Inspire Me

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

‘You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.’

— Jack London

I know that you would think with 4 weeks on the couch that I would have a whole lot of finished knits to show for it. But you would unfortunately be wrong. The first 2 weeks are a blur to me since I was in a lot of pain and taking some serious pain meds that left my brain in a fog. The last two weeks have been pretty unproductive too. I have a small pile of hats that I've made and that is it. Ani was over tonight and looked at the few things at the end of the couch and she said "is that it." I thought you would have filled a room with hats by now.

I made the Flickr widget of my knitted creations at PictoBrowser to help get my creative juices flowing. I have been completely lacking in inspiration. My craft room is a cluttered mess at the moment and I can't really get in there to get to my yarn. When I'm lacking inspiration normally I will go in my room, get out piles of yarn and start playing with different color combinations. I will look through my stitch books until something lights my fire.

I had Mike bring me out some books and some yarn but it just wasn't the same. Tonight Ani went deeper into the yarn stash than Mike chose to venture. She drug a bunch of different things out and helped me to come up with some color combos that peaked my interest. That is what I needed to do a week ago.

I'm not going to beat myself up about not using this time off from work more productively. My body was healing and that was the priority. I wasn't really in a position to make the most of the time and sometimes you can't force it.

I've been thinking a lot about the direction that I want to go with my business in the next year. I just don't know if trying to sell on-line is really worth it to me. It is a lot of work for very little pay off. I'm sure I will have a post soon with my thoughts on this.

Blogger, and Twitter, and Facebook Oh my!

Does anyone else get overwhelmed by all the different methods of promotion and on-line communication? I remember a time when we didn't even have personal computers and I'm not that old. Now my husband and I have at any given time between 3-5 computers of some kind in the house. Only one of them is mine but he has a personal laptop, a work laptop, a personal computer, and a Mac in the basement of a band mate that they use for recording. (The above card is from Simply Sentimental on Etsy).

I have been slowly incorporating different sites into my daily life and I'm beginning to feel overload. I don't want my promotion and networking to take over my life so that I end up spending less time knitting and have nothing to promote. Initially when I started my shop I would spend some time each day promoting on the etsy forums. This seems to be where most people start and it can be a useful tool to get hearts and meet people in the community. I am pretty over it to be honest and I go there less and less as time goes by. I poke in for a few minutes here and there and post a few thoughts, do a little promotion if I have an item that isn't getting much love.

My next venture was Flickr which is just for downloading pictures. It is free but you pay to set up a premium account and get more room and categories. I posted a ton of product pictures and a few personal and band pictures. I joined some crafting and etsy related groups and posted pictures to their pages. I still go in periodically but I don't think I've ever gotten a sale from it and I don't find it too satisfying at this point.

I started my blog around 6 months ago. I started out with low expectations but it has been a very fulfilling adventure so far. I'm approaching my 100th post and I average between 150-200 hits a day according to google stats. I know a lot of them are entrecard drops but I try to keep up with a lot of crafting and creative blogs on there and I feel that is generally reciprocated. I really don't know how that compares with other blogs but I honestly don't care. I like the connection I feel to other bloggers. I'm an introvert by nature and I think that blogging has been good for me. I've also gotten several custom orders and sales from readers so it has been the most productive on-line promotional tool for me so far.

Joining Entrecard has brought a lot of new bloggers into my sphere and I like the dropping process. It is a soothing and meditative activity for me usually. I can do it on my lunch hour and since my work computer is so fast I can get most of my daily 300 in during that time. I can usually find a few minutes here and there when I'm not with students to write a post and leave comments on other blogs during the work week also. I've decided that since my home computer takes so much longer to bring up pages and do my drops I'm going to keep it to a minimum on the weekends and focus on knitting time. This will hurt my entrecard rating but that is not as important as having the inventory I need for my business.

I recently added Facebook and Twitter to my daily doings. I really like that Facebook has reconnected me with people from my past that I've lost track of through the years. I started a shop business page to let people that already know me know what I'm doing with my knitting. Many of them had no idea about my business and I've gotten a lot of hits and compliments on my work. I see facebook as more about connecting and less about promotion, although a little promotion is definitely involved.

Twitter is much more of a promotional thing for me. To be honest I feel a bit like I'm yelling into the wind with Twitter. I have over a hundred followers after only a week of active tweeting but I don't think any of them are really listening. I decided I needed to give it a chance before I decided whether I wanted to really do it. People are always saying how many sales they have gotten from it and how wonderful it is so I'm trying to keep an open mind. I sometimes feel silly saying what I'm doing in 140 words or less. I feel with my blog I am actually reaching and expressing at least part of the real me. Tweeting seems more superficial and fake somehow to me. I have gotten a number of views when I've posted my new listings and what not so I think I'm going to keep it up for awhile and see if it grows on me.

I have a page on Etsy love, Myspace, and a few other networking sites but I've not added any content or spent much of any time there. What promotional tools have you found to be the best use of your valuable time?