Make-it Mondays: Reviewing R-Nest WinterFest

The R-Nest WinterFest Door Prize Winner!!!

Oh the Monday mopes, I am sick! Despite my Dayquil haze and failing vocal chords I, along several amazing ROC Etsy street team members, enjoyed our first (and not last!) successful public sale. The R-Nest WinterFest was our first large scale team effort. We gathered at our meetings to plan, sent tons of emails back and forth, bombed the town with signs that we staple-gunned in mall parking lots, and traversed murky insurance issues. All in all it went well, but now we must come together to see how to improve.

Some suggestions:

1. Start later in the day or on a Saturday.
2. Don't put up signs before snow storms. And advertise even more!
   
3. Check out wifi capability and fees of the venue (we were credit card ready, with our own shopping site until...da-da-da...the $150 dollar fee.)
4. Check ATM's. We had one, but it was busted. Lame.
5. A larger location, like a church or school to pull more people and vendors.
   

Leave me more suggestions and I will add them to this post.

Things that rocked were:

1. Our raffle table and humoungoid door prize. I saw a lot of action there.
2. Networking with other ROC Etsy vendors.
3. Inspiration from vendors displays, packaging and products.
4. Sweet trades and word of mouth sales, by modeling what other vendors were selling.
5. Super supportive, friends, neighbors, colleagues and family who love to buy our stuff.
6. WIDE variety of vendors within our group.

Leave me things you loved and I will also post them.



Now, one more thing. My photos of this event suck! Send your photos to buenahelena@hotmail.com and I will post them here as they come. Let's keep this post ever updating for the next couple weeks as a reflection and even greater direction for the future!

Make-it Mondays: Becoming the Ace of Base

From: Buenahelena!

I recently created a Google Base account to boost my Etsy sales. Essentially Google Base is an online database into which a user can add content, including items on Etsy. With an account you can upload your items from the RSS feed of your Etsy store and schedule them to be refreshed on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. When a buyer uses Google as a shopping search engine they will pull relevent items from this "base" and your items will appear in the results. Stained glass seller, Go to Great Panes has posted an extremely helpful blog for creating a Google Base account here. It is worth the 10 minutes for the many exposures you can create with it.

***On a special note: This is a beta version, so rules for this database and Etsy will change in December 2009. Keep your eyes peeled for updates!