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I'm not sure about you, but the holiday rush of customer inquiries and sales are forefront in my mind right now. And I've received more than a few messages and emails about what I did last year and what I'm planning on doing this year. So here's what I'm doing to get myself ready:
Inventory
I'm setting a goal for myself to make at least one new item everyday.
Now, I know that's tough for a lot of you, and I understand! There are so many days where I'm just too busy with everything else once I get home from my day job. So I plan ahead, and on my lunch breaks at work, you will most likely find me binding a new journal.
I had also spent the last few months brainstorming new product lines for the coming winter. I have launched them all, and you can find them in my Etsy shop.
Packaging
My packaging is fairly simple, as my earlier post has explained.
The kraft paper I use is recycled. At my work, when we receive our order for printer cartridges, the company we order from puts this awesome kraft paper in the box to fill in the empty space. And I gotta tell you, that's awesome for me; I think I have enough to last through to the end of next year! However, I don't know how busy this holiday season is going to be for me, so I'm going to be collecting all I can. And, of course, I'm also stocking up on the bubble envelopes I use to ship out my products.
Upgrade Options
There are a few upgrades I'm planning on offering this year:
Shipping
Each separate size of my journals are all approximately the same weight. So I figure out the expedited shipping for Canadian, US and International shipping, and I make a separate listing in my Etsy shop for the extra expedited shipping cost. Now, I know it's normally against Etsy TOU to create a listing for that, but during the holiday season, they do allow this for sellers.
Note: Since Etsy sellers get charged a % of the listings they sell through the listing price, I put the listing price at $0.21 (which is the minimum), and the shipping to the amount for each country in the shipping section; so I can save on the amount that Etsy would charge me otherwise - it's also the correct way to offer a shipping upgrade.
Holiday Gift Wrapping
I offered this last year, and it was very well received - so many people would like that effort to be made by someone other than themselves, and I am more than happy to do that for them for a nominal fee. As you can see, my packaging is not all that elaborate, so I charge only $2.00 for the gift wrap. Again, during the holiday season, Etsy allows their sellers to offer this as a separate listing for their shoppers.
Sales
You may have heard about this tiny little sale called "Black Friday Cyber Monday" sale. It's only the biggest sale that is nationwide in the US (we don't really celebrate it here in Canada - we reserve the big sale for Boxing Day - the day after Christmas). It goes from the Friday after Thanksgiving until the Sunday - all weekend long. Now, some have only the Black Friday sale, but we online sellers could certainly benefit from having the weekend-long sale.
This is the time where I reserve my biggest sale of the year - 20% off anything in my shop. And I put it EVERYWHERE:
shop banner
shop announcement
at the beginning of each listing (craftopolis is great for editing all your listings at once)
on my Facebook page
on my Twitter page
on my blog - this year, I'm going to do it in some of my blog posts too!
in my monthly newsletter
EVERYWHERE!
And instead of a coupon code, I'll be using "BETSI", which is an online program that is linked to your Etsy shop (like craftopolis is). From there you can change a bunch of things on your listings - this year I'm going to lower the price of the listings by 20%, so that the new Etsy buyers (I get a lot of them) aren't confused with coupon codes. I want to make it as easy for them as I possibly can.
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And instead of a coupon code, I'll be using "BETSI", which is an online program that is linked to your Etsy shop (like craftopolis is). From there you can change a bunch of things on your listings - this year I'm going to lower the price of the listings by 20%, so that the new Etsy buyers (I get a lot of them) aren't confused with coupon codes. I want to make it as easy for them as I possibly can.
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So that's what I'm doing this year to get ready for the holiday rush of sales. If there is something that you are doing differently, please let me know, and I might just adopt some of your ideas. I want to be as efficient as possible this year, since I'm also working a full-time day job.
This was good to read! This will be my first holiday season on etsy and I'm excited/terrified. Good luck to you and fingers crossed for us both! ;-)
ReplyDelete-Jamie
http://chatterblossom.blogspot.com/