What makes a great Guild/Team

Isn't that the question everyone wants to know? How to become a successful guild or team is a new series on Handmade News.

Part one of the article:

http://www.handmadenews.org/article/index.php?id=993

Choosing the Perfect Guild or Team

I have written an article for HandmadeNews.org discussing how you should choose the perfect guild or team on handmade venues.

Please go check it out by clicking this link:

 http://www.handmadenews.org/article/index.php?id=953

Waves of Rainbow

Thank you all for commenting and giving me words of support yesterday. I was feeling sad and down and needed to hear it was okay.

I just finished a new crochet baby afghan. I am soo proud of myself. This thing seemed to take forever because I had to stop after each color and add the next. It was quite time consuming but looks fabulous!!!

Here Jasmine is helping model. I hope the sun comes out today so I can get better photos!

I am going to be listing it in my crochet shop: http://www.thetangledskein.etsy.com/

How to place ads on Project Wonderful

I have gotten many questions about placing ads on Project Wonderful. Project Wonderful is a website that links advertisers to websites in need of advertising. Its like an Ebay for the advertising world.


You can find Project Wonderful at http://www.projectwonderful.com/

In order to place bids on ad space you need to have $5.00 in your account. You can paypal the money to Project Wonderful. Ad space starts as low as pennies for a day. Very affordable!

When you enter the site, you want to sign up and confirm your account. You need to do this prior to placing any ads.

After you confirm your account, you can upload your ads. You can make text ads or graphic ads. Your ads can be animated or not. The sky is the limit. There are many options for the size of your ads as well.

Once you have signed to your account you may upload your ads. On the top left corner, click "My ads". A screen will pop up looking like this:

On this screen you have varying options for the size of you advertisement. Make sure your advertisement fits inside these parameters or your advertsment will be pixelated. Project Wonderful does not resize ads to fix the boxes. You are not limited in how many advertisements you can upload. However, the sites you bid on may only allow one type of ad size. You can not put a banner size ad in a square ad space.

Once you have choosen your ad size, the next screen will prompt you to ad the link to the page you wish to advertise for. Type in the link to your homepage. Make sure it is accurate! The second box asks for the text your cursor will show to the page. For my Artfire shop, I put "Jemz Artfire Shop". You can be formal with your text or cutesy. "Take me there" "Going Shopping" are some cute ones. You will last title your ad.

Next step is to upload your ad. You must choose what type of rating/content it is. Some ads if they are explicit will not be placed on certain sites.

Once you have uploaded your ads, you can bid on the sites that will have your advertisement placed on them. Let the bidding begin!! Go to "place new bid" in the top left corner. This screen will pop up:

This is the search screen for Project Wonderful. On the left you choose which ad spots you want to search for based on size. The next column is for the Catagory of the ad space. So which genre site do you wish to target. For Jemz- I sell Baby items, so I click "Parenting & Kids". I generally don't go to the third column to filter the results- but you can explore that if you would like.

The next button will take you to your results. Let me explain how to read this page, as it may be confusing for some. Your screen will look like this:

The second column shows you what size ad space is available (banner, square, etc.)

The third column is the site that has advertising through Project Wonderful. Click the hyperlink under the name to view the website.

Under publisher- this is simply the sellers profile name This name may not be the same name as the site that is selling the ad space.

The next two columns are one of the more important columns to look at. It is how I discerne whether I want to put my ad on that page. The current page views and average page views. This shows you how much traffic goes to the site. The more traffic=more potential visitors to your site.

You may also want to see if there site receives consistent traffic by viewing the trends. The views for today may be high if they are running a special blog or giveaway. But if the graph shows consistent visitors, then the site has traction and is a great site to place an ad.

The next column shows you the price for the current bid. Generally the more traction the site has, the higher the bids. Project Wonderful allows the highest bidder to get the ad space. This is the column to look at to see if you can afford an ad on the site. Bids prices are per day. You DO NOT pay for however many clicks your ad gets. This per day payment of advertisment prevents fraud (ie someone clicking your ad a gazillion times to make money for the host site). I LOVE the per day rate - which is why I think Project Wonderful is Wonderful !

If you click the last column where it says more details, you can get more details about the potential ad space. It tells you information about the site, the current ads on the site. People who refer traffic to this site. Where in the world the visitors come from. Graphs to show traffic.

Check this page out prior to placing bids. I encourage you to understand the sites before putting your money into an ad on that site.

If you like the site and want to place a bid, click "place bid". These screens below will pop up. One is the top half, the other is the bottom half when you scroll down.

Choose the ad you wish to run. You must place a maximum bid (which you can go back and raise if needed). When you bid, you can put a time frame on how long your bid is active. The default is 30 days. You may also put a cap on how much money you are interested in paying for ad space. This way you don't have a bid for $5.00 a day for 30 days. You can cap your bid for $50.00 and have your ad up for 10 days. However, if you lose out, you can increase your bid for that ad space. If you don't rebid, and someone elses ad expires, your ad may be placed in that spot if it has not expired.

If you are still confused, please check out this link:

https://www.projectwonderful.com/aboutauctions.php

Addies Hat Part 1

One of my buddies enlisted me to crochet her a cap. She was unsure which color combo she would like more, so I told her I would crochet both. Here is the first one. Its black and pink. Hope ya like!

The Tangled Skein

The day that keeps giving me hell

Yah its been a bad day.





Bad in the sense that my daughter still is vomiting 6 days after our intial ER visit for a high fever, vomiting and a febrile seizure. Still sick, and the doctors just continue to say its a nasty virus and they can't do anything for poor dehydrated bug. Yeah, love military health care.





Then, lets see, last nite in the dark and ice of my driveway- I backed the tow hitch of my Suburban into my garage door. After pounding on the steel door for a half hour, I gave up trying to fix it and called a garage repair guy. In 5 minutes he fixed it and charged $85.00 WHAT!



Oh and theres more.....





My Suburban which I only drive once a week as its a gas hog-- I drove yesterday into town to go to a fabulous pizza house called the Mooses Tooth with some girls of mine. Well I parked next to a little Yellow VW bug. This morning, guess what I find on my car. Yellow paint scraping my black paint off the right rear of my car. Yup, their mirror put two scratchs all on the side of my car. A hit and run. I got an estimate to repair and my deductable is $500 and they want $425 to repair two straight , almost key marks on my car.





So, then just to top off my day. My wonderful daughter decides to grab my glasses for the umpteenth time. So they snap and break. My only pair of glasses. So I am blind as a bat. Seriously , my nick name in middle school was Mole if that gives you any idea of how bad my eyesight is. No appointments for three weeks at teh military eye doctor.



FABULOUS. Anyone else wanna share their worst day experiances?





I did photograph a new item. An Awesome Newsboy Cap in Eggplant:

The Tangled Skein

Increase traffic to your Etsy site

Here a fellow pro Etsy store explains how to increase traffic to your store. How to make advertising work for you $10 into 1000 views. How to make your Etsy store the top of the google search page. He has put up many links to follow for each subject all on one blog. Take it from him, hes been on Etsy for a year and half and has over 1,000 sales:

http://timothyadamdesigns.blogspot.com/2008/11/increase-your-etsy-traffic.html

Cool toys

So a new hot item I have been selling at the craft shows and have custom orders in the queu for are my new toys!

Im really excited about the I Spys and the Crayon Rolls I have made. Some of my crayon rolls have been purchased by a local boutique and they are hugely popular with kids these days..

The I Spy is the original handheld game! I have a photo list of items on the back side and the front has a vinyl double sealed opening to peak in and spy the treasures inside.

I have some listed in my etsy shop but I have lots of color choices to choose from! Last day for Christmas Delivery is 12/16 . Hurry and get your orders in today!

www.jazzyjemz.etsy.com

My newest purchase!

I was browsing the shops on Etsy this weekend and found this awesome shop called Ollie Ollie: http://www.ollieollie.etsy.com/





All original prints designed and created by the shop owner Amariah.



For those that read, you know we live in Alaska so when I saw this, I had to have it! I plan on putting it up in my daughter's room.

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=vt_related_3&listing_id=18099349

Then she has some Holiday Cards: which I purchased as well. The shop owner is so sweet she threw in a freebie for me too. So family and friends check out the holiday cards you might be receiving:
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=17752138

Sneek Peek at New items

The ideas just keep flowing... Here are some of the new items I have been working on. Check back frequently as more are rolling off the production line! http://www.jazzyjemz.etsy.com/

Splat Mat - vinyl covering. measures approximatley 54X44 inches. Machine washable. Air Dry only.

Christmas Items--- more coming soon

Long sleeve, turtleneck onesie with Christmas tree and Polar Bear, Christmas bib.