Wednesday, December 19, 2007

5 shopping days until Christmas, Etsy and international shipping

Wow, the shopping season is about to come to a close. Etsy has added a link for buyers who may still be looking for a last minute gift... "shopping local", which is a good idea. But for myself, Thursday orders will need to ship Priority Mail to NJ, eastern PA, Delaware and the southern most parts of NY to have any chance of getting there in time for Christmas.
Many of my customers this year on ETSY have been on the west coast and I can no longer be 100% certain a package shipped at this point will reach them in time.

So, my ETSY shop has gone international! I shipped this year to Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and most recently to Ireland.
It's time to get the boys a world map, so they can track all countries that Mommy has shipped to! They think it's so cool and I'm happy they like to be involved (they really helped a lot at my last craft show, with the set-up and breakdown of the table and my 4 yo handed out business cards like they were candy... who's gonna refuse a cute 4 yo ...LOL)

So as my 5th month on Etsy is slowly coming to a close (well it'll be 5 full months on Jan 6th) my December wasn't bad, though I did expect a bit better, but with 12 sales ( and 2 being custom sales, that received terrific feedback write ups!) I really can't complain. The December craft shows were okay and overall I did much better than I ever expected I'd do when I started this whole little business. I still have 12 more days before the end of the month and there may still be a few more sales!

I just found out that my sweetie bought a spot in a Craft Book featuring 20 or so crafters. The spot is 2 pages and I need to submit 4 pictures and a small writeup (between a couple of sentences and a paragraph) Many of my nicest pieces of beach glass jewelry are long gone and so are my nicest hand-painted pendants ( I gave them as presents to friends for the holidays) and I have to come up with 4 awesome pictures over the next few days...yikes.
Luckily I still have some of the photos of a few sold items, and I guess if push comes to shove, I can still submit those.... I wish he would have discussed this with me first...LOL-- I should complain- I'm lucky my family supports me in this endeavor.

Well, in case I don't make it back to my blog in the next few days...
A MERRY CHRISTMAS & A HAPPY HOLIDAY to all!!!

til next time...
R