My bottle caps

In case you didn't know, I make and sell boutique bottlecaps. I also sell items I make with them if you are not the crafty type. But more on that later.

I beleive I have the MOST bottle caps available anywhere. I have somewhere over 2000 different listed on my bonanzle store. I try to add more at least weekly. I also do custom orders :)

So if you haven't seen them, here are a few. Those are my very popular Daddy's Girl bottlecaps.

So if you need any of them stop by my store. Bottle caps are $0.50 a piece, a bargain compared to other places. I get great reviews of them.

PS. If you have purchase any of my bottle caps and would like your creations (using my bottlecaps) featured on this blog send me an email :)

No School - President's Day

There is no school in the morning, so I am up late working away.

I am sitting here filling out some craft show applications. I'm getting a late start this year. I was a little concerned about how the new lead law was going to go down, but I have another year for that now. My product contain no lead or phalates, or are under the limits, I just could not afford to test every little thing. Most of my products are rather small, and I do have alot of them so it would get crazy expensive.

I'm not doing in shows in February. It's just too late, and even though I am sure I could get into some shows for the last 2 weekends, I am just not ready. I have alot of stock made but I need to rework my display. I also need to make lots of new stock. Mostly what I have left is stuff left over from my shows in November and December. I listed alot of my left overs online as well, so I have less than that.

I have tons of new bottle cap images to make into things, plus I am waiting on a bunch of supplies. I also need to order some display items for my table. I want it to look professional, like a boutique, yet also show that my items are handmade and unique. I don't want to look too much like a retail store because I don't want to be labeled as a retailer, because I'm not.

I have to get busy. If I get in I will have 2 shows in March. One in Palentine, IL on March 14th and another in Brookfield, IL on March 28th. I'm currently looking for some indoor shows for April and May. So if you know of any, let me know ok?

I'm not sure if I want to sign up for any in the summer months just yet. I have the garage sale flea market thing with Seguin that I am supposed to do and she has not released the schedule.

Valentine's Day

I hope everyone had a happy Valentine's Day and spent it with thier sweeties or kids. I know I did. We stayed in and ordered pizza. I'm thinking alot of people did the same things as us because the pizza took 2 hours to arrive. I could have walked there and back faster.

Oh well it did get here hot, so that's all that matters. We had a family night basically. It was fun and cheap, since we are on a pretty tight budget lately. Stupid economy.

So I am a little late but Happy Valentine's Day!

Link Referral

Lets cover one of the link exchange sites that gets me some traffic.

We all know how hard it is to drive traffic to your website. Even if you are on a major selling website that is a household name, it can be really hard to drive traffic to your website. Let's face is, there are other WAHM's, just like you, who are selling the same or very similar items as you. Sometimes they may be even selling those same items for a lower amount than you are.

So what is a girl (or guy) to do? The answer is simple. You have to get people to look at your website and your products. Of course this sounds a lot easier than it is. The more people that look at your website, the more potential customers you have.

A lot of site owners think that is they list it, buyers will come. While sure you may get indexed in a search engine, and get a few looks occasionally and you might even sell something once in a while. But this isn't really what you want. Most part- time WAHM's are looking for at least 1 sale a day at the minimum. Most are wanting to make a decent living off of this to supplement their other incomes.

How can you get people to look at your website? One of the many places out there is a place called Link Referral. Link Referral is a place where you can add your website link for free. Once you sign up and list your link you have the option to pay for advertising, but you don't have to. With as little as 5-10 minutes per day you can get some decent traffic to your site.

How the site works is that you surf 30 sites per day. You only need to look at them for a little while. There are categories set up and you can choose which ones you want to look at by their brief descriptions. Once you click, if it doesn't interest you after all, just close it out. If you like what you see look around a bit. Maybe bookmark it or even buy something from there. Buying and bookmarking is not required.

Once the little counter says you have visited 30 sites you are free to leave. Be sure to come back the next day to do it again :)

Now, if you still have some spare minutes, why don't you stop and write reviews on 5 of those sites you visited. You can do this while you are surfing to make it easier. If makes you go up higher in the pages, so it is good if you do that as well.

Within a day or 2 you will start to get some hits and reviews of your site. Eventually you will get a few hundred hits per week or month. The amount of hits you get depends on how active you are on the site.

Do you really have to login and click daily? No you don't but you will get more hits to your site if you do.

While it may not bring you sales right away, you get lookers and lookers usually turn into buyers. They may recommend you to friends or family if you have something they were looking for. You will not get rick quick with this, but it will help and baby steps are needed to get your site off the ground and profitable. Unless of course you have thousands of dollars to invest in advertising, but who has any extra money these days.

Awesome alternative selling site

Have you heard of the newest, awesomest selling site? It's called Bonanzle, and it was recently named the Top Ebay alternative of 2008! That is quite impressive since it only launched in Sept. 2008.

Bonanzle now has 1.1 million listings in the 6 months it has been around and is growing like a weed. 300-1000 new members are joining everyday. Why not join now!

Bonanzle offers something that ebay doesn't. FREE stores, no listing fees and low selling fees. You can list as much as you want for free and you only pay when you items sells. It really is great. The site owners AKA the Boyz AKA Mark and Bill are on top of things and handle all customer service issues in less than 24hours usually in less than an hour.

So head on over to the Ranch and join Bonanzle today.

Welcome...

To my new Blog. I've never really done anything like this before, so please bear with me as I learn.
In the coming weeks, I will be posting stuff about upcoming craft shows, advertising, marketing and whatever else that pertains to running a craft show and online biz.

Now for a little bit about myself...
My name is Margaret and I am a crafter. My husband and I live in the Chicago Suburbs and we have a 6 yr old boy. He is in kindergarden, so from time to time you may see some things about that.
I make boutique bottle caps that can be used in scrapbooking, jewelry, bows and lots of other stuff. I also make bows and other hair accessories. I travel around the Chicagoland area to craft shows to sell my wares.

In this blog I hope to cover my items, marketing and advertising ideas, products made using my items, reviews of craft shows and so much more.