New Business Goals For 2009

Today I sat down with some friends and talked about our business goals for the new year ahead. We know the begining of the new year will be a challenge for us all who are trying to sell our wares but we are praying the economy recovers quickly.

We all agreed that in order to get more business we need to concentrate on marketing our items. We came up with a couple of ideas that we are going to try and I would like to share them with you. These ideas are nothing new I'm sure as you read this you will say to yourself "I knew that" but hopefully now you will try it if you haven't already.

1. Talk about your craft! This is something I actually did very little of this past year except during the holidays. I did work alot of hours at my day job which caused my craft to suffer. I will carry at least two business cards with me at all times ready to hand out to a stranger that I have started a conversation with. I will talk, talk, talk about what I make to people I have never seen or talked with before. I will also share with my co-workers and my family all of my new designs this coming year.

2. Craigslist.com! I only did this one time in the last year but some of my friends have done it numerous times and have brought a lot of traffic to their websites this way. For the most part Craigs list is free. Need I say more? Check it out.

3. Use pay per clicks. This is something I did last year too and made enough sales from it to pay my google adwords bill. I only turned it on during the weekends when most people are online just looking around. I just didn't use it enough. This year I am going to use it to it's full potential. As a matter of fact I have it turned on right now as I type this. There are plenty of PPC sites out there and they are easy to use. They really don't cost as much as most people think, There isn't any joining fee, you only pay when someone clicks your ad. So what do you have to lose by trying it for a month. You can turn it on and off when you want.

4. Forums. They are free to join and there are many out there. They allow you to put your web address in your signature link so people will be able to check you out when you post to a forum. I found that when I posted daily to forums during my lunch hour starting on Monday by the following weekend I would have a sale by someone from that forum. Then it spreads, they tell their friends and show your item to them and then their friends want what you have for sale too. So I will be back on the forums during my lunch hour.

5. Youtube. My friend said that she made a video of her doing her craft with her website address scrolling across the bottom of the screen. She said it's easy to do, gives you a lot of exposure and she has made several sales from this. So this will be another adventure I will try in 2009.

6. Email signature. Now this is something that I have seen work. I added My website address and a couple of pics of my newest items at the bottom of every email I sent out. I have a tracking counter on my site that tells me where people link to my site from and about 1/4 of them were from an email link that I sent. What I did was started really looking at what kind of mail my friends and family forwarded to me. I found it was mostly dumb jokes and silly pics. So I started sending the same thing to them knowing they would forward it to everyone on their mailing lists and so on and so on and so on. I don't know why I took that signature out of my emails but it is going back in.

Well hope this works for you. I know these small changes will work for myself and my friends. I hope your business prospers!!!