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Wednesday 15 August 2012

What have you done today to boost your business?

Its funny the number of craft artists who believe they either don't run a business or it runs itself.  Don't get me wrong - most people do various 'things' to help get sales and orders such as attending craft fairs, uploading products onto selling sites, posting lots of photos of their makes on facebook - all that kind of thing! But is this what it means now to run a business?


Is this the crafting triangle for business?


Funny, when I asked the what have you done today question on my facebook page earlier today the most common answers were ....... uploading products onto selling sites, networking by liking facebook pages, sharing products online and sorting out displays/items for craft fair stalls.  Of course all of these things are important to do or no-one would be doing them - we cannot sell products that are not displayed in some way! We are also a rather sociable lot us crafters and so it not only makes sense for us to network but we enjoy it too ;)





At some point however i personally think it is important to stop what i am doing and really think about it.  By that i mean think about it as a business person - every single thing i do has some impact on my business, because by doing anything at all i am either giving time to my business or i am not. During the time given to my business i want to make sure i am doing something worthwhile so its important for me to really consider carefully how to spend my time each and every day.  Do i spend hours on facebook? yes i do! Do i spend hours taking photos and uploading products to my online shop? yes i do! Do i spend hours searching for craft fairs and other potential outlets? Yes i do! So after all these hours are spent when exactly do i make my products? Honestly? some days i just don't get round to it and i wonder what on earth i have been doing all day! Sound Familiar? If so its time to take a little walk down Strategy St and Marketing Ave......





In an attempt to make better use of my own time, and hopefully help a few of you focus on the 'right' kind of activities I have now added a business resources section to Craft Fair Central which i will be updating and adding to on a regular (hopefully weekly) basis.  I have completed training in concepts such as business planning, book keeping, forecasting, market research and of course marketing so i'm not just going to be pulling this information out of the air.  I have also sat on various business development groups and been involved in business planning and implementation in several of my jobs so now i just need to do it for myself and get my knowledge working for me (and you!).

I hope this new website section will prove extremely valuable to you and you will also enjoy following my own attempts at implementing them in this blog.

As much as i would love to be able to offer all this information completely free of charge i simply can't afford to spend a lot of my time on this when i could be making products or promoting my own items (Do you see what i did there???).  I will be offering a paid membership option to anyone who would like to get access to the information and am planning to also offer a further service of business coaching - Yes i am qualified in coaching as well!

I will keep the costs as low as i can as i simply don't like to exclude anyone from being able to benefit, and i will provide more information on these options shortly - i need to do some calculating LOL!

Until then, Happy Crafting!!







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