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JimJuris

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  • Website URL
    http://www.inexpensivejewelryphotography.com

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  • Makes
    soap
  • Location
    Colorado
  • About You
    I make soap, critique websites professionally, and sell an ebook on jewelry photography.

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  1. I just looked at your Ct River Candles on my HP laptop and all of your colors look great. You can find the color that are considered browser safe by looking up browser safe colors, but I don't recommend changing any of your colors. There are 216 browser safe colors. I would say that your background color is or is very close to browser safe color #336666. At least that is how it looks on my laptop computer monitor. Great looking website.
  2. If you have never been to any of these shops I would recommend that you stop in the shops and just take a look around. Scout out each shop and take notes in your head about everything that you liked and disliked about each shop. Don't mention anything about selling products, say that you are just looking around, and then leave. Write everything down about the shop that you saw while you where in the shop. Be sure to take notice of how many people where in the shop and if any of them where buying something from the shop. Grab a couple of business cards while you are there so you have the phone number and address of the shop and the owner's name. Was the shop clean and well stocked? Was the shop already carying products like you want to sell? Was the shop on a buisy street or in a location with other stores, or was the shop out in the middle of nowhere by itself and without much foot traffic? Once you have done your scouing, I would then contact the most desired shops by postcard and let them know that you visited the shop on a recient trip and that you would like to send the owner a cd with a line sheet and a price sheet for them to look at to see if they would be interested in carrying your products in their shop. Include your phone number, email address and website address on the postcard. Then follow up in about 4 or 5 days by telephone to see if the shop owner is interested in carrying your products. Be sure to keep track on which shops you mailed a postcard to and when it was mailed. Also keep track of their response or lack or response so that you can follow up with the shop owner. This will save you carrying a lot of products with you. You may have to make several trips, but it will probably be much better in the long run. You may find by doing this that thngs will work out better for you in the long run using this method. You may find that some shop owners won't consider doing business with you if you just drop in unexpected.
  3. I critique websites professionally. I also have a website that I created a little over two years ago. I completely revised it in less than a year. I am about to revise it again because I will be changing web hosts. I have always created my own websites by hand coding them in (x)HTML. I have had 3 websites of my own since 2002. When my web hosting time expires I will be using a template from pagebuzz.com. My website will have a completely different look when I change to a template. I would like to recommend that you look into a template from pagebuzz.com and you may find a great one. They only charge $9.99 per month for web hosting, and that includes a shopping cart, excellent 12 per day/7 days per week, excellent custmer support, and something like 1,000 excellent templates. Changing your photos occasionally is good. I do that with my website. That may be all that you need to do. Having said that, I think being consistant can be good too. Look at Amazon, ebay, and big companies like that. They seldom change the look of their websites because that is what people expect to see when they go to these websites. If you contact me privately, I will give you my opinion at no cost to you about weather or not I think changing your website would be a good idea. Keep in mind, that would be just my own opinion.
  4. W(in.) X H(in.) X L (in.) X 0.4= the number of ounces of oils needed for a soap recipe for that particular size soap mold.
  5. Now that you have dropped off your goods, you need to check in on this shop at least once every two weeks to see where and how well the items are displayed. You will also be able to see if the items are placed in a good location or if they are tucked some place that makes them hard to see. Then you can count your items and see if any of them have sold, been damaged, etc. I would keep good notes of what you drop off to this shop, when, the retail price for your items, etc. Also, if you visit the shop on the last day of each month, an hour or two before the shop closes, you will be able to see what has sold so that you know what to expect for payment when the shop owner pays you. Hopefully your figures will match hers. If not, then there is a problem. You may have had something stolen or broken. If you don't receive payment as promised that could be a warning sign that the shop is having financial problems. That may mean that you should reduce your inventory or pull your stuff out of that shop. I am not trying to be negative, just trying to prevent you from losing your shirt.
  6. Cost per year, deductible per claim, the number of claims allowed per year, the maximum amount the insurance company will pay per claim.
  7. If I was in your situation, I would be willing to place 4 to 6 of my items in the shop and see what happens as long as I felt comfortable about the shop and the shop owner. If I didn't like the look of the shop or if I didn't have a good feeling about the shop owner and with dealing with this shop owner, then I would not be willing to place any of my products in that shop. If everything seems and feels good to you, then I would say go for it. Either way, I think that this will be a great learning experience for you. Hopefully you will have a wonderful business relationship with this shop for many years.
  8. I recommend using pagebuzz.com for your web host. They charge $9.99 per month and that includes a shopping cart and 12 hours a day/ 7 days a week excellent customer service. They have hundreds of fantastic templates to use for your website. If you can type, you can create a website with Pagebuzz.com
  9. I have been selling online for about 6 years on my own websites. I have also been selling on Etsy and Aftfire for about one year. You don't need any type of permit, but if you have a website you need to have your own domain name. You can register a domain with Godaddy.com. Here is some more information on how to choose a great domain name: http://www.inexpensivewebsitecritiques.com/domainname.html You don't need to do anything to sell on Etsy, Artfire or any type of similar website. You just have to pay their fees. Each of these sites have different fees such as a listing fee and selling fee, so you will have to check each website to see what fees they have and how much they charge for their services.
  10. I think that you are off to a good start. You are doing a lot better than I did when I created my first website. I have been selling online since September 2002, except for maybe a year or so during that time period. You can have the greatest website in the world but if nobody can find it it doesn't do you any good. That is why it is important to have your website optimized for the search engines. You also need to convince your visitors to stay on your website once they arrive at your site. It is very easy for visitors to go from one website to another. That is why you need a USP. I forgot to mention in my critique of your home page that you shouldd also include your email address on the home page so that people don't have to search for it if they want to contact you. The more clicks a visitor has to make to find something or order something the more likely they are to leave your website. You may want to reduce the size of your images and/or graphics in order to fit more information on your home page. Another think that I thought of after I did my critique was that navigation is usually LEFT ALIGNED not centered. Your navigation looks like a Christmas Tree. Go to any website and you will see what I mean. Speaking of navigation, maybe you could make the horizontal navigation a little bit larger or use black lettering. Probably black lettering would be better. You have a white on a light colored background. Black lettering would give more contrast and make it easier to see and read. If you don't want to use black lettering a darker color would be fine. I don't know if you have statistics on your website, but you may want to consider adding statistics so that you can see how many visitors are visiting your website, what pages they have visited, what search term they used to arrive at your website, etc. I recommend using Statcounter.com. Statcounter is FREE and it is invisible to your website visitors. I also use Google Analytics, but I like Statcounter just as much or more then Google Analytics. Both are free and invisible to your website visitors. Good luck with your website design.
  11. I critique websites professionally. I have critiqued over 600 websites in the last 5 years or so. Here is my critique of your home page. Your home page loads very fast on my dial-up connection. You have great art work and photographs. I recommend that you use keywords in your title. Your present title is- The Palm Beach Candle Company. The more keywords that you have in your title the better your website will rank in the search entines. Use all 70 characters in your title, which includes punctuation and spaces. If you go over 70 characters by a few characters that is fine. I would recommend using alt tags that describe the item in the photograph, not - Welcome to the Palm Beach Candle Company. Use different alt tags for each photograph. Where is your telephone number? You should have your telephone number on your home page so that people can call you to ask you questions about your products and place orders. What is WAHM? It took me a while to figure it out. Maybe other people won't know that WHAM means work at home moms. If you want your website to rank high in the search engines you will need to have more KEYWORDS on your home page. The first and last 50 to 100 words on a page are the most important to the search engines. Our website is currently under construction and Thanks for shopping with us will not help your search engine rankings. What is your USP? UPS= Unique Selling Proposition. Why should someone do business with you as opposed to some other website. You don't give any reason why your website visitors should do business with you on your home page. You are in a competitive business so you have to let your visitors know why they should be doing business with you and not someone else. What is your return and refund policy? I don't see anything about that on your home page. I would recommend having a page for that on your website. That is about it for your home page. Feel free to ask me any questions about my critique.
  12. To me any time that you only have to pay the shop owner 30% or less is a great deal. You should also find out how soon you will be paid when an item sells. You don't want to be waiting months and months for something that sold several months ago. Be sure that payment arrangements are in your contract along with who is responsible for breakage and theft.
  13. I purchased some lye a few years ago and I used a glass canning jar for the container. I just used some of that lye a few days ago and it is still good. I would recommend contacting a chemical supplier in your area to purchase lye. That way you can save on shipping costs.
  14. This is fantastic information. I am thrilled to know how to figure out the amount of oils that I will need for a soap mold. Up until now I have just been guessing.
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