Congratulations, you’ve made it to the end of the Bead Jewelry Profits Challenge. If you followed each step, every day, you either educated yourself about a new concept, or implemented that concept into your bead jewelry business.

Starting a beading business isn’t rocket science. Once you have a step by step blueprint to follow, you put your systems in place and you keep testing and improving on what works, you have the path to success in front of you. I’m glad to have been part of your journey to success.

Whether you decide to stay at the same level as you are, or turn your business into a beading empire, it’s completely up to you. Just make sure that you regularly review your business and make sure it is working for you and is aligned with your goals.

Feel free to contact me or keep checking into this blog for the latest hints and tips to keep you and your business ahead of your competitors.

And if you would like to move your business to the next level contact me to find out how I can help you achieve that.

To your Bead Jewelry Profits!

The essentials of selling your bead jewelry online are constant. Do your research, find your target market, give them what they want, and keep engaging with your audience are the cornerstones to any successful business.

But the techniques used to spread your message online change all the time. For example, in the last few years we have seen an explosion in the number of networking sites that have come online which are good avenues for developing relationships and selling more of your jewelry.

So how do you keep up?

First of all, define your 80/20. Which 20% of activities in your business bring you 80% of your revenue?  If it is using social media tools and writing articles, great! Focus on that.

If it is using Google Adwords and doing online jewelry parties, again great! Focus on that.

While I’m talking about focus, I’d like to introduce a concept I heard recently from a good friend of mine. There is a nifty acronym that explains it very well I think

Follow

One

Course

Until

Successful

My point with this post is that techniques online change all the time and if you are not careful you could be caught in lots of different directions without seeing a return on your efforts.

The latest whizzbang shiny online tool that is being marketed to help your business will attract you if you haven’t put your focus on the things that are making you money and you are looking for a quick fix solution.

The person who stands for nothing falls for everything!

But if you focus on your core activities that bring you money, you will be able to look at the tools on offer and select which ones are appropriate to you that will help you to improve those core activities.

Trying to keep an eye on all the tools available to improve your business can make your head spin. If you like the idea of keeping up look for someone who is using these tools and can help you decide whether they are right for your business.

Register For The “30 Days To Bead Jewelry Profits” Challenge And Get The Kick In The Butt You Need To Finally Start Your Own Bead Jewelry Business!

So you have all the strategies for how you can make money selling your bead jewelry online.

Having the information is great, but now you need to take action.

Deep down if you don’t have the belief that you can do it you won’t, so it’s time to think about and smash all the excuses you have for why you won’t be successful.

I recently read a post from Dave Navarro called Breaking The Scarcity Mindset. In his post he talks about the four beliefs you must have to be successful, which I believe applies extremely well to jewelry artists:

1. The specific belief that there are plenty of people out there who are willing to exchange money for something of value.
2. The specific belief that you can offer something of value.
3. The specific belief that you can communicate that value to the people willing to pay for it.
4. The specific belief that you can make an offer – right now (or very soon) – that can generate the money you want to have.

Lets examine these a step at a time.

Believe that there are plenty of people out there who are willing to pay good money for your jewelry

There are two issues here. One is that if you have done your research, defined your niche and know who your target market are, you’ll know whether there is a market for your products and where to find your potential customers.

The second is that you have to believe in your jewelry making skills and produce quality jewelry. If you have done/ are doing both of those things then you really can’t fail.

Now when I say that you need to make great quality jewelry, I’m not saying you have to be an expert and have spent years and years honing your skills. But if you are just starting out in making jewelry, you need to be sure that the pieces you make are of saleable quality. If you are in doubt about this then get an honest appraisal from your friends or family.

But don’t let fear of failure hold you back from getting out there and selling your jewelry.

Believe your jewelry is worth it

If you believe your jewelry is worth paying a reasonable price for you won’t be tempted to under-price your products.

As an artist you are providing an experience for your target market. So you need to get really clear on what your target market want and what the value of that experience is.

As an example, if you were making jewelry for Star-Trek fans, you know that these guys (and gals!) are passionate about Star Trek and will buy anything related to the topic. You know that when they wear your Star-Trek jewelry, their friends who are also passionate about Star-Trek will think “How cool! I want one”. So your jewelry is adding to that group experience.

As another example, if you are targeting high-end, fashion conscious women, you’ll know that when they buy a piece of jewelry, they aren’t necessarily interested in jewelry they can get anywhere else. Again there is the one-upmanship factor; the idea of exclusivity is a very powerful one in this market.

So get to know your target market. Find out what drives them. Once you know that, you will understand what your jewelry is really worth.

Believe you can communicate the level of value to your clients

Once you get this right, it means that you don’t have to sound like a used car salesman when you are trying to sell your jewelry.

Again this boils down to talking to your customer. Go and find where they hang out and engage them in conversation. Even though you are selling online you may need to go offline first to communicate with your target market and then usher them to your online store.

Once you know that you are speaking the same language as your customer it is easy to communicate that on your promotional material, website, business card, brochures etc.

Don’t feel that you have to use fancy marketing language; whatever communication channel you use you just need to talk to your customer as if you were talking to them in person.

You may find that you need to re-tweak your sales message – don’t be afraid of this!

Believe you can make an offer that will generate the money you want

If your goal is to redesign your website, instead of saying I can’t afford that, ask yourself what is it that you have to do to be able to afford it.

Or if your goal is to invest in further education, which will cost $1000, ask yourself “How can I earn $1000 in 7 days”

I’ve experienced this myself, and I have to say it’s quite amazing how when you say to yourself “I can’t afford it” there is no area for negotiation – it’s a done deal and it ain’t going to happen.

When you change the question and ask yourself “What can I do in X amount of time to come up with Y dollars?”, your creative juices start flowing and opportunities and ideas just keep coming.

Register For The “30 Days To Bead Jewelry Profits” Challenge And Get The Kick In The Butt You Need To Finally Start Your Own Bead Jewelry Business!

In a previous post I talked about the benefits of having a support group – a group of likeminded people that are travelling on the same road, that you can celebrate your successes with, and who will offer advice and support when things aren’t going so well.

I thought it might be useful to give you some resources where you can join a community of bead jewelry artists, and create a community of support around you.

We weren’t meant to do this alone.

Running an online business from home can be lonely, so it’s great to know that even though you may not have local support that you can shoot off an email or message to your support group and get an informed response from people who are treading the same path as you.

Here are some forums you may find useful

Starving Jewelry Artist

About.com – Jewelry Making Forum

Bead and Button

Beading Daily

There are many benefits to joining bead jewelry forums. They are a great place to ask for advice when you have come to a standstill. By befriending the members of your group you will become a valued member of the community and can offer your advice too.

You may find that business opportunities come your way as a result. Or you may find that joining a community gives you an opportunity to save money on supplies by hearing about the latest sales and special offers.

Register For The “30 Days To Bead Jewelry Profits” Challenge And Get The Kick In The Butt You Need To Finally Start Your Own Bead Jewelry Business!

Do you know why you want to start a bead jewelry business, do you have the self confidence that you can do it and have you determined what strengths you bring to the business?

Do you know how to find people to support you while you are starting your business and the types of people you should avoid like the plague?

Why a bead jewelry business plan is important and how to create one.

The different ways that you can sell your bead jewelry online and the pros and cons of eBay, online craft malls (e.g. Etsy.com, Artfre.com etc) and your own website.

Have you decided whether you need beading software for your business?

How will you organise your beading business from the start so it doesn’t take over your life?

Why is defining your jewelry niche the key to a profitable bead jewelry business?

Which of the myriad of different strategies will you use to make money from bead jewelry?

• Creating bead jewelry for retail
• Custom bead jewelry
• Teaching beading to others
• Bead jewelry designing
• Making bead jewelry kits
• Home jewelry parties
• Jewelry booths

Why is it so important to price your bead jewelry for maximum profits – and what is the best way to do it?

What do you need to consider when photographing your bead jewelry?

How will you take payments from your bead jewelry website?

How will you track how well your bead jewelry business is doing?

How will you get get hordes of people to buy your bead jewelry?

Five ways to market your bead jewelry business – which 20% will give you 80% of your results?

• The power of referrals
• Writing articles to educate and sell
• Free publicity
• Pay per click advertising
• Social networking
  

I’d love to know if you are kicking your goals and making progress. Leave your comments below.

Register For The “30 Days To Bead Jewelry Profits” Challenge And Get The Kick In The Butt You Need To Finally Start Your Own Bead Jewelry Business!

There are many social media tools available to market your bead jewelry business, such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, blogs, forums etc, and each are great in their own way.

I’m not going to talk about the merits of the different tools (for an excellent book on the topic see Social Networking – Sell Your Jewelry Online The New Way) but why using social media is good for your business.

It’s important to see social networking not only as a way to attract clients, but also to grow your business through strategic alliances with other businesses and through generating referrals.

If you understand this, you can grow your business exponentially through social media.

The point of social networking is to get to know others and let others get to know you as a human rather than a faceless business operation. You are aiming to build relationships first, and then have your contacts view you as a trusted person they can do business with.

Before delving into social networking you need to realise that not everyone on your contact list is a potential customer, which is why it is important to get really clear who your target market is.

However, most people on your contact list can help you grow your business in some way.

For example you may connect with someone who is not in your target market, but has friends that would be more of a match for your jewelry line. By having that relationship you get access to a group of clients that you wouldn’t have reached before.

As another example, you may find that one of your online contacts has a hair salon and you might decide to form a joint venture relationship and sell your jewelry line to their clients.

In social networking terms, the quantity of connections isn’t as important as the relationship that you have with your followers. It is of no use to you to have 4000 people following you on Twitter if no-one is buying your jewelry. Much better to have a small group of contacts who love your work and are willing to buy.

As with all of the marketing strategies we’ve covered, keep tracking your sales to see whether your time investment in social networking is profitable.

Register For The “30 Days To Bead Jewelry Profits” Challenge And Get The Kick In The Butt You Need To Finally Start Your Own Bead Jewelry Business!

A powerful way to market your bead jewelry business is using Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising. The biggest player in PPC advertising is Google Adwords.

If you’ve never used Adwords before it might seem quite daunting, but it is actually quite straightforward.

The good thing about Adwords is that you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. With good use of keywords, you can be sure that only people that are interested in what you have to offer are clicking through to your website. That means that you are dealing with a highly targeted audience for much less than traditional advertising costs.

The problem is that most people who try to use AdWords waste a lot of money, don’t sell anything, and end up with nothing to show for it.

So how do you avoid that mistake?

Start with your keywords. Brainstorm the words that your potential clients would use to search for your products. For example if you use gemstones in your jewelry add “gemstone jewelry” to your keyword list.  You can even be more specific for example “silver gemstone jewelry”. Again you can even be more specific (e.g. “silver amethyst jewelry”). You can also use the Google keyword tool to search for keywords that you may not have considered.

Once you have a range of keywords you need to consider what ads to write to entice people to your site. The easiest way to start is to think about the benefits and features that would interest your target market.

When writing your ad you can have up to 25 characters in the headline, and 35 in each line of text. You can have as many ads as you like. It is best to test at least two ads at a time so you can see which is your best performing ad and keep improving it for best results.

When you start running your Google Adwords campaign, you need to find a balance between having low advertising costs (10-30 cents per click) but being in ad position 3-6 which is often the most profitable location for advertisers.

You also need to set a daily budget – this tells Google when to stop running your ads. A budget of $10 or $20 a day is great to start but you do need to track what you are spending on advertising compared to the amount of sales you are making to make sure you are profitable.

Register For The “30 Days To Bead Jewelry Profits” Challenge And Get The Kick In The Butt You Need To Finally Start Your Own Bead Jewelry Business!

A great way to get exposure for your bead jewelry business is through getting free publicity from magazines or newspapers. Editorial coverage gives you a huge amount of credibility compared to advertising because it comes from an independent trusted person talking about your business.

Journalists are always on the lookout for newsworthy stories, so if you have a story that is appealing you will make their day.

What makes a newsworthy story?

An article to let people know that you have updated your jewelry line isn’t going to make the news. You need to figure out what will entice the readers to read the article and visit your website.

Here are some ideas:

• Have you recently won an award? Don’t be afraid to boast about it in print.
• Is there a current news story that is relevant to your business. Give your opinion.
• Offer free information to educate your potential clients about your topic. See the post How To Market Your Jewelry Business Part 2.
• Get involved with a charity. Use your time, resources or products to raise cash for an existing charity.

Now you have some ideas of what makes a good story, how do you get it in front of the right journalist. Here are some tips to help.

Write a press release. You don’t need to have a lot of journalistic talent, just have a great story and present it well

• Write a catchy headline
• Talk about who, what, when, where and how
• Be as concise as possible

To get your press release in front of the right people, do some research into the types of magazines and newspapers that your target audience read. Make a list of the journalists that write articles that are similar to your topic and send them your press release.

Consider using an online service such as PRWeb.com. While not entirely free this service can get you lots of traffic to your website, and may be a good return on your marketing investment.

And finally, don’t be discouraged if your publicity is buried by some other newsworthy story. Keep sending in those press releases and building relationships with your chosen journalists and soon enough you’ll have a flood of people to your website.

Register For The “30 Days To Bead Jewelry Profits” Challenge And Get The Kick In The Butt You Need To Finally Start Your Own Bead Jewelry Business!

Another great way to market your bead jewelry business is by writing articles. This is a great strategy because by writing articles and submitting them to online article directories you are educating your potential clients about your topic. By adding your contact details at the end of the article your clients know where to go to purchase your jewelry.

For example, if you make copper jewelry, you might write an article about the health benefits of copper on arthritis which then directs people to your website where they can buy your copper jewelry.

Or you might write an article on the top ten ways to make your dog feel special and then direct them to your website where they can buy jewelry for their dog.

Or you might write an article that discusses the gemstones for each birthday month, again with a link to your site where your jewelry can be purchased.

Before writing these articles you need to consider the words that your potential customers is going use when searching for the type of jewelry you make.

The benefit of article writing is that you are educating your customer, as well as making your website more search engine friendly because you are article is pointing back to your website.

You also want to make sure that your articles are entertaining and easy to read so that your potential clients want to find out more about you and are motivated to visit your website.

Register For The “30 Days To Bead Jewelry Profits” Challenge And Get The Kick In The Butt You Need To Finally Start Your Own Bead Jewelry Business!

In the next few posts I’ll be talking about ways that you can market your bead jewelry business. The first is by asking your  customers for referrals.

This is a great low cost way to grow your business. If you think about it, it’s like you going to see a good movie and telling your friends about it. Because your friends trust you they are more likely to go and see that movie too.

This is the power of a referral.

For referrals to work you need to a) provide excellent quality jewelry and b) provide your customer with a great buying experience.

Get thee two things right and you’ll have people happy to refer their friends to you.

Think about how you can incentivise your customers to provide you with referrals. One way you can do this is to offer a gift to you client which they receive when one of their referrals makes a purchase from you.

You need to keep track of where your new clients are coming from. One way to do this is to hand out a few business cards with every purchase with your clients invoice number on the back.

That way you can ask the new client for the code on the back of the card when they place their order and you know who to send the gift to.

Make sure you do give good customer service and excellent workmanship of your jewelry. If your customer has a bad experience with you you won’t have to offer an incentive for them to tell others!!

By asking for referrals  consistently you will find over time that your customer base will continue to grow.

Register For The “30 Days To Bead Jewelry Profits” Challenge And Get The Kick In The Butt You Need To Finally Start Your Own Bead Jewelry Business!