Time is not on my side

Summer months are the optimal time to start planning for and getting your shop ready for the holiday season. Etsy's holiday season picks up from October through December. Harvest and Halloween seasons pick up as early as August, so start stocking up on and listing your holiday offerings now in preparation for the seasonal rush ahead
     • Media Tip: Press outlets begin finalizing their holiday issues and series in the summer. Have your holiday items listed, tagged, and available now for buyers and PR reps looking to pull items for holiday gift guides.

-From Etsy's Merchandising Desk: July Heats Up

Oh, holy crap.

I am not expecting to have anything from my shop catch the eye of any media folk and wind up in some magazine in time for the holiday season. I may be talented, but I'm not that talented.

Yet.

No, this just reminds me that the first craft sale that I want to be part of is in 3 months. Three months. Ninety days. Again, oh, holy crap.

I'm not sure what I'm going to sell at that sale, but I don't have enough stock for a sale. And trying to sell the same things I have in my Etsy shop is not going to happen, either (mainly because if I tried to do that, it would be just my luck to have everything in my shop sell online at the same time people are buying them off of me at a sale).

There's a small list in my notebook for ideas of what to make/sell at the sale (this is only the first; I'm aiming for two more, and I know there's at least one more for sure), but haven't actually started any of it. I've decided that I'm going to try to get as much product done and ready to list in my shop by the end of June so July will be when I come up with new products. What those products are is another question.

I've been debating about opening another shop, either on Etsy or one of the other online handmade sites (like Artfire or Zibbet), to see if I can sell my efforts elsewhere. But how much more time can I devote to doing things that may or may not sell? Already, it's what I think about the majority of the time; it's what I spend my 'spare' time doing; and it's an even more difficult financial commitment for someone who doesn't have an income. So, yeah... do I keep all my eggs in one basket or start spreading them out, even though it could be a waste, which is what I'm doing now is turning into.

*sigh*

Sometimes I wonder if things would have just been easier to keep working rather than putting all this effort into something that's not exactly succeeding (which is no one/thing's fault but my own)... at least by working at home, I get to spend time with Maddy and drown my sorrows in cartoons and reruns all day.

Relief... but not relaxation

Crazy, insane, busy day today. I'm tackling a nasty to-do list that will hopefully be cleared off by the end of the day. Amongst the wonderfully fun things I am attempting today are:

• a marketing strategy and plan. Aren't they the same thing? Heck, no. It's like I'm re-living grade 11 Accounting all over again.
• spreadsheets. Two of them - a 'cost per produced item' one and my business ledger. Again, grade 11 accounting is finally paying off.
• banners, avatars and redesigns. I'm not happy with the banner here or on my Etsy store (same with the avatar there), so I've been tinkering with them all for about a week now. I should have specs done in about a week.
• making a light box. Oh, yes, I will... from scratch. Or I'll try to make one, give up and continue to use the floor of my war-time house as the background for my product photos.
• product descriptions. Now that I've had my store up and running for a few weeks and haven't had a sale yet, I'm starting to look at why people like to look at my stuff but not purchase it. Part of what I've come up with is going to be the marketing strategy and plan; the other part - and probably the most important part - is how I present what I am selling. Re-photographing all of my pieces is one step, but the descriptions I have written for the pieces themselves needs work. It's going to be a very 'yay for thesauri' project. 

Keith has agreed to watch Maddy today and I'm eternally grateful for that. I should have the entire afternoon to get through the majority of this... and I have to get it done. I set April 1 as the 'launch date' for my marketing to start and I refuse to let another deadline pass me by. Time management is a big issue for me (and us as a family, really) right now and if I can't start arranging my own work time properly, then what's the point of trying to get this business off the ground?

I should probably get to work on that list now. *sigh*