Handmade Business Podcast

I started my first subscription club back in 2010/11, if I remember correctly and even back then, I knew that subscription boxes were a hot trend among my competitors in the craft industry. Since that time the subscription box market has grown to a whopping 2.6 billion US dollars!

In early July Etsy’s CEO Josh Silverman wrote a letter to the Etsy seller community about their new free delivery guarantee trial for US customers from July 30th. Detailed in this letter was the idea of their new policy and the incentive that they would give priority search placement to those sellers who took up the free shipping guarantee for buyers who spent $35 USD or more. As you can imagine since then there has been a huge online debate among sellers expressing their anger and concern at feeling ‘forced’ into making financial decisions about their business in order to remain on Etsy’s platform.

It’s not uncommon for businesses to use discount codes as a way to seek new customers or promote new products. In fact as many of 53% of millennial shoppers look for coupon codes when shopping online according to Retail Me Not. While large commercial retail set ups can account for regular discount offers in their margins, those who have smaller businesses will struggle to stay afloat with a regular discounting strategy. This is why it pains me

There you are going about your daily business and decide to check on your website, or Etsy shop, you stop dead in your tracks because something is very wrong… you have received a negative product review! Feels like a jab to the guts and you fall KO’d into your chair... As thoughts go racing through your head you find yourself in a funk and the sting has got to you. Today on the podcast I want to share with you the best way to mentally deal with bad product reviews and how to handle the knock to your confidence that this can bring.   SHOW NOTES - https://www.myindielifeblog.net/blog/product-reviews   Don’t forget Craft Biz Incubator enrolment closes 9th July! https://my-indie-life-academy.teachable.com/p/craft-biz-incubator

As we push to increase our brand awareness, we hope that the demand for what we make will increase, but with this comes the fear that our current production capacity might not be enough. We start to worry; How will we cope with larger numbers of orders needing to be fulfilled?

As of June 2018 there were 1 billion users on Instagram

Social media overwhelm is an ever-present threat to our mental attitude towards marketing our businesses online. Continually agonising over when to post to get the most traction, or the number of likes on your posts, or how many new followers you might get each week is exhausting and can make you feel like throwing your phone against the wall.

One of the questions I get asked A LOT is how to be more effective on social media in less time. I totally understand where you are coming from, because if you are anything like me, then the thought of doing yet more marketing is making you feel stressed, overwhelmed and sometimes even sick! That’s because we just don’t know how we can fit ‘more’ into our days especially as better marketing should lead to more sales and more sales means more production. We have only one pair of hands, right?! So how do we cope with doing more?

Everyone in business battles with choosing courage over fear when striving for success.

You fire up your laptop and log in for the day and up pops a product that looks exactly like one of yours, but it isn’t. You are dealing with a copycat! Immediately you feel a gut-wrenching surge of shock, anger and upset, because you spent hours and maybe even years perfecting what you do. How dare they do this to you! Hey, I’ve been there, and it sucks! It’s an extremely, emotionally charged moment that can leave us in a quandary for what to do and how to react. Today on the podcast I’m giving my advice on how you should be dealing with copycats. READ THE FULL SHOW NOTES HERE - I'll tell you my full story!

I have an inner business demon. She’s prone to strike when I least expect it and when she does, she really knocks me off my feet. I’m talking about business comparisonitis. Have you heard of that? Most of us are aware of the basic comparison premise in our day to day lives; comparison is “a consideration or estimate of the similarities or dissimilarities between two things or people.” What we sometimes forget is that comparison can happen to us anywhere and it’s quite prone to occurring at work, especially during periods an intensive push to further ourselves and our achievements. In business I have found it even more prevalent. Here are some signs business comparisonitis may be affecting you; You continually ask yourself ‘why am I not doing as well as _?’ You regularly scrutinise your competitors’ products You regularly check what your competitors are saying on social media, how they take their photos, how many likes they have and the comments from who you think are buyers. You spend way too much time on a

Selling crafts online used to be an easy game and back when I started in mid-2006, selling my craft products was as easy as listing and crossing my fingers - well almost! Today online retail is much more competitive and so starting a craft business and growing it to make a sustainable income can be challenging. Here on the podcast I want to lay out a guide for the key things I think you need to be doing with your online craft business to make sure it works for you. READ THE FULL SHOW NOTES HERE - I'll give you working examples of businesses doing things well.

Welcome to the Handmade Business Podcast! Show notes for each episode can be found at My Indie Life Blog and you can sign up for the complimentary newsletter here.  In this series we are going to be tackling actionable tips and mindset changes to help you grow your creative business sales. Hey There, I’m Sara… I come from a creative product background where I successfully turned my own £100 investment into a six figure business in a niche area of the craft industry. Before that I worked for British Fashion Designers designing and managing diffusion lines. So I have experience in design, marketing, business and range planning, project management and on-line selling. Throughout the 11 years of my craft business I taught a lot of colleagues and customers different aspects of what I did, so it seemed only natural to package these tools up and put them out there into the world. In 2017 My Indie Life Blog was born - a place where fellow independent makers can find the essential training they need to push their busi