Cyber Monday Madness!

Check out this event at http://www.fashionsensei.wordpress.com . She has the most amazing fashion blog and will be having some excellent, one of a kind offers from many online shops. If you are shopping on Cyber Monday you need to make this your first stop!

Come celebrate the official kick off to the online holiday shopping season with Fashion Sensei's "Cyber Monday Madness!" Enjoy Exclusive Discounts, ONE HOUR Web Busters and amazing ONE HOUR Giveaways. You won't want to miss it!

New Venues

I know in a previous post I mentioned that I was going to expand the venues that I was selling on. I have done this, sort of a grand experiment lol and have decided to give each venue until after Christmas, through the four month period most of these venues give you for listing times. Sooo say til the end of February. I have just recently signed up with four new venues, 1000Markets, Shop Handmade Handmade Fuzion and Artfire. So far I am very very happy with 1000Markets, the site looks awesome, it's juried (ya I know but I really like it, it is very profressional looking and the concept is completely awesome) and the admins are fabulous. Plus they already offer most of what that other site seems to think is not important, like stats, being able to move your items around and put them in any order you want. And there is no listing fee, they don't plan on making there money from listing AND they are going to be doing advertising for the site, as in for buyers. Also lots of other stuff that I won't mention now.
I like Shop Handmade simply because it is very proactive as far as the environment goes. Not hard to list on once you get used to the interface either. And its free to list. I may keep this one simply because its free to list and free to sell, plus I can donate a quarter for each item I sell and help save the rainforest. Doesn't get better than that.
I was pretty excited about Handmade Fuzion at first, the site is very clean looking and it has some good stats also. However the listing fee is .15 (which I really don't have a problem with) but if you want to get any hits at all you have to also pay .50 for front page exposure. So now its .65 to list instead of .15 or no one looks are your items. That is a bit steep for me and could rapidly become a fairly large bill. If I don't get some sales from this venue fairly regularly by February it will most likely be taken down.
Artfire is free to list and free to sell but I am not sure how buyers find your products. I am currently paying $7 a month for the upgraded shop which does have awesome stats. I was told that this would also give me additional exposure. We will see how it goes.
I am not closing my etsy shop, I have invested way too much time in it at this point but I will not be listing new items as often as I am being completely buried. I am adding all of my new product to my 1000Markets shop at this point and will most likely spend a good bit of my energy on that. More to come on how that site works later. I have several more that I am aslo using that are also under review but I won't go into that now.

Thanksgiving is Coming!

Wow time flies! I can't believe how close Thanksgiving is! I have nothing done and have barely started gathering all of the supplies I need much less cleaning the house. If you haven't guessed yet Thanksgiving is at my house lol! We usually have 10-12 people depending, and even though everyone brings food it is still a lot of work. This is usually how it breaks down. I get the turkey (the biggest one I can find, preferably over 25 lbs., everyone wants to take home leftovers), I make two kinds of stuffing, one with bread, onions, celery, and meat, and one with apples, onions, celery and bread. I also make home made mashed potatos, corn, and home made gravy. I also usually do two pumpkin pies, two apple crumb pies and a pecan pie. My sister makes green beans, a pecan pie and rolls and red cabbage. My mother in law makes cucumber salad, and sweet potatos. Needless to say no one can move after dinner for about 3 hours. I am very thankful that my 15 year old daughter really likes to cook so she comes home from school on Wednsday and starts helping with the stuffing. I usually get up and start on the pies on Wednsday and just do two at a time. That way all I have to do on Turkey day is stuff the bird, peel potatos and make gravy. We usually invite the neighbors over for dessert (let's face it there is plenty to around lol!).

So I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving with their loved ones. I for one am now exhausted and hungry lol and I still have a week to go.

Sale Reminder

Just a quick reminder to anyone thinking of purchasing for the holidays. I am having a 10% off sale until December first in my etsy shop silverriverjewelry.etsy.com. If you mention my blog in the notes to sellers I will include free shipping.

I am also having a $1.00 off any stitch marker set in my silverriverstitches.etsy.com shop. If you know any knitters this is an excellant, affordable gift. Everything in this shop is $10 or less already so with the $1.00 off nothing is more than $9.


Happy Holidays and have fun shopping!

More on Shop Handmade

Quick update this is awesome!

A ShopHandmade-sponsored forest fills yet another patch of scorched earth... ShopHandmade has just donated enough money to the Trees for the Future foundation to plant a total of 10,000 trees. One tree for each product listed on the site. You are doing your part by shopping at our environmentally-aware handmade stores. Continue to support the Earth and support handmade crafts. Heck, forget all the good stuff and just come and window-shop. It's an entertaining visit and you just might fall in love with something!

I will continue to list some of my jewelry on this site so if you would like to purchase something and do something good for the environment please check out my shop there. I am slowly adding inventory. Just click on the link --> Silver River Jewelry

Saving the Rainforest

There is a fairly new selling venue out there that is focusing is on saving the rain forest. I thought this was really cool since if we continue to cut down our rain forests eventually we will manage to cause our extinction through greed and lack of managing our natural resources well. I recycle and try and do all I can to support our environment but I always feel I could do more. ShopHandmade allows me to list my items for free and also to sell them for free as long as I allow one of two sponsors to have a spot on my listing. Addicted to scrap booking and Addicted to rubber stamping are the two sponsors. The spot is very inconspicuous and does not in any way detract from my listing. You have the choice of donating a percentage of your price, or 10 cents or 25 cents when you sell an item. Donations are not required though. I just really liked this idea a lot. The site takes a couple of run through to get the whole listing process down as it is a bit different but once you figure it out is really quite easy to do. Go check it out and decide if you want to save a little piece of the rain forest today!

This is my shop url and you can check out the rest of the site from there. http://www.shophandmade.com/Store/Silverriver

I Was Featured!

WooHoo! One of my items in my Silver River Metal shop was featured on Friago's blog in her top 7 at 7 pics! How cool is that! Thanks Friago! Here is the link to the post if you want to check it out.

http://blog.friago.com/post/My-what-pretty-jewelry-you-have.aspx

Do you Twitter?

So apparently this is the new thing to do online nowadays. I finally broke down and checked it out after hearing about it for several weeks. I was surprised really at how much fun it is! It's amazing to me how tiny little snippets of peoples lives (140 characters at a time) can be so darn interesting lol! So I decided to give it a try. I can post as little or as often as I want. I am going to try and not make it completely a marketing tool and just try to blend it with life in general. Go check it out and let me know if you like it or not! My twitter address is http://twitter.com/SilverRiverJ

Both of my names are too long to fit entirely and silver river was already taken. Oh well

Don't forget I am currently offering 10% off in my SILVERRIVERJEWELRY.ETSY.COM store and if you mention my blog in the notes to seller I will also ship your items free, worldwide.

Also recieve $1.00 off any set of stitch markers in my SILVERRIVERSTITCHES.ETSY.COM store. Sorry no free shipping on these.