{Don’t Stop Believing by JoyfulSongGraphics on Etsy}

If you, in a daring and wishful moment, share your dream of making your living online with another person, you’re likely to get some less-than-helpful negativity.

Dream on, they say. Not gonna happen. Too good to be true. Even you supportive BFF might come back with a “helpful alternative suggestion”.

Too good to be true? Don’t believe it. Making a living through your Etsy Shop, or your blog, or any combination of the gazillion ways of making money online is totally and completely possible.

We’ve done it. Our work is entirely online for about two years now.

All the people in Etsy’s “Quit Your Day Job ” series have done it.

I heard from a blog reader recently who, after only two years, is looking at huge sales online. How huge? Approaching $100,000.00 per year huge . That’s pretty darn good. Especially after only two years.

Can you do it in two years? Maybe, maybe not. Can you do it in five? I’d bet on you. Can you do it in ten years, if you keep trying and don’t quit? I know you can. It’s a sure thing .

Compare that to your current situation. If you’re working for someone else, what are the chances they’ll be paying you six figures any time soon? I’m guessing not good.

So while it is true that some things really are too good to be true, such as the slightly unbelievable sale price in the picture above, be careful not to be to quick to throw that label on your incredible future. It is possible. It’s not even that complicated.

Here are the steps:

1. Start
2. Try hard
3. Learn from your mistakes
4. Try hard some more
5. Repeat steps 2-4 until you find a formula that makes money
6. Be open, learn, pay attention, stretch, reach.
7. Don’t Quit!

Over-simplified? Not so much. Those really are the steps. The trick is doing them!

Go get em!

~ Kim

The Spring Ad Sale is Almost Here!

If you’re looking for the best deal out there for advertising your Etsy shop, we think this is it! Every three months for the last three (plus) years, we’ve offered an advertising special for Etsy Shops only. We’ve kept the price low and work hard to keep people coming to the blog so they can find you!

Only $60.00 for Three Months — 100×100 Etsy Shop Ads Sell Out Fast

(see the current ad box along the right side of this page)

At only $20.00 per month for an ad that is shown on just about every page of EverythingEtsy.com (over 1000 unique pages now), these ads are viewed thousands and thousands of times each day!

These ads work; more than half of our current ads are repeat advertisers!

They sell out quick, so be ready THIS THURSDAY, MAY 9th at 4:00pm EDT.

How To Get A Spot — Special Email List Only

Thursday, when the ad sale is open, we will send out an email with a purchase link in it. Click on that link and complete your purchase through PayPal. This method has made it easier for people to be able to purchase a spot from wherever they are right from their phone, iPad, laptop, or whatever else will let you access your email.

This email only goes out to the Ad Special Notifications Email List! You must sign-up and be sure to look for the confirmation email after you sign-up. We’ll send out a few advance emails ahead of time so you’ll be sure you’ve signed-up properly.

When you make your purchase (on Thursday), then you’ll email us your information and your ad graphic (which you provide). A few days later, we’ll start showing your ad and sending you some traffic!

Email List Sign-Up Here:

More Ad Specials –

It’s a tradition… whenever we open up these Etsy Shop only Ad specials, we also offer discounts and freebies on our medium ads, and sometimes on our largest ad size too. So if you’re thinking of taking out a larger display ad, this is the time. Our other ad sizes are open to suppliers, websites, etc., not just Etsy Shops (all ads subject to approval)

HandmadeandCraft.com and Etsypreneur.com–

For the first time, we’ll be offering some two-site, and three-site advertising packages that include ad space on our other sites, HandmadeandCraft.com and Etsypreneur.com. These will be some really great deals and since a good bit of our traffic flows between these sites, this is an opportunity to get that important repeat impression.

Be Ready This Thursday at 4:00pm!

Use the sign-up form above, or click here to sign-up.

See you Thursday!

~Kim

When you work full-time online, you start to see “connections” that lead back to your own stuff. You’ll see tweets, pins, and shares from people you don’t directly know talking about something you created. That might be a blog post, an item on your Etsy shop, or a review you wrote somewhere. Whatever it is, it’s kind of neat to see that people are finding it useful.

I had one such experience today which led me back to a post I wrote last year on Etsypreneur.com called “Etsy as Your Door to a Connected Future“. I went back and read that post and, I gotta tell ya, I was inspired!

Here is an excerpt that stirred me up when I wrote it and still stirs me up today:

What Does the Future Hold?

It’s no secret at this point that the Internet is changing the world. We are hyper-connected through smart phones, tablets, laptops, computers, and more. Even our newest cars and televisions are connected to the world, through the web.

While there seems no shortage of people warning of the dangers of all this, and there are certainly many of those, I can’t help but be mesmerized by the opportunities. Limitless, amazing, heart-pounding opportunities.

What will you do, five years hence, when your tv is seamlessly connected to an endless supply of quality video content about every conceivable subject? Will you still watch whatever happens to be on at the moment, or will you search for something of particular interest and relevance to your life?

Will you choose to listen to one of three or four offered voices for news and opinion, or will you find that voice which resonates most deeply with you as a person?

Will you feel limited in what new skills or knowledge you can gain? What about what kind of job you’ll have, or what you consider yourself to “be”?

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I say that these things and many more are in the process of changing, fast.

The Opportunities Are So Real

I’m not exaggerating when I describe the opportunities as limitless, amazing, and heart-pounding. They really are and Etsy really is a great place to start the journey. Really.

But there is one funny thing about opportunities that I didn’t touch on in that post but happens to be key.

You have to do the opportunity. It requires action and persistence.

Opportunities are easily envisioned as open doors, which is funny because the saying goes “When Opportunity knocks, you better answer!” The truth is that opportunity does not come and ask you to give it a whirl. You, thanks to your sharp mind and good eye, see the opportunity. Over there, not right here. You have to walk over and go through the door.

You can’t know for sure what you’ll find on the other side of the door, for no two opportunities are exactly the same. But you can see what is on this side of the door. You’re there! Look around. Do you want to stay exactly where you are, or do you want to change something? If you want to change, you’ll need to walk through some doors. It’s as simple as that.

Too Many Doors? Just pick one!

Sometimes there are too many doors. This is easy to understand when you think about it. The opportunities we see are “revealed” by information or experiences in our life. We see something in the store that we could do better. We read a book or an article that sparks an idea. A friend says the fateful words “Hey, you know what you should do?” Opportunity is born in ideas and ideas come from information.

When you start messing around with anything “Internet” there is one thing you are absolutely guaranteed to get a heaping portion of: Information.

Lot’s of information is very likely going to result in lots of ideas leading to lots of opportunities. That’s great but it’s also a trap. Too many choices can combine with the other obstacles to “doing” something new that we all face such as fear of failure, unwillingness to leave our comfort zone, or a real need to provide a steady income. This combination of excuses and too many choices is a witches brew which will put you into a trance of inaction.

Do a little bit of thinking and calculating, but don’t get stuck! Pick an opportunity and do it. Learn as you go. Make mistakes and get better. Nobody starts off an expert in anything.

Opportunities are real. They are innumerable online. And they all have one thing in common… you have to do them.

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Looking for some free printable labels, gift tags, and fun stickers for your handmade creations? Everything Etsy has teamed up with World Label and designer Erin Rippy of InkTreePress.com to provide you this incredible collection of printable labels and other goodies. All for free and available for download right here!

All Downloads are PDF 8.5×11

Click the download link beneath the design you want!

4″x5″ Designs — 4 per sheet

Download Design Above

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4″x2″ Designs — 10 per sheet

Download Design Above

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2.625″ x 1″ Designs — 30 per sheet

Download Design Above

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2.83″ x 1″ Designs — 33 Per Sheet

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2″ Round Designs — 20 Per Sheet

Download Design Above

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Wow! That’s a lot of free printables!

These are totally free for your own use. Please don’t share them from your own blog, but feel free to point your friends and followers here to get the downloads.

These designs fit many common printable label sizes and if you’re handy with a pair of scissors {I know you are!} you can forget all about trying to line-up your designs and just print on a full sheet label. Easy! For more information on sizes or to order labels, check out WorldLabel.com

Have Fun! ~ Kim

As a long time Etsy seller, I’ve always dreamed of having a huge week where orders just seemed to keep on coming. Well, for me, last week was a dream come true! While I have had some very busy weeks during the holiday shopping season, nothing compares to what happened last week when our “I’m So Crafty I Sweat Glitter” bag was featured in an Etsy email. (at least I think that’s what happened, I never did find the email)

It all started the week before at about lunchtime on Thursday. Tim was going to lunch with his brother and as he was walking out the door I told him “We’ve had three orders in the last fifteen minutes, I think something is up.” By the time he was back from lunch, we’d sold almost twenty orders and they kept on coming. By the end of the following week we had filled about 100 orders, breaking our record for sales in a single week.

It was fun! But it was not easy!

We make our bags to order so we were very busy printing, cutting, pressing, and detailing away. Then we had to package and ship them! If you’ve ever experienced a rush of orders you know just how crazy and time-consuming that process can be.

Stamps.com Saved our Bacon

We’ve written in the past about how much we enjoy using Stamps.com but this week was a whole new ball game. We went through about $500 in postage on 100 packages in about six days. It’s not Amazon.com, I know, but for me it was a major undertaking.

Stamps.com made it better in at least seven important ways:

1. Easy postage purchase – Once your Stamps.com account is set-up and you connect a credit or debit card, you just order postage as you need it. It’s a seamless process that happens right in the same software you use to print your mailing labels.
2. Easy and complete labels – I just use the plain paper option and print one label with postage at a time. I cut it out and tape it to the package and that’s it. I don’t have to put anything else on the package. It has the return address, the ship-to address, and the paid postage.
3. Free Tracking for Priority Mail – We often run a special with free upgrade to priority mail shipping. This usually results in customers getting their order within just a couple of days and, when purchased through stamps.com, gives us free package tracking so we know where our orders are and when they will be or have been delivered. If you’ve ever had a customer not receive an order by regular mail, you know how frustrating that can be.
4. No Waiting at the Post Office – We almost never have orders ready early enough to go with the letter carrier. If you do that you can skip the post office altogether. We usually run our orders to the Post Office to get them out within one day. By having the postage paid label done there is no need to go in the line. Just drop the packages in the parcel drop box and keep moving. This has saved so much time!
5. Easy Tracking of Orders – Stamps.com integrates with Etsy, but I usually don’t use that feature. What I do is print out my orders, one per sheet, from my Etsy Shop. Then I have a stack of papers, each representing an order. I then just take a few minutes to sit with the stamps.com software and enter the name and address for each order (If I’m logged-in to my Etsy shop, I cut/paste, if not I just type it in), print the postage on a single page, and put the order and postage label together with the packaging…then I fill the order, close the package up, and mail it off. This system makes it easy to keep track of any number of orders.
6. Multiple Users – Sometimes my husband Tim will help me print postage. I can have the stamps.com software open on my computer and he can open it on his at the same time and print postage from the same account, no problem. The available postage funds balance updates on both computers as we go. It’s really simple to jump back and forth between him printing a shipping label and me doing one.
7. Save Money! – Last but not least, using Stamps.com saves cash! On our most common package size, I save about .60 cents per order. Not much but on 100 orders it’s enough to buy a nice meal out or pay for my {very important} Roadrunner Internet bill! I also had a couple of large orders that I decided to buy insurance for. Stamps.com offers an easy one-click insurance purchase that is much less expensive than the USPS insurance rates. If you ship packages of various weights, the free digital scale you get when you sign-up also saves money. Before stamps.com, I used to put extra postage on everything, but now it’s exactly right every time.

I guess you can tell I’m a fan. I am because stamps.com works and it makes my life easier, which is a really really big deal!

Stamps.com has a great $100 bonus offer (code: COUPON1) for new users that includes a free $50 digital scale, $40.00 in postage, $5.00 in supplies (labels, etc), and four weeks free. After that, it’s only $15.99 per month and you can cancel at any time. I’ve been paying that monthly fee for a couple of years now and never once felt like it was a waste of money.

Now here’s to all of us having at least one dream week this year!

~Kim

{disclosure: Stamps.com is an advertiser here on EverythingEtsy}

Most Etsy sellers I know have big dreams. You too right?

You want to make something happen. You want to build something amazing starting with absolutely nothing so you can say “I rock, you know it.”

Building that dream is a whole lot like a fantasy/adventure video game that requires players to reach certain levels and collect various achievements to continue on the quest.

If you want to beat the game and go all the way, then the first key you need is perseverance. You simply have to become the most hard-headed “I will not give-up” fool you’ve ever seen. For the vast majority of us, there is no way to win without this essential key.

There are other keys too, such as being great at customer service, learning how to price your products for profits, and getting great at social media. But in order to finally “beat the game” you are going to have to have the key of a recognized brand name.

You can and should get started by piggy-backing off of the already established brand name of Etsy, but eventually YOU need a brand of your own.

Truthfully, can you think of a single widely successful business of any type that doesn’t have a well known brand? The brand and the success go hand-in-hand.

So at the risk of taking something that is really an art form in its own right and over-simplifying it, here are five easy and simple tips to start now on building your brand.

1. Get a decent logo!

Use your logo everywhere! Put it on your shop banner, put it on labels or tags on your products, put it on your packaging, put it on your mailing labels, tattoo it on your arm!

If you’re not skilled at graphic design, you can get a logo from another Etsy seller, or you can just go the route of finding a font you like and simply writing your name in a cool font.

I like to use dafont.com because it lets you type in the words you want to look at.

2. A good name is worth more than Gold!

You need a good name in two ways. First, you need a memorable name that makes people feel happy if possible. Second, you need a “good name” as-in a “good reputation”. You get this by taking care of customers, doing the right thing, and being consistent. It’s not a cakewalk.

Your name should be in as many places as possible. I strongly suggest finding a name you can get the .com for, or if the owner of the .com is in a totally different industry then you could go for the .net, .co, or other but you really need a web domain of your own that matches your brand name. Very important down the road and owning the domain while you’re building the brand is insurance you won’t have to change your name and throw away years of effort. Trust me, we’ve learned the hard way!

Here is a recent article about why Etsy sellers should have a website.

3. Use a branded email address.

Kim has email addresses at lots of different websites we operate. When she first started her Handmade & Craft Etsy Shop, she used an email from RemodelingTherapy.com because the HandmadeandCraft.com site wasn’t set-up yet. We forgot about it and recently realized that all of her Etsy orders were showing buyers the email @RemodelingTherapy.com!

Rookie mistake! Your email should always build your brand. The best way, IMHO, is to have the email @yourdomain.com but you could also go with yourbrand (at) gmail or yahoo or whatever. But your email address should always reinforce your brand.

4. Build an Email List

We use MadMimi for email marketing and even though we still (argh) haven’t gotten into the habit of regular sending, we at least know we need to and are planning in it! The absolute single most important factor to brand building is repetition. Just think of the injury lawyer in your town who advertises the most and you’ll see the power of repetition at work.

MadMimi also integrates directly with your Etsy shop and allows you to pull your products straight into an email promotion. Thank you very much.

5. Advertise

Repetition works in many forms. Email lists, blogging, and social media are all ways to “get your name out there”. But they shouldn’t replace advertising completely. Advertising is the most sure-fire way there is to get your name in front of people repeatedly. If done well, it can really work for you and unlike the aforementioned personal injury attorney, it doesn’t have to be annoying to work.

It costs money to advertise and the results are hard to measure in short time. Pay-per-click advertising such as Google AdWords or CPM advertising on Etsy in the search results are the best for measuring short term returns. Brand building advertising on the other hand is more of a long-term investment and is usually visual and includes your name, your logo, and your products.

Oh, and eh hem, we think EverythingEtsy.com is a great place to advertise! We have an email list for advertising sale announcements and we have a little (mid-term) ad sale coming up soon, so get on that list!

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Here is a great Etsy video on Brand Building!

And after I wrote this post, I saw that Etsy also talked about branding just yesterday on their blog… great minds think alike I guess!

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What about you? Do you have any branding tips, learning experiences, or questions? The comments are open!

Having your own website is one of the most rewarding and fun parts of building an online business. It provides you with so many opportunities. For example:

• A chance to create an individual space that is all you!
• A chance to share your story in depth
• A chance to tell more about your products and why you love them
• A place to refer everyone to, without seeming like you’re trying to sell to them
• A chance to learn something new and create a whole new set of skills
• A place online that you control completely
• An opportunity for future growth and expansion
• A more professional image
• Improved name and brand recognition

The list of reasons you’ll love having your own website could really continue for hundreds of items.

The real question is “Why wouldn’t you have your own website?”

The only answers I can think of are cost, time, or techno-phobia (fear of the technology).

The cost is very low, the time investment can be spread out over years, and if you’re wanting to work (and make a profit) online, you better get used to technology or do like Kim did and trick someone else into learning it.

You Need Your Own Website!

Your own website, hosted on a paid hosting account (rather than a free account such as blogger.com) offers you a list of advantages so long that I think if I wrote about them all, you wouldn’t finish reading this post till next week.

We set-up our own websites shortly after Kim started selling on Etsy and have learned the whole thing from scratch. It can be a lot to learn, depending on how far you want to go with it. But that’s the point! You can go as far as you want!

You can build a professional blog selling advertising, products, downloads, etc. You might find out, like we did, that the blog becomes as big a part of your business model as your actual store is.

You can extend your own site to have your own selling platform. One day you may become large enough that you would prefer to sell everything from your own site, rather than on Etsy.

You may come up with an idea of a web-based service you can offer your customers via your own site. You might develop an app of some sort.

The point is that when you have your own website, you look more professional now and you open up unlimited options for the future.

No website, or a free hosted website, simply don’t offer that kind of future opportunity.

What About Starting Off With Free Hosting?

Since the cost of having your own domain and website is so low (about $10.00 a month) it’s not worth the effort to build a whole blog at free hosting and then move it later.

There is lots of talk about “how easy” it is to move a site. It’s really not. It’s easy to move content, but not at all easy to move the look of your site, the arrangement of your site, or the content of your sidebars. It’s also not great from an SEO standpoint to move your site.

If you’re looking to build a long-term business online, then there isn’t really an option. I’m not trying to be a know-it-all here. I’m just trying to be someone who has been there and helped lots of others who have been there. Just someone pointing out the easiest and best path to where you want to go.

If you don’t have your own website hosted on a paid hosting account, and you really are serious about building your Etsy business long-term, then you should do exactly what I would do if I was in your shoes right now.

1. I would go to Hostgator.com and sign-up for the Baby Plan.

Again, I’m afraid if I go into all the details behind this advice the post will get crazy long. Here’s the bullet-point version:

• We’ve tried numerous hosting companies
• We now run our sites on Hostgator servers
• Hostgator has awesome customer service – very helpful by phone or email
• Hostgator has easy upgrades for when you grow
• Our site uptime is excellent with Hostgator
• Choose the Baby plan because you might want to add more domains
• We have about fifty domains
• When you have an idea, you buy the domain. If the idea sticks, you’re ready to go.
• If you start a new shop, you buy the domain. If it grows, you’re ready to go.
• Hostgator has easy month-to-month payment options

2. Once I had the Hosting Account Set-Up, I’d install WordPress.

WordPress is quick and easy to install for the first time. Here is a link to a tutorial Hostgator has put together for doing so on Hostgator servers: How to Install WordPress

3. Then you start learning!

It takes a little bit of effort to learn all of this stuff. Or you can hire people to do it for you. My advice is that if you plan to build your business up over time is to just take your time and learn it yourself.

We make changes every single day on our sites. It would cost a fortune to pay someone to do it all. It takes time to learn, but the knowledge can never be taken away. You’ll always be able to make your own changes and once you learn “how to learn” online, you’ll be able to figure out anything you want to do.

I’m so sorry if this is over-simplified. I’m just offering by best advice without going into pages and pages of detail. I hope you find it helpful.

~ Tim

Disclosure: When we purchase a product and find it helpful (such as Hostgator) we often look to see if there is an affiliate program. When there is, we sign-up for it because we know we’re going to recommend the service or product anyway, we might as well get a commission. Affiliate commissions is part of how we support Etsypreneur and Everything Etsy, so we appreciate you clicking through our links when you buy these services. It doesn’t cost you any extra.

This post was originally published on our other blog, Etsypreneur.com

Great lighting can make your products look amazing!

It’s no secret that product photos can make or break your Etsy sales.  You can have the coolest handmade product ever, but without an outstanding photo you might not be as happy with your response.

Getting beautiful photos is not as hard as you think, but it will take a little practice to get the hang of what makes your product stand out in the crowd.

Lighting is the biggest source of photo problems.  Create your own photo light box and you’ll be amazed at the quality photos you can take!

Here are 5 examples of DIY Light Boxes…

Pretty Handy Girl – DIY Photography Light Studio Set Up

Ninth and Bird – DIY Photo Light Box

Never Homemaker – How to Build a Light Box

Radmegan – Sun Powered Light Box

You’ll find one more example with some photo tips at The Dapper Toad.

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Now you know how to do it, so get busy and create a light box!

It’s time to take some fresh photos for your shop.  Don’t forget that multiple angles help show off your product.  It takes a bunch of photos to get a few good ones…so snap, snap, snap away!

You might enjoy reading this post…5 Quick Tips for Better Product Photography.

Take a look around Etsy and see what product photos for inspiration.  As you scroll down the page you’ll notice certain types of photos catch you attention and I bet they all have great lighting!

Practice makes perfect…or close to it. There’s always room for improvement when it comes to product photos, so keep updating you photos as your skills increase.

Do you have a light box?  Do you use natural light?  I’d love to hear your photo success tips in the comments!

~Kim

One of the neat things about building a blog with hundreds of posts is that comments keep coming in even months or years after posts are first published. As a result, I hear from lots of people every single week about the challenges they face in social media.

I’ll let you in on a secret: none of them are a surprise. I’ve faced all of them and still do but thankfully I’ve still been able to build a social media following that adds up to just under 100,000 followers between Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter. {Yay, Thanks to you!}

I’m just starting to get into Google+ and I’m excited about it.

10 Tips for Social Media Bliss

Here are ten tips I’ve learned from my own four year experience and from friends I’ve met along the way. If you keep these in mind, you can build a large following on social media.

You do want that, right? Having a large following on social media has so many benefits, the greatest of which is that you can really reach and help lots of people, which is amazing and rewarding. You also gain so much from what your followers share with you. It’s so much fun and I just love it.

So here are my ten tips for social media bliss, first in a numbered list, and then thoughtfully {brilliantly, imho } expounded upon one-by-one.

1. Give it time.
2. Think long term.
3. It’s not personal.
4. Be consistent.
5. Follow Friday {and Monday, and Tuesday, and…}
6. Newsjack.
7. Be reasonable.
8. Remember, it’s forever.
9. It is worth it.
10. Help people.

If that list leaves you with questions, maybe I’ve already answered them in the explanations below, if not, leave a comment at the end of the post and we’ll get a discussion going.

1. Give it Time

The most common complaint I hear is something like this:

“Social Media (or a particular site, such as Facebook) just doesn’t work for me! I haven’t gotten a single sale from it yet. It’s not worth my time.”

As a mom, social media reminds me of raising kids. Kids start out as babies and you really don’t expect anything from them. You don’t expect them to be reading, writing, or doing chores; yet. As they grow, you expect more out of them until eventually {we hope} they are self-sufficient and do things without your help at all.

Growing your following (and your business) is just the same. I think most people understand this, they just don’t understand at what point their Facebook following is an infant, when it’s a toddler, etc.

Based on my experience, here are some numbers to help you see this:

Of course this is just an {unscientific} attempt at illustration and nobody can say exactly how many followers you need before you start to get something (sales, blog traffic, etc) out of social media, but this does help you see that it doesn’t make sense to expect too much too soon.

So you have to give it time.

You also have to give it time in another way… you have to put your time into growing it and getting better at it all. Unlike raising a real child, you can actually get through these levels faster by putting in more effort, aka more time. {because you have so much of that to spare, right?}

Some experts say you should spend two hours a day on social media and that’s probably about what I do. It sounds like a ton and you may be wondering where you’ll get that much time. Thankfully it’s better if you don’t do it all at once. I spend about fifteen to twenty minutes at a time six or seven times a day and that seems to work well.

For what it’s worth, this time investment felt like “work” at first, but once I really got into it, it became fun and doesn’t feel much like work now. It’s especially nice when you feel like some of what you share is helping others, which is mentioned later.

So the first tip is “give it time” and give it your time.

2. Think Long Term

Do you remember the class in school, or maybe from your parents, that explained the workings of compound interest? You know where they convince you that even though your savings account only pays 1% interest, it adds up over time. {mine never worked that way…}

While that may not be very exciting for a savings account at today’s non-rates, it is very exciting when applied to the growth of your social media presence, and it applies just as well.

If you increase your audience by just a few percent every month, the growth doesn’t seem so fast at first, but it will get faster! As your base number grows, that few percent gets to be more and more growth which will eventually lead to the big numbers you’re after.

I can’t tell you how exciting it is for me that my overall follower base across the various networks grows at a rate of approximately 800 people per week now!

3. It’s Not Personal

original image by crimfants on flickr, from wikimedia commons

It can be hard not to get your feelings hurt. This never really changes either. When you don’t have many followers, that fact alone can hurt your feelings. When you do have followers some of them will say things or do things that might hurt your feelings.

The cure for hurt feelings is, of course, to run the other way! That’s not really an option for us here.

So knowing this, and knowing we have a long-term outlook, the only workable approach to social media is just don’t let it hurt you in the first place.

It may be easier said than done {it is}, but if you remind yourself of a few key points it might help:

• “Follower” doesn’t mean the same thing as “Friend” or “Family”. Even “friend” in social media doesn’t necessarily mean friend. Don’t let someone you don’t know (and doesn’t know you) ruin your day.
• Remember it’s all about perspective. If someone disagrees with something you say, and they do so in a mean way, it might just mean that they have a very different perspective than you.
• You are not your follower count. Just like your personal worth isn’t determined by your clothes or your kitchen cabinets, neither is the number of followers you have necessarily an indication of the value of what you have to offer. It’s very likely just an indication of time investment and/or you’re still learning the ropes. Everyone has to do that.

4. Be Consistent

Consistency is key in three super-important areas…

1. You need a consistent presence
2. You need a consistent voice
3. You need a consistent message

Your presence is simply how often you show up. My sweet husband wants to be big in social media, mostly because of me. He’s a typical man and it drives him crazy that I have more followers than him {way more!, heh}, but he doesn’t show-up consistently and he knows it. A tweet once every two months isn’t going to do much for you.

Your voice is just your online personality. Your tone, the amount of humor you use in your messages, your tendancy toward sarcasm or lack thereof, etc. The main point is that people learn to expect a certain feel from you and it’s best to keep that fairly predictable. You can throw a curve ball every once in awhile to keep it real, but not too much.

Your message is your subject matter. Unless you’re a celebrity already, you won’t get much traction talking about every subject under the sun. You have to pick a topic or a related group of topics and stay on it even when you don’t feel like it. Your message is the biggest part of why people follow you. They want information about “x” and you share that.

5. Follow Friday {and Monday, and Tuesday, and …}

Human nature tends to say this to your subconcious:

“If you follow more people than who follow you, that makes you a “follower” not a “leader” and, let’s just call it what it is, a loser. Don’t be pathetic, have a little pride.”

As is usually the case when pride gets in the way, that is the wrong way to think. The truth is that the more people you follow, the more will follow you back. You can always go back in later and unfollow people who you either don’t benefit from or who never followed you back, but it’s not a bad thing to take the first step.

The reality is this: The accomplishment of your goals is much more about how many people follow you and who those people are than it is about how many people you follow.

When I send out a tweet, there is a chance that 23,000 of my followers there will see it and retweet it to their followers. The potential impact of that is exactly the same if I’m following two hundred, two thousand, or two hundred thousand. The impact of my tweet is based on my followers, so if following helps build followers it just makes sense to follow, follow, and follow.

The other benefit of following…

One of the keys to success in social media, and it’s covered by item number 10 in the list “Help People”, is in sharing great and useful stuff. If you follow the right people (aka, people who are into your message) then they will really help you do that by sharing great stuff themselves.

So following helps you get followers but it also provides a stream of great content you can share to help you keep followers.

6. Newsjack

When the San Francisco 49ers played the Baltimore Ravens in the Superbowl, as you may recall, the lights went out in the middle of the game. What an opportunity to gain followers!

I was at a party praying for the lights to come back on so we could-please-finish-this-game, but other people were ON their game in social media.

Oreo Cookies nailed it with a Facebook image post saying “You can still dunk in the dark.” That image has now been liked and shared a total of almost 30,000 times.

Audi took the opportunity to poke a little fun at their rival Mercedes-Benz (whose name is on the Superdome where the lights went out) by tweeting that they were sending some LED lights over to help out.

Sending some LEDs to the @mbusa Superdome right now…

— Audi (@Audi) February 4, 2013

Other companies and thousands of individuals jumped at the chance to talk about something that tens of millions of people were experiencing at the same time. It was a rare opportunity to take advantage of news that wasn’t negative, sad, or scary.

While not all “newsjacking” opportunities reach millions of people, the news stories that effect your niche and fit with your message are great opportunities. I myself need to get much better at this, and I encourage you to try it as well. It’s a great way to get your content shared.

7. Be Reasonable {expectations}

Hand-in-hand with the first tip above, Give it Time, is the idea that if you expect too much too soon you’re going to be disappointed. Building a social media presence that you can use to help others and help yourself is a long-term project and you’ll enjoy it much more if you’re not constantly disappointed in the way it’s all working out.

If you like to measure progress or set goals, try setting a growth rate target in terms of percentage. Early on you can set pretty high hopes such as 40% growth per month or even more. As your numbers grow that kind of growth (in percentage terms) gets harder to attain but your actual growth in numbers is speeding up.

Also set resonable expectations for things you hope to gain from all of this. You’re not going to be able to support your family from Etsy sales from social media alone. You won’t be able to drive hundreds of visitors per day to your blog when you only have 500 fans on Facebook. (Pinterest does better for driving blog traffic)

I can’t give you any concrete numbers because they vary for everyone. All I can tell you is that it takes more than you would expect to get a really meaningful return.

So manage your expectations in terms of time and return. You’ll stay much happier for it.

8. Remember It’s Forever

The simple lesson here is the same for your blog and for social media. Once it’s out there, it’s out there, so don’t post things you’ll regret.

Emotional posts and tantrums might feel good at the moment but they persist even after the emotions that instigated them are long gone.

I’ve been guilty of throwing a #fail hashtag at a store or two after getting bad service and it’s true that you might get some results, so there may be times when you just can’t resist throwing your social media weight around, but I’d use it sparingly.

I’d also avoid things that might offend certain people or groups. Some might say that I’m not being “real” when I do that, but I don’t see it that way at all. To me it’s just being nice and finding some common ground to talk about.

Some people have made a name for themselves being edgy and it certainly looks like fun so if you want to go for it, more power to you. My advice is to remember that what you put online is forever so keep to the straight and narrow.

9. It is worth it

Source: changetohealthy.tumblr.com via Everything Etsy on Pinterest

All of this may sound like too much. I can see you asking yourself “Is it really worth all that?”

The answer depends on your plans for the future, what you hope to see happen. If those plans include any sort of online activity as a major part of your life, then the answer is most definitely yes.

So if you want to build a profitable Etsy shop or other eCommerce business, a busy blog that you can use to support a business or cause, or if you want to build a name for yourself for as-yet unimagined future endeavors, then you should rest easy knowing you’re spending your time well.

If you stay consistent to these ten tips and keep learning from your experience and from the experience of others, you’ll find yourself in a good place a year, two, or five down the road.

10. Help people

I saved the most important tip for last. This one is really more of a guiding principle than a tip. It’s like this ever-present star in the sky pointing you in the way you should go.

Be helpful to your audience.

If you’re investing the time in social media you’ll get to know who your audience is. The better you know them, the better you’ll understand what they want and need. You’ll get a feel for what they, as a whole, are trying to accomplish.

Help with that and you’ll get where you want to go.

~Kim

Let’s discuss it… what tips do you have for social media success? Or what questions or challenges do you face that this blog post didn’t answer? Maybe someone can answer in the comments.

—

Here are a few more social media posts you might enjoy:

• Twitter Tips for Etsy Sellers
• Are you Being Yourself Online?
• 6 Tips and Tools for Pinterest Lovers
• 10 Social Media Action Words to Help You Connect

Free photo editing has never been easier or more feature rich. Tools and websites designed to crop, edit, and enhance your photos are almost as abundant as places to share them!

It’s no secret that I’m a Pinterest fanatic (EverythingEtsy on Pinterest), I love Instagram, and I’m in constant need of photo editing for my blogs and Etsy shop. My guess is you do to, right?

Even though I have Photoshop, I’ve been doing lots of my work using PicMonkey. We’ve written about using picmonkey for photo editing and Tim did a tutorial and video to demonstrate using PicMonkey to create a blog button or Etsy Banner.

Today I found a new (to me) site that just might turn out to be my new go-to website for photo editing, especially if I need to do a collage, which I do all the time.

Free Photo Editing with iPiccy

iPiccy.com is very powerful and full of great features. It’s a tiny bit more effort to learn than PicMonkey but most of the tools and steps are easy and intuitive if you’ve got any photo editing experience. The extra features are totally worth the effort, and there is no cost at all.

iPiccy is totally free.

I haven’t used it enough to offer a full review of iPiccy, but I can point out a few of the things that I liked and were different than PicMonkey.

Local Storage

The first thing I noticed was that iPiccy wanted to store my work on my computer rather than online. That involved allowing it permission which kind of freaked me out a little. But since I really wanted to try it, I took the time to Google “iPiccy Local Storage” and didn’t see anything negative in the search results so I gave it a try.

As it turned out, I really liked the features that local storage opened up. You have a photo library of all the pictures you’ve uploaded to iPiccy as well as a “history” tab where all of your finished picture saves live. This is in addition to the normal file location on your computer.

Overall, I found working with the iPiccy storage easy and very helpful compared to the way you have to upload one thing at a time to PicMonkey and do that again for every time you work on a photo, even if you’ve worked on it before.

iPiccy seems better here though I am curious why the history shows the picture saved on Jan. 4 when it was Jan. 24 (no big deal I guess…).

Easier Color Controls

It was easy to adjust colors in iPiccy for things like added text, overlays (called “stickers”), and shapes. I also really liked having easy access to the eyedropper tool which allows you to select a color from within your image. That’s great when you want to use a matching color for your text or shapes. iPiccy also shows you the new color on the screen as you move the color selector around.

Great Cropping Tools

It might be hard to see in the image below, but iPiccy has built-in cropping sizes for many of the major Social Media sites. Need a Facebook Cover Image or a background image for your iPhone, it’s already built-in as an option in addition to all the standard options such as square, 4×6, 8×10, etc. Now if they would just add some Etsy Banner sizes we’d be cookin’.

Tons and Tons of Collage Options

This feature was one of my favorites. The collage options here were much easier to use than PicMonkey. First of all it seems like there are quite a few more options to choose from. Secondly, you can see them all without having to click on curious terms like “Biggie Smalls”. Finally, once you’ve selected an arrangement you can adjust the aspect ratio of the collage which can be helpful if you’re having a hard time making a picture fit just right.

The screenshot below only shows about half of the collage layouts available:

Full Featured Editing and Effects

iPiccy has ALL of the bells and whistles. You have a full set of adjustment tools such as Brightness, Contrast, Hue, Saturation, etc. as well as a great selection of effects such as HDR, Sepia, and lots of cool vintage effects.

Great Selection of Fonts and Easy Font Tools

One of the things I love about PicMonkey is the font selection so I was really pleased to see that iPiccy has a great selection. Maybe not quite as extensive as PicMonkey, but huge and all for the same price (free). I pay extra on PicMonkey to get all the fonts.

Font editing is easy. Change colors, alignment, opacity, and font size in no time flat.

Overall Seems Great So Far

I’ll keep using iPiccy for awhile and let you know how it works over time. I haven’t used it enough yet to know if it’s glitchy or does anything totally horrifying. If it continues to do well I’ll get Tim to do some tutorial videos to really show how it works.

Am I ready to give up Picmonkey? Not yet. I’m still pretty in-love with that site, but iPiccy.com is one to watch and one you might want to try.

Any photo editing tricks you’d like to learn? What’s your biggest picture editing challenge?

What’s your favorite free photo editing website?

~Kim

For a long list of free photo editing sites, check out this post we found and shared on Google+