Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Hello all! I recently read an article which encourages people to narrow their focus to gain success. The impulse is to expand and the author says that confuses potential customers. I am going to give this a try. I have been struggling for a while, couple this with the bad news that my gf & I didn't get accepted into the craft fair we had applied to, and I'm looking to make improvements. Some things take a while and improvement is something all businesses must constantly look to but it's hard not to get discouraged. I wonder if I'm marketing on the wrong site; Etsy is primarily handmade stuff, and while all my products are derived from handmade art, many of them are printed out of a computer. I love Etsy and am going to stick with it. I may have to figure out a better production system.
So, to narrow my focus, I'm going to make less greeting cards. Although initially greeting cards was my main focus, they were always just an outlet for my art. I never said, "What can I paint to make a good birthday card?", I always said, "What kind of card can I make from this painting?" (Of course, I made many Christmas cards just for Christmas with that in mind, but sold none...) I know there are many factors at play but I'm going to give this advise a try. It comes from Handmadeology, which I respect alot.

What I am going to focus on is art prints. Mostly spiritual. I have a total of 21 Saint related product. This is not counting non Christian spiritual products of which there are 12. There are an additional 12 that are motivational or sober related that could be grouped into the spiritual catagory. That's 45 and there's still some Easter cards I didn't count because they have the Easterbunny instead of a spiritual theme to them. I have 83 products total so the remainder are landscapes, dino prints, and other non spiritual products. Now just to be clear, all my Christmas stuff is down, or there would be more of both catagories. Aren't you glad I'm telling you all this? My hope is that others going through the same struggle will be able to get something out of it even if it's just commiseration.

So I added some new prints along those lines. I've completed 3 more paintings in my "saint" series and I love them all. I've listed them as prints on their own, or as posters with some text to go with them. I've been visiting the gf's family and some old friends, so I've given up alot of creating time for that. I hope to redouble my output to keep offering great things to people.

It's Coming Right at Us!

Christmas is fast approaching, and I Have a feeling I'll still be getting ready for it when it's gone. I should be done with cards, but knowing that there's time between now and Christmas makes me just want to keep designing new ones. I'll make the one that everyone just has to have, and that will open the floodgates to the selling out of everything else in the store. That's the fantasy. The reality is I need to figure out how to promote my store(s) cheaply and efficiently. Dropping my life's savings into advertising on Summergetaways.com might get me some eyeballs on my sight, but there's probably a better way to go.

My budget for advertising this year is free. I can advertise anywhere that's free. Actually, that means facebook & google+, which is better than nothing, but not much. So I'm interested in google adwords. I love google. they own this blogsite, the browser I'm using (chrome), the software that operates my phone (droid), my email carrier, and of course google+ (which many people are saying isn't a big deal, but there are a ton of people on there). Of course they also use the search engine that is most popular for finding things, so they have tools to help people who invest in their products. My girlfriend who runs ahtees designs, turned me on to Google adwords keyword tool, which analyses and suggests keywords, the tags that help people find your stuff.

I just joined for the purpose of reporting the cost to this blogpost, and they let you create whatever budget you want. I put in $2 a day which doesn't sound like much, but is considerably more that $0. In fact; it is 2x365 or $730 a year, so that's an estimate based on how much I spend on coffee a day. It's also about $60 a month. This is kind of a lot for me, but I have no idea how it translates into how much advertising it will buy. They say that once my budget is exhausted for the day that my ads will stop appearing. That means that perhaps they wont be seen during high traffic times, but it doesn't matter because it's not tv or radio, only one person is looking at each screen, so the same number of people will be exposed to my ads whether its all in the morning or spread throughout the day. There's also pay per click (again a bid I set that I have no idea how competitive it is.) I didn't intend to get this deep into this subject for the purpose of this post, but I've been hovering over the "join now" button for a while, and I haven't commited to anything yet, so I'm ok so far. I'll let you know when I know more.

I finnished the Santa card, and need to make more shirts, and designs. I'll leave you with this: successful people are the ones who do what they love.

Dragon print $10.00

This dramatic print of the mythic dragon embodies symbolism from Eastern & Western cultures. In the far East, the dragon is a symbol of wisdom & enlightenment; in the West the spiral is a symbol of infinity. This aspect is emphasized by the way the serpent cannot be contained within the limits of the frame.
The print is on recycled black paper with faux deckled edges.
Print is 8x10.