adillenal

This is my "free time" and I really don't expect much in the way of sales SO I was pleasantly surprised when I received my January check from the craft mall where I have a booth. It was the largest check I have ever received. Guess folks are shopping locally. Even had a few online sales. All of my online sales are from people that have bought from me at my monthly market or a show somewhere. Received an email from a customer asking if I would be at the April market because they needed more soap. I sell more soap and lotion than candles. So things are looking good for me and my hobby turned part time business. I am looking forward to my first market in APril along with a 3 day festival that is local.

It is interesting how certain things jump out for certain people. I lookeda t every page of that website and never even noticed that the font was red. Now it is purple and I like it very much.

I like the color and it is easy to navigate. I found it to be attractive. Now you need to proof read and fix the typos. guilty instead of quality on your about us page. Plus there is a massive run on sentence on that page also. any were instead of anywhere and class instead of glass on the palm melts page On the soy melts page it says palm melts. Good start. Keep going.

I use clear labels and they are very simple yet look decent. I also think the labels should be centered on the jar. It looks out of balance on the bottom. I like the candle colors. Kind of like Easter Egg colors/.

Think of me as an online customer. I click on a website and it is dark and hard to read. I go somewhere else to shop that I can read easily. Strange that everything else is light and bright on my monitor but your website is dark and hard to read. Since everyone has different equipment, it should be a good thing to find out that some potential customers have difficulty reading it. When I opened my website I had comments from friends that they had to scroll down and to the side to see the whole page. That wasn't happening for me but I did not want potential customers to go elsewhere because my site was hard to navigate. I apologize if you did not want honest feedback.

I have a giant monitor and it is very easy to read the print on most sites but this one is very dark. The font isn't the easiest to read but the darkness of the opening page is a turn off for me as a customer. I don't want to have to strain to read.

My computer/printer is in my house. My work area is in a separate building. Unless I want two computers, it would not work for me to have my computer in my work space.

Same here. Plus I make soap and lotiona and it is all in the same work space.

Thanks for this link. I have looked and looked and gotten some great ideas. Thanks again.

This is the one I was talking about. http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=7811421

I ordered mine online from Wal-Mart and they had it delivered to my local store. Can't remember the price but it was on sale at the time. It is still in the box since I haven't gotten around to setting it up. Guess I need to unveil it huh?

Depends on what you want. My name is my goat herd name with soaps, scrubs and lotions on the end. I also make candles, solid perfumes, air fresheners, dry oil sprays, lip balms and on and on. Sometimes a generic name is a good thing as you can market many different things under it. Ex. My goat herd name alone doesn't tell you I make anything so it can work for just about anything I want to do. soaps, scrubs and lotions is under the main name.

Well, I know I am tired and I don't feel very well so my brain may be working in slow motion, BUT I could not figure out what # 1 was. I had to look and look before it finaly dawned on me that it is half of a candle. The palm tree made me think it was a beach and I could not figure out what the orange thing was.

I prefer to remain with retail since I work fulltime and I like being able to make what I want to when I need it. I do not list everything on my website so I will not run into a problem of being out. I still have people that call me and tell me what they want and I bring it to work or drop it off at their business. I have even had a mail order from someone that picked up a card at a show. No cc so she sent me a check. An older customer so she was happy and so was I. 95% of my sales are in goat milk soap and goat milk lotion. I sell a few candles at shows but have never had an order from my website for a candle. Of course, I push the goat milk products so it isn't surprising. It takes time to build a customer base. I am on my second year so I think I am right on target.

I make more soap and lotion than candles but I do shows and markets and have used these venues to drive repeat customers to my website. I would say 100% of my web sales are from repeat customers. The odds of someone googling and finding me with the zillions of sites out there is not too good. I am starting to get a few orders from people that received soap and/or lotions for Christmas and they are runnning out and want more. Love it.

Mine may sound silly but I raise dairy goats and make goat milk soap and lotions. The goats are my marketing ploy. I have a "special" goat's picture on all of my labels and I talk to customers about her as if she were a real person. Chloe this and Chloe that. I have repeat customers that always ask how Chloe is doing and others that tell me to be sure and let Chloe know that they bought her next bale of alfalfa hay. I display 8x10's of her in my booth so it gets to be very personal. At least it is a way to engage people in conversation and get them to stop and sniff without trying to sell them something. They often buy when they stop and look. I offer 3 fers on bars of soap and foamer bottles of liquid soap. I have not tried the buy 4 get one free but I might try that on a "Chloe's" choice at my next show. I have a special item for each show that "Chloe" wants to promote. It is her new favorite scent or color or texture. My cusomers (rural) seem to enjoy the banter about Chloe. If they don't seem interested I just smile and tell them to sniff all they want cause sniffing is free. I also enjoy my face to face shows. I feel like I am on stage for the day. I do have a tall stool that I lean on mostly since I have an ankle injury. But I am never sitting in a low chair behind my table. Another technique is to get out in front of the display and arrange and rearrange stock. Seems to make people stop for whatever reason and I can chat when I am out almost in the aisle. If it is really really slow, I knit washcloths or crochet bath poufs. This also draws attention as I get people stopping to see what I am making and I can lay it down on the table quickly. I even keep extra copies of my free off the internet patterns and hand them out if someone expresses an interest in making their own. I just make them cause I can't do nothing with my hands if it is SLOW. And I can only rearrange stock for so long. BUT this is a hobby business for me. I work fulltime and my business is probably as big as it can be at this time. I am doing more business than I did last year. I also keep plenty of soap samples in ziplocks with a business card. The soaps are about guest bar or hotel size and I do get some business from those. People usually won't turn down a free soap sample. I also have fullsize lotion bottles with pumps for testers. I go through a lot of lotion on show days but I secretly smile when I see them coming back to buy a bottle after they see how their hands feel. I encourage a lot of lotion testing.

I laminate my clear labels that I print on a laser printer.

Got mine at Ace Hardware but I got it for shrink wrapping soap and lotion. That was before I started dabbling in candles. Now I also use it to clean out molds and make the tops level if I have messed up.

I use snowdrift farms method and I make goat milk liquid soap. Works great and I sell all I can produce. In fact, I am totally out right now. Made a new batch but I let it age before I sell it so hopefully will be ready in another month or so. There are other methods that people have a lot of success with but I like snowdrift farms method.

Not sure exactly what you are doing but I have to add EO's to my liquid soap when it is still warm.

Had this happen to me but it turned out that it was my system. If I sent an email through hotmail, she received it . If I used my work email, she DID NOT receive it.

It all started with a goat, way back in 1981. My first dairy goat. I had always wanted to learn to make soap and tried a few times but that was when you had to buy a book or go to the library and those weren't the best references if I recall. Fast forward to a couple of years ago. Decided to make goat milk soap (still have dairy goats) and I researched enough to be able to make a decent first batch. I made a lot of soap and it was cured and ready to give away at the end of school. I work with 6 school districts and I gifted a LOT of soap that spring. About July, I started getting phone calls wanting to buy more soap and my business was born. I work fulltime and this is a hobby that has taken over. The goats are now self-sufficient through their goat milk soap and lotions sales. They hire me to make it and go sell it. THen I buy them feed and alfalfa and more supplies to make more soap. I started with a few small craft shows in the fall of 2007 and was successful so I now do about 20 shows a year which includes a monthly market 9 months out of the year. Also have a booth in a craft mall. I started with a do it yourself website at Godaddy but I could never get the shopping carts to work for me so I threw in the towel and hired somene to build and host a website for me. Cookie cutter, yes, but I like it and I am getting repeat business from craft show customers so I feel it was worth it. Just started making candles last summer and I started selling in October. Now I am learning to make votives and pillars. No one else in my area is doing votives and I have people asking about them plus I love votives. Goat Milk lotion and liquid goat milk soap has turned out to be my biggest sellers. I used to hate making lotion but I have streamlined it and it isn't so bad anymore. In fact I need to logoff and go bottle some lotion for a phone order I received today. People are now tracking me down and how on earth she ended up with my cell phone number I have no clue. I only use it to call my office and DH. Very resourceful lady.

I am fortunate that I have a separate workshop (14x70 mobile home) which I thought had lots of room and I am now spread out all over the entire trailer. Big ktichen, lots of counter space but I still have a 6 foot table in the middle, curing racks for soap along one wall. I actually pour candles in the front bedroom. I have a real long dresser that is kind of low and I have covered it and that is where I line my jars up. I pour votives in the kitchen since the molds don't take up much space. One bedroom has all packaging material, the living room is my wrapping and labeling center along with wax storage, and the final bedroom holds all of the cardboard boxes I keep along with styrofoam peanuts I collect and bubble wrap. I just might need all of those boxes. Just bought a used 5 drawer file cabinet to get my paperwork organized. I have little labels on all the kitchen cabinets as to what is in them to save me time looking. I really can't remember how bad it must have been when I was trying to make soap and lotions in the house. I added candles after I obtained the soap trailer.

Going to businesses is an intersting concept. I could never do that since I just am too shy. When I owned a business, we had a LOT of people that would come in and try to sell us things. Sometimes it was something I was interested in and others not so much. Our town does require a permit but I am sure some of the tamale vendors that come to our office are not permitted and we NEVER buy food items from a door to door salesman. In my humble opinion Canton is just a HUGE trades day place. I don't think I could see everything in the whole weekend. And the variety is endless, from junk to high end art. I guess it has something for everyone. Hope you find a way to keep sales up during the weaker winter months.

I live in a small town so EVERYONE knows where I work. I can't hide from them.