Art In The Park
Kalispell, Montana

Craft Show Booth Displays
Retail Success Secrets Revealed

Your art festival and craft show booth display is your brick and mortar retail store. Don't guess at art show booth displays hoping to increase sales. Don't hire professional retail designers to create show booths that sell crafts.

Now learn from professionals trained in displaying crafts for sale. Every vendor can have professional art and craft festival booths that sell handmade crafts and increase profits since retail layout secrets are available online and in books.

Power For Craft Booths
With No Electricity

Should I pay show promoters for power for craft show booths?

Do you need power in your art show booth? Need cash registers, electronic displays, laptops, or cell phones, extra lighting to highlight handmade crafts or handcrafted jewelry, a fan or heater?

Extra lighting increases sales by attracting the eye to craft show booths and allowing craft buyers to see quality and details of your craftsmanship.

The Big One Art & Craft Fair -Fargo ND

Visit The Big One Art and Craft Fair in Fargo, North Dakota happening Oct. 19 & 20, 2013.

Arts and crafts festival vendors contact Stacy and Lisa Frank at 701-837-6059 to reserve your booth now. Please thank them for listing this show with The Extravaganza Craft News.

Want more information on this and other art and craft fairs in North Dakota each month subscribe to The Extravaganza Craft News at 

Facebook Giveaway Guidelines

Facebook has its own guidelines when it comes to giveaways. This is very important because if you do not follow their rules your Facebook page could be deleted. To put it simply, Facebook does not want to have anything to do with your giveaway.

Help Buyers of Handmade Crafts
Imagine Themselves Using Your Crafts

Buyers at craft shows pickup, touch, feel and inspect your handmade crafts for looks, feel and quality.

Buyers online can't touch the items and try them on to see how they will look in your hand sewn dress or handcrafted jewelry.

What Wedding Tradition
Teaches Artists to Blog

Did you know they were teaching you how to blog when you got married?

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue actually tells you how to keep your crafting blog alive and well.

Something Old-Post an old post from your blog to remind people of it's existence.

How to Display Crafts at a Craft Fair

The secret to displaying crafts at a craft fair are shared here by Erin Proctor Herb of LinkedIn group Handmade Jewelry.

Pricing Crafts Correctly Sells Crafts

As far as pricing your handmade crafts go you need something called a loss leader.

A loss leader is a handcrafted item or a few items sold at a loss. They get buyers of art through the door to your craft show booth or online craft store and getting out their wallet. After they've gotten out their wallet they are easier to sell to.

Keep a few items as loss leaders, adjust some of your prices to be more inline with the real market price (for crafts similar to yours) but not at it, and adjust the majority of the items to be real market price.

Are Photographs Keeping People from Buying Your Handmade Crafts

People buying art in a brick and mortar store can pick up and inspect an item for quality of construction, details, etc. They can pick it up, try it on and see how it looks on them etc.

When buying crafts online your pictures are all they have to see the pieces and imagine themselves in or using it.

Ever had a craft show that seemed like a total failure, like you had totally wasted your time and money attending it?

Ensure every art festival will be a roaring success.

8 easy things you can do are listed below.

1. Send out information about the festival you will be attending by mail, email, blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn to your friends, family, and acquaintances. Send an occasional reminder.
   
   Read

Handmade Jewelry Sizing Charts

I've been searching for information that would help you create handmade jewelry. Here are jewelry sizing charts so you better understand what sizes to make your handcrafted jewelry.

Bracelet Size Guide-From How to Make Beaded Jewelry
Reeds Jewelers-Bracelet, Necklace and Chain, Ring, and Watch Size Guide

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Packaging Your Craft Show Products

Need ideas for packaging crafts at craft fairs?

Packaging crafts has always been a simple concept to me it never occurred to me to share. This wonderful post inspired me to share this packaging idea. Most scrapbookers and rubber stampers probably use this concept already. How many of you have thought to use it to package your handcrafted arts and crafts for sale?

How Your Art or Craft Business
Is Like Playing Facebook Games

I admit it! I’m addicted to Sorority Life on Facebook. It's a game where you do things like the girls in a sorority would. You must add a certain number of new friends every level or you are bound to be beat. You send your friends gifts and vote for them etc.

What does this have to do with my art or craft show booth?

You only have so many friends you can invite each day.

Is Facebook and Social Media Selling Art?

Social media is working for my art business but...

I have gone to where my customers (artists and crafters) are on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. and that is where I post.

Search keywords related to your product in the Facebook search box.

Want to know how many people like fine art? Type in fine art in the Facebook search box and go to fine arts-interests.

Check out your competitions pages from the search above.

Are You Pricing
Your Original Art Too Low?

Price your original art too low-You are doing yourself and others a huge disservice.

Pricing handmade crafts too low implies low quality decreasing sales. Don't wrongly assume if you sell crafts for what they are worth you wouldn't sell any.

Get Jewelry Buyers to Purchase at Craft Shows

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.

18 Things to Add to Your 30 Day Plan
to Greater Craft Show Profitability

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.

Today while working on my site I came across this information that will help artists and crafters be more aware of tactics thieves use when stealing our one of a kind works of art.

http://abclocal.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Art of Turning Lookers into Buyers
at Craft Shows

Just as creating arts and crafts is an art, getting a looker to buyer at a show is an art. Encourage lookers to imagine themselves at home using or wearing your product.

Every person is bombarded with advertising/marketing materials for hundreds if not thousands of items every day. They may need or want handcrafted arts and crafts but don’t have time to sift through all the information they see to find the ones they need.

Art and Craft Show Booth Etiquette for Artists and Crafters

From the perspective of both a show promoter and artist one thing craft vendors at art and craft shows do that bothers me is not including the legs of their displays into the size of their booth.

Having legs of art festival displays sticking into the aisles and booths next to them is hard for show promoters, dangerous for customers and inconveniences craft show vendors in booths nearby.

Craft Show Canopies are a Weighty Issue

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

A plastic cover and tarps can be put on sides of craft show canopies in case of rain. Weights for all four canopy corners are necessary, don’t count on driving tent stakes into the ground at most shows. Considering the overall weight is important as you must be able to lift them.

Recently I’ve been working to make my craft 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.

Facebook Page Helps Your Art or Craft
Business Know Who Your Customers Are

Have you ever wondered exactly who your craft show customers are? Who to 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? Ever wondered who was 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.

Difference Between Creating Interest in Your Arts and Crafts
and Getting People To Buy Your Crafts

To have a successful full time business selling arts and crafts (defined as making enough income to support yourself or your family without having a part time job) two things must happen.

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

How to Sell Art Online
Take Better Pictures

When selling art online little is more important than 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 bad pictures can make the buyer imagine your art is poor quality because you didn't care if the photos were low quality.

Taking pictures of handcrafted art is something that overwhelms many artists and crafters.

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.

101 Reasons Your Customer Should Buy Handmade

Customers at craft shows often balk at the price of handcrafted works of art. One reason is they are used to going to Walmart and buying imports at half the price.

Help your customers realize the value of buying arts and crafts by sharing this article 101 Reasons to Buy Handmade.

With the New Year just around the corner I'm reminded it's tax time.

We have more taxes withheld from our personal income than what we will owe. This way we can plan on getting a substantial return and therefore are motivated to get out taxes done early.

How do you handle taxes for your art festival and craft show booth?

Are you organized and have everything in file folders or do you have everything in a shoe box? How is your system working for you? Do you file yearly or quarterly? Do you know what is required of your business?

Things you might need to help get your taxes filed in an orderly fashion ar

“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.

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.

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

Craft Festival Vendors
Make Your Business Card Do Double Duty

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

The business card includes Mullen's contact information and an offer to their customers.