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You Can Raise Your Prices If…

By on October 3, 2011 in ARTrepreneur, Creative Business Development

{Personal Image}

In the most recent class posted to ARTrepreneur, April gives an overview of product pricing -  definitely everyone’s favorite business topic!* I found the bit about determining if you should raise your prices – beyond the basic reasons – to be most interesting and useful.

The basics of pricing your products, as you know, include covering the cost of materials, your time and experience, etc.  This basic cost-cover number is the lowest you should price your item – but please don’t undersell yourself! You are probably charging enough to cover all costs and a little bit, right? Or maybe you have a formula you are following?

Take a look at your prices as they are right now.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself if you are thinking about or wondering if you should raise the price of your items:

  • Have you increased the item price in the past year?
  • Do you pay yourself a fair hourly wage?
  • Are you under pricing in order to compete with other sellers who sell the same type of work you do?
  • Have you learned any new skills that you apply to your work that give you an edge?
  • Do you package your item in such a way that makes it more valuable?
  • Has your business gained more recognition and “social proof”?

If you answered yes to any of these and your prices don’t reflect these factors, you should consider raising your prices!

So, if you’ve packaged your products so that your customer feels like they are opening a gift when they get it in the mail – your price can be higher. If you learned new skills that many of your competitors don’t know or if you’ve been practicing your craft for a long time – you can raise your price. If your work has been featured in magazines, on blogs, or endorsed by a big name more than a handful of times – you can raise your prices.

Another things to remember  – people make snap judgments based on the price of an item.  People make assumptions about the quality, reliability and prestige of an item based on its price. What sort of message are you sending about your items with your prices? Should you raise your prices?

*Not really.

About the Author: Hello! I’m Danielle, the President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, Administrative Assistant and summer intern and blog updater at The Merriweather Council. I enjoy sipping iced lattes, listening to boy band music, watching crime solving TV shows and putting things in hoops. I am often covered in little bits of thread and fabric but, well, ‘I want it that way’ ;)

Comments { 3 }

A Simple Solution for Building a Loyal Customer Base

By on September 26, 2011 in ARTrepreneur, Blogging Advice, Creative Business Development, Success

{Personal Image}

I want every woman starting a creative business to feel empowered. I want her to take her excitement for her passion and turn it into something that makes her proud and makes her money. I want her to be able to spend the majority of her time on her art—not shuffling through resources and wasting time on stuff that doesn’t matter. That’s why I put together ARTrepreneur.

I enjoy taking the concepts from my background in therapy and helping women who feel overwhelmed, struggle with procrastination, and wrestle with multiple passions. I love to learn and experiment with business concepts and then teach them in a simple way so they’re easy to understand and easy to put into practice. That’s why I blog regularly.

I want to make big changes for women who have big dreams. I want to help women who struggle to get their unique, handmade products in front of the right people. That’s my why—the reason I do what I do.

Why do you do what you do?

This isn’t the easiest question to answer, but it’s incredibly important that you know the answer. It’s also important that your customers and target market know your answer. If they don’t, you’re in trouble. You’ll have a really hard time building a loyal customer base without sharing this information.

 When the right people understand why you do what you do, they connect with you and your brand. It’s easier to make purchasing decisions and price doesn’t matter as much.

Think about recent purchases that you made. Why did you buy?

When my husband and I bought a new sofa and love seat, we looked at all of the brown sets. Then we narrowed down our options by sitting on them and seeing which ones were the most comfortable. Then we looked at the prices. We found a sofa and love seat on major sale, it was comfortable, and it was chocolate-colored. Perfect. We bought them because of the price. We knew our dogs would be laying on them, so we didn’t want to pay too much for them. I have no idea what company made them. I won’t look for other sofas made by the same company. I’m not a loyal customer.

Contrast that with Liz Lovely, a company that makes vegan and gluten-free cookies. Their mission statement is clear. They bake cookies with a higher purpose. They don’t cut corners, and they don’t prioritize profits over people or the planet. That’s a business that I can get behind and enjoy purchasing from. I had never ordered food online before ordering a batch of cookies from Liz Lovely. When I landed on their website, I read about their business and my mouth watered looking at their products. I was hooked and ordered cookies right then and there. I’ll be a loyal customer, ordering more than my fair share of the gluten-free chocolate chip cookies. It costs $3.99 plus shipping for two cookies, but it doesn’t matter. I would even buy them if they cost more.

Your purchases either depend on something like price, promotions, or fear OR they depend on loyalty, trust, and connection with the company’s purpose.

Share your purpose. Let people know why you do what you do.

When someone new lands on your website, she should be able to figure out your “why” within seconds. It should be obvious in everything that you do. Put it in multiple places. Blog about it, include it on your about page, and make it clear in your shop announcement. Every blog post that you write and every product you put out there should somehow connect with your why. Otherwise, your purpose gets diluted, trust decreases, and your customers will be confused.

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Tip From Inside ARTrepreneur That Saved me 450,000 Hours

By on September 19, 2011 in ARTrepreneur

{Embroidery Hoop Art by The Merriweather Council – the author of this post}

Recently in ARTrepreneur, April Bern posted a tutorial about how to automate a task in Photoshop by creating an action. If your eyes are already glazed over and you think I am speaking Greek, don’t fret just yet. This is so super simple, it’s actually ridiculous. Photoshop users, you will rejoice.

I had heard rumblings of these “actions” you can use in Photoshop for years and I was even in a Photoshop class once where we were taught about this but I felt it was something I’d never need to know and so I just sort of zoned out. Recently, someone else suggested I utilize this feature as well – but I didn’t get enough info from them to actually do that so again, I didn’t.

And then one magical and glorious day, I was browsing ARTrepreneur and found this little gem had been posted – it was a sign! I needed to learn this. It was time!

So what is this little bit of knowledge that is so amazing? It’s a custom preset action you create in Photoshop to do anything you want – generally, something you do over and over manually that would like to do just once and then leave the room while tiny fairies take care of everything else. For example – resizing images.

If you need an entire folder of images to be resized, you can “record” yourself resizing one image and then “play” that action on the rest of the folder – with just a couple of clicks. You tell Photoshop what to do, and it does it automatically. You don’t even need to be in the room.

If you are familiar with Photoshop you will have no problem setting this up.
First, open Photoshop and make sure your Actions window is visible. Find it under “Window” -> “Actions.”

(Now is a good time to make sure you have an image open that you can perform the action on first.)

On the bottom right hand corner of that window (the Actions window) you will see a trash can and then next to it, an icon that looks like a piece of paper with the corner flapped up. Click that.

A new box will pop up, you can now name the action you are going to perform and save it for future use. Then press “record.”

Now just start doing whatever it is you are wanting to create an action to automate. For example, resizing images. Just go ahead and resize the image you have open to whatever size you want the rest of them to be resized to as well.

When you are done performing the action, press the “stop” button – located on the bottom left corner of the Actions window, it is just a square.
Now you have created that action! And you can apply it to another image by opening it (the new image) up in Photoshop, selecting the action you just created from the menu on the Actions window and pressing play. Beyond that, you can also apply this action to an entire folder of images by going to “file” -> “automate” -> “batch” and then choosing the folder you want to apply the action to. Seriously, this saved me half a lifetime.

What will we do with all this free time?! Oh yeah, all that other stuff that needs to get done.

Go fourth and conquer.

strong>About the Author: Hello! I’m Danielle, the President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, Administrative Assistant and summer intern and blog updater at The Merriweather Council. I enjoy sipping iced lattes, listening to boy band music, watching crime solving TV shows and putting things in hoops. I am often covered in little bits of thread and fabric but, well, ‘I want it that way’ ;)

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Successful Branding Through Cohesion

By on September 5, 2011 in ARTrepreneur, Creative Business Development

{Embroidery Hoop Art by The Merriweather Council – the author of this post}

Branding isn’t just a logo or the colors you use in your imagery, buttons, packaging, and other designed elements of your business, etc… it’s the rest of the stuff you are doing also.

A good design is important, don’t get me wrong. Of course it is! You already know this! You know that when you go to a website and a trail of blinking stars follows your cursor around and some midi file starts playing and the background is blinking and neon green you aren’t likely to stay very long. But I digress…

Branding is, as April shows and tells us in her recent ARTrepreneur class, about “creating something that instantly connects everything in your creative business.”

What do others say when they talk about your business?

What kind of language are your customers using when they describe your business to someone else? Do people want to talk about your business? Are you giving them a reason to?

Now, of course, you cannot control what people are saying about your brand but you can control what you put out there – and what you put out there should be cohesive. Cohesion will make you look more organized and professional and therefore more trustworthy. Cohesion has to do with your design materials, colors and logos, but it also has to do with your personality, your story and your message.

Those things that people are saying about your brand – should be applicable not only to your product but also to your customer service, your message and the personality you portray.

Let’s take Mayi for example – Mayi’s products are adorable, girly, fun and colorful but also clean and simple (simple as in, not covered in diamonds and 22 karat gold.) Mayi’s blog is also adorable. Her banner features one of her signature characters, there are bright colors and an adorable font face. Mayi’s posts are fun and bubbly, just like her products and her branding is clean, colorful and energetic. Mayi’s brand is bouncing with personality – hers – and her products also represent these characteristics. And if I were going to tell someone about Mayi’s brand, I would absolutely be using words like these. Mayi also represents the same things over an over – part of the cohesion of her brand – her love for cupcakes and encouragement to other handmakers, just to name a couple. As April puts it – you know what you are gunna get when you hire her.

Mayi’s built a strong and cohesive brand, and her business is flourishing because of it.

I think the idea of creating cohesion is so important – and this is your business and you have the ability to spread you idea and message to any extent you’d like, just focus on doing it with consistency. Take advantage of that. The bits of personality you share with your customers and potential customers will create more interest – or as we like to call it since reading our book club book by the same name – fascination. Sharing your personality, your story and your values will give your customers some insight into who you are and where your products come from. All of this makes buying easier for a consumer.

In addition to reaching out and talking to people about what they would say about your business, look back at emails, blog comments and feedback you’ve already received. Do these comments match up with your vision? Make your brand better represent you and your message through cohesion of thought, product, design and personality.

Tricky stuff, but so so worth taking the time to think about!

About the Author: Hello! I’m Danielle, the President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, Administrative Assistant and summer intern and blog updater at The Merriweather Council. I enjoy sipping iced lattes, listening to boy band music, watching crime solving TV shows and putting things in hoops. I am often covered in little bits of thread and fabric but, well, ‘I want it that way’ ;)

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Why I’m Interrupting Follow Friday…

By on August 26, 2011 in ARTrepreneur

I’m interrupting the Follow Friday series for two important reasons. You gotta watch the video above to know what they are. Oh, and if you want to hear one of my dogs groan because he wants his lunch, listen for it around the 59 second mark. Gotta love my doggies! And, if you want to know who I’m talking about in the video, you can find out more about her here.

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Super Awesome Interview Takeaway: The #omhg Chat

By on August 22, 2011 in ARTrepreneur, Social Media

In my last Interview Takeaways post I highlighted a few different interviewees and different bits of advice they offered. But today I want to focus on just one new interview takeaway because I have found it to be extremely valuable and I hope you will check it out.

April recently interviewed Jessika Hepburn of Oh My Handmade Goodness for ARTrepreneur and they spoke about making connections within the handmade community.

Some of you may already know about it, but if you don’t, I implore you to check out Jessika’s weekly Twitter chats. Every Thursday from 1-2pm EST Jessika hosts a chat for people in the handmade community to come together and talk about relevant topics. Each week there is a different theme or topic of conversation and different people come to chat (although there are lots of regulars.)

You might be thinking that you kinda already chat with handmade community members on twitter and so what is the point? The point is that Jessika has, through the facilitation of these discussions, brought people together and given them a place to connect but also discuss, ask and nurture their businesses and the community it operates in.

Through these chats new ideas, collaborations, projects, products and businesses have come about. Tons of brainstorming happens right in front of your eyes! It’s amazing! People become friends and supporters of each other. Newbies meet people who have been around a while and people with ideas meet people who want to make ideas happen. People come with insights or concerns, questions or helpful bits of advice. There is a place for everyone and it’s really fun and it’s very very valuable.

Jessika is all about making connections and creating community. She does so on her blog and she does so on Twitter during her weekly chats and beyond. Her influence resonates with those who connect with her and they go on to make more connections as well.

Through Oh My Handmade Goodness I have found people who I have hired and people who I love to chat with and people who I now follow.

There might be something exciting, or someone exciting, waiting to connect with you! Join Jessika and company for the next Twitter chat using the OMHG hashtag ( #omhg )on Twitter next Thursday at 1pm! Follow Jessika now and she will probably tweet a reminder!

Can’t join us? Wish you were there for the others? Jessika posts transcripts and highlights on her blog after the chats!

Hope to see you there!

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Applying Fascination Triggers to Your Biz

By on August 8, 2011 in ARTrepreneur, Book Review

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I am so glad that April chose Fascinate by Sally Hogshead for the ARTrepreneur book club. It puts into words things that we all basically know already, but maybe haven’t really thought about, and thinking about them is certainly very interesting.

We are all fascinated, whether only slightly interested or completely obsessed, with something – probably multiple things.  Bands you travel all over the place to see play live, TV shows you absolutely cannot miss each week, celebrities you love or love to hate…

Why are we attracted to these things? Do we really even understand what it is about that band that makes us spend hundred of dollars on a ticket? Do we have any real idea why a TV show about crab fishermen is so freaking awesome?

That is what this book is about – understanding why things fascinate us and how to make ourselves and our brands more fascinating to others.

“Anything, and anyone, can become fascinating.”

Fascination is, at least in large part, the key to success. Without triggering fascination, your product will fade into the background – and just become another “thing” in the endless sea of options, rather than the front runner in your category, field or area of expertise.

In her book, Hogshead covers the seven triggers of fascination and I chose three of the seven to talk about today: Lust, Prestige and Trust.

“Lust creates craving for sensory pleasure.”

Soft cashmere, delicious foods, tropic island sand between our toes … these are things we crave, love and appreciate.  In many cases, the things we lust after are “special treats” – not things we encounter or get to have everyday.

Perhaps even more interesting than how to make products more lustworthy was a lesson from the book about how to maintain lust. Hogshead talks about Godiva and how once they started offering their chocolates in more common and accessible places – their brand lost the lust factor. Once people could get it anywhere, it wasn’t as desirable, it wasn’t something that was a treat anymore.

The fascination with Godiva dropped off the charts once it was more widely available.

That is something we can probably all learn from.

“Prestige earns respect through symbols of achievement.”

An example of prestige that is outlined in the book comes from Grey Goose Vodka. According to Hogshead, Grey Goose “forced an entire category to realign” by pricing their vodka twice as high as “the other guys.”  This move alone, a higher price point, gave the brand an aura of prestige.

Other things that Hogshead tells us build prestige? Emblems and logos (this Gucci and Chanel) and limited availability of a product. Of course, celebrity endorsement couldn’t hurt either.

We are assured, in the chapter about prestige, that “the most authentic and lasting fascinations require you to earn them.”

Trust comforts us with certainty and reliability.

Trust is so important when it comes to selling anything, because in order to sell something someone must give their money to you and, as you may already know, spending money isn’t always easy. When we trust something we return to it over and over.

Hogshead cites consistency and repetition as trust builders. She uses McDonald’s as an example. Hogshead tells of a case in which a group of children were each given two sets of chicken nuggets, one set of nuggets were wrapped up like they would be coming from McDonalds and the other set was unbranded. When the children were asked which nuggets tasted better – guess what they said? The McDonald’s nuggets of course! But the truth is the nuggets were all exactly the same, just presented differently.

And isn’t it true that people tend to trust the name brands more than the generics? Those brands have a history and they all started somewhere, and from there they maintained consistency and utilized repetition. As the company built the brand, the consistency of the branding built trust.

You can see how these factors, lust, prestige and trust all play into fascinating people, so what are you going to do about it? How can you make your brand, your product and yourself more fascinating?

{You could probably start by reading the book, because I didn’t even scratch the surface here.}

About the Author: Hello! I’m Danielle, the President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, Administrative Assistant and summer intern and blog updater at The Merriweather Council. I enjoy sipping iced lattes, listening to boy band music, watching crime solving TV shows and putting things in hoops. I am often covered in little bits of thread and fabric but, well, ‘I want it that way’ ;)

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Danielle’s (that’s me!) Tips for Etsy Success

By on July 25, 2011 in ARTrepreneur, Etsy, Success

{Hand Embroidery by The Merriweather Council – Available for purchase here.}

I was so honored when April asked little ol’ me to do an interview with her for ARTrepreneur! Like, seriously on the floor shocked out of my head.

Okay, back to reality.

I had such a great time chatting with April and I tried to share as much insight as possible. Our discussion revolved mostly around marketing through and building a successful Etsy shop.

April thought I was qualified to be a resource on this topic! Awh shucks!

Here are some takeaways from my interview:

Use the Merchandising reports on Etsy.

If you want your items to have a better chance of getting exposure on Etsy’s front page or in one of the Finds emails, you will want to pay attention to the Merchandising Trends report that Etsy puts out once a month. In this report, which gets posted to Etsy’s seller’s handbook, you will find information regarding seasonal trends, upcoming holidays and other cultural events, forecasted popular colors, keywords, motifs and styles.

While it seems that mustaches and small woodland creatures are not going away – chalk boards and writeable surfaces have also been gaining popularity, as have fortune cookies, vintage industrial objects and terrariums. Perhaps these are trends only on Etsy, but if your item fits the bill, you want to utilize it to bring traffic to your shop.

The merchandising report will give you lots of new words, and ideas for tagging and titling. Use the report to update tags and stay in the know about what the trends are. Pay attention to the Finds emails and you will see the themes often get pulled right from the Merchandising Report. (There are a few versions of the Etsy Finds email – Daily, Weddings, Fashion and Dudes. You can see which ones you are signed up to receive by going to “your account”- “settings” and then “emails.”)

See the reports here.  (This links to the July report.)

Think outside the box. Appeal to varied levels of intellect.

Once, I did a search for “avacado” on Etsy and got a bunch of pages of listings, which is a lot but I thought for sure there would be more – turns out, I spelled it wrong. I realized, with the help of some others, that this was probably intentional. And you know what – I think it’s brilliant. If your item could be searchable with a word that is commonly misspelled, why not use that in your tags? Don’t misspell the word in your titles though, that won’t look good.

For you, as the maker of your item, you might know all the technical terms for it, but does everyone else? Try to use both the technical term and the commonfolk term when tagging.

If your item is purple, absolutely use “purple” as a tag, but how about “phlox” (pulled straight off the July merchandising report) or “lavender” or “eggplant”?

Come on! Make your listings work for you! Use all the space you are allotted for tags and use synonyms.

Promote Others.

I really enjoy making treasuries on Etsy, and the return on time investment is pretty good. People often wonder about how to get front page exposure on Etsy – and the answer is: get involved. Promote others through Treasury making and soon you will see others promoting you in Treasuries. Those items you see on the front page of Etsy are from member curated Treasuries. That means someone put that treasury together, and simple math tells us that the more Treasuries you are featured in, the better your chances are of landing on the front page.
If you enjoy making Treasuries and marketing your shop on Etsy, you might consider joining a treasury making team on Etsy. Before you do that though, I suggest you get your shop to a place you are happy with – cohesive, well maintained and well stocked. Treasury making is a free, fun, and relatively simple way to market your shop – because once you start promoting others, they will start promoting you.

Smile.

I didn’t say this in the interview but, smiling couldn’t hurt so let those pearly whites show! It definitely couldn’t hurt.

About the Author: Hello! I’m Danielle, the President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, Administrative Assistant and summer intern and blog updater at The Merriweather Council. I enjoy sipping iced lattes, listening to boy band music, watching crime solving TV shows and putting things in hoops. I am often covered in little bits of thread and fabric but, well, ‘I want it that way’ ;)

Comments { 4 }

Birthday Bundle Bonanza: Pay What You Can! {TODAY ONLY}

By on July 19, 2011 in ARTrepreneur

{Personal Image}

It’s my birthday. It’s my birthday. I’m gonna party like it’s my birthday.

If you can’t tell, I’m a BIG birthday person. I celebrate a birthday week—not just the day. I think it’s the only child in me that demands this kind of celebration.

My parents always made a big deal out of my birthdays. I’m not talking circus animals and sweet 16 parties that cost as much as my wedding. My parents didn’t have that kind of money, but they always made me feel extra special even if that meant having family and a couple friends over for a backyard barbeque.

I remember one birthday in particular when I was in the second grade. My mom let me invite 8 friends over for a slumber party and she bought us about $100 worth of beads and jewelry supplies. Nothing extravagant—plastic beads and stretchy stringing material, but we LOVED it. We stayed up most of the night making bracelets and necklaces while watching movies and eating junk food. We definitely thought our new jewelry rocked.

Enough with memory lane. Let’s talk about how I’m celebrating my birthday today.

I’m giving you something that you’ve been asking for—and it’s super fun. If you want to know more about this birthday bundle surprise, you can check it out here.

Comments { 22 }

How to Achieve the Dreamy Light of Amazement and Awe in Your Photos

By on July 11, 2011 in ARTrepreneur, Creative Business Development

Trying new things with my photos stresses me out.

I like what I have, I don’t want to have to do a huge overhaul… but I do like to tweak what I already do and make it better if I can. I browsed through April Bern’s photography tips on ARTreprenuer and decided to take on the lesson about aperture settings.

I am not a photographer. I can barely spell the word aperture let alone understand what it means. April broke it down to simple terms that I could understand though, thank you April!

You know when you see the photos that have lovely, dreamy light with blur in all the right spots?

The ones that make you think of unicorns and fairy tales and dreams come true? Well, those photos are achieved by manually finagling with the aperture on your camera.

This “aperture” thingy works by using what is known as “F Stops” to set how much light comes into the camera, and now here is the tricky part! The lower the number, the more light… the higher the number the less light. And here’s the part everyone really wants to know: the blurry, dreamy light of amazement and awe can be achieved through setting your F Stop to a low number.

I messed around with it for a while… here is some of what I came up with…

You can use a point and shoot or a DSLR to adjust the F Stop setting. I think I speak for all of us at ARTreprenuer when I say… try it out, experiment with it and see if you like any of your results!

About the Author: Hello! I’m Danielle, the President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, Administrative Assistant and summer intern and blog updater at The Merriweather Council. I enjoy sipping iced lattes, listening to boy band music, watching crime solving TV shows and putting things in hoops. I am often covered in little bits of thread and fabric but, well, ‘I want it that way’ ;)

Comments { 2 }
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