Budgeting Time for Success

As you begin the adventure of selling full-time, one of the biggest pieces of advice I can give is this: budget your time wisely and set goals for yourself.

print from LetterHappy

Running a home arts/craft business can be an enormous challenge with great pay-off if you make sure to pace yourself wisely. Don't take on more than you can handle, but don't limit yourself either. Make sure you challenge yourself without over-doing it. This is different for every person, but it is vital to the growth of your business and yourself as an artist to know what you are capable of and what you are not.

moleskin journal from BubbyandBean

One of the most important things you can do for your fledgling business is to set some long term goals and write them down. Putting things in writing is so important; it's like signing a contract with yourself. Here you have documented evidence that on April 17th of 2011 you decided that you would double your monthly sales-intake over the next 6 months.

Full-time hit me like a runaway freight train. One minute I was happily packaging my 100th hand painted jewelry sale after 5 months of work and the next I was handling almost 10 orders a day. In less than a month I had not only met my goal, but surpassed it by quadrupling my monthly sales after making a large number of tweaks, changing how I managed my time and doubling my inventory. Where was the problem in this you ask? Each of my pieces is hand painted, so each week consisted of an enormous amount of painting. Not only did it add to my workload as far as painting went, but it increased the amount of time I had to spend packaging and changed how I had to handle my finances. Making this sustainable has been more work than getting to this point was.

From the middle of November to the middle of March I only took about 6 days off--one of which was to move to another state.

This didn't feel like the ease and work-in-your-pajamas-awesome that a home-based arts business was supposed to be. It was beginning to feel all consuming. After some close examination, I sat down to rework how I could better use my time. Where was the fat I could cut? What could I do differently in order to streamline production without cutting quality?

'The Traveler' from TuckooandMooCow

Setting a budget for time is like setting one for finances: you have to examine everything, decide what's most important and make cuts where you need to and can afford to. To keep your budding business as stress-free as possible (which it will never be 100% of the time) budget your time as wisely as you can. Every so often, go back and re-examine your time-budget the same way you would finances.

Time is the ultimate cost for any business. Everyone is allotted the same amount and no one can over-draw. How you divide it up and make use of it needs to be based on your individual business plan (how many hours does it take a day to make your business work), the goals you've set for yourself (how many more hours will you need to get to where you want to be), and the time table of you life (how much time do you need to devote to family, social obligations, taking hot bubble baths).

'The Relic' bracelet from Flowerleaf

Author: Sarah-Lambert Cook of TuckooandMooCow

Tagging Tips: Make Your Tags Work For You

The primary way for an item to be found on Etsy is by its tags. When a person does an Etsy search (especially when sorted by relevancy) it is an item's tags that will be its main way of being found. Figuring out the right way to tag can be time consuming and hard, so here are a few tips to help you out!

Make Your Tags Work For You

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- First and foremost is to always use all of your tags. Etsy provides space for 14 tags per item and if you aren't using all of those spaces, you are limiting the ways people can find you. The first few tags come from the drop down menu. The more you can do with this the better as each of these tags represent a category your item is being included in. Why is this important? Many people click through the categories without ever searching anything specifically--you want to appear in these categories when they do.

-Include you shop name in a few of your items' tags. Some people new to Etsy or unfamiliar with its search will look for a seller by using the general item search. You want to show up when people look for you this way, so including your shop name in a few of your items will ensure that their search returns results.

-Use the word "handmade". This does not automatically appear as one of your tags even if items are automatically listed in this category. I've heard people say it increased their sales noticeably after making this edit.

-Edit tags based on seasons and current trends. Try searching "Black Friday" or "Cyber Monday" and you will find a huge number of listings still tagged with this Holiday tag! Making sure that all of your tags are up-to-date, both with current trends and with seasonal tags, is very important. Tags that are out of season are wasted tags.

-Include your location in a few of your tags. This is pretty much the same as why you should include your shop name.

Coming Up With Tag Terms

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Coming up with tag terms can be a pain and a half. Here are some great tips to make that a little bit easier:

-Use a thesaurus. That's right, bust out the old thesaurus and look up synonyms! You are thinking "woodland", but a buyer might be thinking "forest"--you're thinking "nautical", they are thinking "sea side". (Don't have a thesaurus on hand? Here is a decent one online: Thesaurus.com )

-Add some adjectives people associate with a style if it fits the item: hipster, indie, rockabilly, punk, minimalist, post modern, etc.

-Think Crayola Crayons when tagging with colors. Remember the descriptive colors like cadet blue, kelly green, and burnt sienna. You'll come up in searches of basic "blue", but also in ones where a person was specific.

-Ignore terms like "ooak" for the most part. This is an extremely specific acronym and many people using Etsy have no idea what it means anyway. Don't waste your tag.

Some Helpful Links

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A word about the Tag Tool from Craftweasel by Etsy: http://etsy.me/erBFS8

and the actual Tag Tool: http://bit.ly/2RU0b5

Etsy's guidelines and tips for taggings: http://etsy.me/efHj3

**Looking for more tagging help? Most of the tips given here are fairly common tips given by Etsy sellers and admin and can be found along with various other tips elsewhere.

Author: Sarah-Lambert Cook "tuckooandmoocow"