OK I have my first question for my Plain English Tech and AF help. I'm open to any and all questions so drop me a note and ask away. I'll try to get your answers posted within 24 hours.

Our first question is about Item Titles. Here's the question: I have difficulty with the titles and description for my pieces.  I'm kind of a black and white person so if I have, for example, a wire-wrapped red teardrop dichroic glass pendant, that's what I write.  A lot of the artists come up with these beautiful titles to describe their pieces.  Which is the best way to get the info into the google base and be most effective? 

It's been said that google prefers something straight and to the point when it scans the web during searches. I love fancy titles. A necklace called "Moonlight Promenade" makes me smile. However, most people will not be searching for that name and if they are, they probably aren't finding exactly what they're looking for. 

Your title needs to be clear and concise. Typically it should include the color, maybe the shape, the name of the object, and maybe one other descriptor. So one of the pairs of earrings I sell would read "Red Crystal Chandelier Earrings". That title gives us the color, the material, the shape, and the type of item.

Google picked that one up in a heartbeat.  That title happens to the the number one search out of any of the incoming URLs I have into my shop. 

Now this isn't to say that you can't have a fancy name for your items. Maybe you want to name your pieces, there's nothing that says you can't, but I wouldn't put them in the title. The one thing I have found that I love is when I see the "flowery" name of an item scripted so sweetly on the first picture in the shop. 

For more help on Titles and SEO in general I've written another plain English post. You can find that post here: SEO and You

SEO can be a guessing game. It's almost constantly changing with the whims of shoppers searching for particular items. What drew people in before, now isn't what's being looked for. So, let's talk in layman's terms about keywords and what they can and cannot do. Artfire offers some great guides on SEO and what it is, but for some, the techno-babble and information is just overwhelming. I'll try my best not to make this too technical.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization - the fancy term for "How Google and others find stuff on the internet when you type something into their little box."

Keyword - The fancy name for "That word you just typed into Google's or other's little box"

Now rules for SEO vary from search engine to search engine. Some words are allowed, other not so much. Keep this in mind when using keywords. Also keep in mind the number of keywords you are using, and make sure not to repeat the same keyword too many times. I'll explain this in a moment.

When making a listing on Artfire, you start with the title. The title is usually the first thing people will see when they are looking for something in particular. This is where your first keywords come into play. So if you're selling a bracelet you should describe it a bit in the title. Something like "Blue Bead Stitched Bracelet" will work well. Anyone searching for a Blue bracelet or stitched bracelet, or bead bracelet, will have that come up in their search.

Now in your description you can go into far more detail than your title. Using the bracelet as an example again you would put something like "Blue Peyote stitched beads are woven together to form this 7 inch long bracelet." And then get into the prettier details like how the beads reflect the light. The first line of your description should contain a couple keywords from the title, but not repeat more than once. For instance the above example was correct. It used Blue, Stitched, Beads, and Bracelet but did not repeat those words several times in the sentence itself.

Using the same words over and over in a description or in your tags (explained below) is known as Keyword Stuffing, Keyword stacking, Keyword Packing...and it can actually hurt your searches in the long run because the search engines think you are trying to get more views from irrelevant searches. Putting "Blue Bracelet" "Blue Beads" "Blue Peyote" "Blue Stitched" as your keywords is stuffing. Basically your item will come up in someone's search even if they are looking for something completely unrelated, like "Blue Berries"

Ok so we have our title and our description. Now we add tags. Tags are the words that we have already used in our title and description as well as other words that describe our item but maybe didn't make the cut for the title and first line of the description. The magic number for tags is 10. You should have no more than 10 comma separated tags and each tag should be different. Going to the bracelet example again our tags would be something like this: Blue bracelet, Beaded Bracelet, Stitched Jewelry, Armband, Bangle, Peyote Bangle, etc.

Keywords may be repeated but not more than twice in the tags. Bracelet was used twice with two different descriptors as was the word Bangle. This is fine. Also be sure to remember that you do not need to put the category your item is under in the tags. Artfire does that for you.

I hope this was layman's enough for you to understand. SEO is hard enough to get when you're writing up a listing, even moreso when you're just learning. If you have questions, leave a comment and I'll try to answer as soon as I can. Happy Selling!

My boss is a major taskmaster. She demands I come in early, she also demands that I work late.  She has to-do lists to keep track of her to-do lists, she barely lets me have a lunch break, and if something isn't done just right she completely flips out on me. She has to have everything just so, and woe be to the person who puts a single thing out of place. She is definitely not someone to cross. I don't recommend working for her, she's picky and overbearing. A real perfectionist. Oh and you can just forget about time off, don't even think about it.

Did I mention I'm self-employed? Yeah, forgot about that, sorry.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's like this. Running a business, any business, takes lots of time, energy, and devotion. You can call it a labor of love, and you'd be right. I work hard to get my name out there, make sure my items are perfect, and that I make something people want to have. There comes a time though, that even I need to just stop. That time is....

....the dreaded sick day.

It's inevitable, we're going to get sick. Sure we take care of ourselves, but even the best laid plans are easily dashed upon the rocks of reality. The common cold isn't called common for nothing.

It's when we get sick that we tend to push ourselves. We try to work through it, knowing things won't get done unless we do them. We go to our studios and force ourselves to make just one more thing for our shops or just post one more thing on the 'net to promote, when we really should be resting. 

Ultimately we end up feeling even worse. We go from having a cold to having a fever. By then, we're really sick and can't even get out of bed. Then once we feel better, a week or so later, we come back to work with a mountain of things that need to be done because we were out for so long. 

If we had simply stopped when we had a cold, taken care of ourselves, this probably wouldn't have happened. Now we're in a mad dash to get all the back logged work done, and, because fate has a cruel sense of humor, we get sick again. We've burned ourselves out trying to get caught up. And now the cycle continues. 

So whether you are employed by a taskmaster boss or you yourself are that boss, take heed. Listen to yourself. Know when to call it a day. If you're sick, take a rest. Work will be there tomorrow, it always is. The world isn't going to end because you didn't finish that piece of jewelry or make that last card. Take care of yourself first and then when you're feeling better concentrate on work. Your sanity and health will thank you.

In tough economic times the first people to feel the pressure are those who are in retail and sales. As business people we get a first hand look at the shifting trends of buyers. We are the first to witness the public tightening their belts, holding onto their purse strings, and passing on things that are deemed luxury items for the more practical necessities.

I think it's safe to say that the smaller we are, the more we notice the ebbing tide of sales. Things that once flew off your virtual shelves now linger without so much as a glance. Many times we wonder if it's something we did, if perhaps we garnered a poor reputation somewhere along the line. Even when we're told over and over that it's the economy some small voice in the back of our brains still wonders ever so quietly and continuously nags over the small things we could have done.

It's easy to let that voice take over. After months of waning sales, months of no views, the waiting becomes just too much and we get desperate. We want validation, to know that our items are still as good as they once were. We get impatient and it begins to show outwardly. That small voice in our heads becomes louder and we begin to vocalize the thoughts that not too long ago remained unspoken. And when we do finally say something, we find we're not alone. We find scores of others feel the same way, and they too begin to vocalize their need for validation, and their frustration at the lack of customers. Inevitably commiseration turns into a pity party.

I've been guilty of the above. I may not vocalize it publicly, but I have been guilty of falling into the "woe is me" trap. It affected a lot of areas in my life, and none for the better. I knew I couldn't just wish the economy better, nor could I make people buy something from me. Instead I had to change my outlook and how I felt. I essentially pretended my way out of my pity party. I used something called the "act as if" premise.

The premise is nothing new. I didn't invent it, though I wish I could claim I had. Basically it's a way of pulling yourself up. You act as if you are successful. You act as if you have the greatest things in the world. You act as if you just made a huge sale. Eventually the "acting" becomes commonplace. You begin to believe in yourself again, and it's no longer acting because it's a reality. 

Ghandi said "You must be the change you want to see in the world." If you want things to change you need to act like they already have. Live your life how you would if things were the way you wanted them to be. Eventually the changes will happen. 

"As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The future is truly what we make of it today. It's human nature to look forward and make plans for tomorrow. I'm one of those people who dreams of how things will be, whether it's for my family or, as has been the recent case, how it will be for my business.

Like so many others I began selling my crafts for pin money. I wanted to simply have the ability and money to keep crafting. I love making things, and if I could keep doing it then I was happy. As I became more involved in the selling process though, I realized that I could be doing this as a job. That's when I began to dream a bit bigger.

The dreaming isn't the hard part. I'm filling the pages of my writing journal with new ideas every day. I write down new ideas, the direction I see myself taking my shop, and a whole score of other ideas I want to implement in the future. 

The hard part comes when I want to begin to implement some of these new ideas. My time at the moment is very limited. I have a toddler that needs most of my time and energy. I tried to create a schedule that would allow me to be both a mom and a full time business owner, but I realized that I couldn't do it all at once. So the ideas were written down for another day. I am content to wait until my baby goes off to school, but I still keep dreaming up new ideas and directions. 

If I could give one piece of advice to anyone who wanted to start their own business, any business, it would be to keep dreaming big. Just because you can't be big now, doesn't mean the opportunity won't come later. Make plans, write them down, whether your plan is to be bigger than Hallmark (you know who you are) or you just want to make a bit more money to help pay down expenses, keep dreaming big. It will happen, just give it time.

"May the dreams of your past be the reality of your future" ~Irish Proverb