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I went to bed angry last night. I woke up still angry this morning. I know I have to really give some thought to what I am doing and I don't want to. LOL.
I opened my Etsy shop in 2007. Almost 2 years later I only have 42 sales. That does not bother me too awfully badly because I am the first to realized and admit my type of work does not appeal to everyone. There is a particular niche of people that wear the type of beadweaving I do. I have been doing alot of reading on turning your craft into a business that you can support yourself on and the one message that keeps coming through all of it is there is a very small chance of supporting yourself with your jewelry making because so, so many people are doing it. I have been looking for summer time craft shows in my local area, I did craft shows for 20 years with reasonable success. 80% of the local shows say they are full or accepting accplications in every area EXCept jewelry, they have enough vendors doing jewelry. I had someone approach me and ask me if I would be interested in doing a series of shows this summer for a organization that was holding them. I got excited only to find they wanted me to showcase my Avon fundraising. Which is wonderful, I could use alot more Avon customers but....they already had enough Jewelry Venders. Got a call last night that I was waiting for for a show I have done for many, many years, found out there is still time to apply for the show "as long as I am not selling jewelry, they already have too many booked selling jewelry.
I am so frustrated, angry, I am writing this in the morning and mornings are tough for me. The first few hours I am up the pain is unreal. It takes a long while of sitting quietly waiting for meds to kick in, Coffee to kick in, before the pain eases up to the point I can be productive and now I am just sooo lost. If I beleive everything that I have stated above, I have to rethink what I am doing. How do I turn this around , what can I do with my beads that is going to be more of a benefit. I have pushed this so hard just to ... not even make a living, just be able to pay the monthly bills on basic house hold expenses.
I guess there is no real point to this other than to vent. I am so angry, all I want to do is be able to take care of myself. I don't ask for much out of life. just the basics we all deserve. a roof over my head, electricity for light and heat. My cable, I guess I could live without cable but I don't want to, the TV, and internet get me through the day because we all need something to keep our minds active, the phone, well these day's how do we live without one?
Any way, I have vented. If you have any ideas' of something different I can do with my beadwork that would better my ability to create an income, please, please, let me know, I would love any ideas, input, advise.
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Hi, I'm one of your twitter followers, I so feel for you, I know how you feel, I also want to make a living from my jewelry, I have had 34 sales in about 6 months, but the items purchased, don't give me much profit as most of them were my cheaper items. I am married and my husband works, but we have 4 kids and our daily living expenses are high, so I want to ease the burden by selling my jewelry, but obviously I'm not achieving that! Here in Australia, I have the same problem, the markets are saturated with jewelry makers, so it is hard to get into. Most people here buy real gold from the jewellers or cheap crappy stuff from Diva or those stores, so I'm banging my head against a brick wall, too!!
ReplyDeleteI have just recently put my designs onto sites like 'Handmade Forum' 'Mixxmade' and others like that, you register then they allow you to post pics of your items for people to view, which can lead traffic back to your shop. I think Mixxmade or another site called Thisnext are shopping sites, so people go on them to look and buy.
I also recently started up a Zibbet store, which is free to open and free to list your items, It is fairly new. I also started up a free Artfire studio, you don't get all the benifits of a paying member, but I figured if my stuff is in more places, then maybe more people will see them!?
Let me know if you want the links to any of the above mentioned sites, if you do I'll send them to you in the morning (my morning) as I'm not very good on the computer this late at night!!
Sorry for the huge long novel!!
Brenda
Thank you for all this. I am a member of most of what you are talking about, Indiepublic, Mixxmade, Craftcult, By Hand me, I am going to look at Zibbett, they just friended me on myspace recently. Thank you for the input and I wish you better success with this also.
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