Expanding my selling horizons

So I have been gone for a bit figuratively speaking anyway. Nothing as exciting as a vacation or leaving town or anything lol, I have just been really busy. I have started several new avenues for selling and am pretty excited about it. I have always known that etsy was not the only area I needed to pursue to be successful although it will always hold a special place in my business heart. The direction at etsy seems to be changing and not for the better as far as hand made is concerned and while I took this into consideration it is not the only reason that I am expanding my market. The old adage to not put all of your eggs in one basket is a good one for many reasons.

So for those of you who don't know I also sell stitch markers for knitters and crocheters. That started out as a way to use left over beads and has morphed into into a line of business that is a lot of fun. I find that when I bead shop now some beads say jewelry and some say stitch markers. Some of them say both lol! Anyway my shop on etsy silverriverstitches
is doing quite well. I was approached by a wonderful lady with and offer to sell my stitch markers on line in her shop that caters solely to people who use yarn to craft. Yarny-Goodness
She offered me a great deal, and excellent contract and with the extra advertising she is doing my product will hopefully become more well known. This is one of the ways I have expanded a bit as far as going beyond etsy as a source for customers. I feel this can only be a good thing and I did some serious research before I jumped in. I made sure that the contract that was offered had what I wanted in it before I committed or sent any product. Pam has been wonderful to work with and quite frankly if this works out as well as I hope I may end up sending them all to her since she is the one doing the hard stuff like photographing the pictures, and doing all of the packaging and shipping.

So I am doing several other things with the jewelry including a local farmers market (which has turned out to be surprisingly successful), I have place a good portion of my higher end items in a fabulous gallery and I am building my own website from scratch with a web building program that will allow me to sell directly off my own site. (this is turning out to not be as difficult as I thought it would be, just very time consuming). Considering the amount of money I am saving building it myself, it will be worth the time it takes. And I like to do as much as I can myself anyway. I have designed a logo and applied it to my business cards, earring cards, price tags etc so that I have a "brand" that people will recognize. I will be showing those off in another post. I am also looking to possibly do several craft shows before Christmas.

Hopefully I will be posting a little more regularly in the future as summer winds down and we all spend more time indoors. For those of you who knit, crochet, and felt make sure you check out the artists on Yarny-Goodness for some great yarn and yarn accessories.