Question for my mom

If there is a lot of competition in the jewelry niche then when promoting find less competitive keywords so getting any kind of traffic, google or paid, will be cheaper.

I have never used etsy so I can't comment on it but, google, SEO, traffic would be cheaper and better in the long run then paid traffic. Paid traffic is good but can be risky and expensive if not done right.

Hey brit16

Thats a lovely blog and a lovely story. Do you promote that product on CB? Only I'd add an affiliate page at the bottom and encourage affiliates to sign up. Especially if you ever comment on here as people will check out your site if they're in the niche

Which I am - I'll add your product to my blog www.tryingtogetpregnantsite.com if its affiliated.

I chose that niche as one of my starters as I know about infertility from the coaching side. I've worked with a lot of women over the years and I've helped them change their mind set and reduce the stress which in turn makes pregnancy more likely.

Anyway, back to your mums site.

I think your mum should choose to brand herself as a starting point. It's always going to add a lil somit somit to a product if there is a brand behind it.

Now, you have a site so you know how to build them - yes? So build your mum a feeder site as if your an affiliate of her products.

Research buying keywords and I'd say this is a mini niche 'hand made, vintage and art' so you could rank for keywords focused on your mums products.

Right just hopped off to check out the ranking of page one for 'upcycyled clothing' and yes there are some rank 3 and 4 but there's a page rank 0 at number 4 you can outrank.

And guess what!! The comp for 'upcycled clothing' is LOW!! but you're getting 2900 local monthly searches - now thats a good keyword!!

So build a site around that keyword and send traffic to your mums 'page' on etsy or build a shop on the site and sell it there.

I should be getting off this forum right now but well, you know what it's like and tbh I like your question so am happy to help

I found another doozy of a keyword for you but I'm not gonna share anymore on here cos I want you to have first dibs, if you want to know what it is its low comp with 5400 local searches and the number one spot is an exact match domain - not live - with pr 1 - so get the .com if you can and you'll outrank them

Right my lovely

I will be happy to give you that keyword and in my opinion it would do well as a brand too.

Here's to your fab mum for making old stuff good again and well done you with the babs

All the best
Leah

I used to be an artist, so I know how hard it is. There are two sites you should check out.

Art Business Resources and Consulting from Alyson B. Stanfield | Art Biz Coach

She's an IM just for artists. She has webinars on marketing, licensing, studio tours, etc.


The second site is artists in cellophane (aka art-o-mat).

<< artomat >> the original-art vending machine project based in winston-salem, north carolina, established in 1997 and created and solely owned and operated by artist Clark Whittington -- Art*o*mat ® is a registered trademark of Artists In Cellophane

They sell art though revamped cigarette machines.

The art sells for $5, but if your mom comes up with something that's quick to make and doesn't cost too much, it's great promotion. You could brand the heck out of the box.

They don't care what you put on the box as long as family friendly and work inside is good. They have them all over the world, including Australia, England and the Met.

Links back to websites, special offers, maybe a way to build a list, the opportunities are endless.

Brit, you are probably one of the smartest "newbies" on this damn site.

But to be honest, I don't think I can give you much of a reply if you only give us that small bit of information. It would really require a good, hard look at your mom's business model to say what direction she should go.

Because, well, otherwise I might say something totally incorrect!

You also want to help her make a connection with her buyers. Does she have a business card to include with each package she sends so they can find their way back to her shop? Does she use Facebook and Twitter? Pinterest is a great option as well.

Hey britt.
Well if your mother wants to go REAL BIG then she should be considering to launch a website. But Launching a website isnt the Problem the issue starts afterwards. When you have to mess around with your head and spend money to Promote your Services online. If you mother has a good offline sell, then she should keep it that way, but if she wants to launch Big then go for BRANDING yourself. Some investments will be required as nothing comes free.
and The best way for Jewelry stuff is to go around social Networks. Create FACEBOOK Fan page and promote it and twitter as well. This will help getting really good customers without Email Marketing mess. and secondly i would suggest you to try FACEBOOK promotion rather than going for paid traffic or SEO stuff.


Regards,
Sana

just an idea, maybe you can find girl forum or any forum related to your product.. and then buy some ads from that forum
Don't forget to check the member of forum and their activity

Spend some time in there and look for the advertisers who are advertising on a consistent basis. Those are the people making money. Next, dig into them and find out what they're offering, but more important what they're missing. This will help you find the hole in the market, then you find a way to fill in the missing need and you're in.

Etsy are running a series of seminars in March to help their sellers get found. You can attend in person (they are in the US somewhere) or stream them live. It would be a great idea to get involved with this!

Make sure she has a Facebook page, and joins in with threads where sellers 'like' each others work and pages. Hopefully this will get you some cross-traffic.

While Etsy is a good option because it has traffic already, it is incredibly hard to get noticed there due to how many sellers there are, and the huge choice buyers have. Use your tags etc correctly to get maximum exposure on Etsy, and concentrate on promoting your own website too. You'll save on listing fees, too.

All the best!

Brit, I just took a look at your Mom's page on Etsy. You weren't kidding when you said she was really creative! I have a feeling that her work is going to sell itself if you can get it in front of enough people. You're looking at a broad market, so that makes it easier. I agree with Sana about Facebook. Will Etsy let you link to Facebook? If so, do some cross-promotions between the two.

If she's been using that banner as a logo for awhile, you could use that for her own website. By the way, has she looked at having her own label and trying to get some of her merchandise into retail shops?

I just set up an Etsy shop for my wife (she does the creating and I do the marketing).

You should definitely get a Twitter and Facebook page up and running (Etsy supply apps for creating FB pages).

One other thing I'd point out is that photography is critical when you want to ensure your products stand out on a big page of thumbnails.

I done photography for a while (I sell some of my stuff) and I have a pretty good idea of how to photograph my wife's creations in order for them to stand out from the crowd.

I notice that most of the clothing is photographed against a tree and/or the house. Unfortunately this makes the fabric patterns and colours get a little lost in amongst the background. If possible, you should try to have a nice clean background so there are no distractions from the main item of focus, ie: the clothing.

There are a few large diy clothing forums- threadbanger.com is one one of them.
And there are general diy forums- she should sign up for these and put her links in the signatures. Many of them let you show off your projects, so she can share her pictures too.

I didn't click on the link to your shop, but saw it said romantic clothing. I have no idea what that means, but there are many costplay forums and renissance forums if it fits into that style.

Many people make youtube videos of them creating the crafts, and then post a link to their etsy shop. There are many diy tutorials on youtube, she could make jewelery and clothing tutorial videos and put links to her shop. Where does she get the vintage clothing? If the thrift store, "thrift store haul" videos are popular to put on youtube as well.

With the business card thing I mentioned before, you can link to her etsy shop as well as your youtube channel on the card, helping people find her after making a purchase.

Whenever I sell physical goods I include a business card so they remember who I am. (In fact, include three so they can give some out to their friends!)

Have you ever pushed her into the direction of Ebay?

She does list items on eBay occasionlly, but she doesn't really think eBay is the right place for her type of merchandise. She spends a lot of time creating it and it is really designed for a particular type of customer. Thanks.

Etsy is a good experience. Sadly, it never grew as much as fee bay, but the atmosphere is nice. She needs to create a look that is unique. That and start to work on her brand name. Repeat customers are my favorites, but it takes time to build a base of loyal consumers. Try to work on creating your own space.

Just my thoughts... if she fairs better on selling on Etsy instead of her own websites, that would work fine. However, I would definitely want to create either a website that promotes her two niches on multiple pages... so if she did dresses and blouses as clothing, and other items as jewelry, then the site could have a page for blouses and a page for dresses, and another page for different groups of clothing.

Just my thoughts as I'm not hip to fashion sites or anything, but I would do it as the example (names are just as examples)

DressesAndMore.com (have her articles of clothing be here on different pages based on categories, whether by article of clothing, or design categories depending on what keywords you can find that work best, and make each page optimized and routed with links to her Etsy page)

VintageAccessories.com (have her jewelry and other accessories be on this website and again, just as above, find the best way to break them out into each category and then link them all to her Etsy page)

I think doing it this way would be great as you have better chances of optimizing and building backlinks for each, rather than having everything on one site. You could then go to forums related to jewelry and post there for the jewelry site, and go to fashion sites for the clothing.

It may sorta seem like a bit more work at first, but here's why I suggest this:

Some years ago, I had my Genycis.com hip hop site as my site to sell my hip hop instrumentals to music artists, and then I got into sound design and also sold sound kits to music producers. The site did okay, but optimizing the soundkits page was more difficult as it was an inner page to my home page. So what did I do?

After some time, I decided to split them off into their own separate brands. I was then able to optimize Genycis.com by itself to cater to those interested in hip hop beats, while then creating my "spin off" site if you will, SoundsForBeats.com, to relate to those that produce rather than rap. I optimized them each as their own entity. I did this building backlinks little by little for each of them and posting in corresponding forums, article marketing for each site, etc.

The result: I wound up making double in sales, as more people were now finding my soundkits website as its own entity in Google, and my hip hop beats site was still making sales as a result of the optimization it already had.

I'd say since the clothing is separate from jewelry even though they're both worn, I would do a separate site for each as a promotion type site to then route back to her Etsy site. It's similar to what I went through, in that, although both sites related to hip hop, one was for rappers and singers, and the other was for producers. Yours has the same feel in that although they're both worn by the customer, they still are separate categories of their own.

Two sites is my recommendation. And, if you can find someone that can do two sites for you, and make her an easy merchant site, I'd recommend that as well as she wouldn't have to worry about the cover charges or fees that Etsy sells. But try the promotional sites first, and get them optimized properly. I'd be willing to bet she makes more money than she is now because now you're bringing a stronger customer base to her via SEO and search engines.

Her sites can still be branded towards her this way as well, such as "AnnieRoseClothing.com" and "AnnieRoseJewelry.com" so that the Annie Rose brand still stands out, but she still gets a better chance of building "real estate" online to optimize for all that she sells.

Hope this was helpful to you, and anyone else that may have similar scenarios.

Oh, and if you can find ways to get each site to show random items of the other's site, you'll do well to cross promote clothing with jewelry and accessories. Just some food for thought. Best of luck and success to the site! Gotta get her creativity out there, especially if the potential to make money from what she enjoys is strong! It's what got me into my niche and doing both smaller niches now as well. Blessings spawned from blessings!

Brit -
I've got no flinging clue about the fashion world - but my field (too large to be a niche) is rock and gem hunting. A lot of gem hunters have the lapidary equipment and facet their own gems and shape their own cabs - and a lot of them also make finished jewelry.

I'm not sure what level your mom is at jewelry making. Did I miss the URL to look at her stuff?

At certain levels of jewelry creation, she might want to strike that as an individual business. If what she is doing is simple jewelry, such as bead work and simple wire wraps, she might want to consider displaying the jewelry as accessories for her fashion creations, with prices for just the jewelry and just the clothes and another price for the ensamble with the jewelry included.

Without seeing the jewelry and understanding her processes, it's hard to say whether she should take that on as a separate entity or keep it related to the fashion. There is a major amount of jewelry makers, so the options I have listed are all I can give without knowledge of her jewelry.