Jewelry Marketing Website

Alright ,now I know this is giving away a secret in jewelry marketing,but I like being nice.

Check out this site for great tips on everything to do with jewelry and marketing your products.

Click here.....Jewelry Marketing

Take a look at this adorable Etsy cartoon from youtube!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2g31xjdfhQ

This really needs to be shown on TV.

Mayeb then people will have heard of Etsy when I mention it! lol.

Cheapest Display Ever!

I don't think I can credit myself with coming up with this idea. I've seen this before. But,I wanted to tell everyone else about it too.

One of the cheapest ,coolest,simplest displays you can ever have or make yourself.

You can make as many as you want,in any color or pattern you like. It's utterly limitless in the possibilities!

How to make these: Take a sheet of heavy cardstock paper (make sure it's cardstock,light paper won't work) in whatever color you want for a display. Using a paper cutter for a straight edge,cut the paper in half long ways. Now take one long peice of what you cut and fold it in half.(You should have a rectangular peice of paper folded in half now).Unfold it so you can see the crease. Now take one edge (on the short side ) and fold it about 1/2". Now fold the other short side over 1". Now you should have three creases in your paper. Fold the peice in half at your middle crease so it makes something like a tipee. Now tape the other two folded sections on the bottom of it together with the 1" overlapping the 1/2" fold. Use the side view picture to see what it should look like.

Now you should have a tilted paper display that is cheap,and can easily display rings,earrings,necklaces,and whatever else you want.

**For those of you who don't do jewelry,you can use them to display tags,magnets,hair accesories,cellphone charms,headbands..basically a plethora of small lightweight items.

If you're afraid of them tipping over,simply weigh them down with a rock or antoher heavy object.

You can paint these or leave them as is. Or you can decorate them with stamps and stickers too.

Cut vertical slits in the top to hold necklaces and bracelets. Cut a horizontal slice on the top to hold your earring cards.

I've made several of these for my next craft fair.Sometimes when you can't afford a small army of little displays,you have to get innovative.

I hope you enjoy making your own creative paper displays..the sky's the limit!

Mark-Up or Margin?

Mark-Up or Margin?

Many of you might be looking at me blankly right now,not knowing what I mean at all.

Well,here's a handy site that'll explain the difference between the usual mark-up and the much more useful margin when it comes to getting a good retail price on handcrafted products.

http://www.buildingtrade.org.uk/articles/markup_or_margin.html

Mark-Up is basically marking an item up a certain percentage.

Margin is the % of the % your adding on,plus the orginal price ..that makes no sense does it?I give up..Go look at the site already! :P

Materials (Pricing)

Pricing is always one of the hardest things about owning your own business. It's even harder when you make your own products,whether they be soaps,blankets,or jewelry. I'm going to show the basics in how jewelry is often priced(or at least the general way I price mine.) Please remember that this is personal opinion here on how to do things, and jewelry is priced in many different ways and is not nessearily always right or wrong. :)





Materials

Let's start with the one thing you need to do handmade crafts.Your materials.



You must always find out the price of the materials you used to make the item and put that into your final price.



Stringing Materials: Find the amount of each inch of your string/tigertail/chain etc that you've strung your beads/pendants on. Take the total amount you paid for the item and divide this by the number of inches total to get per inch.Take inches used in peice times $ per inch.



Wire: Do the same thing as above the get the price for each inch of wire you used,especially if it's precious metal wire which can cost up to 0.20 per inch.Make sure you measure the amount of wire used before using it on your peice. Keep a record of it on a peice of paper or on your computer. Different guages are also different prices,keep this in mind.



Beads- Make sure to find out the price of EACH individual bead from a strand. Count how may beads are on an inch of the strand, then mulitply that by the number of inches on the strand. Take the final cost and divide that by the final tally of beads. Voila, a very easy way to find bead price instead of counting every single bead! EniOken.com has a bead price calculator for free if you want to download it.



Headpins/Jumprings/Spacer beads/Krimp Beads: These are some small or sometimes not as noticeable parts of your jewelry that might get missed. Make sure you get the price of each one you used in your entire peice of jewelry.



Use a calculator or a computer program to calculate your material costs.

I use Microsoft Excel as my pricing program. You can easily put your material costs in with =(blank)+(blank) as an equation and it will add it right up for you. Or simply use your calculator and put the final number in the slot.



Getting to best price for your materials: By wholesale or in large lots as much as you can. The lower your material costs mean the better priced your jewelry is going to be in the end.You can also resell any supplies you can't use or don't need at a small profit. If you can't afford buying in big lots,try and get another jewelry maker to join with you and split the cost of some of your materials with them.



Using higher quality materials: Higher quality materials means that your jewelry will last longer,stand up to more wear and more people will be willing to puchase it due to it's higher standard. Your jewelry will cost more with higher priced/quality materials but the trade off may be that more people will buy the jewelry if it'll last longer and not tarnish or wreck as easily. Note: Metal allergies are becoming more and more common. Making jewelry with prcious metals,nickle free and sergical steel wire/metals means that those with metal allergies can fully enjoy your jewelry.

Last note: Alot of jewelry sellers take the price of materials then multiply it by 1, 2, or even up to 5 times the amount they paid for it.

I personally do not do this. I pay myself properly for my time and overhead to create my price (wholesale) first. Why get paid for twice the number of materials? It seems silly to me. It's for abosolutely no reason whatsoever that this is done,and if you ever had to explain why you did this to someone..what would you say? Think about this when you decide to up the material tally or to just leave it the same.Pay yourself properly,add meterials, and add your overhead,and that SHOULD be good enough.If it's not good enough for wholesale,then ask yourself why not.

You're welcome to price your materials by multiplying or not. Your choice!

(I'll explain wholesale versus retail pricing perhaps some other time.)

It's summertime baby!

Arn't these wire rings so adorable!

I've been making them in sterling silver because well, sterling silver is my favorite(quite frankly).

They are just gorgeous, and they are a simple single wire style that can hold any style of flat bead. Great for summer wear.

I can make these in any size you want. Any color too! I have some shaped beads,faceted beads,glass,gemstone,you name it,I either have it,or can get it!

Just email me,or contact me through etsy -natureallwell- to get your own today!

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=6615659

This picture is one using a brown mother of pearl shell.