A new aspect of business

I was recently approached by Bloggerdise, which is a free site where bloggers interested in doing product reviews and people who have products they'd like to have reviewed can sign up and contact each other. They simply offered me (as a small business owner) basically some free publicity. I haven't looked around on it much, but I posted up an ad with a picture of some of my crane earrings (the people on the site are very nice, by the way, and will create an ad for you if you'd rather not make one yourself...they did for me, but I made one because I wanted a specific picture in it and such). But it's really, really easy, and free, so there's no reason not to if you've got a business. What they wanted in return was for me to spread the word...so here's MY review. Five people have already contacted me, and it's been like two days. If you've got a business, it's massively worth the two seconds it will take you to sign up and make a little ad thing for free and see where it takes you...and you can make more later if you like how it turns out. Go to www.bloggerdise.com.

I've been contacted by so far, one offering me paid advertising on her blog (not up my alley at the moment, nor probably ever, I've gotta say - if I want to pay for advertising I'll pay Google or someone) but the other four wanted to do review/giveaways. That is, I send them a product and they talk about it on their blog (hopefully raving about how awesome it is) and then one of their readers can win a similar one (or in my case, I'll probably offer custom orders, since my most unique pieces are my origami ones, those are the ones people will want and they're the ones I can afford to give away anyway). The reason I'm doing this when it will be a LOT of work for me (5 minutes of folding per crane plus prep (cutting into squares) time and sealing time...I've got a full workday's worth of work to do on these already) is that in order to win the item, the readers have to do things like "like" me on facebook, or "heart" my etsy shop...anyone who enters, not just the winner, will do these things, and if they really like the prize enough, the non-winners might just buy one. Not to mention the fact that just getting my product seen by more people, even if they don't enter, and sending more of them out to more cities where people will see them on the street, will drastically increase my visibility online and in the real world. Basically, like all advertising, this is my losing money hoping to gain it in the long run...that is, hoping to gain money and a chance for jewelry to be a bigger part of my life, and a chance for my business to stand on its own legs.

Honestly, if I had a reliable way to know I could sell my silver and copper and gemstone wire-wrappings, I would want to make them more, because they're more fun, though less unique. I probably wouldn't be able to do giveaways just because my pieces would require so much more overhead...I would need to gain something tangible in return. But I don't know how often my peers enter such things, and since my angle at the moment is "eco-friendly" (emphasis on friendly) I need to be as friendly as I can. I wonder where this all will take me. It's getting very exciting (and time consuming).

Speaking of which, some future update will have to detail how awesome my summer is going to be. On a related note, next Monday is Marathon Monday here in Beantown, and I have a DAY OFF. Where I don't have to be ANYWHERE or do ANYTHING. I haven't had one of those since I got my part-time job. I am almost embarrassingly excited for the chance to do whatever I want...don't expect productivity, it will probably be spent reading.


Also, I am continually astounded by what colors people pick for custom crane orders. Yellow and purple and teal and green just don't look good to me as a combination, but I've gotten more than one order for such a pair...I guess that's why I OFFER custom orders, because I would never dream of making what those people would want. At least I'm getting to the stage where I can look at my creations and not think "gross, she's going to hate it" - to see it from the buyer's point of view, and not judge it based on my own color preference.