Working my way through the 45 Day Success Guide-Week Three

Well it's been a bit over a month that I've had my Artfire Studio up and running. I'm still working at my own pace on the Artfire 45 Day Success guide. I've been taking my time to set-up my shop, join some guilds and do a bit more in the way of promotion. Here's some of what I've been working on:

• Day 15-Setting up your SEO testing. SEO? anything like REO? What the heck is SEO and how do test it? SEO means search engine optimization. In other words, it's how people find you in search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines. Each search engine has it's own way of ranking your listings. It's usually a combination of your product title and description. By testing different ways to write your descriptions you can help determine what descriptions work best for you. I try to vary my titles-especially when I list similar items. Today I listed 13 pairs of sea glass earrings. In some of the listings I started off with the words "sea glass" in others "beach glass" in others I started out with other descriptions. This way I hope to capture the attention of people searching  using different terms.
• Day 16-Has you listing some of your prior work. I listed some things I've listed when I was on Etsy, but that I haven't listed yet on Artfire. Many times people will list things from their art or craft shows or prior sold items.
• Day 17-Meet the staff. The staff often posts in the forums-hey it's nice to know that frittering away some of their day hanging out with us too! Tony, one of the co-founders is usually checking in daily. If you have a problem just ask. I had an issue come up this week with my studio announcement and they we right on top of it. Good work!
• Day 18-It's a work day. Hey it's fly fishing season for me around here. I think I'm heading to the stream. Work can wait. The trout won't.
• Day 19-Setting up your Rapid Cart and Facebook Kiosk. If you look to the right side of my blog you'll see a Rapid Cart feature. I've got it set up to view 6 random items from my studio. The cool thing about it is, that instead of just linking to my studio, you can actually purchase something without navigating away! I haven't had any on try it yet. But for my type of blog, which brings in a lot of people looking for things likes recipes or tutorials, I'm hoping it will be a nice feature. The same thing goes for the Facebook Kiosk-it's a check-out application on your  business page.
• Day 20-More SEO-by now you should be starting to get more comfortable with writing titles and descriptions. The one thing to remember is that your not really writing nice flowery titles naming your products. Think of them as you would try to "Google" an item.I suggest searching on a couple of different search engines on how your titles show up. Here's a good example. If you search "strawberry jello pretzel desert" in exactly that order you'll find my recipe number 1 in Google-and I might as it's been in number 1 (or very close to it) since 2009! I even beat out places like cooks.com and allrecipes.com! On Bing and Yahoo it doesn't come up until page 3. It also places on the first page on Ask.com.. So you can see I'm happy most people use Google and I try to optimize my titles for Google searches. One of the things you'll notice in my posts are links. Click on my titles and the highlighted words and you 'll be taken to something I've mentioned. Did you know that having these links in your posts actually improve your credibility? I didn't. But having links in your posts increase the likelihood that you will increase your ranking in the search engines. But, don't over do it. You want to be credible without selling every word to an add or link! Don't you just hate it when you get to a post and just about every word in the post is an ad!

I hope you're finding my journey interesting and helpful. I'd love to hear how some of you are doing setting up your shops and studios. If you have been around for a while, I'd love to hear your suggestions.

Nobody trips over mountains.  It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble.  Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain.  ~Author Unknown

Working my way through the 45 Day Success Guide-Week Two

Well, I'm working my way through the Artfire 45 Day Success Guide, albeit it's going a lot more slowly than the 45 days. Like many others, my Artfire Studio isn't my only job. I have to fit it into my schedule as time permits. I check in daily-I'm hoping to see that first sale on Artfire-I usually post in the forums, check out facebook when I can and even sneak in a couple of tweets. When do I have time to create? So here's the second weeks goals:

• Day 8-Listing and Starting your blog. One of the features of Artfire is that your studio has it's own blog tab. I find this a bit redundant for those of us who already have outside blogs such as this one. I have posted a couple of articles, but I'll stick with this as my main blog. The upside is that Google seems to like blogs when it crawls for content. The goal is to post 10 more items and 3 posts in the forums.
• Day 9-Studio Clean-Up-silly me-I thought this meant the cleaning genie was going to appear at my house and clean up my studio-A prayer answered! funny thing, that's not what Artfire had in mind. Their idea of studio clean-up is to add categories to your studio. Lucky for me I had them already in place. Oh yeah list another 10 items. Well, I'm still working on that.
• Day 10-Work Day! Yeah a day off to create....or just catch a few extra zzzz's. This is the kind of a day I can enjoy!
• Day 11-Social Media Set-up Day. Now I know why they gave me that day off yesterday-Artfire want to lull me into believing I was sailing right along. Yea, more like a moth drawn to a flame. Here's todays goals: Set-up a Twitter and Facebook Fan Page. But if that wasn't enough How about 3 tweets and 2 Facebook posts, 3 Forum posts and just for good measure post 5  more items. Hey these people aren't fooling around! Well I may not be the most Social Media savvy person on my block, but I do manage a tweet now and then, and Facebook-I don't like to be too spammy. In fact, The fastest way to have me "unfollow" you is when I see dozens of posts from your shop. 
• Day 12-Social Media Day Two-What there's more? Actually Artfire recommends an outside blog...like here on Blogger. Well at least I've got that covered.  Maybe I should tweet about it...
• Day 13-Listing and Interacting-Hey isn't this Social Media Day 3? List 5 more items-Tweet one and feature another on Facebook. Didn't I say something about not being spammed with all those look at this item I listed today posts. Really people, I don't mind looking at all your things, but not all in one day. And make it a bit interesting for me.
• Day 14-Work Day! thank goodness. I need to take a nap.

Actually, following the 45 Day Success Guide  has done a few good things for me, it keeps me off the streets, out of the bar, neglecting my family, shot my diet all to Hell...no really, I find myself at least trying to maintain a bit of a schedule of working on my studio daily. I just need a bit more time to create and photograph my items-it isn't easy to get natural daylight at 9 pm in Michigan this time of year!

So if you're new to Artfire...How goes your Week? For the rest of you lucky souls, why don't you go check out some of my latest designs. And how about leaving me a link to your Facebook Fan Page or your Twitter Link. I promise-I won't spam you! And for all you lurkers-Hey leave me a comment!

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.  ~Thomas Edison

Week one on Artfire-working my way through the 45 day Success Guide

So I've survived my first week! Moving and setting up a new studio is a lot of work. There is so much to learn-almost like moving to another country and learning about their customs and language!

One of the helpful guides Artfire has is the 45 day Success Guide.  It's no holds bared, fast paced introduction to getting you studio up and running. I'm trying my best to keep up with m daily tasks.

• Day 1-Getting rid of your progress bar. when you first register on Artfire, you see a progress bar on top of your screen. You need to set up the basics of your studio. Your bio,policies,payment methods and your avatar and banner-now that's a full day one!
• Day 2-Time to read up. You've got a lot of guides here-You'll find answers to a lot of questions. Don't be lazy or frustrated. get reading!
• Day 3-Getting your studio ready. Time to figure out layouts, color schemes and shipping policies. Start listing 5 items.
• Day 4-Getting the feel. Artfire actually has a "test" buying area. Sometime sellers have have not purchased items-this test area actually has you checkout an item-without having to pay for it. You also list an additional 5 items bringing you studio up to 10 items.
• Day 5-Getting your front page filled. Since your first page holds 20 items. It's time to fill up your shop. Listing 10 more items is a bit of work-but at leat your first page will be full.
• Day 6-It's a work day You've been so busy listing and setting up your shop-don't forget to keep reading those guides!- That you probably haven't had the energy or time to be creative! So take a day off-get those creative juices flowing again.
• Day 7-Introduce yourself. Time to check out the chatterbox forums. You'll find a lot of information and helpful people hanging out here. I like to visit the forums on a regular basis. you'll meet all sorts of people-and soon you'll be chatting away like old friends. Don't forget to check out the promotions area and games when you need a break.

Phew! so much for the first week. No wonder I'm tired.Tomorrow I hope to get a lot more pictures taken. I usually do my photography on the weekends when I can photograph my items in daylight. I've got a lot of items to photograph-that going to take some time.

Hope you're enjoying the "behind the scenes" look at what it takes to set up an online shop. It's more work and more fun that you think it is!

Be sure to leave some comments if you have visited. I'd like to know what's interested you the most.

Until later,

"Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower".
Hans Christian Andersen