Fearing Failure, thoughts about time commitment

I am sitting at home today (home from work), wondering what I should do. I got a little work done this morning, but I slept for most of the morning. MUCH needed sleep. I have been staying up too late trying to finish my intro to Photoshop tutorial scripts so that I can be ready for my maternity leave.

I am doing very little for my digital download card Etsy shop. I think I still want to do it, but I am not getting any costumers and I have not been doing enough promotion and I am struggling to stay interested in it myself. I have not made a card in at least 2 weeks.

I didn't expect it to take off right away...but I did think that I would have at least have had one sale. So much wasted time...

Time.

I think about how much time I have been spending on it...and while I do enjoy actually creating the cards, I am really struggling with the promotion. I am not a marketer by nature and all of this Pinterest, SEO, Etsy teams, and all of the other promotion things that I should be doing to market my product is both confusing and aggravating.

The more I mull it over in my head, the more I want to stop working on my Etsy shop, or at least take a break. I know that if a person wants to grow a business they should push through these feelings, but I just feel overwhelmed thinking about everything that I need to do:

• spend time with the Lord
• be a good wife and mother (keep the house tidy, spend time with my family, provide opportunities for my son to grow and learn, serve my husband well), 
• prepare for baby #2, 
• teach, 
• sponsor the FCA club at school, 
• prepare for maternity leave, 
• make quality photoshop tutorials that could eventually be sold for a profit.

I am sure that there is more that should be added to that list, but those are the main ones. I am feeling burned out by it all and I know that this is part of the issue.

But is there really anything that I could take out?

Figuring out Pinterest...sort of

I have done almost no promotion for my Etsy shop. All I have really done is joined a team that helps me get views and favorites.

I have kind of put my Etsy shop on hold since I found out that I will not be able to use this FANTASTIC website that had an excellent tutorial that the kids could follow while I was on maternity leave. So I have not created any new cards for my Etsy shop since the last post, I am now creating my own  photoshop tutorials geared toward art teachers and plan to record them this week.

I figure that I can eventually use these tutorials to sell online when I make my art teacher lesson plan website. Which, I have been very tentative about up to now, but since I don't have any free tutorials, I have been spring boarded into creating content for it, I have pretty much decided to go ahead with it. But it will likely still not become a website until this summer sometime.

I don't want to give up on my Etsy Shop, although I am pretty disappointed in its progress, I know that I need to give it more attention...but I have so little time...

I bought a little ebook about how to promote on Pinterest and read a couple blogs about it, but I still feel uneasy about it.

My ebook gave me some steps to follow:

Tip 1: Visit Your Pinterest Page Often and Be Active
Tip 2: Get More Followers
Tip 3: Find New Undiscovered Pins
Tip 4: Create a Great Pin
Tip 5: Create A Great Board
Tip 6: Get Your Shop Items Pinned 

I read this last week and I have done none of these things.

Another source that I found some good information was at 12 Ways to Get More Pinterest Followers:
1: Add the Pinterest Follow Button
2: Add the Profile Widget
3: Share a Lot
4: Comment on Popular Pins
5: Mention Others
6: Connect Your Social Networks
7: Find Friends From Other Social Networks
8: Promote Your Individual Boards
9: Contribute to Others’ Boards
10: Follow Others
11: Run Contests
12: Keep Your Followers Happy

The last site was at 6 Pointers for Using Etsy and Pinterest Together:
1. Open a Pinterest Business Account
2. Try to Earn Sales
3. Participate in the Community
4. Form Group Boards, Invite Others
5. Make Pinning a Habit
6. Remember that Pinterest Is a Visual Medium

The ones that I have highlighted seem to be on multiple pages. They seem to be saying the same things, but at the same time, there seems to be a lot here at the same time. So I guess I will make my own list and try to go through it this week:

1. I have already created a business account. (so that one is already crossed off my list!)
2. Start Pinning (often) (this is going to be a difficult one for me because I am not consistently on Pinterest) I should look into a program that will do this for me, but for now, I will just plan to pin during my plan period at school (shhhhhh, don't tell anyone) and before bed at night.
3. Join an Etsy Pinterest group and start using it daily.

Well, that's the plan at least. We shall see how it goes. The last two points will be my Immediate goals.

My Long Term goal will be to make a sale...sigh*

Target Audience

Moon and stars!

I have decided to follow Beth Anne and Sarah in their "52 Weeks to a Better Business" plan. I don't know if I will be successful with it or not...especially with a baby coming in less than 2 months, but I thought this might be a good place for me to keep myself in check.

Week 1 of the 52 weeks to a better business spoke about finding a new audience...well, I need to have AN audience...period. Right now my Etsy shop has zero sales and my online art lessons idea is still, well, just an idea.

So, I thought I would start with trying to get a picture of a Target Audience, which is something that I have been meaning to do for about a month anyway. 

For the Etsy shop:

I am thinking that this person would be:

• A married mother of four in Kansas 
• busy stay-at-home mom (no time to create a card)
• a total family income of less than $50,000 per year 
• unknowing to the digital world, at least to adobe programs

For the online art lessons idea:

This person would be:

• a young, brand new teacher, teaching something new subject or medium, with limited time to plan, making less than $40,000 a month.
• someone looking for standard alignment
• someone with some knowledge of the adobe programs

Perhaps I am just too tired (I wasted WAY too much time looking at high chairs on amazon.com), but I cannot think about anything more.

I went to 6 Steps To Decoding Your Target Audience to help me get some more ideas, but I don't think that I was much more successful with it.

So now my question is: what do I do with this information?

Immediate Goal: Go through week 2 of the 52, figure out what to do with the information above, make a banner for my Etsy shop.

Long Term Goal: Make a sale this month!

Accomplished Goal: I have a new birth announcement! I think I may use this one for my unborn!

Not moving

newest christmas card

So in my last post I wrote that I was going to send out an email...It completely and utterly failed. I like to give up when I completely fail at something. I am pretty discouraged...

BUT,

I am still thinking about changing my focus, both in the Etsy business and in my ponderings about starting a website with all my lesson plans, including some video lessons that I could use while I am gone in the spring with baby #2!

In the Etsy shop, I was thinking about adding some other products like scrapbook templates or party printables, but I cannot find anything that I feel would be truly unique. I don't feel like it would be a waste of my time to do these things, however, because I want to have unique scrapbooks for my children and it would be fun to create party printable designs for any and all events that I have...that is if I ever hosted any parties...sigh. Life is so busy and all I ever seem to do is add to it.

The Etsy shop is not over yet...but it is going to take some doing to pull my spirits out of the ditch!

For the art teacher lesson plan site, I do not expect this to come off the ground for some time, perhaps next summer at the earliest. I just don't know if it would be successful, I would hate to put a lot of work into it and then get nothing from it. On the other hand, I am already going to be doing a lot of work building a curriculum. I may as well go one extra mile and make it professional enough that it could be quality enough to put up for sale.

I just don't want to overwhelm myself with all of the work that would come with trying to run 2 sites at once, because I don't think that Dreams To Creation would be big enough for these two different purposes.

immediate goal: make a banner and birth announcement for my Etsy shop, start thinking about the first lesson that I could make for photography.
long term goal: make a sale this month!

New Business, New Blog

Most recent card creation!

I have started this new business on Etsy selling digital Christmas cards, so I decided, new business, new blog. I may be going a little blog crazy, but I think that it helps me keeps my thoughts clear. I started a bible journal of sorts at the beginning of August and a Family blog a couple of months ago, so it made sense to make a blog for this venture as well.

I have had so many ideas running through my head, how can I cohesively put them down on "paper"? Let me just start typing. :)

I currently have 11 cards made up, 10 of which are Christmas cards. I opened my shop 3 weeks ago and was hoping to have a sale by the end of November...we shall see. We are almost to the end of that time frame...

So I plan to send out an email to my church small group and mom's coworkers. I would send it out to my coworkers, but it feels weird for me to do that, I do so much for free, it feels weird to sell something to them. 

The email is giving me some trouble, however, because I don't feel like I am very good with words. I don't want to sound too pushy, but at the same time, I also want to sell my cards! Each one has taken me 2-3 hours to complete. I wouldn't mind a little compensation for my time. Not to mention all the time that I have spent setting up the shop and other business related things.

I have also thought about all of the other things that I could be adding to my sales (like digital scrapbook pages or digital paper) and I haven't found a way to set my shop apart from everyone else's. I feel like if I can come up with a really unique product, that I could be really successful...I just haven't found out what that product may be. So, I'll just stick to cards for now.

Separate from the Etsy shop, listened to a podcast #43 from the Brilliant Business Moms Podcast, in which they interviewed Jocelyn Sams about her success with her Elementary Librarian website. Jocelyn built her website only because her principal was bugging her about making detailed, curriculum aligned lesson plans for her classes (just like my principal is doing). So she looked online to find something that she could buy...and found nothing. So she made them herself, sold them, and was VERY successful. She has NEVER had less than a 4 figure month...

This got me thinking...could I do this for art? I am also being forced to make lesson plans, and it would be nice to have everything formatted and set to be used for future, and I have briefly looked and not found anything amazing in the field that I work, and I do want to keep my lesson plans some place other than the accursed program that my school is having us make these plans. 

Could I do something similar to this? It would meet a need of a well meaning, time strapped art teacher, but how many would be interested. But again, I want to have this done for myself anyway, so what is the harm in making it official and offering it for sale?

So many things to think about, plus trying to balance home and work. 

Still just thinking about this lesson plan thing. For now, I want to delve into this digital card business, at least in this venture, I get to use my creativity...oddly enough, as an art teacher, I don't get to create things of my own very often...sad, but true.

immediate goal: get that email sent to people about the Christmas Cards!

long term goal: make a sale this month!