Tired of Living on The Street...Online Sales Help!
 

We've been busting our humps on the road, making it to shows and farmer's markets to get sales & get the word out about our shop. We spend a lot of time loading in, loading out, driving and driving all weekend long. Sometimes it's cold outside all day. We don't make much per hour when you add it up. All the time we spend at the markets is time we can't be home at the shop making new things. We love to ship our products, because it allows more time for creating. We love listening to music, building brooms, checking for orders in between. Home in the shop is where we need to be.

So we've decided to try to cut back on the market appearances, just going when we feel like it. What we really want is to build our online presence, and spend more time in the shop. We have absolutely no idea how to spread the word about our business online. We tried some Facebook ads. Etsy search ads. And it's still slow going. We would love to triple our business online this year, but we don't have a lot of money to risk on advertising.

So I'm asking for some good ideas to increase our internet sales. Or maybe several good ideas. We would so much appreciate any input that might help us get off the street, and spending more time in our cozy little shop!

Have you ever considered selling your brooms at wholesale prices to vendors who can retail them at markets outside your area?

I've not seen anyone selling handmade brooms in our central Indiana area.

Have you considered expanding your product line to include a more commercial handle? How about offering a line with a standard broom handle and offering it at wholesale to vendors outside of your area?

Just food for thought....

Hello, Just visited your Etsy site and your photos are very well done as are your descriptions. Did you do the photos yourself? Wanta come and do mine LOL?

I am trying to think of places where your product would sell well and it is a tuffy. I would think that some antique outlet sales places like antique malls online would be good also other country sites and natural living sites. Maybe there is a way for you to get your site linked to theirs and vice versa for no money involved.

Your product appears beautiful and well made and your prices seem to be in line with what I would expect to pay for a well hand made broom as well. I will keep thinking on it! sis

I just shared your photo on my FB page. I think your brooms are awesome! My son makes walking sticks and canes, but doesn't sell them. He started making them because I needed one to walk with. Your handles remind me of his canes, almost, not quite.

I shared your link to your etsy store on my NY Homesteading forum. And I hope you don't mind if I pin it on Pinterest. That will get some traffic I bet.

First off, I love your products, and your Etsy photos, so great job with that stuff.

If you want to make more of your living online, you need people to find your website when they search on google for handmade brooms, etc. There are changes (some big, some small) that you could make to your site to make it more search engine friendly.

Google likes content that is updated regularly. Adding a new post/page whenever you have a new product, special, or are attending a new event is a good way to accomplish that. You also need to get meta tags (keywords, title tags, etc) on your site to help search engines know what your site is about.

Adding paypal buttons or a shopping cart directly to your site will make it easier to order, and capture more sales because buyers don't need to do as much clicking to make a purchase. It also saves on the cut Etsy takes whenever someone stays on your site to buy.

I hoe some of this helps!

Thank you very much for the help and advice. I started the process of getting my site more search engine friendly. I have a lot of work to do! All the encouragement and advice is greatly appreciated.

If you are open to more suggestions, I think you might consider:

Change your sig line to "Need a Great, High Quality Broom?" and then have your links.

Every once and a while, run an ad on the barter board, letting folks know that you sell brooms. It is free, and doesn't take you but a minute. Maybe offer a sale price on one particular broom once in a while?

diffently get paypal shopping cart.... try this http://www.powersellersunite.com/buttonfactory.php

What about living history museums?

I agree. Almost the first thing you see are the words "no" and "bad". Use positive words like Homemade, Beautiful, High Quality.

I would contact Cracker Barrel and see what the process is for them to get things into their stores. That way you deal with one buyer for a load of stores...

If you are currently traveling to shows. I would definitely have a healthy amount of business cards to hand out which would advertise the online business and the brick and mortar shop. Perhaps think of very limited business hours where customers could come with out having to make an appointment.

I think that my mind works like some of the others here trying to find some living museums or themed rest stops/ restaurants to sell wholesale brooms. While traveling check for small rustic bakeries or groceries that are trying to capture a country feel in their shop and want to add additional stock, which would give you a wider market then just locally. And since you would have your stock with you you could possibly make a sale on the spot.

Widen the variety of stock to interest more buyers. Perhaps wall decorations or wreaths using the same broom materials for those rustic primitive homes. Think of some smaller/cheaper/ quicker to make souvenir type of items, which can represent the work you do which would be marketable to those just wanting a trinket to take home. It would have to be somewhere in the $5 to $10 market. It could perhaps be made from the trimmings from your flat brooms? There are a lot of student trips to living museums, so perhaps mini brooms with pencils for the handle.

Perhaps a basic broom making class? This could be marketed to the living museums to help train staff on a basic skill. Then the living museum could sell your product in the gift stores. Perhaps write a book that reviews broom making history, old broom tales, and/ or how to make brooms. These could be small penny papers or thin paper backs or large coffee table books with large beautiful pictures which given your Etsy site you could pull off.

How about selling on Amazon?

I think your brooms would sell if they were in in "higher End" Furniture Stores and Antique Shops. Maybe you could make a route one day out the week to deliver to these type of Stores. Maybe they would give you a small section of their show room for you to display your brooms if they can make some money too. Good Luck!

Your brooms are quite lovely, but frankly, your website is primitive and doesn't inspire much confidence. Change your title and description. You won't get traffic if the search engines can't find you.

Here is what shows up for the search bots (or whatever they are called) to find:
<!DOCTYPEhtmlPUBLIC"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN""http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<htmlxmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"lang="en-US"xml:lang="en-US">
<head>
<meta----------="Content-Type"content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>
<title>Home Page</title>
<metaname="description"content="Home Page"/>
<metaproperty="og:title"content="Home Page"/>

There's nothing there to find. Plus your opening sentence reads: "There's just no pleasure in a bad looking broom" So, about the only way I could find your site is to search for "bad broom". Not what you want to convey.

As an example, here is the source for title and description for my site. I tried to hit every word that might be relevant. I don't update enough to always stay on the first 10 listings, but I'm usually on the first page of search engines.

<!DOCTYPEHTMLPUBLIC"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<htmllang="en">
<head>
<title>Anglican Prayer Beads, Solitaries of DeKoven, Vigeat Radix Hermitage, Anglican Rosary, Santa Anna, Texas, USA</title>
<meta----------="Content-Type"content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<metaname="keywords"content="Solitaries of DeKoven, Vigeat Radix Hermitage, Anglican Prayer Beads, Santa Anna, Texas, USA, hermitage, prayer beads, crosses, Episcopal Church, Diocese of Northewest Texas, James DeKoven">
<metaname="description"content="Solitaries of DeKoven, Vigeat Radix Hermitage, Anglican Prayer Beads.">

You have a unique product. Build a webpage that highlights that product. I don't do Facebook or any social media, so I subscribe to Google Adwords. It costs me $35.00 a month, but is well worth it. Google and Yahoo both often run specials to bring in new customers and give you a month or two free. You can check them out to see if they have any current specials running. I tried Yahoo but didn't see as good results as I see with Google and I can only afford one ad service.

Good luck on your endeavour.

What about checking with Lehmans:
http://non-electric.lehmans.com/sear...%20Brooms&rk=5

They sell brooms but they're not near as nice as yours. Also, maybe contact wood stove companies. They might be interested in hearth brooms.
I bet once you get your product "out there" you'll do great.

We have been in the craft business for a lot of years, raised 5 rather expensive daughters and managed to keep my wife at home instead of in a formal workplace, so I'm no genius, but I do know something about the craft business.

I HATE craft shows with a purple passion. Not being there, but expecting reliable profits. We started out with craft shows, and were almost always disapointed. Finally, people who owned shops started buying from us at craft shows, doubling the prices and reselling in their shops, so it finally came home to us that we were wasting our time and money on shows. We were not and would never be professional retailers, and the show circut is more geared to hobbyests and weekenders, so people expect to pay less there than in shops.

Say I have $2500 in merchandise in my truck. I drive 50 or 100 miles to a craft show, rent a room, pay for the show, waste Friday setting up. it rains Saturday and the wind blows 40 MPH Sunday, I drive back home dejected and start making plans to do it again next weekend. Doesn't happen every time, but far too often.

Instead, say I take off Monday and drive to a touristy area. Get there early if possible. The store that's open first in the morning is the "hustler" that is an aggessive business person, the one I want. If the store doesn't look too "Hallmarky" for country goods, I grab a couple of samples, walk in, ask with a smirk on my face "are y'all talking to peddlers today?" That's unless the owner is talking to a customer. NEVER interrupt. Probably your smaller brooms would go better in touristy places, 'cause they have to get them home, ( and don't know how to fly them) and you should make the store buy a case of a dozen or two, to make the stop worth while. You usually have to pledge to sell nobody else in the area if they buy a case or assortment.

If none of the right kind of shops in the area buy, either something is wrong with your price, your merchandise, your presentation or, most likely, the area. They all have seasons, and as little as 25 miles can make the difference between good and bad at any given time. That's when, instead of spending three days suffering and losing money, you crawl back in your truck and head to greener pastures. After a while, you'll be able to recognise "your customer" as soon as you scan the street and peek in the windows.

Along the way, you can "whistle stop" various places like antique stores and other little charming places that won't buy much or probably repeat, but will pay your gas and food as you travel.

NEVER consign anything to anybody. They'll use your stuff as decoration for their store, but sell hard on the stuff they already have their money in. Your stuff is better off in your truck where you can sell it for real money.

NEVER give anybody 30 days to pay. Keep your prices reasonable, delivery free, and stand there with your hand out waiting for the check. People like to "leave their checkbooks at home" but you can take credit and debit cards on that little thing that plugs into your smart phone.

In laying out your route, you will take a fair amount of time seperating the sheep from the goats, but in the end, if you perservere, you'll have perhaps 30 to 40 accounts spread across your area and another several accounts that you ship to in quantity. As some go out of business or get ticked off at you, you'll need to replace them with others. The ones that you have hung onto will be quality folks who you will regard as friends, probably for life. The others will be just bad memories.

I used to have other vendors prowl through towns where i did business, looking for my customers. They would try to sell them their own stuff, because they knew that my accounts were the best pay, the best sellers, the easiest to get along with in the area, or they wouldn't be my customers for long.

I hope this hasn't been to wordy. I was drawn to comment in detail because the man who inspired me to be a small manufacturer was a customer on my paper route 50+ years ago, and he was a broom maker.

Anything else I can tell you about wholesaling, just ask.....Joe

On building your online presence:
Your etsy store looks like things have been moving- but I think you should get better pictures, use your feature pictures, and get a banner made. The brooms look dark at the bottoms and on getting to the shop, all the photos have the same ochre look, even the candles. I know they can be made to look richer and more interesting with better lighting, and some photos with a rich brick hearth, or props like pumpkins, plants, a front porch.... Add more photos, including someone standing with the broom for relative size. Use all 5!
Web presence has to be promoted- use twitter, make treasuries on etsy, pinterest is also a growing shopping tool. Don't laugh, but I would also look into pagan and wiccan sites, brooms have significance to them and may be an outlet.

For your Etsy shop to grow, read the book 'how to sell your crafts online' by derrick sutton. It is SO informative...It really helped get us off the ground.
Aside from that, what you're needing is people to find you. Get your facebook & twitter accounts liked at the top of your Etsy shop (see ours for example). Make a pinterest account, just spend 5-10 min. on it a day, same with your fb & twitter. Doesn't have to be crazy. Join some homesteading/traditional/local Etsy teams. Etsy teams have really helped us as well.
It does NOT have to cost money to get people to find you. We have not spent $1 on advertising - I'm serious! I guess we bought that book...But really, all the instructions and articles out there are free - as are most of the websites. It's just a matter of how you use them. :)

It is a real job keeping up on online selling. Good luck, and keep us posted! Hope I helped some.

Wow, thank you everyone for so much helpful information. I'm sure everything is going to come together in the next year or so. We have kept our website simple, but added keywords recently and content to try to get more hits. We are considering so many great options, and appreciate the help very much!

This is true! I know a few wiccans who would pay $$$ for a really nice ceremonial broom.

Might want to get on the 'rings' they have that sell to historic reenactment groups like SCA and all the war re-enactors. Places like Williamsburg,
(living history museum)-there are a lot of them in the country, heck, harry potter fansites! You never know. Think outside the box. Well, you already did!

Just disregard a lot of what is below. I am sorry I didn't see your links in your signature. I didn't realize you had a website already. You just want to make it more SEO (search engine friendly). This link might give you some ideas just off the top of my head:) http://www.webplusshop.com/create-a-web-presence.wml



First, you could build a free blog on blogger or Wordpress. I think blogger is easier if you are new to using a pc/internet. I think the biggest mistake many make is to overlook how much presence you can build online for free. You sort of take babysteps but it can go well once you make even one sale/connection. Then you get your good review and someone else comes and buys.

The blog is not hard to start at all, just sort of introduce yourself and take some pics of your product. Blogs today can be set up with pages, just like a website, all free.

I am taking an e-commerce course and if I don't know the answer I can either find it for you on the web or in my text. I am 60 but I'm finishing up school with a 4. GPA. I would be glad to share all I can with you. Denise PS No charge, it's good practice for me when I start my biz;) PSS We can share it right here so if I'm wrong, someone can correct me. Also, no funny business;) Too many cheats and scams online.

Here's a link to blogger help, step-by-step tutorial you can take a look at. Remember it is free so don't click on anything that is trying to get you buy something. I don't think that has ever happened to me on blogger;) Denise PS Blogger is paypal friendly as well, but I don't think Wordpress is??

http://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Blog-on-Blogger

True, and I bet plenty of them know how to "google brooms":banana:

I put you on my facebook as well. I hope it helps:) denise