25 Stunning British Places You Can Reach From London. The Ladykillers. Christmas Craft Fairs in December 9/12/13 - 31/12/13. Craft Challenge #90 - One Tiny Thing - Entries Due Sep 2 - 9 - CRAFTSTER CRAFT CHALLENGES. Craft Challenge #90 - One Tiny Thing - Entries Due Sep 2 - 9 Winner Announced! It's Time to Vote! Scroll up to see the voting poll.You must be logged in to vote.
One vote per member.If cheating of any sort is discovered, the applicable entry and votes will be disqualified. In honor of the amazingOne Tiny Thing Swaps, be bring you the One Tiny Thing challenge! You can use any methods and materials of your choice to create your project. Additional Rules and Details: Craft your project during this challenge period (Aug 7 2013 - Sep 9 2013) only.
It's probably impossible to know whether your project is 100% original, has never been posted on Craftster, or made by anyone else in the past. Prizes: At the end, we'll set up a poll right here and the first place winner (US or non-US) will get: (1) their project in the Featured Projects area(2) their project in the Craftster Blog(3) and a prize from us at Craftster.org -- any one item from one of Craftster's online shops! Guardian Small Business Network. 20x A4 White [MATT] Self Adhesive Sticker Paper Sheet Address Label UK 1st class. Why Twitter won’t get you any clients soon (and why it’s still my favourite marketing tool!) Social media are very popular, and I regularly get questions about how to use Twitter, Facebook, Linked In etc to get clients. You might be spending hours on these social media tools (they are pretty addictive!) But are they getting you closer to any sales? Firstly, a reality check … Are your potential clients using the same social media tools as you are?
Are they using them to help them with their buying decisions? How many of your clients are actually ‘following’ or ‘liking’ you right now? And what are you talking about or sharing with your followers that is useful and interesting for them, and info that they would share with others? When you dig a little deeper you might quickly discover that your contacts are mostly friends, family and peers, and that your content isn’t really that interesting for your potential clients.
Not really that surprising then that you aren’t getting any sales via Twitter. So, how can you get more useful business followers on Twitter? So, how do you do that? How To Get More Facebook Likes - 5 Simple Steps To Build Your Likes. News/on_my_way_down. Best and worst times to pin. Who knew. | Social Media.
The Top 5 Facebook Marketing Strategies Every Business Needs. One of the most important social media networks your business needs to be on is Facebook. And if you’re reading this, chances are you know that already, or at least you trust whoever told you that was true. But – are you confident that your Facebook marketing strategies are as effective as they could be? The purpose of marketing your business on Facebook is to boost profits, of course.
But how do you do that? One of the proven strategies for using Facebook to grow your business is to create an audience of engaged and loyal fans and customers who eagerly look forward to your brand’s updates. Is your Facebook engagement steadily growing, or have you found your marketing efforts slowly choking? Growing your Facebook engagement – both in terms of number of fans and the level of their engagement on your page is the result of consistent, proven activities that make your business stand out as the provider of choice in your category.Think that’s something you can do? 1. 2. 3. The 10 big (but practical!) questions to answer before you start a design or craft business. Have you just graduated? Are you thinking of setting up on your own? But where do you start? Becoming a creative freelancer or sole trader can be very scary and overwhelming!
This post is based on an article written by Patricia van den Akker, The Director of The Design Trust, which was published in Crafts Magazine in May/June 2013, in the special Graduate section. You can find the original digital page turner of the entire graduate section in Crafts Magazine here. Crafts Magazine May/June 2013.Images left to right: Ying Yang 3 by Surjit Sanghera, Kefal neckpiece by Grace Hamilton, and Spun Stools by Hugh Leader – Williams, who all showed at New Designers One Year On. So get a pen and notebook ready, and answer these 10 big but practical questions by The Design Trust Director Patricia van den Akker to help you get started: Question 1: Why?
The first two questions are big: Why should your business exist? Take some time to write down ALL your answers. What do you want to improve?
Twitter. Pinterest. Craft Insurance | Event Insurance | Insurance Broker | Craft Insure | Insurers | UK | Ireland. London’s best places to work solo. Do you know any good places where I can go and work for an afternoon with my laptop? Whether it’s spaces for coworking or just somewhere to plug in the laptop, this is one of the questions most often asked of us at KHQ.
Well, as it happens we do and we’ll be running a mini series of articles that give you a flavour of what you can expect at some of our favourite freelance friendly spaces. This week, we’ve started with London, UK but we’ll be featuring other cities and towns based on your feedback soon. Drum roll please…. Firstly, our favourites. We’ve chosen them because we’ve used them ourselves and often run our pop-up coworking events here. It’s not an exhaustive list of every coworking space in London. You’ll also notice that there aren’t any coffee chains in here. 1. On the downside, it can get super busy, so you’ll need to be there early if you want to grab a seat and some table space. 2. Ssshhh.. 3. @ Work Hubs 4. We do love the Hubs. 5. Basically you just buy a card. 6. 7. 8. 9. The Top 3 Ways You Can Build Your Business with LinkedIn. If you could get your business in front of the decision makers at the businesses who are your ideal customer, would you?
If you could skip the cold calling and get right to the people who actually have the authority to decide, would you? If you could bypass the gatekeepers – aka the secretaries, receptionists, and assistants who promise to forward your message (but rarely do) and actually enjoy a higher percentage of sales in your business, would you? That, my friends, is the power of using LinkedIn to build your business! LinkedIn has over 200 million accounts. And what you don’t know about the average account holder might shock you. Like – the average salary of a LinkedIn user is over $100,000 annually. I’m telling you – you might think LinkedIn isn’t fun to use, but can you see why it just might be worth figuring out how to use this network to your advantage? I’m with you – it’s not my favorite network either.
Top 3 Ways to Use LinkedIn More Effectively to Build Your Business 1. 2. 3. IdeasTap. The things all art graduates should know. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't do it When I was preparing for my degree show a lot of people said things like “Well obviously I don't expect to work as an illustrator,” and “Everyone knows there's no work in illustration”. These things aren't true. It's not easy but it's not impossible; somebody's got to play the gigs, take the photos, design the clothes and draw the pictures we all enjoy, so why shouldn't it be you? I have made my living solely as a freelance illustrator since graduating two years a go. Keep producing work If you're passionate about your work, prove it. Get a website This is essential, and something that really should be sorted out before your degree show. I use Cargo for my portfolio website and Wordpress for blogging: they’re both easy to update and come up well in Google searches.
Make the most of graduate opportunities There is a relatively short time span when you are classed as a graduate, not just a student or a run-of-the-mill freelancer. Join IdeasTap. 31 Days to Build a Creative Business: Test Your Product’s Marketability {Day 2} 31 Days to Build a Creative Business: Test Your Product’s Marketability {Day 2} You can find all the 31 Days articles HERE. Welcome back to the Build a Creative Business 31 Day Series! Today we’re going to discuss how to test your product’s marketability. There are a few ways to not only test the marketability of a future product, but to enhance the visibility/search-ability of any existing products you might have on the market. If you have yet to launch your own storefront, you’ll find these tools useful throughout the life of your business. Here’s how to get to know your market better: 1. Start with a basic Google search to see what comes up whenever you type in your craft, service, product, etc.
Further your research by searching your product or idea on marketplaces such as Etsy or Big Cartel. 2. Contrary to popular belief, a saturated market is a good thing. 3. When your product is trending, it’s a golden opportunity to recruit new customers. Cost-per-click Advertising. P.S. Like this: Photoshop Tutorial: How to Use Clipping Masks and Eyes Of Style Graphics – EVENT: Designers Market at Stour Space | UK Handmade. For four years running, Stour Space Designer’s Market is a platform for creative independent makers, artists, and enterprises to sell and promote their work. On the last Saturday of every month Stour Space opens its doors for local produce, craft, design and creative entrepreneurship. Packed full of innovative and exciting collaborations, the Designers Market is the perfect place to find a little more of what you fancy.
As featured in Time Out last year, “This indoor market is a Saturday afternoon well spent, come rain or shine”. The monthly indoor market holds itself well in the bright glass encased venue of Stour Space, Hackney Wick. On the fringe of the Olympic stadium, the venue also houses The Counter Café - a hugely popular hangout for East End coffee enthusiasts. Visitors and stallholders will be able to browse the stalls, buy exclusive one off products, and then fill up on a delicious brunch. Stour Space has been committed to supporting local artists since its launch in 2009.
Are you ready to...... | Handmade Horizons. Top 5 tips to sell your crafts online successfully. Do you want to sell online, but find that creating a website takes too much time and money?! Instead of creating your own website, it is far easier to sell your crafts online by joining one of the many established online shops or market places. Promoting or selling online with an established handmade website, online market place or online directory is one of the best and cheapest ways to increase your profile and to generate sales all year round.
They have overtaken galleries and other sales opportunities like consumer and trade fairs. Many galleries now research for new products on line too, so don’t be surprised if a gallery in the US approaches you through your Etsy shop! As they promote themselves heavily with often big marketing and advertising budgets, and have an established traffic stream already, it is far easier to increase your profile and get sales through these sites, than when you create your own website. There are three levels of online sites to promote your craft products: 4 easy steps to boost your database if you don’t know enough people to sell to. If you don’t know enough people to sell to then … you don’t know enough people to sell to! It is as simple as that. If you want to go beyond selling to your friends and family then you need to have an up-to-date and thriving database of potential clients, contacts and other relevant people that are interested in what you do and who might want to purchase from you or commission you.
If you are starting out you will need to identify and include potential people into a database, address book, e-mail management programme. This process is called ‘Filling the Pipeline’, and is one of the first crucial steps in your marketing. Step 1: Create a (computerised) database There are different ways to create a database. The good news is that you don’t have to use anything fancy. If you want something more advanced you can use Microsoft Access, but you might need to ask somebody to format it in a way that makes it work for you. Step 2: Gather all your existing contact details And then? How to get more traffic to my website or online shop? Top tips from 11 successful creatives & experts. ‘How do I get more traffic to my website?’ Is one of the most asked questions here at The Design Trust. Getting traffic to your site is the starting point of building up the relationship with your potential clients. Get this right and your online sales will start to increase most likely too.
But when I ask this question to social media and online experts or successful creatives I always get a wide variety of answers … so, I decided to ask some of them to share their own tips with you here in this post. Some advice here overlaps as many people use similar tools such as Twitter, FaceBook and Adwords Keytools, but it is really interesting to see how they all use them slightly differently.
PS Don’t forget to scroll all the way to the bottom for my own tips, and to add yours too! Rachael Taylor – surface pattern designer and textile artist www.rachaeltaylordesigns.co.uk Rachael writes: ‘My biggest tip for getting more traffic to your website is free social media. Hilary’s top tips are: Why not?