In Full Swing

So the shop is up and running...and then I abandon the blog for almost two weeks! I promise I did not mean to! It is just that last week was Valentine's Day stuff, and I work in a bakery. Enough said I think. If not enough, I will tell you that I made over 100 dozen hand-rolled, hand-cut, and iced sugar cookies, mmmkay? Then over the weekend I made a super fast trip to AR for my mom's birthday, and then it was back to work as soon as I got back. I feel like the week just started, and it is the weekend already! 

Any second that I have had at home I have been busy working on prints, trying to improve listings in the shop, and just doing tons of brainstorming. The first day I opened, it all just happened really quickly. I had been doing tons of debating and procrastinating about making the shop live, but since I had sold several of my "melon" prints via Facebook, I figured it would be much easier to keep track of things if I could just direct people to my Etsy shop. So I just posted that one print as a "just in case" sort of thing. I really didn't even think anyone would see the listing, much less order it. And on top of that I hadn't received my packing and shipping supplies yet! Well, low-and-behold I was eating lunch, and I had a "Congratulations" email from Etsy. I had already made a sale within a couple of hours of listing my only item! I was so surprised and excited. I might have done a crazy-jumping-fist-pump-thing in my dining room. Maybe. 

As soon as I made the sale, I jumped right into printing, photographing, and listing more items, and made a sale on the second day as well! On the third day, I got an email on my phone while we were in the movie theater. I was trying to not get too excited thinking it was a sale, but sure enough...it was! This was great for morale at the beginning, but then I had pretty much listed everything I had ready at the time, views started dropping, and the sales stopped. I got a bit bummed, but instead of getting frustrated and giving up, I got with it. 

I am still in the process of trying to promote my site, and if you know me you know that is really difficult for me. I am working on it though. I am trying to engage viewers/readers. I want to hear what you all are thinking! I want comments to know what I am doing right and what I am doing wrong. I started a Facebook page to try to help with this, and I had over 100 likes in the first 24 hours. That was pretty exciting, but now I have to translate those "likes" into sales!

I will admit that I have waves of frustration, followed by excitement, followed again by frustration, but I am still hopeful. I am just going to keep on keepin' on. Wish me luck! 

xoxo,

Katie