They are being held tomorrow from 10am – 1pm Eastern and on September 30 from 8pm – 11pm Eastern.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• Get a complete tour of the Wordpress Dashboard

• Learn the difference between posts and pages.

• Learn How To Use the Visual Editor to create great looking blog posts.

• Learn about categories and tags and how to use them!

• Learn about Plugins

• Learn about Widgets

• Learn about Themes

• Learn about Exporting/Importing and Backups.

• Get Answers to All Of Your Questions!

These sessions are held in a web conference room, so you don’t have to worry about traveling, hiring a sitter, etc. And it’s only $19 – and that is totally worth skipping the headache of trying to learn this yourself!

For more info and to register, click here.

I ready many types of blogs, and crafty blogs are no exception! Some of my favorites include blogs from Handmade Detroit, Craftzine, Martha Stewart’s Craft Department, Naughty Secretary Club, Vickie Howell, and Sublime Stitching.

What are your favorites? I’d love for you to leave a comment on this post with the links to your favorite crafty blogs! So don’t be shy – let us know what you’re reading online!

 A Friend: First and foremost, bring help with you! Don’t think for a minute that this is something you can do entirely on your own. Running a booth is a constant juggling act, so having your “right-hand man” is key to having not only success, but everything is more enjoyable when you can share it with others! Having a 2nd person to take payments is a great asset so that you re fully available to answer questions and show your products. It’s also valuable for transporting items, being able to take a restroom break, or even grab a lunchtime meal.  This person also becomes your “cheerleader” to help support your efforts throughout the day! I promise, you will be so grateful if you can find that special friend or family member to help you on the big day.

 Your Products: How many you ask? That is a good question. Bring what you can, but make sure you have a sign-up list available for those who would like to special order.

 Bags for Customers: Shoppers need bags! There are a number of resources on line of how to obtain bags, but one of the best resources may be in your very own area!  Before doing a show several years back, I went to our local drugstore as I knew their bags did not carry the individual store’s name. Instead there was a rose and I figured if I could get them at a good price, it really didn’t matter what was on the bag! So I went in and asked the manager if I could purchase some bags from them and indeed they did let me! The cost was unbelievably cheap and I now was ready to take my bags with me to the booth!

 A Possible Credit Card Machine: If this is doable, you may want to seriously consider opening up this method of paying to customers. By doing so, you are offering a convenient service to them. If you don’t, you may lose some potential buyers. I say this not to scare you, but perhaps intrigue you by looking into this option more seriously. It not only makes your booth look even more professional, but it is also a much safer route to go rather than accepting personal checks. You must obtain a merchant account in order to offer this, so be sure to check with your bank on how to do this. Taking credit and debit cards can really boost your sales!

 Your Money Center : Some craft fair organizers provide these for you and some do not, so be sure to check into your options. The small table is a great place to set up your money center. Along with this, don’t forget your calculator, a receipt book, a sales tax chart, cash box or machine, and the credit card machine if you go that route. And while you’re at it, don’t forget to bring change! A copy of your sales tax certificate and your business license to hang up in your booth is also a nice touch.

 A Small Cooler: Bring some snacks and bottles of water to keep you at your peak performance all day. You may easily get worn down if you wait too long before taking a break. Sometimes a small snack is just the right energy boost you need!

 Office Supplies & Other Misc.: These include: pens, stapler, tape, a garbage bag, sales tax chart for your area, extra price tags, markers, business cards and brochures, tape, your cell phone, a camera so you can document this fun day, and possibly some candy in a bowl. Don’t believe for a second that the candy is just for the children! The grown-ups love it just as well!

 Any Hang Tags or Care Instructions: If you’re offering any item for sale that requires special instructions, be sure to include those attached to your products. Your customers will truly appreciate your efforts.

 Tissue or Newspaper: If you have any items that are fragile, you’ll want to be sure to have these on hand to help package the items in the customers’ bags.

 Shelves: If possible, see if you can find some shelves that you can put onto your tables. Keeping items at different levels is more pleasing to the eye. So lift! Keep the booth interesting by doing this. Crates and stacks of blocks also work well with linen cloths draped over.

 Company Name Sign: Make it big and make it something special. If you have a website, be sure to include that on your banner as well.

 A Sign Up Sheet: This will help make future contacts for your business. A name and an email is a perfect way to contact interested customers in the future and keep them updated of new products and upcoming shows.

What items do you take with you when selling at a craft fair? Did I leave anything off the list that you would suggest?

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Tips on writing blog post titles that will help your blog stand out:

1. Is it a tutorial? – if yes than say so. I enjoy writing tutorials and folks generally love a tutorial. How many times have you web searched for a tutorial on how to do something or another? Lots of times I bet. Make your tutorial easier to find on the the web to find by beginning the blog post title with ‘Tutorial on…’ or ‘How to…’.
2. Does your post include a list of information or a breakdown of points? If yes than say so in your title eg. “My 10 top tips for….” Lists/bullet points are easy to digest for the reader and they are an easy way to organise information for the writer (that’s why I like them so much!)
3. Is your post about a rant, a happy experience, a memory etc.? If yes than say so in your title eg. “Why I love nothing more than…” or “The …est day of my life was…”. Blog posts which offer an intimate peek into the life of the writer always stir an interest in readers because as humans we are fascinated by each other. Great isn’t it?
4. Keep your titles shorter rather than longer. Try to be succinct, but at the same time informative. Search engine robots only read a certain number of words so longer titles tend to get cut short. So your title needs to have the most important words in the first half of the title (just in case).
5. Writing the title for yourself vs writing the title for search engines. If you are not bothered by appearing high in search engines than (arguably) you would write your posts and your titles in a way that suits you eg. they could be funny, daft, abstract etc. etc. etc. BUT search engine robots/spiders are ultra efficient and totally unfeeling, they don’t care for writing with flair, they are just after cold hard keywords (see below for more info on keywords)
6. Try to put yourself in the mindset of your readers – what search terms/words do you think they would type into the search engines? Including words in your title that readers are likely to search for will help your post will appear higher in the search engines.

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Further Reading

• What is SEO
• SEO Tip – How to write winning meta titles.
• What are key words?
• Key word generator tools
• Wring effective, attention-getting headlines and titles on your blog

What was I doing before? How’s this for a clue? Mmm…only another hour before lunchtime.

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In this post I want to share some blogging tools and widgets that I have tried and tested to make my blogging life more fun, easier, and er… fruitful.  You don’t need to be a tecchy geek, and you don’t need to know any HTML, or any of that stuff (I’d like to be a tecchy geek, but alas it’s all beyond me) to try these out.

Widgets to help with the traffic

• Technorati – is an important place to have you blog listed on. This is what they do. I joined these folks from the beginning when I set up my bag making blog. Joining is easy and free. You create your own profile and you can get a profile badge to put your on your blog if you wish. To see my Technorati profile go to my bag blog and look on left hand menu toward the bottom.
• Feedblitz – this enables your readers to subscribe to your blog via email. Some folks just prefer updates by email and this subscriber widget makes it easier for them. This is what they do. If you have a Typepad or a Blogger blog join up for this free service.
• Feedburner - manages your RSS feeds. This is what they do. It’s free to join and the stats that they provide are in-depth.
• Pingoat - this cool little gadget pings (notifies an update has been made) loads of different services all in one go . So when you’ve just written a post that you are proud of go to this site and ping loads of services in one fell swoop.

Some Blogsessories

• Polldaddy – create very pretty polls/votes to put on your blog with this free service. I have used this in the past. The polls are easy to paste into your blog and they do indeed look nice with optional images, and coloured bars.
• Box - I first came across this cool service on Meg’s blog. This is a user friendly way of storing your files online and sharing them with others. You can share images, text, or music. I use Box to share music. You upload files (from your computer) to box and then you are given a link to that file so you can share it with any none else. You can also get a Box player widget to you on you blog if you wish.
• Sitemeter – this is a handy widget that tracks things like how many readers have visited you blog, where they came from, how long they visited etc.
• Big huge Labs – I first came across these image tools on Ali’s blog. If you have images in Flickr you can have lots of fun with your pics on this site…
• Babelfish – looking at my stats I can see that I am getting more and more readers from abroad so I have hopefully made it easier for them to read my content by adding a translator to my blog.
• IconBuffet – free dinky doo icons. I don’t have a use for them yet, but they are so cute I’m sure I’ll think of something.
• Qumana – my favorite blog editor. I wrote a post about Qumana on my other blog.

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Got widget fever? Then check out these mega lists by Problogger, and again by Problogger for Mac users.

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Widget mania! Pic credit: HardMacs Blog.

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I am willing to accept this as a compromise, but only because I made him feel like a jack ass on the phone. When we first spoke (before he knew what I was calling about) I got him to confirm that he was responsible for writing the copy on his site, then I told him about the copying issue. He denied that he had copied anything and that he had been selling item X for years to which I replied “Look, instead of getting lawyers involved I have paid you the courtesy of calling you to give you an opportunity to modify the copy which you have OBVIOUSLY taken from me. I’d appreciate it if you’d begin to extend a similar courtesy to me by NOT denying what you have done…’ I’m not one for power trips, but my heart was beating like crazy and I could sense that he felt like shamed 10 year old boy being scolded by a scary headmistress heh heh!

Hey! Get your thieving hands off my work!

How can we protect ourselves?

It’s a sad fact that the accessibility of the Internet and our desire to share and show our work makes it easy for unimaginative, lazy, (and lets face it) sleazy copycats to steal our work to pass it off as their own. I’m going to look at some ways that we can protect our work from copycats (or at least try to deter them) . I understand that copyright laws differ country to country so I can’t list hard and fast rules that apply to everyone and copyright is a whole minefield in itself, but I can suggest a few things that we can all do:

• Get yourself the appropriate Creative Commons License – the licence are free and you can obtain a ‘label’ for your licence to put on your site of blog. These licenses come in different flavours dependent on the level at which you are willing to share your work. For instance on my Handbag blog I have an Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license which means (amongst other things) I am happy to share any of my work and photos with anyone in the world as long as they credit me with them. You can see what my licence looks like on the bottom left-hand corner of my blog.
• Make your intentions clear on your site – If you don’t want others to use your copy or your photos say so on the pages of your site or blog. You could say something like “Please do not reproduce my images or written content without my consent, if you like something and you’d like to use it just ask me ”
• Apply water marks to your photos – these things can actually be removed from determined and experienced copyists, but most copyist won’t know how (and they wouldn’t be bothered to learn) so they are a good deterrent. See below for Watermark tutorials.
• Do a search on the web to see if your work is being copied - Carla showed me a post on Startup Princess which had a cool link (in the comments) to Copy Scape. You can type in your page URL into the search box and the engine will look for any copies of your content on the web. You may be surprised at what you find.
• Search and destroy – OK so that’s a little over the top, but if you discover that your work has been copied and you’re unhappy with it don’t take it lying down. Contact the copycat and let them know that you know! If the copycat is a serial copyist this will often be enough to deter them from doing it (at least to you) again.

Further reading

• About UK Copyright
• About USA Copyright
• What is Intellectual Property – UK
• What is Intellectual Property – USA
• What is Intellectual Property – Europe
• What is Intellectual Property – Asia
• How You Can Fight Back Against Online Plagiarism
• Countries covered by Copyright

Creative Commons Licence

• Homepage
• Review conditions – various features of CC licences
• Select and obtan your level of licence

Watermark tutorials

• Watermarking Images
• Paint Shop Pro Watermark
• Photoshop Watermark
• YouTube Photoshop Watermark

I hope some of that helps. Have you had any experience of having your work being copied?

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Yes I know that I do go on about this, but a busy blog is one of the best marketing tools your Craft Business can have. The larger the readership of your craft blog the more people know about you, and your craft products. Lot’s of craft business owners use their blog/s to promote their craft business (myself included) as well write about the more personal side of their lives. The question is: how to you do this in an engaging, informative, and entertaining way, and without offending your readers (e.g because the blog is one big advert)? In this post I’m going to suggest items that you could include in your Craft Blog.

A good craft blog is any craft blog that YOU’D like to read…

Think of crafty blogs that YOU really enjoy reading, what things make YOU come back to those craft blogs again and again, what makes YOU subscribe to them, and what makes YOU comment on their posts. If you don’t have lots of fave craft blogs, think of things that you would like to see in a craft blog. It really is worth taking a bit of time to answer this question and write down your answers on a sheet of paper. This is exactly what I did back in November ‘06 when I first started blogging. You see, I think that the maxim ‘treat others as you would like to be treated yourself’ works in most everything. If you run a shop, try to give the kind of customer service you would like to receive, if you sell craft items try to sell things that you would enjoy receiving yourself, and if you write a craft blog write about things that you would like to see in a craft blog and you won’t go far wrong.

My computer is sooooo slow today!

Here are some blog items which are to be found in all busy craft blogs:

• Tutorials, making advice, and ideas - these require effort, but they are worth it because one of the main strengths of the crafting community is the community’s desire to share ideas and knowledge, and anyone who takes the time to do that is regarded as ‘a good sort’ in the crafting community! Examples of tutorials in craft blogs: a whole stack of coin purse tutorials listed in Need More Fibre, and a Whip Stitch tutorial on Futuregirl, and a whole mixture of tutorials listed on Whip-up.
• (Somewhat) personal entries - and integral beauty of a handmade item is that a person has made that item with their own fingers, they have taken a fair amount of time to do it, and they have done it with love. I think that one of the best things that you (the creator of that item) can do to increase the value of your craft item is to bring it to ‘life’ giving your readers and customers an insight to who you are. It increases trust, gives your craft items ‘personality’, and it’s interesting (because we’re all nosey!) Don’t you just love it when you are at a craft fair and you can see the vendor making craft items to sell. Just the sight of seeing the artist at work somehow adds value to their craft products… A one-off or limited edition handmade item is the antithesis of a mass produced item made for a faceless corporation, so celebrate this difference on your craft blog. Get a bit personal, how about talking: about the crafting process, what things went wrong, what things went right, what your favourite cake is, things that you find inspiring, things that you find funny, recipes, your new hair cut, stories about the kids, etc. etc. etc.
• Nice photography - unfortunately not all of us are as fortunate as Amy or Heather (who’s partners are both pro photographers). But we can still try to take well lit, and clear photos. Also consider taking a few different shots of the same craft product, i.e. front, back, side, inside, this give readers and customers a clearer view of your products.
• Writers promoting others - a very good way to promote yourself is to promote others. The more you do this the more that other people will promote you in return. Share links, swap links, link, link, link! Of course, the favour isn’t always returned ‘directly’, it’s more a case of creating good ‘internet karma vibes’. Also your readers will appreciate being shown new and interesting links, just like you do when you are reading other craft blogs.
• Regular-ish posting - I know that this one can be tricky, Crafters are busy people! The thing is if you don’t post with some regularity on your blog, you’ll find that may loose readers who’ll go and find other fave blogs to read…

Further reading on writing good blogs:

• Emoms
• Blogging Basics 101
• Blog Tips
• Blog Herald
• Blog Hacking
• Better Business Blogging
• ChrisG

Don’t forget to add your blog to Blog Directories to help you be more easily found (and it’s free!):

• Blog Catalog
• Technorati
• Blog Search Engine
• Blog Flux
• Blog Her
• Delightful Blogs
• Blogarama
• Blogs by Women

• Craftzine
• Adorn
• Whip-up
• Craft Gossip
• Craftster
• Craft Revolution
• We love Etsy
• Indie Quarter
• Modish
• Decor8
• Anything Indie
• Trunkt
• Mintd
• Indie Finds
• Oh Joy!
• Design Sponge
• Indie Fixx

“Ohhh! I saw this Absoluuuuutley Gooooorgeous bag, necklace, plushie, vase, shawl, print, book, soap, etc etc. etc. on (any of the above) website last night!”

Getting your blog and/or your craft products to appear on sites like these is obviously a REALLY GOOD thing for your craft business, the question is; how do you go about it? Well, it’s both easy, and a bit tricky. It’s easy in that (in most cases) it’s a simple matter of just approaching the authors of these sites and asking them to blog about/review your craft item. And it’s tricky because whether you’ll be accepted for review or not, kind of depends on what you have to offer them in return. So, in this post I am going to list some things that you can do to increase your chances of getting craft sites like these to accept your yummy craft goods for reviews (if you have your own site/blog).

1. Get yourself on the web - If you want to get yourself reviewed on a website, it REALLY helps if you have your own website/and or blog (I’ve posted about blogging here). There are lots of benefits to having your own website/blog you can display your craft products and you can talk about them, and very importantly, you can link to other sites. It’s important to link to other like-minded sites because in doing so you are making your own site/blog more popular in the search engines. Therefore, it’s a good thing to offer to link to the review site (so as to make them even more popular in the search engines) or even better link to them before you approach them for reviewing your products (this shows goodwill). The more popular you are, the more popular you will be! This does take time, but in my experience it really IS worth the effort.
2. Take a good photo of your craft item (you could try this method of cleaning your photos) because lots of sites don’t really need to see you craft item in the flesh. Often all they want is a link (to your site of blog) and a good sized, clear and attractive photo to put in their own site. If you’re not too hot at taking photos, it’s worth asking a pal to take the pic for you. Most of these craft review sites are very design conscious so if your craft product looks attractive in a good photo it is more likely get reviewed.
3. How about making your craft item useful as well as beautiful? – A good way to get your product reviewed is to make it more than eye-candy. How about making up a tutorial for part of/or all of the craft item that you want reviewed. I think it would be fair to say that my bag making tutorials DO contribute a far bit to my blog popularity (yep they do take me ages to make, but once they’re up there they will hopefully be used again and again, and discovered by lots of new readers). Sites like CraftZine, Whip-up and Craftster and squillions of personal craft blog love tutorials (as do I!) . Just approach sites like these and tell ‘em about your tutorial on your blog! Look for craft forums, join them, and post details of your craft tutorial with a link to your blog. Your tutorial needn’t be complicated, just make something nice and show others how you did it!
4. If you want to send your products to sites ask first - one of the things I enjoy about running my business is all of the freebies that I get sent. 7 times out of 10 I usually receive a nice email from a supplier who will introduce themselves, they’ll talk a little about their product, even better they’ll include a link to their website too (see, a web presence is so important) and they’ll ask if I would like to receive a sample. It’s really nice when a potential supplier is polite and they ask first before sending, this gives me a positive feeling towards the supplier and it’s the best start to business relationship. However, some suppliers don’t ask first before sending and their products aren’t always suitable for my shop, so they have wasted money in sending something that I won’t use (or promote). Another thing that annoys me is when suppliers send me loads of product photos in emails (when I have never heard of them, or asked for them), they really clog up my inbox! Grrr!
5. Offer up one of your craft items as a prize on your site or blog – this is a great way to promote your products and your site as everyone loves to win something nice. I’ve seen some blog competitions specify that you need to link/ and or subscribe to them in order to enter their draw. I don’t do this personally, but I suppose it is a way of increasing your own site popularity – I guess it depends on the value of your prize – the more your prize is worth, the more you (could perhaps) get away with when asking entrants to do this, that, and the other!

How about you folks? Why not introduce yourself with a link to your craft blog/shop and share with us things that you have done to get yourself noticed on other websites?

Next time: I suggest items to include/post about in your craft blog to help increase readership and search engine popularity.

Right, so last time we looked a ways to market yourself and your business for free, this time we’ll look at way to market our craft business on the cheap (I have written down what I have done for my own business in italics):

• Get yourself a blog This is my favourite way to market myself and my business. I use my business blog to promote my products, give my customers an insight to who I am, provide tutorials (that use my products), showcase the bag making skills of others. By doing these things I hope introduce bag making to people who have never made bags before, increase the trust that customers have in me as the owner of my business, encourage others to go into business themselves, and create a little corner (that is less formal, and more casual than my shop) for us bag makers to congregate. Having your own blog gives you another web link (that you can get out there in the internet), and a platform in which to talk about you, show off your craft photos, show off your craft, talk about the craft process for example. I have found blogging absolutely invaluable to my business, and I can’t recommend it for your craft business enough! I use Typepad (which only costs me £4.50 a month – bargain!) because it was recommended to me, I think they look good, and I like their type list function. I had never blogged before I started (Nov 06) and I’ve learned it all on the way. You don’t need to be a computer geek (the help you need is in the help pages). Here are a few well known blog providers, some of which are free (I don’t know about the ones in other countries, sorry!): Sixapart (who provide 4 different types of blog depending on your needs), Wordpress, and Blogger.
• Get yourself your own logo - It’s really worth getting your logo designed by a pro (you can also approach the owners of good looking blogs and ask them who designed their banners, and lots of web designers have their own blogs, see if you can set-up a trade with them!). If you are rubbish at drawing (like I am) don’t attempt to design your own logo yourself because it will look unprofessional and this may well turn potential customers off. In the beginning I had no idea what I wanted for my logo. I just knew that I wanted it to look friendly, approachable, craftish, not too young, and not particularly old. My designer (who is experienced in logo design and branding) and I worked on the logo together and we eventually settled on the final design, font, and colour after almost everyone of my friends said ‘yep, that’s the daddy!’
• Get yourself a strapline (as defined by Wiki). A strap line is a useful bunch of words that serve to reinforce /inform (in a quick & simple way) just what your craft business is/provides. I’ve had my strapline “Love Bags, Make Bags” from the beginning and I hope that from reading it, it is obvious to the reader that my craft business is involved in handbags, and handbag making. When my strapline appears alongside my logo is serves to inform people of what my business is (in case you can’t tell from looking at the logo in isolation.

I’m guessing that this guy will have to think up a better strapline…

• Get yourself some labels – and place them on your craft. If you have a pretty logo, in nice colours it will look great on a tag or label and when you put these labels on you craft items it will make them look more professional. When things look more professional the perceived value (what something appears to be worth) increases, making your product look like it is even better quality. Include contact information on your label such as website or telephone number becuase as the owner shows off his or her new craft item (bought from you) you can bet that he or she is going to asked where it was bought from. Also, your craft item may be given as a present and the new owner may well want to know how the get their mitts on more of your craft items. Use you craft items to promote you! You can make your own tags (have a look at these yummy ones,) and/or you can have woven labels made for you. Here are some manufacturers I can think of (there are lots more, have a search on Google). Cashes, Charm Woven, National Weaving, and Clothing labels 4 u.
• Get yourself some stationary - such as business cards (did you have a look at the Free business cards yet?) postcards, or get creative and think up your own ‘little calling cards’ that you can put your business info on. In the past I have received cute ‘business cards’ that have been made from quilted scraps, cute key rings made from bottle tops, and wire window decorations all of which the creators have used as ‘business cards’. They are so pretty that they haven’t gotten lost or been thrown away! The more attractive and or useful something is the less likely it is headed for the trash, plus they also make you think nice and positive thoughts about the creators (which is important!). If you have a Flickr account (which is free) you can also make up your own Moo Cards, and postcards which are also popular and dead handy becuase you can use pictures of your craft items.

As soon as I hear of more marketing tips like these you can be sure that I’ll write ‘em down and share them with you. Do you have any little cheap and cheerful marketing tips that you use, and you would like to share with us?