Analytics

One thing I am thankful for in this business of being  e-commerce are statistics. But boy are they a pain in the ass (excuse my french as my Father used to say) to understand. Statistics show you how your website and blog are doing each day, week, month and year and the same goes for each marketing outlet you choose to use to promote your business. They give you the who what where, when, why and how of those interacting with your business in some way online. Unfortunately, all statistics are not the same. They don't even call them the same things (Insights anyone?) or use the same terminology. So it is up to each business owner to figure it out or hire someone who already knows how to use it.

Product Focus - Self Care

Image by Beth Hurlin via 
Juhan Sonin on Flickr

When I started Scarlet Moon Creations my goal was to make more money doing something I thought would be simple. How wrong I was and how far I have come with some knowledge. Honestly, even if it had been super simple I would have complicated it by always trying to improve. 

However I did not research beyond product packaging, ingredients, basic shipping, bookkeeping and how to use Etsy. I had this image in my head of selling spa quality all natural products to the every woman. Which is not bad but not specific enough. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people doing the same and that's just on Etsy. Then there's the other products I decided to add. My handmade books (journals and photo albums) as well my pagan products. Tons of people doing those as well.

Last year after joining the Pagan Business Network and finding out how to do much more research I realized the "if you build it they will come" idiom is deceiving. I had a lot more work to do. One of the things I've realized that I needed to do was decide on a product focus and target market.

After a lot of thought and research I decided that self care would be my product focus. What is self care? I have seen several definitions but the one I am focusing on is "intentional actions to take care of yourself." Having dealt with anxiety and depression I know that bathing and grooming are big parts of self care. As is talking and writing things down. Being aware of what you are putting on as well as in your body is mindful self care. So this ties into the natural movement and the herbal and aromatherapy communities. I also see self care being a major facet of practicing witchcraft and other types of paganism. Improving oneself, sacred bathing, ritual baths, journaling, Book of Shadows and Grimoires, astral traveling, anointing, cleansing and so much more.

Self care as my product focus leaves the door open for future products that I have been considering as well. With all of this in mind earlier this year I changed my Facebook pages focus to posts promoting self care and inspirational messages as well as my products. I have started organizing my Pinterest page to do the same there. Next will be Instagram and Google+. When I finally have an email list my newsletter will highlight self care as well.

Don't get me wrong self care is different for everyone and it includes emotional, spiritual, and mental activities as well as physical ones like using your favorite scented body scrub to scrub the day away. But I want my products to help you help yourself. For those people that do see an at home spa experience as helpful to their well being I am your gal. However, I also think the acts of scrubbing or washing away and putting or smoothing on to be symbolic. And I plan to make more products that tap into that symbolism to help those in need take away the unwanted and put on those good feelings. 

If nothing else, helping people feel good and take care of themselves helps me feel good, so why not?
~Lashette
  Scarlet Moon Creations

Teamwork

There is another new sort of partnership I started this year and it is going quite well. On Etsy, there is the team feature and actually I think it was in 2013 that I was invited to join a local team called Bronx Artisans of Etsy. It wasn't as advance then but this year, led by the wonderful Nellie Escalante, whose shop is Nelesc Designs, we've been doing more to help promote each other. We've now got a Facebook page as well as an Instagram account where we can share our promotions. There are lots of great Etsy shops and artists in the group, so this blog post is basically to shout out and pimp out my team members, enjoy:

Instagram
Facebook

Blog

Rebel Orisha:   Instagram
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 Website
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And many more.... Click the shop images to see their current inventory. And don't forget to find us and other Bronx Artisans of Etsy on Facebook and Instagram.

Holiday Boot Camp

Hey guys,

Its been crazy in the crafting world and in the every day world too. This year I joined Etsy's Holiday Boot Camp and boy is it not what I thought. I thought I'd be getting emails once a week with goals or suggestions for how to prepare for the holiday shopping season. I get emails twice a week though and they are done already. Only eight emails though they came with great worksheets. I thought they would be paced out so you'd get a reminder as you gear up for and go through the holiday season. Kinda of like an e-personal trainer or drill sergeant. Guess I'll have to come up with my own way of doing that.

The first email was to set a goal for the season. My goal is too make $350 in profit by the end of the year. I picked this because I have only made two sales in as many years and I'd like to prove to myself that this can be profitable. I want to move towards the goal of having at least some money in my pocket when I finish my job in March next year. I also want to push myself to update and spruce up my shop and business practices.

There are things that I haven't done like finalize my logo and labels, update my product pictures and promote regularly on all social networks, that I should have done by now. My production and promotion processes should be streamlined by now but they are not. I needed the reason and the encouragement that this Holiday Boot Camp can give to focus more in this business and make it a success.

So, it has been 4 weeks now, I think, and a lot of what Etsy has suggested is on my list of things to do. After I thought out my goal, I wrote out (or typed up) a long list of things to do to get ready. Then I separated them into different categories like new listing, product pictures, social promotion and shipping. From there certain actions listed needed to be broken down into even smaller actions, so I did that as well. Now, I need to come up with a timeline and continue to go down that list. One of the things on that list is posting blogs more often about new products and about the Bronx Etsy Team members as well as other crafters and craft ideas I like and enjoy. Look out for those posts. I also plan to post a recap of this Holiday season; how it went and whether or not I reached me goal. See you on the other side.

Facebook Marketing

I have come to the somewhat sad conclusion that Facebook is not the place for me to build an original following for Scarlet Moon Creations. Facebook before it went public would have been great for my young business. Unfortunately, I did not create a business page until just before that. The effect going public had was that now Facebook had to prove that it could make money as a social networking site. It decided to do this in one way by changing its site wide algorithms ruling what content users see. Basically, the more you like a certain person's or page's posts the more they show up on your news feed. The drawback to that is if you don't click that like button often enough those 'less liked' people and pages will disappear from your news feed.

Now all of us who have used Facebook for purely personal reasons know that we don't click that button for everything we see on our news feeds but that does not mean we do not want to see it all. Now Facebook did try to adjust things by giving you the option to change your settings and let certain people and pages onto your news feed while blocking others. They then came up with the Pages Feed so that you could actually see what the businesses and groups are up to without them getting lost among your more personal contacts. You can even make lists for family, friends, co-workers, and any other specialized grouping so that they can essentially have a separate news feed that you can look at. But honestly, when it comes down to it who wants to do all that work to find out what's going on with the people, places and things you have already taken the time to find and like so you could follow them easier. It somewhat defeats the purpose.

After officially going public, Facebook took even more measures to show its backers it can make money by creating advertising and boost payment packages for pages. "Hey, not getting enough followers, why don't you pay for an ad that you create for your target market here." Not a bad idea; a good one actually. But on top of that Facebook's new algorithm says, "hey all those followers you got (and possible paid for ads to get) aren't really seeing your posts. Really it's only 6% of them so you should pay to boost your individual posts so that the people who already liked your page can actually see you on their news feeds." Many business pages went from having, as an example, 1,000 followers and roughly 600 likes and/or views for each post they publish down to roughly 60 likes and/or views per post. For those of us just starting out, you only get about 5-10 views or likes per post unless you pay to boost your posts. And that's hard on a new small business. Unfortunately, within the past few weeks Facebook has done another update that reduces views for posts to only 1-2% of your following.

Courtesy of Pixabay

One way to get around the views issue is for your followers to click yes for notifications from your page once they like your page. This means every time you post something they will get a notification. The drawbacks are if those people don't look at their notifications often, it makes no difference or if you post a lot all those notifications can become annoying. So with all of this, these past few months I've been very frustrated trying to crunch the numbers and coming to the conclusion that Facebook is not the place to build a new business following. I think it's best to be more established elsewhere first and then give those people the option to follow me on Facebook and to offer Facebook only specials.

What does this mean for Scarlet Moon Creations and Facebook? Well, I've reduced my presence there by not posting as much. I plan to be more active on this blog and on my personal blog on tumblr. I use Pinterest, Instagram and most recently Google+ as sort of behind-the-scenes looks into Scarlet Moon Creations inspirations, creation process, ingredients, and its owner. I hope to create a full picture from all angles so you can see the business grow without being redundant across multiple social networking sites.

So Facebook is not going away entirely just having a reduced presence. I know that means more work for me since one of the perks of Facebook was if I go on for personal reasons and see or think of something worth posting on Scarlet Moon Creations page I could do so easily. That and already having a follower base to work from. But if even my friends and family cannot see my business posts to like and share it short of defeats the purpose. I wanted to end this post on a positive note and not a bitter one. I've gone back and forth over this entire issue and how I feel about it and I think that this decision is best for now and that is why I feel I can write about it. Its not the end, its just the beginning.