Hobby & Craft Forums

Just thought I'd run this by you all and ask for your opinions...

I had a thought a while ago about a bit of Avon style marketing for my jewellery and jewellery kits and if I'm going to do it I need to start getting organised now in time for Christmas...so here's the idea:

Get some smallish brochures designed and printed with order forms- say A6 size, maybe 8 pages or so (I'm a graphic designer and sell advertising material so this would all be at cost and there'd be no hefty bills for this part of the plan). They'd then be posted through doors on the run up to Christmas (Avon style) meaning I'd employ others on a commision basis to deliver and collect orders.

Another idea is to give the brochures to the school kids which my son and his girlfriend know with samples to show their friends and family. I'm not talking about really young kids here- kids over the age of 16 but who still have access to the massess at school and college etc! They'd be taking money so there'd have to be some written agreement but it's still only an idea so although I've thought about it quite abit, it's not something I've began to type up or anything just yet. I can also market the forum in this way too by plastering the forum logo and web address all over the brochures as well.

What do you think? Do you think it'll work? Do you know of anyone else who has tried this sort of thing?

sounds like a plan to me x
christmas is an excellent time to do it - everyone needs to buy presents don't they

I think its a great idea, I did something similiar when I first started last year I worked in an office and they were mainly all men, so I made a 3 page catalogue for them to take home to there wifes it did work they all brought then I set up my website. good luck let us know how you get on

Well it's far from a concrete idea at the moment... I have a have a really fab wax printer here so I might just make up a few brochures and print them out and test things out with a few friends before I go ordering them in their thousands. it'll be a few weeks before I can get around to making any progress on it though but as soon as I start I'll let you all know how it's going!

To be honest I am not 100% sure how it would work out, I have had simular thoughts with my soaps, as in putting mini brocures through local doors near christmas or even the rest of the year with an order form.

I think you would need to work out how much are others going to need to spend on broachures and what happens if they order the stock and then a few customers then decided they no longer want what they ordered, will you accept returnsm who is paying for return delivery and delivery in general etc.

A lot to think about but also it could actually be a good plan if done correctly. Also if you get 100 orders 2 weeks before christmas can you ensure you have enough in stock?

Anyway keep us informed. may even have another Idea for you.

Hmmm, yes there's plenty to think about and yes, I've thought about the whole stock thing which is why I'd defo have to have a final order date for guaranteed delivery for Christmas which would allow enough time to order the stock in if I was running low- priority mail from China can be here in as little as 2 days! As for returns, I'd have to be making enough profit to cover them but I've also factored this into my prices so I'm not too worried about this side of things. As long as 'most' people pay then it should be fine! It's defo a minefield but fortunately I think I'm thinking about it at the right time in that I have a couple of months to get it all together etc. Geeeeeeeeeessss, my life just gets busier and busier...isn't it supposed to calm down as you get older lol!

First off your website doesn't exists at the moment, just see a holding page for your server. Have you switched servers?

Anyway, no idea how much your jewellery costs so lets move on from that and talk hypothetically here...

You sell jewellery between £20 - £50
Costs you 20% for raw materials, so between £4 - £10
You offer 25% commission to your agents (is that enough? Too much even?)

£20 - £4 / 25% = £4 each
£12 for the time and effort printing the catalogues, ordering the parts and knocking together the jewellery.

£50 - £10 / 25% = £10 each
£30 for the time and effort printing the catalogues, ordering the parts and knocking together the jewellery.

How about the people who sell for you, how will they feel if after a week of leg work walking around the streets, posting and collecting catalogues they only make five sales/£20 or worse still, no sales. Do you think they'll want to give it another go down the line?

On the other hand, if they make a few hundred pounds and see you make three times as much, do you not think they'll figure what you're doing is easy and order the stuff in themselves and have a go and make the whole 100% profit for themselves?

It's all swings and round abouts... Some people will be happy walking the dog, posting a few brochures and making £20 for doing what they needed to do anyway - walk the dog. Others will see it as an absolute waste of time, walking in the rain/snow/cold (weathers usually bad near Christmas) and making £20 or even nothing...

As I said, why is your website not working? I noticed one of your forum members has lost the plot! They've "gone on holiday"...

Not that going on holiday is a bad thing, but taking the website offline because they've gone on holiday, it's hardly professional. Like wise, with your website not working and the non hyphened version(which you don't own) having a parked domain. Anybody trying to find your website may come to the conclusion that you've given up the ghost.

The website is new Rodger and we had a few problems with the server last week so it's not back online yet. I'm in the process of having the photography sorted out so it hasn't even started being marketed yet. I'm talking future here, not right now/immediately! My profit on sales has nowt to do with those working for me and they will have no idea how much my stock costs etc. You're right in the sense that someone else could take the idea and think it's easy to do but it'd take as much investment as I myself have put into it and unless they have a spare few grand under the matress not doing anything, then it'll be harder than they think to do the same thing. If they had a spare few grand it's very much doubtful that they'd be delivering and collecting catalogues in the rain and snow etc.

As for the non hyphened version of the url...if you know anything about SEO then you'll know that that domain was bought for it's keyword value as Google puts a lot of weight on keyword rich domain names. I don't own the unhyphened version as this was/is owned by someone else. This won't make a difference anyway as it's intended on catching the searches done for jewellery kits and not intended to catch searches for my business name etc or someone entering for example 'nickie's jewellery' into a search engine as that is unlikely to happen or generate sales of any significant description.

Not sure what you mean by holiday? I'm off to have a look at the other posts...

It was somebody elses website, the holiday thing...

Anyway - fair enough, costs a few grand, but what I meant is that you're expecting people to do a lot of legwork for what could be very little reward...

SEO ... Uhm... What's that? lol

I have 13 websites, some doing better than others so yeah, I understand the power of the keyword rich domain seeing as one of my websites one week after being registered, no content and only being linked to from two of my PR3 websites shot to number #1 on Google.com above kelkoo/ciao and all the rest of the shopping sites selling the same products. I've since managed to get it to the first page on about 5 keyword terms and no end of long tail keywords but my favourite is google placing me second behind dixons when people search for dixons andthe product my website is about. So anybody looking for this item on their website using Google.co.uk will hopefully come to my website, see what they have to offer and click the affiliate links back to dixons or one of the cheaper retailers I have listed

Global Local
[jewellery making kit] 5,400 4,400
[jewellery kits] 2,900 2,400
[jewellery kit] 2,400 1,900

Free - jewellery-kitS.co.uk.
If you were thinking SEO, you'd have added the S but you didn't. Or even made it jewellery-MAKING-kitS.co.uk.
With this forum, you added the S when in my opinion, you didn't need to. But oh well, your call...
I just believe in product terms, the plural is better because you catch bot the singular and plural versions of search terms. But I also realise that a well optimised website (the one I mentioned) can also rank bloody well for keywords for which don't exist within the domain name. I have the .com version where as some guy who got there 3 months before me has the .co.uk and I'm doing better on some keywords he hasn't aimed at which get searched for me. Then in Google.co.uk, I am right behind him for our domain name's keyword+keyword.com/.co.uk. I know I will beat him in the end and I've already shot up from 80th on Google.co.uk to 4th within two weeks, I've only had the website just over two months and only started posting content two weeks ago...

So care to demonstrate your SEO expertise then? Which terms are you ranking so well for and how many searches are done for that keyword/phrase monthly both locally and globally?

The 'S' was added to this forum url as this website is not 'A' forum- it consists of more than one forum so it's a plural, i.e. candle making is one forum, jewellery making is another forum etc. More than one of something is a plural...need I go on???

What you fail to mention in your run down of global and local search volumes for the terms you mention regarding the jewellery-kit url is the competition so while on the face of it it may look like the url jewellery-MAKING-kitS.co.uk would have been a better option, it has way more competition than the search term 'jewellery kit' and as you will know, for a site just starting off, it is better to target searches with less competition but not necessarily with the largest volume of searches. The term 'jewellery kit' has a good number of monthly searches but does not have the same competition as 'jewellery making kits'. A new site cannot expect to compete to the established big boys and hence that statement!

jewellery making kits
22,200 18,100
jewellery kits
2,900 2,400
jewellery making kit
5,400 4,400

All the exact matches above have high advertiser competition- the term jewellery kit however has a very close monthly search volume (both locally and globally) to 'jewellery kitS' but only had medium advertiser comptetition and is therefore a better term and exact url match for those searching for 'jewellery kit'.