Forging for a living

Looking at your list of keywords might I suggest that you should concentrate less on the health aspect and more on the 'unique' and 'beautiful' aspect. Many of your keywords are too generic which is possibly why only some of them rank high.

Your sales page is a bit pedestrian and could do with a little excitement. Make winning a free ring look exciting! The offer just sits there and could easily be missed by someone skimming down the page. Make your contest a 'referral' contest with the prize going to whoever introduces the nost new people to your site.

"Jewelry for Health and Beauty" sounds so functional - add the word 'beautiful' and make the headline more prominent.

Your rings look great. Your website, not so much. You could convert your site to using WordPress as a content management system, instead of strictly a blogging platform. That way it would be easy to manage and you could take advantage of the hundreds of templates out there to improve the appearance. The other advantage is that Wordpress does very well with the search engines.

Try offering your existing customers product discounts for referrals. Make sure you keep a list of your customers and contact them regularly. You can market to your loyal customers for a good, long time. They're proven buyers, so are much more likely to become repeat buyers, especially if you have specials for them that you send out every so often.

Target buying keywords, rather than interest keywords. You could try phrases such as "custom rings" (41 searches a day in Google, 42K competitors) "custom wedding rings" (16 searches a day in Google, only 21K competitors) and "custom engagement rings" (13 searches a day in Google, 27K competitors)

Do some article marketing, it is pretty effective on a minimal budget. You should definitely start a blog in addition to your main sales site. The regularly updated content would keep visitors coming back and help with the search engines too. It would be a great way to introduce new designs. Talk to otheer web site owners with complementary sites and see if they would be affiliates for you. You give them a percentage of the sales for every sales they refer.

These are just some ideas off the top of my ole' head.

You might consider selling your jewelry on an online mall. I'm a jewelry maker myself and have great luck at rubylane.com - it's like an online mall with antiques and handmade artisan jewelry.

The artisan jewelry section does really well and rubylane works at getting all the traffic to their site,and hopefully once they are shopping around they will find your site. I know some of the other sellers there have a huge following and sell almost every item they list right away.

You can have your own site like you do now, but also open a shop at RL and gain more customers by leveraging their promotional activities. They also advertise in major magazines and news venues and each shop can pay to put their shop into that advertisement - by combining it this way it costs each shop owner like $50 to get in the ad instead of having to pay $2000 or more that it would cost for a full page ad in these publications.

Hope that helps!

Lee

Art,

Thanks for all your comments. I love your brutal honesty. All your suggestions make sense to me and I will start implementing them. How do I determine some non-generic keywords? Just by going through the copy or create copy that has unusual kw?

I love your choice of words. "a bit pedestrian". I get it. I guess my copy speaks for itself, I do tend to be very functional. I'll see if I can liven things up a bit.

Thanks for your help Art.

Opportunities,
I strarted a blog a while back but not knowing what I was doing, I totally neglected it. I recently got an ebook on blogging and just downloaded worpress 2.7 and installed it. Now I'm looking for instructions on how to work it.

What do you mean by content management blog. Is that simply a blog where I post the new designs and such?

Seriously? You made that badboy on a Commie64? That's impressive!

You might want to try using WordPress or XSitePro for site building (they come with lots of cool templates), or, if you are comfortable with HTML, just find a jazzy free straightforward template and customize it by hand (a lot of my stuff is done in Notepad woohoo).

I really do like the rings, I may buy one.

Forging Hmm you create fake checks ahh not that kind....

I will give you the advice I gave an Sculptor friend of mine when creating their marketing site.

People who buy art, buy it because of how it makes them feel, they can't feel what you bring to the art if they don't know who you are, or your inspiration to create.

While many sites are more of a photo gallery of pieces of they artists work, her first page talks about her, all relating to why she creates.

This isn't the exact copy that I wrote for the site but it gives the basis of what I am talking about.


Living a beautiful fulfilling life is the essence of everything that I do.

I believe that the world is full of such great beauty that I take my inspiration from the simplicity of the beauty of life.

You and I know that we who are on this planet are all connected, and connected for a reason.

My reason for being here is to support bringing more beauty more pleasure and more peace into your life.

To bring to you, what flows out of my heart as I take chisel to soapstone.

You know life isn't about time clocks and schedules, its about finding what is true in your heart and sharing this gift that is inside you to all those that are drawn to you.

This is my mission in life, to create beautiful sculptures inspired by the drive to create beauty in the lives of those who understand what life is all about.

Thank you for taking time to appreciate my way of bringing beauty, peace and joy to those who share the knowledge that a beautiful environment is a reflection of the beauty of your soul.


Mark

Amazing jewelry! I've been a hobby blacksmith for a few years and can really appreciate your level of skill. I'm a newbie here, so take my impressions with grain of salt.

I can't add more than has already been posted on the SEO front either in this thread or other parts of WF.

From a pure user experience perspective, consider hiring someone to help with the look and feel of the site. If you're like me, your specialty isn't web site design.

Another site to sell your art you could consider is etsy.com, as it only carries hand made goods. Your work should easily be among the top of the jewelry class.

How do I determine some non-generic keywords? Just by going through the copy or create copy that has unusual kw?

Keywords that contain superlatives like 'beautiful', 'eye-catching' and 'unique' are non-generic and I am sure there are many adjectives used in the jewellery sculpting trade that are not in common use but which many jewellery buyers are aware of (and it is the buyers you want to attract).

I don't know anything about the jewellery trade but when I am looking for good quality second hand books, the words 'slightly foxed' tell me a great deal about the book and will give the book a priority position in my 'to buy' list. (NO - I'm not suggesting you sell seond hand jewellery (though it could be a good move) - it's just an example from the world I know.)

Thank you all for the fantastic feedback. This is my first time on a forum and I had no idea how much I could learn from this experience.

John,
I have been told before to increase my prices. At my wife's suggestion, I doubled my prices on everything as a test for one show I did. I sold more jewelry that day than ever before. Needles to say, the new prices stuck. That was about 20 years ago. Maybe it's time to experiment with that again.

Art,
Your ideas about the possible second hand jewelry make me think. My son had a great idea. He said "Looking for Love section" "Used and returned pieces looking for a new home. " This could be good but I don't get returns. Maybe 10 in the last 30 years. Mostly because the wrong size is ordered.

This led me to another idea. I stam my name on all the pieces I do and one a few times I stamped on the wronf side. meaning that the ring had my name on the outside. This was a prototype of a new design. I had it at a show as a sample of the new design coming up and because it was mis-stamped, I had 2 people bidding for it. It was really a joke at the time but I did sell it to a very happy lady.

So maybe a prototype section with name on outside as a collectable item. Crazy huh?

Hi Energy (not a pun, just lack of name, LOL)

I just looked at your site (like the big gold ring, top center). What seems to be lacking is information. You need to put some literature on that site to draw people in. All the site did for me - other than show me the jewelry is leave a heck of a lot of questions in my mind. And by answering those questions you would cultivate organic SEO (how appropriate is that? LOL) by creating a wealth of key words just by writing natural literature on your craft/science.

What is the history of using the varied metals, stones, etc for energy balance?

How do these items balance energy? For instance - some of your rings have stones in them - what type of energy does the vibration of that particular stone produce and how does the pattern of the metal amplify or channel it?

How does science support the metaphysics?

If you need ideas for literature - take a look at ezinearticles.com - look me up under advanced search (expert author - Sally Taylor). Check out "Take two Crystals and Call Me in the Morning" and "Can't Afford A Great Metal Detector? Just BE One" -- those two articles will show you what sorts of approaches your site info might use to attract viewers. People are also very interested in the history of such crafting.

Once you put some literature on your site - submit a portion of it to submission sites - not all of it.
You can use short crops from longer essays or just a few of the shorter articles that you have up - use as much diversity as possible when choosing your items for submission - cover the realm, so to speak.

Uber-cool work, Isidro! I was an artisan myself before I got into
marketing. I forged steel stuff occasionally but not with much skill.

I have seen salesletters in the past selling copper bracelets and
things of that ilk for claimed anti-arthritic benefits - so there
is a pretty good precedent in direct mail and space ads for
this sort of appeal with jewelry.

I didn't look over your site too much - but in general if you emphasize
SEO your sales message can suffer. You site is almost like a
brief authority site about your work and you. I might advise you to
capture mailing addresses and really focus on getting the message
in their hands on paper. Just my intuition - a DVD could be good too
but I would test a mailing piece first.

Of course using the mail would force you to invest in making
your marketing good - which is something a lot of entrepreneurs
try to avoid by just saying "Oh I'll just write articles and get my
site ranked"... which works for some people and for others
it is frustrating - depends on a lot of factors.

I'm not saying the internet isn't awesome and powerful, just that
direct mail can work wonders for selling a product like this - the
state-of-mind people are in when they read their mail is very
different from web-browsing state.

Gorgeous rings! Ahh I wish I had some artistic talents like that! I agree market them as wearable art and they will sell!

I would start with a blog, you can get good Google traffic if you learn a little keyword research. Plus you can pay someone to write articles to put in the blog too.

Hi Isidro, and welcome.

Oh, what a relief! I was afraid from the headline that you had some "black hat" system to fool people with another person's signature.

There are two reasons for someone to be interested in your products. One is that they are uniquely beautiful and handcrafted. The other is that they have a "vortex energy" design. I believe that your current home page has one foot in each side, but does not give enough of the story on either side.

I recommend that you refocus the site on the energy balancing aspect of your work. On the site, tell a little bit about you and your history, just like if you and I met at a crafts fair and I had a few minutes to learn about what you do.

Were you interested in energy vortexes before you started working with metal? Or did you start making jewelry, and then you decided to add a vortex design?

How did you find out about energy vortexes? Did you have a life of tension and uneasiness, which was calmed once you started designing wearable vortex designs for yourself? What effects have other people noticed?

Are these energy vortex designs related to what David Wilcox discusses in his "Law of One" material? Are they related to what David Icke discusses? Would web sites like those be good places for you to run a classified ad?

Meanwhile, add a page to your site that focuses on the beauty and craftsmanship aspects of your work.

Your work would also be ideal for some three minute videos. Have one where you discuss energy vortexes, another where you discuss the process of making rings. Put them up on Youtube.

Have you had a chance to browse some Wordpress themes yet?

Regards,
Allen

John, I was thinking of different pages on one site. Your idea could be more powerful, because each site would have a consistent focus all the way through: all about the beauty & craftsmanship, or all about the metaphysics.

Isidro, that's awesome!

You need to make a series of five minute videos, rather than one hour long video.

I recommend that you watch "how it's made" (episodes are available on YouTube) for inspiration. With two minor changes, this approach could be ideal for your videos.

In this show, the narrator refers to "the operator." Of course you'll talk about your own personal point of view.

Also, this show uses punchy techno-sound effect music. For what you're doing, Native American flute, smooth jazz, New Age, or light classical music might be more appropriate choices.

If you're not familiar with the art of filmmaking, I recommend you look to add an artistic video person to your team.

Once you have your five minute clips, upload them to Youtube and they'll be converted by the site to a compressed format for display.

Regards,
Allen

Yes, that's exactly what I have in mind. It would work well for putting videos online, and also let you have a menu of "chapters" if you release a DVD.

Regards,
Allen

Yes, that's what I had in mind. It would be technically possible to make a 5 minute DVD, but I think people would really prefer to buy an hour or two of instruction.

Then that's a bit of a change of focus. I originally thought the focus was on selling the rings, then I thought the focus was on selling your tools and equipment.

If you were paid very well, would you prefer to teach one on one? To have a small group workshop, maybe five people who would come to Seattle and visit your own shop for a week? To travel around the country, giving classes to 100 people at a time in hotel ballrooms? To sell instructional videos? To sell videos, then have phone calls to give one on one guidance to people who watched the video and are trying to replicate the technique at their own shop?

What would be your ideal life?

And what would be the ideal balance between teaching, making tools, and making products?

I believe all of this could be possible for you with effective marketing. However, selecting marketing tactics before a vision of your destination is like creating a route turn by turn without a map.

Regards,
Allen

I went through your web site and noticed that your title tag for you web pages are not optimized.

Your ring sizer page has "Untitled document" in the title bar.
Your Contact form page has "Mozilla Firefox" in the title bar.

I'm not that experienced either. I had index.html on my title bar for ages before I changed it. Maybe someone here could help you with a little SEO for your site.