your branding. Be sure your form includes your company logo and fonts. You also want to make sure you use carbonless forms that automatically make a duplicate of the pages as the customer writes. That way your customer gets a copy of the order and you get a copy. We got our forms made at PrintRunner. Their prices are great and the print quality is top notch. (Note: Printrunner has a 50% off sale now through Nov 30, use coupon code NV50CF at checkout.)

• Customer Contact info
  Be sure you get all the necessary contact information you need to fill the customer’s order. This includes name, address, phone number and email address.

• Order Details
  Include sufficient fields for the customer to provide their order info. If your products vary in size or color be sure you’ve got fields for the customer to fill out that information.

• Marketing
  Be sure your form includes a checkbox to join your mailing list and a coupon code for your online shop (if you use coupons).

• Company Contact Info
  Include your company web address, company phone number and email address. You want the customer to feel confident that she can contact you if she has a question.

• Delivery Details
  Set expectations about delivery times for your customer’s order. Let her know what shipping method you use, how long the order will take to ship and what the expected delivery time frame is.

I seldom discuss Etsy specific tools, but since they’re a giant in the handmade scene and they have a new tool, I thought I’d take a few minutes to talk about it. Etsy recently released a tool enabling their sellers to advertise on site search results (yay) in the most half-assed way possible (boo).

Having a paid search tool on this site is long overdue, but with so many great models to base their system on, it’s disappointing that so little thought seems to have gone into this tool. Though I imagine the goal may have been to make the tool as simple as possible for a non-technical user base, the lack of advanced options makes this tool far less valuable to both sellers and shoppers. Here’s what they could do to improve:

1. Relevance
Relevance is probably the most important thing for search. It’s important to consumers and the sellers. If the consumers get irrelevant search results, they’ll get fed up and leave. If the sellers are paying for impressions in search results that don’t relate to their products, they’re wasting their money.

Today the first search I plugged in was “cupcake jewelry.” Under the ad results I got a match for a cat collar. Huh, that’s not jewelry. Did the seller put spammy keywords in the listing? Nope! Etsy was keying on the word cupcake. Which means I got a result that had nothing to do with what I wanted and the seller’s money was wasted.

I tried to search on “robot sculpture”. What did I get? Robot art print, robot tote bag and robot quilt. There were robot sculptures a’plenty on Etsy’s non-paid search results, but the ad results were shown on top and they were not what I’d asked for.

If Etsy isn’t going to give their users sophisticated tools like broad vs exact matching for their listings, it’s their responsibility to make their search result smarter.

2. Pay Per Click
The issue listed above (lack of fine tuned relevance) is exacerbated by the fact that Etsy charges per impression not per click. This is pretty bad news since you’re paying for impressions on results that aren’t targeted to your products. The issue could be mitigated (at least for the seller) if charging was based on clicks. At least then your budget wouldn’t be entirely wasted on irrelevant searches since mismatches would be unlikely to score clicks.

3. Auctioning and Quality Scores
Most search-based ad tools charge based on two things, quality score and demand. Here’s what this means:

Imagine you sell jewelry, since this is an especially competitive market, there’s more demand for the ad space, so as a result the cost to advertise in that space costs more. You might pay 50 cents per click vs someone selling reusable dog diapers, who is probably going to have far less competition.

The other ingredient that usually goes into price is quality score. This means the ads that get the most clicks and/or conversions get the better price or placement. This would be especially valuable to Etsy, since they receive an additional commission on conversions (sales). Why not give cheaper impressions/clicks to shops that are actually selling? In the long run, those shops are more profitable for Etsy, plus they’re giving consumers what they want (as evidenced by the sales).

This results in higher quality search results for shoppers, since only the better/more serious shops will end up at the top of the heap. This means customers are likely to see more things they are likely to buy.

4. Campaigns
Not being able to organize your ads into campaigns is yet another failing with Etsy ads. You basically get one campaign and you can choose to list some or all of your items, but that’s about it. There’s no option to organize your high dollar value products into a campaign with a high budget and low dollar value products into a campaign with a low budget. You can’t organize your best sellers into a higher budget campaign, unless you want to exclude everything else. You can’t organize a seasonal campaign just to market your Halloween products.

I will give Etsy this, search marketing tools are above and beyond better than their previous attempts at paid ad offerings. That said, this tool has a long way to go. The focus should be on creating a tool that allows the best and most relevant matches to rise to the top. A goal that’s impossible with this tool’s current implementation.

Have you tested the new paid search tool? Have you noticed an increase in sales as a result? If you shop Etsy, do you feel satisfied with the quality of the ads that display on search?

Want an alternative to Etsy’s ads? Check out the I Shop Indie holiday season co-op. More details here…

It’s almost time for the winter holiday season! If you’d like to give your online shop a boost in traffic and sales, co-op advertising is here to help.

If you’re new around here, this is how co-op advertising works:
1. Designers wishing to participate pay a membership fee to belong to the co-op
2. The co-op dues are used to buy ad space that directs traffic to ishopindie.com
3. That ads bring the customers, who see your products featured on I Shop Indie
4. The customers find what they want, click and are sent to your online shop to make a purchase

If you join the I Shop Indie you’ll get:

• TEN products on each of our co-op websites, including cutique.com, ishopindie.com and loungeluxe.com. Products will appear from October 15 through December 31, 2011.
• One product featured right on the home page for each of our co-op websitse
• TWO bonus items can be listed on the “sale” pages of each site.
• Your promotions, sales, coupon codes, etc. promoted to our monthly mailing lists, we have over 3,500 opt-in subcribers! You will be able to promote on our lists for our October, November and December issues!
• Your news, promotions, sales, etc. promoted on I Shop Indie’s Twitter and Facebook accounts until December 31, 2011!
• Real-time access to your click-through data 24/7! You’ll always know exactly how many clicks your products are getting and you can add, edit or delete listings any time through our easy account manager tool. You can remove items with low click-through or promote items with high click-through right on the home page.

When/Where will I Shop Indie Advertise?
From early November through mid-December you’ll see ads for I Shop Indie on several high-traffic sites including Design Sponge, Kind Over Matter, Design for Mankind, Design is Mine, Making It Lovely, and A Softer World.

How much does membership cost?
Membership is $250.00 and covers your entire holiday season’s worth of advertising.

Note: I’ve been getting some requests from designers who wish to join the co-op even though advertising has already begun. If you’d like to join today I can offer you a pro-rated discount on membership. Email me for details.

Why isn’t membership cheaper? Like $5.00 or something?

A few reasons:

1. In order to pay for ad space on premium sites we need a good sized budget. You get what you pay for, and high traffic sites with an audience that loves to buy handmade aren’t giving their ad space away for free. While you can find low traffic blogs with cheap ad space, these placements provide very little value since they don’t have enough traffic. I buy ad space based on statistical probability, here’s how this works. If I know a site gets 1 million pave views per month and charges $400/month for ad space, and I average a click-through rate of .5% on my ads, I can expect that ad to cost 8 cents per click. Conversely, if I buy a $10 ad on a site with 10,000 page views per month I’ll end up paying 20 cents per click. Ultimately that pricier ad is cheaper per click and a better deal for my members. In order for afford that more expensive ad I have to collect membership dues that are sufficient to pay for it.

2. While I could try to get enough of a budget to pay for high traffic ads with cheap membership fees, this would require me to recruit hundreds of co-op members. Then members’ product listings would be lost in a sea of competitors with no one really getting to stand out. The benefits of membership would be very diffuse and it would be difficult for members to see beneficial results.

What have current/past members said about membership?
“I’ve had a lot of traffic, new people signing up for my email list and quite a few sales from the holiday promo, so thanks! Co-op advertising has been successful for me.”
Amber Coppings, Xmittens

“I’ve been very pleased with my participation in the I Shop Indie program so far. It’s been one of the biggest sources of traffic for my shop since I started and it’s led to some definite sales. ”
Mallory Whitfield, Miss Malaprop

“Thank you so much as I Shop Indie has gotten me press coverage with this journalist. Thank you so much. Much appreciated for everything!”
Charmaine Leung, Go Jewelry

Sorry for the lack of updates, I’ve been super busy with my primary business, Ex-Boyfriend. We’ve been having a cool week though and it’s only Tuesday

We’re crazy busy getting ready for some retail events at the end of July, so we just cranked out a lot of new art. See our Cupcake Ninjas below? So cute!

Also, our new Pirate Bunnies were on the front page of Cheezburger today and our beloved Fuzz Aldrin popped up on The Daily Show last night. You can see him starting at the 2:43 mark below:

We’ve also been super busy working on some more pretty amazing TV placements which I’ll be sharing once they’re live. More biz related posting later this week. In the meantime, check out my guest post from yesterday on Handmade Success.

P.S. Want to know more about how we’ve been scoring media placements? I’ve revealed my top secrets and strategies here.