The first year being a new Etsy seller can be fun, frustrating and confusing. Here are a few tips to keep in mind while you start to work at home online.

1 – Limit the amount of time you spend on the forums.

You need to focus your attention on creating new products for your store. If you are on the forum looking for tips, be sure to have a notebook with you and actually write down what you plan on trying. Also, if you are on the forum to promote your business, just spend a limited amount of time. Be considerate, give advice and share your knowledge. Don’t just look at what your going to get out of a conversation.

2 – Consider selling on both Ebay and Etsy.

Look for offline places to sell your products as well. The point of this is that it relaxes your brain a bit. You aren’t all stressed out about making the Etsy store work. Less stress = more creativity and nicer communications with others.

3 – Consider making a few purchases from other Etsy sellers to gain some positive feedback.

This is a great tip if you are new to Etsy and have little or no feedback, but it’s a good idea as a veteran seller too. Many buyers are wary of buying from brand-new sellers especially if they do not have feedback.

4 – Offer free shipping with your products. 

It can make a difference on how fast some items will sell. Be sure to accommodate the shipping in your listing price. Remember, you will also pay a little more in fees with the shipping included so may want to consider adjusting for that too. Consider writing ”free shipping” in your title.

5 – Use Tags because this is how potential customers will find you. Most will do a search on Etsy. Use all the tag spots available.

If you want to sell different things in your shop, then go right ahead! I like that type of store myself. It seems like a fun boutique. I get to dig around and see what I can find.

What tips do you have for the new Etsy seller?

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You’ll probably need to know how to make a bow for a wrapped gift basket even if you aren’t making gift baskets as your business. Gift baskets make nice personal gifts too. I’ve always wondered how to make the perfect bow and I found some nice instructions.

The key to the look of this bow is to have two coordinating ribbons.

The ribbon appears to be at least a 2 inch ribbon.

She didn’t say that it had to be wired.

So, without further delay, please press play and enjoy!

 

 

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To me, moms working at home are a great inspiration. Because of:

  • The sacrifices to spend more time nurturing their family.
  • The lessons being taught to the kids about planning, working, organizing, goal-setting, dreaming and so much more.
  • The chaos of being together so much.
  • The creativity and ingenuity to get things done.

I like to research, read and write. I like to talk about true home business opportunities. Those born of inspiration, perspiration (and maybe even a little desperation to make it work.)

There are plenty of people who talk about other stuff. The home business ideas with big headlines and large claims. I know some of it probably works. I know some of it probably only works for certain people. That’s OK.

Real passion, hobbies and interests of real people are more interesting to me. I’d rather choose to solve problems and share genuine ideas over searching out get rich today quick-fixes.

Why is Passion Important?

Ever wonder what the secret of successful moms working from home is? Do you think they know something you don’t? Do you think they just have more connections? Maybe you are sure they have better luck?

If I were to guess, I would guess that successful moms have a passion for their business.

  • It consumes them. They could work all night without a care.
  • They could talk about their business all the time.
  • They could make any stranger a friend by discussing the what’s and the why’s of what they do for their business.
  • The truly enjoy what they do.

Passion Turned into Starting a Home Based Business

What if you haven’t found anything in your life that you enjoy so much that you could start a business with it? Well, if you are serious about striking out on your own you have some work to do. These are my suggestions for finding a topic your are passionate about.

  1. Start with your hobbies. What do you like. Why do you like it. Get a piece of paper and come up with 30 ways you could make money from your hobby.  List silly ways, crazy ways, ways you have no idea how you would make them work. Come up with some ideas that seem outrageous.  Once your list is done, fold it up and put it away for a while.
  2. Head to the library and get yourself to the non-fiction section. Start wandering around. Pick out a few books. 4,5 or 6 about things that just sound interesting. It doesn’t matter if you know anything about them or not. Check them out and take them home. Read them if you enjoy reading and have the time to read. If not, then just start skimming them. Pull out a piece of paper and make another list of 30 ways to make money around these topics. Fold it up and put it with the first list.
  3. Try a new hobby. Learn it. Take a class. Have fun. Read some blogs about your new hobby.  Make a third list of 30 ways to make money. Put that list away.

Starting a business – moms working from home

So, now it has probably been a while. A few weeks or months have probably past. And you know what… while you have been busy learning new things your mind has continued to think about those lists you made with all the ideas about how to make money. I bet you’ve even found yourself thinking more often ‘hey, that could be a business’.

Now is the time to take action. Pick the idea that won’t go away. The scary idea even. I’ve heard once that the more scary something seems and the more you say to yourself  ‘There’s no way I could do THAT’, then that might be the right idea to pursue.

Start your business plan. Pick a start date. The ultimate goal (in my mind anyway) is to be an independent business owner. You control it. You control where you get your supplies. You control the pricing. You control your website, your blog, your advertising and your online store. Um…overwhelmed yet?

Why is this important?

In the end, you don’t want to be subject to someone else’s business policies. You don’t want changes decided by another person to negatively impact your business.

How did all those moms working from home learn everything they need to know?

Honestly, the ’school of hard knocks’ is a great teacher. And the only way to learn the lessons is to get started and take action on your business plan.

Second, find a small amount of positive resources you can trust. Your own mind can generate more than enough fear, anxiety, worry and doubt. The last thing you need is to read and participate and talk about those topics even more. I say get a small amount of resources (a nice blog, a favorite book, a friend, an online forum) because you don’t want to spend so much time talking that you aren’t doing!

Third, do you your own thing. Your intuition knows what is best and right or wrong for you. This is not a race. It is not a popularity contest. There is no right or wrong way to run a home business. There is YOUR WAY!

It is your passion and your business. Make it be what you want it to be.

In the end, as far as my passion goes,  I hope I can help a few moms stick on the path to their dreams like other moms working from home.

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Some webmasters try to use free article content from content directories to get visitors to their site and make some money. This is mostly important for those who have just begun working as an affiliate for several companies and do not yet have any funding, yet need to built small niche websites to visitors to their site so that they can begin making revenue.

Although this can sometimes be the only option for those who are running on a non-existent budget, it is not a way that will effectively build your website or revenue. There are a few potential reasons why this may be detrimental to your business building efforts for making money with articles.

Problem #1 – Search Engines

  • Search engines will only look down upon your site if it has the exact same duplicated content than other sites. The more sites that share your content, the less it will help you achieve good search engine rankings.
  • Good search engine rankings are essential in getting visitors to your sit so that they have a chance to click on your affiliate links. If you cannot even get visitors, then will never make an revenue. Working on the search engine optimization of your site so that you will eventually be high enough in the results to get customers, should be priority one. Unique articles are best for making money with articles.

Problem #2 – Getting visitors to click

  • Although getting your site high on search engine result pages and acquiring site visitors is hard work, unfortunately this is only half of the battle. You must also be able to convince those visitors to click on your affiliate links.
  • If your visitors see the same content they have seen on a multitude of other sites, they will be least likely to click on your links. This is because most people want to buy things that are recommended by people that they trust or whom they feel like are an expert on the subject.
  • If your content is just free article content duplicated from other sites, you will be exposed as someone who does not really know what they are talking about and therefore will not look heavily on your product recommendations. This will reduce the number of website visitors who will be willing to click through.

Problem #3 – Author Bylines

  • Most free  article content is only given to you if you agree to place the authors byline under the article (you can get into trouble if you try to use it without following the stipulated rules).
  • This poses a problem because most author bylines include links. When a reader gets done reading a really intriguing article, there is a strong possibility that they will click on the author’s byline link rather than your affiliate links.
  • This is the entire reason why these authors offer free content to begin with, so that they may get their name and links out there to the public.  They will be making money with articles distributed with their name.
  • Using this type of content may mean shooting yourself in the foot and losing possible profitable website visitors.

Once you put these three problems together, you are looking at a serious decline in revenue simply because you used free website content from article directories. Although it may be the only option for some, if you have the funds to buy your own original content, then you should go this route. If you don’t have the finds, however, you may be better off writing your own content and then hiring professional services once you have made a profit to work with.

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If you have an online store, one of  your top questions will undoubtedly be centered around how to take pictures of your product.

Who takes pictures of your products if you have them listed online? Do you pay a professional to do this or just post pictures you have taken at home even if you are not a professional? 

Many people hate their own pictures of their product.  But, we know it could cost a lot of money to have professional ones done.

How often does the picture sell the product?  Do quality pictures make that much of a difference?

5 Tips About How to Take Pictures of Your Product

1) Set up an area with a natural or light background. Keep it uncluttered and simple to focus on the product.

2) Learn how to fix and doctor up your pictures in Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Elements (You can download a free trial version from the Adobe website)

3) Learn how to cut out your background and just show your product

4) Try taking some outdoor pictures on a nice day!

5) Have someone else take the pictures for you. Your spouse, your sister, your mom.

Bonus Tip 6) Just practice taking a lot of pictures. Do it in some downtime when you are not rushed to be posting new products for sale in your online store.

Bonus Tip 7) Pull out your manual for your camera. Re-read it (or read it for the first time). Maybe you change some settings that will increase the picture quality.

Bonus Tip 8) I haven’t tried this myself because I use Adobe Elements. If you use Windows XP, 2000 or Vista, you might want to try out paint.net. It is free photo editing software similar to Photoshop. It doesn’t have all of the capabilities of Photoshop, but it’s pretty good considering it’s free. You can find it at www.getpaint.net/

Learning how to take pictures of your product will improve the look of your online store. Do you have any picture taking tips?

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I’ll be the first thing you thought when considering newsletter publishing was the ability for making money from selling advertising space. And yes, this is a good thought!

If you would observe the company that delivers the daily paper to your doorstep for a business case study, you will come to learn that the newspaper publisher hires reporters, writers and other important staff to create the contents and deliver the papers to their readers.

In addition to the above mention, the publisher has to invest regularly in heavy duty machinery and tons of papers in printing tons of newspapers on a daily basis.

And in order to ensure that the newspapers are delivered on time, the publisher appoints agents at every part of the covered territory.

So, how does the newspaper company make money? It is obvious that selling a copy of the papers at less than a dollar would not even be able to even fund the operations.

The answer? Selling advertising spaces! You have definitely seen lots of advertisements in the newspaper. The publisher simply sells advertising space in the papers to advertisers who want to leverage their advertising efforts on the paper’s high readership.

On the same analogy, you can make money the exact way from your newsletter: simply by selling advertising space to prospective advertisers!

If your mailing list size exceeds 1,000 (5,000 is recommended) subscribers and beyond, you can start selling advertising space for say, $10.00 per sponsor ad.

In this manner, you turn every issue you send out to your subscribers into a profit-pulling device. And since there is virtually no end to the stream of advertisers as products, services and businesses are cropping every single day in every industry imaginable, so are your money making opportunities.

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Finding inspiration to work at home isn’t always easy. Some days…are one of those days.

Everything is just all wrong from the moment you wake up. The house is a mess. The kids are cranky. You feel one step behind. You didn’t get a good night’s sleep. You have to go to your day job and the last thing you want to do is more work at night.

It just seems easier to do nothing. Make no progress towards your dream of running a successful business from home. Oh, I’d rather read instead or maybe I’ll make some cookies.

My favorite little tip is to set the timer( on the stove, on the microwave, on your cell phone) and start surfing for inspiration to work at home today. Usually it only takes 15 or 20 minutes to inspire me to do one more business task today.

I think we underestimate the power of doing one more thing each day. In the moment, it seems like it doesn’t matter. But, what does a month look like if you stretched yourself and did one more small thing than you felt like doing each and every day? How about after a year?

That’s why it’s important to continue to find the inspiration to work at home. Keep going. Keep at it.

Momentum is everything. If you skip one day…one day turns into two days…then it turns into a week.

How many weeks have you not been working your business? Where is that getting you?

So, here’s a few places I’ve been lately looking for inspiration. Enjoy!

Craft Boom

Handmade for Profit

Handmaiden

The Artful Crafter

Victoria Klein

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