A few Cool Features!

I've had several great promotional opportunities come my way the past few weeks. I am this week's Featured Artist on the very cool handmade site St. Louis Handmade. I've always been impressed with the site and I'm very excited to now be a part of it. I love their tag line, "living the creative life under the Arch". I'm honored to be featured with so many other creative and artistic people.

I was also recently featured in a cool video presentation of fiber artists by Nana's Gift Nook. You can find the video here and a PDF file of it with links to all the featured artists here.

I'm off to a good start with my fall promotions without even spending a dime. I'll be looking for other opportunities to promote my knitting in the next month to spread the word as my favorite time of year approaches.

Google Me

Someone last week asked me how I knew how many visitors I had each day to my blog. There are lots of tools you can use but I, like most use Google Analytics. I am not going to go into details on how to install it but if you need help here is a good beginner's guide from Mahalo for getting your account set up and figuring out how to initially use it. I rarely refer to Google's help section since I find it to be geared towards a user with a much more techie vocab than myself. When I need help I just google the question I have and usually someone else has translated directions it in a more user friendly way than Google itself. The above Google Love print is by MARCOART ONLINE and combines the Beatles Dynasty with the Google dynasty.

You are going to want to eliminate your own ISP address from your statistics if you are anything like me and check your blog over 20 times a day. You can add a filter from as many computers that you use, I have one for my work and home computers. WeepingWillowyOne on Artfire did a good step by step guide for how to do this here.

Last month I noticed a very alarming trend in my blog stats. I was experiencing a negative % change for the first time ever. I knew intellectually that it was because I had such a huge increase in numbers the month before while running the Lose the Winter Blues Contest. I had done tons of promoting and was linked on all kinds of contest blogs and was still seeing some residual effects of this throughout March. But it was so depressing to see my losses there, especially as they actually got as high as 18% at one point. That is when I jumped into action to try to stop the bleeding, so to speak. I threw myself into Twitter and StumbleUpon and was recently able to turn the corner. I thought it might be interesting for some of you to see where my traffic comes from. If you don't even like looking at your own stats then feel free to move along.

One of the first things I always look at when reviewing my Statistics is where my traffic is coming from. I think this is the most important resource since it helps us to see where we should or shouldn't be putting our energy. To find the whole list you go to your Traffic Sources Overview and click on view full report. I usually have over 70 referring sites, with some of them only referring a few but every one counts as a potential new follower.

Here are my top 10 referring sources from the past 30 days. The first number is the total number of visitors from that site, the second is the average number of page views per visit, The third is the average length of the visit, and the last is the percentage of new visitors.

1.	entrecard.com / referral	2,678	1.06	00:00:25	30.96%
2.	(direct) / (none)	1,217	1.11	00:00:36	54.31%
3.	blogger.com / referral	358	2.61	00:08:32	11.45%
4.	adn.entrecard.com / referral	266	1.06	00:00:30	43.98%
5.	sortafloweringdesigns.com / referral	179	1.12	00:00:49	41.90%
6.	twitter.com / referral	146	1.58	00:03:50	73.97%
7.	etsy.com / referral	80	1.12	00:00:22	81.25%
8.	stumbleupon.com / referral	74	1.19	00:00:31	98.65%
9.	google / organic	72	1.58	00:01:17	93.06%
10.	photodito.com / referral	33	1.03	00:00:39	33.33%

It's no surprise that my biggest source is entrecard. I put the most amount of time into promoting my blog with them. Even with all of their bumps and advertising debacles during the past month they are still the best way to promote your blog that I know of. I no longer do my drops on the weekend since it was taking away too much time from creating so I do have a pretty big drop in viewers by Sunday but I'm ok with that.

The twitter stats are very interesting for me. Those are actually very solid new numbers since I really just started working the twitter last week. Before that I had less than 20 views from them. What is promising from those stats is that they are actually spending some time here, with an average of almost 4 minutes.

The StumbleUpon numbers are about what I thought they would be. A lot of new visitors but not necessarily the same quality. They had an average of only 31 seconds. I will continue to submit some pages to them and it is a good way to search for interesting diversions.

I have been using the etsy forums to promote my blog some the past few weeks too which is where the etsy views are coming from. I'm not real impressed with the quality of these views as the average time is only 22 seconds but I think I will continue to do it as I have time. I also find some great blogs by participating in those threads which is part of the fun.

Do you have any interesting trends or thoughts on Google Analytics you would like to share?

Social Networking Sites vs. Blog Directories

Last month for some reason I got a wild hair and started joining blog directory sites like they were going out of style, which in reality they pretty much are. It seems the blog directory is being replaced by social networking sites for finding information on-line. Directories are still a decent way to get links to your site to build up your page rank but it can be a tedious process to join them so you have to way the cost vs. the benefit to you and your site. The above necklace by CouchObjects lets the world know you love your social networking sites.

The DMOZ, the open directory project, is the gold standard in directories and appears worth the effort if you can get in. I have applied but it is reviewed by experts in the field so it takes some time to hear whether you are accepted. It is a true directory and is the most comprehensive attempt to organize the web there is.

The other true directories that I applied and was accepted to relatively quickly are BlogRankings and Blogged. I like blogged and have done some searches with it as they index just blogs by topics.

There are other directories that are a combination of directories and social networking sites. We all know the true social networking sites like Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. These sites are all about building a community and networking with like minded people. You can share pictures, make friends, and promote yourself and your business. The directories that are also creating ways for bloggers to connect are the ones that are most useful for promoting your business. Not only will they give you a link to boost page rank but they will also give you and your business opportunities to be discovered by new eyes.

Blog Catalog is the most popular of these sites that I have discovered. There is a great community of bloggers here that can be searched, befriended, and can be a good promotional tool if fully utilized. I haven't fully tapped into what I want to use the Catalog for but I think there is more potential here than many other sites. Technorati appears to be a similar site and has potential as well for networking opportunities. Fuel My Blog and Blog Hub are two other similar sites I joined when I was in my directory joining frenzy but I haven't explored them much yet to see what they can do for me.

There are also several crafting directories that I have joined partly for exposure and to develop links. Crafty tips Arts & Crafts Dirctory is the one I'm most impressed with. It isn't huge yet but it is very well organized and the editor reviewed my blog quickly and actually sent me a personal e-mail with suggestions and her thoughts on my blog. I also submitted to the Recreation and Hobby Directory and the etsyBloggers ring as well as a few others that I haven't heard back from yet.

Bust Magazine, which is one of my absolute favorite reads, just started a directory called the Girl Wide Web which is very cool. I submitted and was accepted to it very quickly. I have been wanting to explore their directory more to find some new favorites. There is also BlogHer that is just for women bloggers to connect and network. I have not found this site to be very intuitive and I have struggled to find my way around but I'm sure if I give it a little time I'd be fine.

There are some other social networking communities that are a cool way to connect and can be used for promotional purposes as well. I don't suggest just treating them for promo though as you don't want to be seen as a spammer. I think there has to be a balance between you as a person and the business. Even though I join them under my business name I at least attempt to inject some of the real me into each site I join.

The most interesting of these for me has been Indiepublic. I heard about it a long time ago but had never taken the time to join. It really is a great community of indie designers and supporters of the handmade movement. It has brought me more chatter than any of the other sites I've joined by far. There is also We Love Etsy and I just discovered a new one called MyCraft that looks interesting.

I'll cover the social bookmarking sites in another post. If you want to explore this topic further the blogging maestro TimothyAdamDesigns has a tutorial for $8 called Handmade Blogging Essentials which covers these topics and many more. I just bought it today and will do a review of it once I've taken it all in. If you have some other directories you swear by please share.

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?