Happy Holidays. . .

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ♪♫♪♫♪♫♪  

I've had several orders recently that I know will be gifts.  😇

I did a holiday craft party with a library youth group. 😊

It snowed last night, just a little bit but the green grass is now covered in white. 😉

I am somewhat surprised that no one has added the gift wrap to their orders, but it's ok. Etsy has continued to change and re-write things so I'm not even sure how many people get to see the gift wrap option.  To combat the Etsy oddities in layout and hiding things, I went ahead and created a listing to add gift wrap, it's the same $3 price point with the same sample photos and I made it a "featured" listing on my shop page so at least people can/will see it.  Ironically the gift wrap listing got favorite'd.  😄  

I am re-making the mini rainbow trees since they just keep selling. Plus I really need to get other new stuff made I'm back down to 138 listings and apparently 141 is my magic number.  After sales last week I was down and I found chainmaille rings that weren't listed yet so I added them and that put me back up to the 141 but then more sales. (not a complaint I'm ecstatic)

I am also noticing that whatever wire tree I put up as a "featured" listing sells.  I've had to change that row 3 times, the tree sells I pick a different one then it sells.  LOL  So I'm going to have to start paying attention and rotating things through there more often. 

Holiday weekend sales. . .

I have been trying an assortment of promotions, sales at differing %, free shipping, posting on assorted social media.  Doesn't seem to be doing much though, it's a bit disheartening, honestly.  😡

CYBERMONDAY17 coupon code click to pre-load 
take 25% off orders over $10.00 (discount applied at checkout)

Sales currently running include 20% off orders over $30.00 and FREE Shipping on orders over $60.00

You would think I would have had more than one sale.  😩

Ok who broke it?!?

Facebook is broken, it's semi-functional, functional enough that the average user probably doesn't realize how badly it's broken.  You may have noticed some page lag, slow loading, failure to load, site unreachable timeouts that seem to correct when you refresh the page.  

See I thought I was in facebook jail being punished for complaining but now I'm pretty sure facebook is just broken.  11 days ago I wrote the post Thanks a lot Facebook complaining about my business page blanking out years worth of historical activity data. I thought it was a glitch or server brain fart but it has never come back, apparently it's not likely to either. 😩  I thought I was being punished because 4 days ago I posted a link to one of my instagram posts and it got no views, literally its been 4 days it has 1 person reached so obviously it was never served up to my 100+ followers. 😒  In October I was averaging 40-170 people reached per post now in November it's 2, 15, 1, 10 ridiculous.  So the instagram share post with it's pathetic single view I was considering "boosting" but the button says "boost unavailable". 😮  I clicked the link and tried to figure out why but it doesn't seem to make any sense none of the reasons listed seem to apply.  😵  

So I posted a fresh post yesterday about the layered sale in my shop, actually wrote the post on facebook not a shared post from somewhere else.  It seemed to work better, it gave me a boost button but when I tried it failed, it gave me some error.  It looked weird it wouldn't give an estimated audience like it normally does and it error-ed and failed.  I tried 3 times yesterday and after it would fault out I would get a notification from facebook encouraging me to boost my recent post "page admins boosted similar posts. .yadda . yadda." . 😫  Why keep telling me to do a thing that is clearly not functioning?!?!

So this morning I tried again and again and I think it finally went through but popped up a box that they received my request and my ad would be reviewed and could take up to 15 minutes to be approved. 😕 This is weird, I've had the page for over 2 years this is not the first time I've advertised, my payment method is confirmed and unchanged, it's jewelry nothing offensive to be reviewed.  Previously it's been about 30 seconds between clicking the submit and getting the notification of approval not 15 damn minutes.  So I checked and it now says approved and I never got the notification of approval.  

Something is very wrong with Facebook.  I complained to my husband about the weirdness over a week ago and he admitted while "facebook jail" is real and facebook does punish people who complain or cause problems it's not likely that that is happening in my case as my page is such "small potatoes".  However, he told me of a much larger problem with extreme and prolonged cyber attacks on the backside of facebook, for about 2 weeks they have been jedi style cyber battling and it's all hush-hush no one is supposed to know or talk about it. Hey I just got the notification of my ad approval.  I hope they get this under control soon because it's starting to get ridiculous.  I got a 1 notification on my page but when I clicked it and went to the notification page there is nothing there, literally the most recent thing is yesterday nagging me to boost the post not even the ad approval shows. 😐  Although, it clearly has been approved because when I look at the page the post shows it as an active promotion.  Also it went from 11 people reached to 51 people reached in a matter of a minute after a page refresh so now I'm questioning if that is actually valid and accurate.  😵  It's just weirdness and inconsistency that I'm not used to seeing on Facebook and it's been going on for a while now.  I hope they get it together soon as it is normally one of my best advertising options for my etsy shop but not if it's not functioning. 😩

Thanks a lot facebook. . .

So this morning I log into facebook, and there is a notification on my RainbowMaille page but when I clicked on it, it went to a blank empty page that said no new notifications.  Now the numbering being a lying misrepresentation of new activity would have been bad enough but it was a TOTALLY BLANK page as in no historical data for the page. 😞  Seriously 2 plus years worth of activity data just gone.  WTF?!?!

Facebook shit the bed on me, I don't know if they are having some sort of internal problem or server problem or whatever what I do know is my business page currently has no history, no data, no record of activities at all.  This is troubling since I post regularly and just recently did a "boosted" post that netted fresh likes and followers, and multiple clicks of the shop now button, you know lots of activity.  Finding a blanked out page with a suggestion to promote my business makes me want to choke someone.  😒  I did promote my business but now I can't even look at the data because facebook forgot. ?!?!?

Business confidentiality. . .

I often wonder how many "etsians" are actually business savvy and daily I am disappointed in the low percentage that are.  😡  

Today someone posted a thread about the possibility of Etsy changing the fee structure, this entire discussion is based on some second-hand information and guess work because someone's friend got a survey asking about fee structure.  Now it has been pointed out by someone else who received said survey that there was a non-disclosure clause and confidentiality agreement before the survey but apparently the person who posted thinks it's ok to go ahead and quote questions and give out private information because she was not the one who took the survey, not understanding that their friend is violating a legal agreement by sharing protected information and that she is in fact violating said agreement by proxy by publicly posting private and protected information that should not be being discussed in a public forum.  ~sigh~ stupid is as stupid does 😒

Yet they all get so offended if you point out to them that they are not real businesses, that many of them are not licensed and have no idea how to properly collect and remit sales taxes, they do not understand even the most basic concepts of business management, actually annoyingly many of them seem to have no reading comprehension or understanding of the meaning of words such as confidential. 

is it a coupon or a Sale ? ? ?

Language is meant to make communication clear and easy however, in today's world we have reached epic levels of failure in that department.  Many people do not communicate clearly and a lot of it is because people seem to have forgotten that words have meaning and are not interchangeable.  I know I'm a crazy picky grammarian stick in the mud, who's all caught up on the semantics at times but that's because people have become so imprecise with their use of language that words are beginning to lose meaning. 😕

It is both sad and somewhat scary because it makes communication difficult and it means that very often things are misinterpreted or misconstrued because the party reading what was written applies their own meaning to words and that is likely not what the person who wrote it actually meant.  

My pet peeve of the day is now "coupon sale" because a coupon and a sale are 2 totally different things. 😒  A "Sale" means that prices are temporarily lowered for instance a "Labor Day Sale" would mean that Labor day weekend prices were 20% off regular retail.  Whereas a "coupon" is a contingent discount that requires the use of the "coupon" to get the discount for instance you have to have the piece of paper for the clerk to scan or in the case of Etsy you must enter the code in the shopping cart to apply the discount.  "Sale" prices are automatic at checkout while "Coupons" must be applied. TOTALLY different things. 

This is only one of a million things that make me concerned that we are in fact going backwards in our evolution, when words lose meaning and language becomes meaningless we end up back to pictographs and grunting at each other. 😟

I have in the past offered "Coupons" and very few people actually remembered to put the code into the shopping cart. 😔  So my "Free Shipping" in November is a Sale and should (provided that Etsy functions properly) be automatically applied to qualifying orders at checkout.  I still have active coupons so if you have a "thankyou" coupon or a friend code you can still use those, they will still work.  😉
  

~YAY~ I got it . . .

Etsy has made the "gift wrap" option available for sellers to set up. ~yay~  I turned it on and set my price $3 and uploaded my photo of "sample" packaging, writing the description was not easy due to the limited number of characters they allowed.  I'm not used to the twitter-esq 150 character stuff, it makes full sentences and proper grammar difficult to say the least. 😉

Unfortunately, I can't see what it looks like because it's still in set up and preview mode so buyers can't see it yet.  😕  It should be fully rolled-out by the end of the month and it includes multiple changes.  "Gift wrapping" as a new option for a fee, "gift messages" which are free, and a new "packing slip" so when things are marked as gifts or include gift messages it will print without prices and messages will be included on the packing slip.  The last time I had someone mark something as a "gift" and include a message it went in the "notes to seller" box which does not print on the packing slip so I had to copy/paste it to notepad and print it out separate.  Not a big deal, to me, honestly it's not like I'm swamped with orders. 

However, I am considering for the holiday season that I might not always use the packing slip option for gifts mainly because it will likely say what is in the pretty box making the concept of gift wrapping pointless.  So if it were a "Gift" and included a gift message and was being shipped straight to the recipient I plan to print that message on one of my hand-colored Christmas cards and not use the official packing slip so as to not ruin the surprise. 😉

 They are nice heavy card stock paper and I colored them with gel pens so they are all shiny and glittery and super pretty.

 Also the hand colored every one is unique thing really fits with my whole shop being handmade and unique items.

I am all set for the season with pre-wrapped gift boxes, pile of pretty cards, plenty of inventory on hand.  I really hope I get some orders that choose the "gift wrap" or "gift message" option so I have a chance to use this stuff.  😇