Happy New Year

Happy New Year !!

In 2018 I plan to make some personal life changes, not likely to impact RainbowMaille on Etsy . . . too much.  ~LOL~  

I want to shift focus somewhat, while I plan to continue making and selling chainmaille and the wire trees, I plan to take up painting.  I am actually excited about this prospect, I bought the easel and stuff months ago.  I did a few test projects over the summer Franken-Art and I really like how they turned out.  I have so many ideas of different things I want to try.  💫

I'm not sure if any of them will make it to the store for sale or if my walls will just end up covered in it.  Art is so subjective just because I like it doesn't mean anyone else will and it doesn't mean anyone will want to pay for it.  ~LOL~  I do know that the ones hanging in my hallway in their little shadow boxes are never going to be for sale because I'm attached to them.  💖

I am leaving the "gift wrap" option available in my shop all year round, since most of my ribbons are solid colors and not really "Christmas-y" I think I can keep it holiday neutral. 😉

Pinterest. . .

I've started using Pinterest for RainbowMaille, but since I've never been a "pinterest" person prior to this I'm finding the whole thing a bit odd and somewhat annoying.  ~LOL~  😄  

However, Etsy's new social media tool includes Pinterest so I thought I'd give it a go.  I have created multiple boards because I like to organize and keeping my cats separate from my art seemed like the thing to do.  https://www.pinterest.com/RainbowMaille/ 

I don't know how to get followers, unlike instagram where I've made it over 160 followers in the last year not exactly a huge following but better than the 2 on pinterest.  ~LOL~  😄  Short of paying for advertising and doing the facebook "boost" post thing I'm not sure how to get my stuff seen on pinterest.  😖  Worse yet, I am paying to promote some, so I've gotten some views and a few re-pins/saves but over half of them are mis-labeling my stuff. 😕  Like my wire trees which are clearly called out as wall art and home decor but people keep saving them to jewelry boards.  😟  My chainmaille has been saved to beaded jewelry boards in spite of the fact that there is not a single bead on it.  😵  It's making me nutty, it's not OCD compliant at all. ~LOL~ 😄

I'll keep trying and keep posting but I'm not sure it's doing much good.  I know all social media stuff takes time to build a following and be effective but good grief. (and yes that's a Charlie Brown impersonation)  😉

Happy Holidays to all . . .

It has been a good holiday sales season thus far, as Christmas comes and goes I realize my work is never done.  While many others will spend the holiday weekend blissfully lazy and enjoying family gatherings with days off of work, I will be once again editing all of my shop's listings.  😏  

Changes to tags, keywords, holiday, occasion, etc. as I shift from Christmas to Valentine's Day and re-work the gift wrapping description to apply all year round.  

Yep I have to edit all 140 listings. . .again, this is a continuous thing shifting focus with the seasons.  Happy shoppers are completely un-aware of the work on the backside of a business, they search, they find they buy, it seems to easy to them.  ~LOL~

Christmas is creeping closer. . .

We are in the grips of a winter storm and for once I'm glad to not have orders  😇  as I'd really rather not drive my shiny new car in this muck. ~LOL~

I've re-created the mini rainbow trees, I've made a new gold and pink super cute tree with fancy new butterflies that just got listed yesterday.  😉  Today I'm planning some new chaninmaille, we'll see how far I get with my plan. ~LOL~  

I've been working on establishing a Pinterest presence and it's an odd place I haven't quite figured out.  I post and pin and link back to my listings and I have seen some traffic from it, but I'm not sure how to get more people to save and re-pin and share. 

Pinterest is a bit like this blog I keep trying but it doesn't seem to have much of an audience. ~LOL~

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. 😩