Sticking with online. . .

For months I have been looking forward to getting back to in person events, unfortunately at this point, I just do not see that happening this year.  😔  Many of the events I had scheduled were cancelled and I have resisted scheduling new events due to concerns that they may also end up cancelled on short notice. 

I have re-opened my etsy shop and I am continuing to build my goimagine.com shop, so for the foreseeable future I will be sticking to online sales only.  This will be a challenge, mainly to my sub-par photography skills 😅 but I'll manage.  I look forward to more reviews like "Pictures don't really show how awesome these really are, " "The photo didn’t begin to do it justice.  " Yes these are actual quotes from previous reviews, it is something I hear regularly. ~LOL~  😇

So if you are interested but on the fence, I know buying things online without really "seeing" them can seem risky but I would say take a chance you may end up pleasantly surprised. 😉

Jinkies !! I'm messy . . .

Or maybe I'm just a mess. 😏  

Ok, so it's a bit of both, I guess.

When my easel was new it was all clean and pristine, now 4 years later look at the mess I've made with my drips, splatters, drops, whoopsies and oopsies.  It's a good thing I have a large drop cloth under there and yes it's a mess too. LOL 😄  

As a person I'm also a bit of a mess.  I have some health issues both physical and mental.  I try not to dwell on them but they do get in the way sometimes.  Also worth noting when going slightly mental I have tendencies toward rhymes.  

I chalk the rhyming up to the mental circus, like the OCD, social anxiety, impostor syndrome, yup I'm nutz and it's OK.  😇  Physically, I have early onset arthritis developing in my hands.  I also have some pretty serious vitamin deficiencies that cause uncontrollable numbness and muscle twitches at times. 😏

So, yeah my arts and crafts are challenging for me and my photos almost always suck.  I have taken all the photo advice, I got a better camera, I got a tripod, I have banks of lights, I have solid clean backgrounds, I've tried natural light next to a window, I've tried colored backgrounds instead of white, I have multiple versions of editing software.  I do my best but accept that "my best" is still not that great.  😕

Self acceptance a.k.a. acknowledging I am a work in progress 😇

Not what I planned. . .

That's life though, things often do not go according to plan. 😄  

I bought these crates for storing and transporting my art.  I thought they were a great idea and a good solution too, they are nearly the perfect size, the built in handles make them easy to carry.

Ok, so they were plain and a bit ugly but function was the key factor as I can always make things pretty. 😊  So I contemplated ways to brand them and brighten them up.  I started with the idea of using peel and stick lettering to trace and then hand painting and edging, it was time consuming and tricky as my hands tend to shake at times.  

I got one done and I was super happy with it, but when I looked at the other 4 and realized how long it would take me I sighed and nearly cried.  😔  But I did like the way it looked so I started. . .

On the second one at the very last stage, there was a paint pen explosion of sorts. ~sigh~  Yeah that's not exactly the clean logo look I was going for there. 😕  I was so disappointed in myself as well as the exploding tipped paint pen.  Then I found a fellow seller with the amazingly perfect thing that I didn't know I needed.  She made me custom signs.  

I thought "heck yeah, that will make it easier!"  ~LOL~ I'll paint those up pretty and then just attach them to the crates, bing.  Well, painting them up with tiny brushes and my shaking hands turned out to be it's own time consuming tricky test.  It took longer than I thought because I had to do several coats of paint to get the brightness and depth of color I wanted. When I went to do the silver on the edges I had lots of oops and had to repaint the front.  😒

Eventually, I did get one done in a fashion that I was happy with and ready to seal.  I laid it on a canvas thinking I was going to gloss varnish it, the nature of the cut-out means it has to be laid on something and I was afraid the varnish would stick to paper or cardboard and cause problems after.  Once I laid in on the canvas though. . . I fell in love with it and my mind started running amok with so many ideas.  😲

But this one is Mine!!  as so many first attempts and prototypes are.  I am using in my office and plan to use it as booth signage (if I ever get to an in person event). Also I made it into logo photos for my social media. 😁

Now I'm off on a whole new line of art, thanks to Liz Wengerd of LizsWoodDesigns on etsy 

New can be scary. . .

Trying new things is often scary, forging into unknown territory is bound to cause anxiety, after all, how do you prepare for the unknown.

Some people are better at adapting than others, some people are more adventurous than others, while some people become practically paralyzed by fear and the unknown. 😔

I am not a tech genius but I have been using computers since the aol dial-up days and I am not afraid.  I am not afraid of breaking them, I am not afraid of clicking something wrong because anything that can be done can be undone (most of the time) even if it takes a bit of work sometimes.  😉

Over the years I have used a lot of websites and all of them were different, in format, functions, terminology, I have learned to pay attention to details.  Some sites like to make obvious button-y looking buttons, some use simple text links, some have some really hidden stuff and unless you know what you are doing you can't find things. 😏

I had a stand alone website hosted through ipower where I used multiple different web builders, wizards, add ons, etc. a lot of things changed over the years I had that site, eventually the security and payment security issues became too much (annoying and expensive) so I ditched it.  I closed that business, I killed the website, I let the domain names expire and moved on.

I did a lot of research on ebay, amazon, etsy, artfire, etc.,  I read all their terms of service, I read seller handbooks, I read help articles, I looked at a bunch of shops on all sites.  I decided to start with etsy and in spite of all my reading I still didn't understand search or stats or how things worked. 😏  But I jumped in and just started doing.  Etsy was an adventure, like learning to ride a horse on very shifty sands. No joke, etsy in the 5 years I've been there has been regularly, if not continuously, changing things sometimes for no obvious reason.  They changed the seller dashboard, they changed the shipping interface, they changed stats, they have changed advertising multiple times, they changed the dash interface again, they combined ads, they separated ads, they changed shipping to be through pitney bowes and started charging people "adjustments" etc.,  Every time etsy pulls one of these genius moves the forums fill up with angry and confused sellers who can't find what used to be so simple and right there.  😕  

I do feel for those individuals and I have tried to help by answering questions, with screen shots and step by step instructions sometimes, but I have found some of those individuals do not really want help they just want to complain. Sometimes you just need to vent and are not ready for help, I compare this process to the 5 stages of grief.  So by all means be annoyed and let it out, but then you have to progress through the rest of the process, don't get stuck in one stage too long. 😉

I have always coped with etsy's changing formats by giving myself that first day to just be annoyed, give it dirty looks and make a list of all the things I don't like about it. The next day I try to look with less personal annoyance and more of a critical eye looking for functions or info that may have been moved and make a list of things I need to look for or re-learn.  After a couple of days I will dedicate a block of time to literally click on EVERYTHING and by everything I do mean every thing that looks in any way like it might be a button or link.  I click on things just to see what happens, where the links go, do they open pop ups or new screens to explore.  I hover my cursor over nearly every inch of the screen just to watch what happens, do arrows or drop downs appear, does the cursor change, does the font/color of text change, these things can indicate hidden functions.  When I see those hints I click to see what happens. 😎

My generally curious and adventurous nature has served me well in these situations and I apply that attitude and methodology when I set up on new platforms.  Last year I got my hopes up for the "AC Moore" marketplace hosted on zibbet.  I wasn't afraid to try, I wasn't concerned by format differences, and I never cared if it took off I just wanted another platform to try.  It was weird, it was different, it was confusing in places but I clicked my way through and set up shop. Now sadly that turned out to be a waste of time as it never took off, AC Moore never really promoted it like the said they would.  Zibbet never followed through on the promised upgrades and eventually I ended up taking down all my products. 😕

However, the failure of one platform did not stop me from getting excited about or wanting to try goimagine.com  I joined the #caringeconomy knowing that the platform, layout and functions would be different and it is.  Again I looked at the help articles, I watch all the Wednesday webinars and I clicked on everything I could find.  Setting up shipping was the trickiest part but mainly because it was just different and honestly it looks intimidating because there are so many different options.  I can understand why some have found shipping settings overwhelming, it took me multiple tries to get things the way I wanted them, but eventually I did get things set up just the way I wanted, it only took 3 tries.  😇

I have not finished adding all my listings yet, it's a process.  I was initially confused by the idea of "global options" and I don't find that helpful but I'm sure other's do, many of my listings/products have different/non-standardized options.  So I created all my one of a kind listings first, no options necessary.  Now I am working on listings with options and in the weeks in between I have read and seen more info and have new ideas about how to set up my options and realize that there is no limit so I can set up each listing with its own options if I want, I just have to name and code them so they make sense to me. 😉

I have high hopes for goimagine, Jon and his team are willing to listen to sellers about how we would like things to work. When they say they are working on a change they follow through and changes appear.  When people have questions or get confused they are in the facebook group with answers, they reply to their emails.  The regular webinars where Jon shows his screen and walks us through settings and changes are incredibly helpful.  The site is still in beta so things are continuously changing and there have been a few glitches that were usually quickly resolved.  😇

Jon has a PR and advertising plan, a list of improvements under way and things seem to be progressing well.  I genuinely appreciate Jon's openness, honesty, and transparency about this process of building goimagine's new #caringeconomy. The platform has processed tens of thousands of dollars of sales already and made its' first charitable donation.  I personally think things are off to a great start. 😁

Etsy likes to nag. . .

Etsy has always loved to use auto-emails and reminder emails nagging buyers to leave reviews but now they have changed to a more "in your face" method. 😏  For those sellers who do not purchase often you may not be aware of what etsy is doing to your customers.  Some sellers have said they seem to be getting more reviews and in some cases reviews from people who have not even received their items yet. 😐  Now in my case at least I had received my order before the persistent review request appeared on my home page, but once it appears it seems to be there until you click it and go leave a review. 

They are literally putting it right in your face when you log in (this is my home page this morning).  Now that I have left a review for the order the persistent nagging reminder has gone away. 😉  I have checked and although I received an order confirmation email, and shipping notice email and even a delivery email, there was no review request email this time.  Maybe they are thinking, since some have issues with receiving emails and many do not follow through after the email, but by putting it on the home page at log in more people will respond, which would make sense because they are already at etsy and logged in so no extra steps. 😎

Now I am not saying this is necessarily a bad move but I am wondering how many people will end up getting mildly annoyed by the home page nagging.  I am also concerned about international orders or orders shipped without tracking, which is I think what leads to the review request popping up before orders have even arrived which may in fact be what is behind the rash of bad reviews of "I haven't got my stuff yet".  😟  Now maybe if we weren't in the middle of a global pandemic with severely delayed shipping all over it wouldn't be such a big deal but this particular issue at this particular time has the potential to be a really BIG deal to a lot of sellers.  

Here I go again. . .photos

I am still working on transferring listings to my newest platform, there is no easy magic button.  There is an import process but it's a process and it does not transfer ALL the listing info and it would just lead to a ton of editing and messing with them after, so one at a time creation is the method I've chosen. 😏   It is slower doing them one at a time but I get to decide what order stuff goes up in, I get to pick and chose which things get transferred, and I get to customize the listings as I create them.  

I've been doing them in groups by sections mostly and there are some things that will not get moved like my "clearance" section on etsy, yeah not putting "clearance" in a brand new shop on a brand new platform. 😉  Basic math says I cannot move everything, my etsy has close to 300 listings and my new goimagine shop has a 250 listing limit currently.  There is a larger plan but it's a 1000 listings which seemed like overkill to me.  ~LOL~ 

So there will be no clearance section, no leather jewelry section, and I am considering ways of re-working listings so that I can combine some things.  In some ways this is the exact opposite of what I do on etsy.  On etsy you cannot put a listing in more than 1 category, so sometimes I have more than 1 listing of something like a necklace bracelet set will have a listing for the set and another listing for the necklace by itself.  Also on etsy people seem to like cheap prices, they are looking for "bargains" so the low price points of the leather and clearance draw attention there but that is not a strategy I want to employ on goimagine.  😇

So as I am approaching the half way mark with moving things over, I have hit a bit of a snag, in that I cannot find some of my older photos. 😏  My etsy shop is 5 years old and way back then I had a different laptop and I often edited my photos on my old desktop.  Now neither of those is really alive anymore or easily accessible at the moment.  ~LOL~  You know life happens. . . I got a new laptop, now I'm not entirely sure where the old one is. . .when we were moving out of NY I think the old desktop computer got gutted so somewhere is a drive in a box but who knows where and then you'd still have to re-install it in something to access it. 😌  

Then I realized that those really old photos were not that great anyway and the backgrounds, yikes!  So I am planning a massive photo shoot to take new updated photos for almost all the earrings and necklaces and basically any listing with photos so old they have weird backgrounds.  😉  Now I just have to shuffle through and sort out my entire chainmaille inventory to make sure everything I plan to list is in stock and make lists and piles of stuff to photograph. 😇  I am also considering trying some photos of my walls of art, where I can take 1 photo of a wall and then put it in multiple listings, since I hung the canvases in groupings by style I think I can get away with that.  

I have plenty of time, I have been applying the "slow and steady" wins the race approach because technically goimagine is still in "beta". 😎  The plan is to have my shop fully stocked in a few weeks and the site's plan is to "launch" with PR and advertising shortly after that, so back to school time-ish.     

Maybe next month. . .

I think I'm going to "Resume business" sometime in July.  

The state of Indiana plans fit that timeline, although festivals/fairs and such large events (ya' know the kind I sell at) are in the final stage of the re-open plan. I have been looking to schedule things for fall but I dislike trying to plan months in advance in such an unpredictable time, especially since many of the events are now having a no refund policy on booth fees, even if events are cancelled.  😕

I have still been working on filling up my store on the new platform, which I have not named, linked, or advertised yet. The site is still in beta and although things are going well and improvements are happening every week, many sellers are getting orders already. Actually, on the whole the site has had tens of thousands of dollars of sales already, so I think it's going great for just starting. They are planning for their public launch and to start the PR and advertising for the site in July, I believe, so that aligns with my plans. 😇   

Hopefully, things will continue to stabilize and improve in the next 30 days and I'm not just planning for the fun of it. 😏