Want to do craft demonstrations in your art festival booth but...

Don't have a helper to watch your booth and sell your crafts while you do them?

Veronica Campos-Hallstrom of one of my LinkedIn groups shared this tip and gave us permission to share it with you.

She said, "To take the place of live demonstrations, I use a digital photo frame, a photo book, and displayed photos of me at work for "proof" that it is actually me as the artist creating. You can show a step-by-step process in those means without loading up all the needed materials.

Depending on the space, I do also display a newspaper feature article so that locals can further connect my face with my art and read details about my art for themselves if I am engaged with someone else at the time they are interested in looking or speaking."

I think this is a great idea or you could take your laptop and play a YouTube video of you making your craft or a Power Point of you making them.

Also Read Karen's tip Crafts That Sell-Selling Customized Arts and Crafts and Holly's tip How Giveaways Sell Arts and Crafts.

Please thank Veronica for sharing this great tip with us by visiting her sites below:
Hand-crafted beads created by hand in clay and glass. Art That Sets You Apart.
One-of-a-kind beaded jewelry and home decor items.

Club Creative Studio Blog- Learn About Creativity

Follow the artist as Veronica interacts and shares information about her unique beaded art on Facebook

Found this fun idea for getting customers to buy jewelry (or any art or craft) at craft shows.

How to Get Your Jewelry Customer Buy at Craft Show Event.

Thank you Ooh-la-la Beadtique for sharing such a fun idea!

Also read Do Sales and Discounts Hurt Craft Show Sales? and 5 Places to Market & Display Your Handmade Jewelry for Free

How do you get your customers excited about buying?

I’ve told you the things I did on My 30 Day Plan to Greater Profitability and I promised that I would let you know some things you can do to increase the profits your art or craft show business receives.

1. Draw a marketing map that shows how the people you meet at craft shows are going to move from cold contacts, to warm prospects, to hot buyers.  Include on your marketing map all of your sales tools including your craft show booth, your fliers, business cards, website, blog, social networking, advertising, and more.
2. Make sure each sales tool mentioned above (and any others you use) moves your customer through a process that leads to them buying your art or craft.
3. Get a website. Click here for easy instructions on how to build a website.
4. Get your website search engine optimized.
5. Arrange to take credit cards.
6. Offer a payment plan.
7. Get email marketing (auto-responders). See my post on following up with your customers by clicking here.
8. Create emails for your current customers. Remember to follow the Can-Am Act for email. Send your customers useful relevant information. You want this to help your business reputation not hurt it.
9. Create emails for your warm prospects.
10. Create emails for your cold contacts.
11. Sign up your customers to the proper groups above. Ask permission before signing up people for your emails.
12. Check if your business cards, fliers, etc. look professional and are updated. Be certain they have current contact information. Make sure they mention your website if you have one.
13. Collect names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of the people who are interested in your product. Ask if they would like to be signed up for your emails.
14. Sign up for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Fast Pitch Networking or many others. Let your customers and prospects know they can follow you there. Post regularly.
15. Create a blog. Post regularly. Mention your social networking sites and your website often.
16. Make sure your posts to your blog automatically post to your social networking sites.
17. Pick up the phone and call a customer that you haven’t heard from in a while. Renew your relationship with them. Tell them the news from your business. Offer to send them free information or ask if they would like to sign up for your newsletters.
18. Send an email to customers that haven’t bought in a while. Renew your relationship with them.

1. Be aware of what's going on around you.
2. An open safe is as good as no safe at all.
3. Have someone you trust with you in your booth at all times.
4. Have two adults make bank deposits during the show. Have them carry pepper spray.
5. It's better to give them the merchandise or money than to be killed if someone threatens to harm you. Give them what they want and call the police when they are gone.
6. Don't leave large amounts of money where it's visible.
7. Showing alone. Ask a vendor nearby to watch your booth while you unpack, pack and eat etc. Offer them a small piece of merchandise and to watch their items when they need.

You need to be a great salesman to make money selling arts and crafts. The problem is how do I become a great salesman without becoming the pushy salesman?

I have to admit I haven’t been the best example of a good art and craft salesman. Why, because I was always afraid of being too pushy. So, when I heard the word no I took it to mean no and I didn’t push the issue any further.

A good salesman of arts and crafts will have already contemplated all of the reasons someone would buy their product as well as the reasons someone wouldn’t buy.

They will already have answers ready to overcome the objections made by people considering buying their arts and crafts. They won’t take no personally and will simply see what they can do to gently persuade the customer to make the purchase, without being pushy.

So what are the reasons people should buy your art or craft?

1. high quality
2. price-affordable vs. good value for the money
3. handcrafted
4. great customer service
5. support local economy – local artist
6. help a good cause – charity

What are the reasons someone might not buy your handcrafted merchandise?

1. poor quality
2. price – not affordable or not a good value for the price
3. poor customer service
4. not ready to buy right now
5. not what customer is looking for -salesman needed to offer something else
6. salesman didn’t ask for the sale

So now you know why someone might buy your handcrafted art and you know why they might not. You are now prepared to offer the customer the sale several times through out the sales process and work to overcome their objections.

Also read 6 Reasons Your Art Festival Customer Won't Buy

What other objections do you face? How do you overcome these and other objections? What do you say when faced with these problems?

Have you used Google's Adwords keyword tool to find out what words people are using when they are searching to buy arts and crafts? https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__u=1000000000&__c=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS#search.none

I visited an Etsy store and right clicked to view the source code which is what the search engines use to view your store. What I found is:

< meta name="keywords" content="fancy stone necklaces, wire wrapped pendants, hangings and suncatchers, stone bracelets, stone chain necklaces, men's collection" >

I typed those keywords into Google's Adwords Keyword tool and learned.

 stone bracelets High 9,900 5,400
 wire wrapped pendants Medium 2,900 1,900
 fancy stone necklaces - - -
 hangings and suncatchers - - -
 stone chain necklaces - - -
 men's collection - - -

So what this tells me is that the keywords stone bracelets has high competition (meaning many other people are using those keywords to sell their stone bracelets) but only receives 9,900 global monthly searches and only 5,400 local monthly searches not enough to support any business.

I didn't see the keywords metaphysical jewelry (which the owner of the site often uses to describe her jewelry). The results for metaphysical jewelry were High competition 590 global monthly searches and 390 local monthly searches.

The key to using Google Adwords and selling art online is finding long tail keywords that buyers use not browsers.

Browsers get online and start their research using general terms. If they are looking for jewelry they may search for the keywords "jewelry" then as they learn that what they really want is jewelry made of a certain element they add that word to the search. For instance if they want a semi-precious stone or silver, gold or a pearl. When they learn the specific name of that element their search gets even more specific. At this time they are probably using a 3-4 (sometimes not always) keyword phrase known as long tail keywords.

Now they are using keywords that specifically describe the product, they are now ready to buy. This is when we want them to visit our website, Etsy store, or Artfire.

Using general search terms like jewelry, jewellery or jewellry gets 13,600,000 global monthly searches but these people will generally not be prepared buyers and by the time they are prepared buyers they won't find your shop using these general keywords.

Very rarely is anyone going to find your site if you use keywords that people either aren't searching for or there aren't enough monthly searches for.

Keywords with high competition will mean that your site has to be highly optimized to be listed high enough on the search engines to rank.

The ideal keywords would have low competition, 10,000-100,000 local monthly searches, and describe your product exactly in 3 to 4 words.

All of the information above tells me either people aren't looking to buy metaphysical jewelry or the site owner hasn't zoomed in on the correct keywords people are searching for when they are looking to buy her product.

This information holds true whether you are selling on Etsy, Artfire, or your own website.

Learning where to place keywords is as important as using the correct keywords to optimize your site for both search engines and for your human visitors.

To receive a free 30 minute review of your site like the one above or to get help learning what keywords are best for your site and where to place them email me.

Hi Shasta, 

I think of you so often. I hope your website, email and all are ok now and that you were able to restart everything ok. Hope everything is ok with the children and your family.

I want to thank you again for all the help you gave me in the fall even though a lot of the time I now feel like I am going under the radar screen with my shop. My sales are improving and I got over 3000 views in dec and made $800+. It was busy for a while. It got busy again last week for some reason and then now nothing.

I will need eventually to connect with you again to try to understand the shop stats etc. I am not sure how to track where people are coming from and what gets their attention.

Jeanne Costello of the Passionate Pearl

Holly Sennott creator of  Kooky Critters had this great idea.

"I have a large FB fan following and it brings loads of traffic to my Etsy shop and my website. I have not tried Payvment yet, but will certainly check that out.

One thing that I have found effective in Facebook marketing is giveaways. I do my own little giveaway each month and also do larger giveaways on other pages (they must have 2000 fans or more). You can typically expect to gain 5 − 10% of their fans during a giveaway period. I just completed one last month and gained 500 fans from it!

This is how the give away works... I am approached by a business to enter the giveaway. I then check to be sure that they have a large fan base. I offer a small product of mine (typically a $5-10 item) for their event. I will also offer free shipping to US and Canada. People are then required to "like" my page in order for the chance to win it. When the giveaway is over, the organizer lets me know who won and I then mail it directly to them.

It only costs me between $5-10 dollars in total and I can gain 100+ fans. That seems like pretty inexpensive advertising to me.

You can go looking for giveaways to enter if you are not approached. It has really worked for me and I always get orders from participants who did not win. BUT, be choosy about which ones you enter, be sure that they are your target audience."

Please thank Holly for her tip by visiting her pages:
www.kookycritters.com
www.etsy.com/shop/kookycritters
kookycritters1@gmail.com

Also See Barbara's tip Selling Custom Arts and Crafts
and Karen's tip Crafts That Sell-Selling Customized Arts and Crafts

Recently I’ve been working to make my business more profitable each and every day. Today it occurred to me that I should share with you how I plan to do that.

Week one I worked on catching up on left over unfinished projects from previous weeks to prepare for my 30 days of greater profitability. As usual I accomplished some of the things I intended to do, did some things I planned to do later early, and didn’t accomplish some of the plan.

Week two I learned new things about my email marketing to keep my messages from being flagged as spam. I joined a networking site I’ve been meaning to join for months when they ran a special I couldn’t pass up. I did a client consultation which was a new service for me. I blogged about what I was doing and I did all this while keeping up with requests for information about my business.

Week three I mailed coupons to show promoters, had a second client consultation, worked on Facebook profile and group pages. I created a profile on Fast Pitch Networking and added a few contacts there. I worked on cleaning out my email box, and signed up for a MySpace account, and I blogged about what I had done to make my business more profitable this week.

Week 4 what I had a new member join my Linked in account and contacted her right away with other places she could get more information. I found my friend that was already on MySpace and reconnected with her. I created an email I can send to all my customers and prospects reminding them that they can follow me on my blog, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn. I still need to finish formatting it and send it to everyone. I remembered to tell a client over the phone that they could follow me all these places. I also worked on creating my profile on Fast Pitch Networking and added a few contacts there. I blogged about my experience working toward greater profitability this week.

This last week while checking my email and cleaning out my inbox I made a horrible mistake and downloaded a malicious file. I spent the whole last week trying to back up my files so I can reformat my computer. I didn’t accomplish many of my goals except blogging about this weeks experience.

What I learned over this 30 days is that although I didn’t always accomplish everything I set out to do by having a goal every day and working toward it I did improve my business. I am confident that my business will be more profitable in the future because of the efforts that I made this month.

Just as creating your art or craft is an art, turning a looker into a buyer at a show is also an art. You want to encourage each looker to imagine themselves at home using or wearing your product.

First you need to recognize that every person is bombarded with advertising/marketing materials for hundreds if not thousands of items everyday. They may need or want some of these items but don’t have time to sift through all of the information that they see to find the ones they need.

How do you bring customers who are most likely to buy your product into your booth?

Before the Show

Send a postcard to customers in the area who’ve visited your booth in the past. Offer them a discount for bringing in the postcard and a friend.

AutoWebBusiness.com or Constant Contact is a good way to let customers know about upcoming events. I highly recommend you check out these two companies if you don’t already have some kind of automated follow up/email system in place.

AutoWebBusiness.com Increase your sales by 100% GUARANTEED! CLICK HERE

Signage

Your sign should be visible from all the sides of your booth that your customers will be approaching from. It should be clean and in a clear font. It should tell the reader exactly what you have to offer them (not your business name).

For example:
If your product is baked goods your sign should say, “Delicious home made muffins, pies, candies, fudges, cakes, and cookies,” not Lacey’s.

If you product is woodworking your signs should say, “Woodturned pen and pencil sets, handcrafted wood utensils, unique wooden dishes, and original knotty pine picture frames,” not Jake’s Crafts.

This way a customer who has never seen your booth before knows exactly what you are selling before they arrive in front of it. By telling them exactly what you have to offer you remind customers interested in your product not to miss your booth from across the building.

Layout and Traffic Flow

The next thing to consider is the layout and traffic flow of your booth. Arrange your booth so that customers can enter (and exit) easily where they will be approaching from. Is there enough room inside your booth that many customers can shop and move easily or will people feel trapped inside?

Selling large items or if you have a large variety of items to sell ask the show promoter for an additional half (or whole) booth. You want to have plenty of space to display your items properly and still have room for your customers to move about freely. You also need a place for customers to make purchases that is out of the way of shoppers but where you can keep an eye on your investment.

Look and Feel

The look of your booth needs to complement your products. Use western style decor for western products, oriental style for oriental jewelry, if your make beach hats and bags you might use a beach cottage theme.

Color can add to or distract from your product so choose colors carefully.

Customers become attached to items through their senses. They see something they like, touch it and feel the texture, and finally try it on. Part of turning a looker into a buyer is to encourage them to see themselves using or wearing the item.

Encourage this process through your display by:

Selling wearables be sure and include a mirror in your display so they can see what they look like wearing the item.  Display items in a way that encourages people to try them on.

Selling furniture or home decor display your items as though you were decorating your own home with them. The customer can now imagine how the items would look in their own home.

The smell of food is one of it’s biggest selling points next to a sample of the product.

Display your products with these things in mind and see your sales increase.

Looking at it from both the perspective of a show promoter and artist the one thing that other vendors at shows do that bothers me the most is not including the legs of their displays into the size of their booth.

Having the legs of their display sticking into the aisles and into the booths next to them is hard for show promoters, as well as dangerous for customers and also inconveniences the vendors in booths nearby. Show promoters are then pressed to find an acceptable compromise for everyone.

Keeping all parts of your display in the footprint of your booth keeps everyone happy.

Also read Attending Craft Shows Isn't Just About Selling Arts and Crafts.

What is one thing other art & craft vendors do that tick you off at craft shows?

The weather can really affect how your outdoor craft show goes. Wind, rain, and sun are all considerations.

Items that will help are a plastic cover and tarps to put on sides of canopy in case of rain. I don’t recommend counting on driving tent stakes into the ground at most shows so weights for all four corners are necessary. Considering the overall weight is important as you must be able to lift them.

How to make bucket canopy weights:
Put length of PVC pipe over bottom of canopy pipe. Drill holes in the PVC pipe and the canopy pipe at the same time (so holes will align). Mark canopy pole and PVC pipe with colored paint or electrical tape so each of the four corners is a different color. Repeat for each corner. Put PVC pipe (hole up) in small plastic bucket and fill the bucket with concrete being careful to keep the concrete outside the PVC pipe and below the holes. Let dry. Place these on the ground slide in canopy poles and line up holes, slide screws through and place a nut firmly on the end.

How to make PVC canopy weights:
A short length of PVC pipe filled with concrete can be made by drilling a hole through a pvc cap and threading through an eye loop. Then glue the pvc caps on one end of the pipe.

Carefully fill the pipe with concrete, be sure the eye loop is secured into concrete. Let dry then glue on pvc cap on other end. String a sturdy rope through the holes and tie a secure knot. Hang these on the corners of your canopy.

You can also:
Fill an empty milk jug or brightly colored laundry detergent bottle with sand. Thread a rope through the handle and tie knot tightly. Hang on the corners of your canopy.

Gallon jugs of water can be used as weights. Take empty jugs and fill with water at the event for ease of packing and carrying. The handle of the jug makes a natural place to tie to the canopy.
-Family Comforts

Art and Craft Show Expert Shasta McLaughlin provides articles, hints and tips, checklists and more for artists and crafters that sell handcrafted products who want to save time looking for shows, packing for fairs, and get more sales at festivals. Now she is revealing how to collect your customers contact information, follow up with them and make more money while working less. Go to http://www.extravaganzacrafts.net to get her newsletter, The Extravaganza Craft News, that will help you avoid mistakes, save time and money when preparing your craft show booth.

Recently I’ve been working to make my business more profitable each and every day. Today it occurred to me that I should share with you how I plan to do that.

Week one I worked on catching up on left over unfinished crafts and business projects from previous weeks to prepare for my 30 days of greater profitability. As usual I accomplished some of the things I intended to do, did some things I planned to do later early, and didn’t accomplish some of the plan.

Week two I learned new things about my email marketing to keep my messages from being flagged as spam. I joined a networking site I’ve been meaning to join for months when they ran a special I couldn’t pass up. I did a client consultation which was a new service for me. I blogged about what I was doing and I did all this while keeping up with requests for information about my business.

Week three I mailed coupons to show promoters, had a second client consultation, worked on facebook profile and group pages. I created a profile on Fast Pitch Networking and added a few contacts there. I worked on cleaning out my email box, and signed up for a MySpace account, and I blogged about what I had done to make my business more profitable this week.

Week 4 what I accomplished.

• Power Pay contacted me but then never got back to me. I guess I still need to call them next week.
• I remembered that I had a Linked in account and had a new member join there.
• I found my friend that was already on MySpace and reconnected with her.
• I created an email I can send to all my customers and prospects reminding them that they can follow me on my blog, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Linked in. I need to finish formatting it and send it to everyone. I remembered to tell a client over the phone that they could follow me all these places.
• Worked on creating my profile on Fast Pitch Networking. Added a few contacts there.
• Worked on cleaning out my overly full email box which got even fuller despite my efforts.
• I blogged about my experience working toward greater profitability this week.

Here is what I didn’t accomplish.

• I still didn’t get my accounting done.
• I didn’t call the people I just mailed free newsletters to in the last few weeks to ask them what they thought of the newsletter. It is probably too late but I will try to fit this into next week anyway. Call your prospects right away they are only interested about 7 days!
• I didn’t create any articles to send to show promoters that will encourage them to list their shows with me.
• Since I didn’t write the articles I also didn’t start calling my huge list of show promoters. Obviously I didn’t sign them up in my email marketing system.
• I didn’t get the article written for my newsletter although I have some very good ideas to write about.

I hope that this series is inspiring you to work along with me to improve your businesses profitability by doing something each day that will make your business stronger. I know that I’m a bad example but I would really suggest that you write your goals down on a calendar. This way you can truly see what you did accomplish and will remember what you didn’t get done so you can work on it in your spare time or in your next 30 day plan.

The plan for the next 8 days:

Day 24-Write and send a quick email to all my customers from the past asking them how their businesses are doing? Tell them how my business is doing and showing them where they can get more information from my business. Sort of bring them back to take another look at my business.

Day 25-Write the article for my newsletter.

Day 26-Finish writing my book.

Day 27-Clean out my email box.

Day 28-Do my accounting

Day 29-Create articles to send to show promoters who haven’t listed with me yet.

Day 30-Call show promoters and ask them if I can send them free articles.

Day 31-Blog about my 30 days to Greater Profitability for my art and craft show business.

Entry 4 of 6 in the series My 30 Day Plan to Greater Profitability.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Art and Craft Show Expert Shasta McLaughlin provides articles, hints and tips, checklists and more for artists and crafters that sell handcrafted products who want to save time looking for shows, packing for fairs, and get more sales at festivals. Now she is revealing how to collect your customers contact information, follow up with them and make more money while working less. Go to http://www.extravaganzacrafts.net to get her newsletter, The Extravaganza Craft News, that will help you avoid mistakes, save time and money when preparing your craft show booth.

Have you ever wondered exactly who your customers are? Who you should target in your advertising? How to find out if your target market is male or female, what age they are, or where they are located? Have you ever wondered who was the most likely to walk into your craft show booth?

Your art and craft based facebook business page can help.

First of all if you don't have a facebook business page I suggest getting one. You can learn how at How to Setup Your Art or Craft Show Booth Facebook Business Page.

So you are asking how does my Facebook business page help me know who my art fair customers really are?

Your Facebook business page allows you to begin conversing with people about your business then it gives you statistics it calls insights about those conversations and others taking place about your business. When done correctly-meaning most of your conversations are with people who will benefit your business in some way prospects, current clients, partners, affiliates, etc.-you will start to see some trends in those statistics.

For instance the likes The Extravaganza receives are mostly (78%) from females ages 25 to 55+. I also receive likes from males (13%) ages 25 to 55+. The age groups are broken down further but I think you get the point.

I can look further at the break down of ages of the females who like my page that tells me that most of my customers (44%) are going to be females between the ages of 45 to 55+. I know know where the focus of my marketing efforts should be. I also know that I totally waste my time and money when doing any advertising and marketing to males or females under the age of 24 as 0% of my likes are in those categories.

Take a look it will give you a place to start examining the demographics of your buyers and it's free.

Read 5 Ways to Use Facebook to Sell More Arts and Crafts and Art and Craft Group "Facebook Like" Exchanges on LinkedIn as well as Is Facebook and Social Media Selling Art?

Do you agree?

1. There must be enough people interested in buying your arts and crafts.
2. You must be able to persuade people who are interested in your art to buy.

These are two very separate and distinct problems with different solutions.

First one needs to realize that to be very successful selling their handcrafted goods they must chose to create a craft that is wanted and needed by a large enough group of people to support the number of sales the artist needs per day, week, month or year.

Most artists choose which craft to sell based on which one they like to create the most, the one they get the most compliments on, or the one they like the best. This is actually backward and can be detrimental to your business ever succeeding.

Crafters spend too much time looking for those who want their crafts this way. Artists don't realize they are trying to make people who aren't even interested in their art not only like it, but buy it-a losing game to be sure. 

They are always looking for people interested in their handcrafted merchandise and have no real direction to look... instead of going to a group of people who are already interested in their crafts and trying to persuade them to buy.

It's like trying to tell your customers their favorite color is purple when really their favorite color is green. They aren't going to even want to stand around and listen.

Like trying to sell hand tatted doilies to every child, teen, and young single adult that comes near your booth rather than slightly more mature married adults and grandmothers.

Let's be honest here we can't make people like what they don't like or want. They just won't buy it and our time and money will be wasted in the effort.

If your artwork meets the needs of a large group of people but still seems like people aren't interested the problem may be:

• is the group of people who want, need, and like your product large enough?
  • one caveat here is that you want to target a very specific group of people. Get too generic and you go back full circle.
• are you targeting your prospects well in your advertising, marketing and offers?
• are they are willing to pay your price to get it?
• are you selling where your buyers are, where they are prepared to buy, when they are prepared to buy?

You can still succeed selling your artwork this way if

• there is a large enough group of people who want, need, and like your product.
• they are willing to pay your price to get it.
• you learn where your buyers are and go where your they are to sell your product.
• you don't mind that your business will be less profitable than it could be.

On the other hand persuading a person to buy your crafts when they are already interested is much easier. It requires many skills but most of them are small and can be learned over your career.

The skills you will need include:

• correctly pricing crafts.
• using signage and tags effectively.
• proper displays.
• learning to make small talk that draws out the needs of your buyer.
• recognize the needs of your customers from clues they give in conversation.
• not over selling or underselling -giving the customer just the right amount of information so they don't feel overwhelmed or that their questions haven't been answered.
• recognizing when a buyer is on the fence-knowing what will get them off the fence and on the buying side.
• using coupons, discounts, sales, samples, upsells and downsells effectively to persuade an undecided buyer. Read Do Sales and Discounts Hurt Craft Show Sales?
• staying in touch with and following up with customers so they will buy for the first time, make repeat sales, and refer you to others.
• using your business documents, fliers, business cards, to sell more handcrafted works of art.
• asking for the sale and calls to action.

The difference between trying to create interest in your crafts and persuading people to buy your crafts is: You won't be able to create an interest in your crafts where there is none! You will be much more successful trying to persuade a large group of people who want, need, or like your craft already to buy.

The way I see if people really aren't interested in buying your artwork you have 3 choices:

1. Go where people are interested in buying your crafts.
2. Find a craft they are interested in buying and sell it.
3. Find a job working for someone else.

What do you think?

When you are selling your art online little is more important than the quality of your pictures.

You won't get many sales if the quality of the pictures make it hard for the buyer to see the quality of your art or craft. Worse yet the quality of the pictures can make the buyer picture in their mind that your items are poor quality because you didn't seem to care if the photos were low quality.

Taking pictures of our handcrafted items is something that overwhelms and irritates many artists and crafters. It seems like it is too complicated and our photos are never good enough causing us great frustration.

I was very excited to learn of an inexpensive tool that can help us all take better quality photographs of our crafts. I would like to thank Nancy for this wonderful information please visit her sites below and say thanks.

Nancy's blog
My Artfire shop
Nancy's Etsy shop
Find Nancy on Facebook

Nancy uses a light tent by CowboyStudio on Amazon.com to take pictures of her jewelry. Actually I found quite a few there and was pleasantly surprised at the price.

Nancy's described her lights as "just clamp lights, about 8 bucks at Lowes, with 23W 5000K natural daylight compact fluorescent bulbs.

Nancy also shared with us this link to a great video tutorial on product photography. http://www.prophotolife.com/prophotolife-instructional-video-diy-studio-product-photography/

Thanks again for sharing such great information with us Nancy!

Parts of this 7 part series have been reprinted with permission from the article “7 Common Disconnects In Retail Business” by Pam Grimm of Ideaco.

7 Common Disconnects In Retail Business

2. Lack of interest in customers:

It surprised me how often I could walk into and out of a store without having a single conversation with anyone. No one seemed interested that I was even there. When we did come in contact with staff, they really didn’t know how to conduct small talk to establish some kind of personal relationship connection. It was all business. Why is this important? Because the personal connection made with the store is the core of a positive experience…making a connection that makes you want to come back to that store, think of that store,and become an advocate for that store. Another “dropped ball” was in the lack of gathering contact information. In over 95% of the stores, we walked out with no way for the store to ever follow up, market to us, or make another connection with us.

How to Overcome a Lack of Interest in Customers

As I mentioned in part 1 everytime a retailer misses a sale they leave an opportunity for you to make the sale, if you have a product of similar quality and value. I feel like it is obvious that if a customer walks into your booth and leaves without even a greeting that you have missed an opportunity, but since it happens so often in every industry it bears repeating. If a customer walks into your booth and walks away without having a conversation with you, you have missed an opportunity for a sale.

I admit it is hard to find the motivation to happily greet every customer when a show has few customers and sales are slow. Remember it is more expensive to find new customers than it is to sell to those who have already purchased from you. It’s not the purchase one customer is making that will make your business profitable it is the many purchases they will make in the future that will. Retailers who fail to greet their customers aren’t seeing the full potential of each customer. Every customer has the possibility of one sale or one thousand sales depending on what you do to earn their business. If you follow up with correct marketing principles with the customers who have purchased from you approximately 20% of them will make 80% of the future purchases from your business. By treating each customer like your best customer you won’t miss your next golden opportunity.

A customer walked into your booth, saw something there that interested them, your job is to establish a relationship of trust with the customer. Find out what is was that brought them into your booth, and ask for the sale. How do you establish trust with someone? What makes you trust someone? Establish trust by getting to know them, find out what it is that they want and give it to them. You can’t establish trust if you haven’t spoken to them. Start off with a simple, “Hello.” Don’t ask, “How are you today?” unless you truly want to know, customers know when you care and when you’re just asking to start a conversation. If you ask, “How are you today?” you must truly care how they are today. Ask where someone is from, or what brought them to the show today, ask what they are looking for, or if you can help them find something. Ask if there is someone they are shopping for or if they are shopping for a special occasion. Ask if they are looking for a particular style or if they are looking for something in a certain price range. Listen carefully to their answers without trying to figure out what you are going to say next. When they are finished speaking then take a moment to consider what to show them. When you have narrowed the choices to a few of their favorites ask for the sale by saying, “May I wrap those up for you?” or “May I take those to the counter for you?” If they’re having a hard time deciding, offer to give a small discount (10% off) the lower priced item if they buy them both.

When ringing up the a customers purchase always offer an upsell. An upsell is an additional complimentary product for example McDonalds offers a larger fry and drink with every hamburger (or hamburger meal) purchased. Done correctly chances are some customers will make the extra purchase, but no one will if you don’t offer. Don’t forget to collect the customers contact information during this step. They have purchased from you showing a need or want for your products so you should follow up with them to find out if they have additional needs, You can’t follow up if you have no way of contacting them again. You can collect their personal information by using duplicate receipts and including their name, mailing address, phone and email on every receipt you make out. Be sure to ask if you may include them on your mailing list and mark that on the receipt. Only mail to those that gave permission to be included.

Treat every customer like a golden opportunity. Follow up with them multiple times and soon you will be able to sort out the customers who will make many multiple purchases in the future and focus the largest part of your marketing budget on them and your profits will definitely grow.

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“Your ability to discipline yourself to set clear goals, and then to work
toward them everyday, will do more to guarantee your success than any
other single factor.”
~Brian Tracy

How do you know if your craft show booth is successful if you haven’t defined what success means to you?

Does success mean money to you, if yes how much money? Does success mean time to spend with your family, how much time? Does it mean working fewer days and hours a week, how many hours a week is success to you? Does success mean working from a constant vacation-where, working from home, quitting your other job, or having a really great car -what kind? Does success mean talking to 100 people and getting the contact information for 25 so you can follow up with them?

Write down your goals for your handcrafted art and craft business. Define success for your craft show booth.

When you achieve your success who do you want to be there with you? Write it down.

Set goals both for your handmade craft business as a whole but don’t forget each time you are doing something for your craft show booth or business to define success for it. Remember if it’s not accomplishing something to help you reach your long term goal it is just a waste of time and money.

Haphazardly wandering through your business is like wandering aimlessly through the wilderness without knowing which peak you are trying to climb. You won’t ever reach the top if you don’t know where the top is. Choose a goal and know where it is then choose a path to get there.

Now choose a path that will take you to that place. Choose a narrowly defined path one that keeps you on track to achieving the goals you have set for your craft business. Wider paths can take you many places and are less likely to take you straight to your goals. Break down your large goal into the smaller more specific steps you can take to get there. Get out your calendar and write down 30 things you can do to help your business reach your goals. One on each day for the next month. See my series My 30 Day Plan to Greater Profitability to see some of my goals.

Your plan to reach your business goals is like your map to reach the top of the mountain. So choose your path to success and let everything you do for your craft business lead you to that goal.

Art and Craft Show Expert Shasta McLaughlin provides articles, hints and tips, checklists and more for artists and crafters that sell handcrafted products who want to save time looking for shows, packing for fairs, and get more sales at festivals. Now she is revealing how to collect your customers contact information, follow up with them and make more money while working less. Go to http://www.extravaganzacrafts.net to get her newsletter, The Extravaganza Craft News, that will help you avoid mistakes, save time and money when preparing your craft show booth.

Recently I’ve been working to make my business more profitable each and every day. Today it occurred to me that I should share with you how I plan to do that.

• Day 1-Set a goal to do something to make my business more profitable each day for 1 month.
• Day 2-Make a plan. Get out a calendar and write down the goal for each day until calendar contains one goal for each day. Make each goal one that can be accomplished in a time frame of 1 day to 1 week.
• Day 3-Finish writing down goals on calendar. Breaking larger goals down into step by step goals if necessary.
• Day 4-Clean office so I can find everything I need to accomplish goals.
• Day 5-Do projects I’ve been putting off for the past month or so especially accounting.
• Day 6-Finish projects I’ve been putting off for last month.
• Day 7-Blog about my experiences this week.

Entry 1 of 6 in series My 30 Day Plan to Greater Craft Show Profitability. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Art and Craft Show Expert Shasta McLaughlin provides articles, hints and tips, checklists and more for artists and crafters that sell handcrafted products who want to save time looking for shows, packing for fairs, and get more sales at festivals. Now she is revealing how to collect your customers contact information, follow up with them and make more money while working less. Go to http://www.extravaganzacrafts.com to get her newsletter, The Extravaganza Craft News, that will help you avoid mistakes, save time and money when preparing your craft show booth.

Press releases are informational articles sent to the press. They are meant to inform the public of things happening in the area. They are free and will be printed in most publications as space allows (so send them early and often).

Press releases are a great way to advertise your art festival schedule and your craft product. A press release includes certain necessary parts:

• Exciting and newsworthy headline
• Summary that clarifies and defines the rest of the release
• Body answers where, when, who, what, why and how

The body contains 6 parts they include:

Include your schedule of art fair, holiday arts and craft show, street fairs, and festivals and shows.

1. Lead paragraph
   - City, State – Month Day, Year – Your Business Name
   - What is happening
2. Quotes – From previous newspaper articles, quotes from show promoters, other crafters, or previous customers about your product.
3. The Why and How paragraph – Tell the reader why you are attending this craft show, why you make your product, why someone should come see your product and how to attend the event.
4. Call to Action – Ask the audience to do something i.e. See me at The Extravaganza or at my other upcoming shows.
5. Corporate Summary – Include a short summary of your art festival business here.
6. Contact Information – Name, Business Name, Phone Number, E-mail Address, Website

For samples of press releases look in your local newspaper, also examine the People in Business Section to determine the best place for your advertising.

Art and Craft Show Expert Shasta McLaughlin provides articles, hints and tips, checklists and more for artists and crafters that sell handcrafted products who want to save time looking for shows, packing for fairs, and get more sales at festivals. Now she is revealing how to collect your customers contact information, follow up with them and make more money while working less. Go to http://www.extravaganzacrafts.com to get her newsletter, The Extravaganza Craft News, that will help you avoid mistakes, save time and money when preparing your craft show booth.

I received an email the other day from Give to Get Marketing expert, Joe Gracia, that shows how Mullen’s Ice Cream Shop uses their business card to do double duty.

The business card contains the business contact information including name and phone number, but also includes an offer to the business’s customers.

The business card functions as a coupon for $1.00 off purchases of $6.00 or more, $2.00 off purchases of $12.00 or more, $3.00 off purchases of $18.00 or more, or 2 scoops for the price of one. They easily fit all this information on one side of a business card.

There are several ways this concept could be adapted to any business, but I immediately thought of art and craft festival vendors.

Different craft vendors should use different offers.

For instance lower priced jewelry might use an offer very similar to Mullen’s offer above with just a small increase in savings for a slightly larger purchase. Instead of two scoops for the price of one you could use get a free pair of earrings valued at $x.xx with every necklace valued at $xx.xx purchased. For higher priced items like fine art or furniture you might want to increase the size of the discount (or use a % off offer) and purchase to fit more with your items.

The idea is to encourage a customer purchasing one item at craft festivals to purchase an additional item or complimentary item as they will receive a larger discount or savings the more they purchase.

Other offers that could be used on a business card include:

• $x.xx off offers
• x % off offers
• buy x get x -1/2 off and other similar offers
• buy x get x free

The back of the card should have a picture of your best seller and say, “Bring this card and a friend to any show and receive xx offer. See our website for current show schedule.” It should then list your website address. NOTE: Your website should tell what shows you will be attending, have other places they can purchase your items (such as galleries, specialty shops, etc.), and have pieces for sale. By including a coupon code beneath each offer on the front they could use the coupon on their online order to encourage larger online sales.

HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS LIKE A MAGNET
Marketing is all about ‘helping people get what they want.’ Simply do that and you’ll have all the customers and sales you’ll ever need. Learn this simple formula and your business will begin to grow instantly. For more information, visit: Give to Get Marketing

There are many benefits to hiring your children to work in your art or craft show booth. Your children will learn responsibility and business skills while your craft business will reap the tax benefits. You can teach your child about scheduling, work ethic, entrepreneurship, setting goals and accomplishing them to the best of your ability.

Give your child clear tasks and hold them accountable for accomplishing them.

The law is simple treat your child like an employee :

1. Have your child do tasks that are appropriate for their age. Choose tasks they are already good at, for instance a computer savvy teen might be able to type letters to your clients, or even build websites. Artistic teens could design brochures and younger children could place address labels and stamps on mailings. Children who enjoy crafting might help assemble less technical parts of the jewelry you are creating or paint base coats on the
2. Document the tasks and hours that your child works. Keep good records just like you would with any other employee.
3. Pay your child the same wage as you would pay any other employee doing the same task. Pay your child minimum wage for stamping envelopes if you would hire an employee to stamp envelopes at minimum wage. Pay your child per envelope if you would pay a temporary employee per envelope.
4. Pay your child regularly with a check.
5. All assignments completed must be necessary to the business. The child must actually be doing work for the business.
6. File state and federal quarterly payroll reports, a W-2, and a tax return for the child at the end of the year, even if no taxes are due.

The long and short of it is that the IRS when performing an audit needs proof that the work your child did for your business was a necessary business task, that was actually completed by your child, and that you paid them a fair and reasonable wage. Waiting to pay your child until the end of the year will cause suspicion that you are just trying to avoid paying taxes.

Visit the US Dept. of Labors website at http://www.dol.gov/whd/childlabor.htm for more information.

LinkedIn has helped me connect with many professional artists and crafters.

I love when newer artists ask questions I never thought to ask, I learn from the answers they receive.  It’s also a great place to learn from those who are successfully selling their arts and crafts.

I was just checking out LinkedIn this morning and came across this great article on how to use this professional networking tool more effectively.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/6-powerful-linkedin-marketing-tips-for-small-businesses/

I have to admit I joined LinkedIn and had a nearly blank profile for months (maybe more, was it years?) and I wasn’t getting any connections, or gaining anything from having a LinkedIn account. Then I came across another article like this (and bought the product it was promoting).

I used that product to fill out my profile and BAM! I started making connections, getting referrals, making sales, and even appointments for consultations.

Not everyone can afford to buy a product to fill out their LinkedIn profile so use the free tips in the article above and see what a difference it can make in your art festival booth.

LinkedIn is a great resource for any artist or crafter. It is a great place to connect with your craft show customers. Share good information with your clients about things that interest them and they will share you with their professional connections.

Start your own LinkedIn Group invite your family, friends, clients and social network followers.

Use your group to:

• start conversations and build relationships
• tell your customers about upcoming art shows and craft festivals you will be attending
• inform buyers of other places to buy your arts and crafts
• inform your group of materials used in the creation of your crafts
• offer product maintenance tips
• give valuable information and discounts
• share blog posts
• learn what your customers really want
• promote your customers and their products (what goes around comes around)
• refer the businesses you enjoy

LinkedIn is a great place to establish yourself as an expert in the art and craft industry. Use it to promote your craft show booth.

Get Your LinkedIn Training Course!

Fast Social Marketing Fan Pages!

Entry 1 of 1 in series Social Media Networking for Artists and Crafters

Use Facebook to Sell More Arts and Crafts

Pricing an art or craft show product is more of a science than an art. You can’t just set a price that you think is okay and expect to sell a lot of your product for a profit.

First of all you need to know what it costs you to produce your product. You want to include the costs of the goods used to create your product plus a little more to buy extra supplies.

Second you need to include your wages. What price per hour would you like to make? How many hours did it take to create your product?

Third you need to add in the price of your other expenses. Don’t forget to include things like the cost of your studio, electricity, advertising, cost of travel, cost of shows, in this figure. Then spread these costs out over the price of all your products.

NOTE: You will recover a small portion of these miscellaneous costs each time one of your products sell. For example your miscellaneous costs add up to $2000 a year and you sell approximately 1000 products a year that means that you need to add $2 to the price of each product to recover those costs.

In order to make a profit you must build one into your price. At this point adding 1or 2 dollars to your price probably won't hurt sales but...not doing it can hurt your business.

Last and definitely not least you need to know what price the market will support. What this means is that your price can’t be higher than the amount the people who buy your product are willing to pay for it. IF you sell a product that is similar to a retail product you can go to the stores and see what price products like yours are selling for.

Then you need to decide if you can make your product for that price.

Here is a formula to help!

A. Cost of goods used x 1.5 = cost to replace supplies used + costs of new supplies

B. $dollars per hour I would like x #number of hours it took me to create product = my wages

C. Miscellaneous expenses for the year divided by approximate number of products I can sell a year = cost of miscellaneous expenses per product

D. Whatever Profit you would like to receive.

E. Add A + B + C + D=Total wholesale cost of product. This is the price you would receive if you were selling to someone who would resell your item to someone else at a significant markup.

It is not necessarily the price you should charge a retail customer, that price will usually be almost twice your current figure.

F. E x 2=Approximate Total retail price

Compare the answer you got in F to retail prices in the area to know if your price is inline with market expectations.

It may take some adjustment to find the price point that sells the most product at the best profit. Read Are You Pricing Your Original Art Too Low? to know why pricing your crafts too low isn't a good idea.

Here is a link to a simple example of how this works http://www.whatthecraft.com/arts/pricing.htm

Art and Craft Show Expert Shasta McLaughlin provides articles, hints and tips, checklists and more for artists and crafters that sell handcrafted products who want to save time looking for shows, packing for fairs, and get more sales at festivals. Now she is revealing how to collect your customers contact information, follow up with them and make more money while working less. Visit http://www.extravaganzacrafts.com to get her newsletter, The Extravaganza Craft News, that will help you avoid mistakes, save time and money when preparing your craft show booth.

Why is it that 20% of the artists and crafters make 80% of the money?

The reason is that 20% of the artisans set goals and take steps that will take them to their desired effect.

A captain of a ship at sea decides on the final destination of his ship, then he charts his course mapping out each stop along the way. He departs from the docks and sets his course.

In order for your craft show booth to achieve the goals you want for it you must define what those goals are. Your goals (your definition of success) are your final destination. What do you want from your craft business?

• Do you want to do crafts to make extra money for the holidays?
• Do you want crafts to be your full time job?
• Do you want to create handcrafted products to supplement your income?
• How many craft shows do you want to participate in a week, month, season or year?
• How much money do you want to make at a show, a month, a year?
• When do you want to achieve these goals?

When you’ve chosen the final destination for your craft show ship you need to decide on the course you are going to take to get there.  The course you chart will vary depending on your final destination?  You will have to do more to achieve greater success.

Places you might need to stop along the way to achieve your success:

• A certain number of shows each week or month.
• Know which shows are best for your product.  Juried, unjuried, art, craft, fair, festival, bazaar, boutique or commercial.  Which one best suits your product, has products in your price range, has your customer in attendance and the least competition?  Do you want to do wholesale and retail shows?
• Know which products are most profitable and at what price you sell the most while still earning the most profit.
• A way to collect your customers contact information and an incentive to encourage them to give you their information.
• A way to follow up with the your prospects, and a way to follow up with your customers.
• A website.
• A blog and other social networking sites.
• Email marketing system
• Mailed advertisements
• Participate in contests
• Press releases, call to artists, and other publicity

After you’ve chosen your destination, and charted your course the next step is to leave the dock. Like the captain of the ship you are never going to get anywhere if you never start out. The sea is always threatening and unpredictable but the captain and his crew put on their brave faces, prepare the ship, untie it from the dock, raise the anchor and set sail.

Like the ship at sea you are going to get blown off course a little every time the wind blows and the waves threaten so as the captain of your ship the last thing you need to do is check your compass make sure you are on course and adjust accordingly.

That’s what 20% of the people do that earns them 80% of the money. They chart the course of their ship, set sail and correct their course as necessary.

What do you think?