Today I spent a lot of time cleaning up my virtual craftshouse. I reorganize my actual craft supplies regularly at home (and I even have some things stashed at work!) to keep inventory up to date and items their proper places. I rarely think about cleaning up my virtual world. But since my business is online it is very necessary to dedicate some time every now and then to making sure all my ducks are in a row and my shop is up to date. Since I just got back from a nice vacation now was a good time to reorganize and get ready for the busy months ahead.
First I started by removing some items from my
Etsy shop that just aren't selling - I am going to take some new photos and relist those another time. Gotta work on the descriptions and think about why they have so many views but those views are not translating into sales.
I also removed a couple items that I want to keep available for my upcoming craft shows because they are real stunners in person and I want them on my table purely for visual purposes. If someone wants to buy them - great! After the craft shows are over for the season I will relist any items which are still available.
Next I went through my Flickr site. I use my Flickr for personal/vacation photos as well as my crafty photos. (I need to consider opening a second Flickr account for my crafts only but that decision will come at a later time.)
I have all my craft photos in different "Sets" - One for Listed Items, one for Not Listed items, and one for misc things like promo pictures, craft event pictures, and everything else having to do with my little business. I specifically needed to clean up the Listed and Not Listed folders. I started off moving items from one category to another. I don't always remember to get things in the Listed folder after I list it. Next I started deleting old pictures of items that have already sold. I did keep some of the old pictures for promo or jury photo needs. Deleting duplicates and blurry pictures was also necessary. Some pics will just never get better with editing and you just have to start from scratch.
I also finished editing/cropping some pics of items waiting to be listed. Flickr is finally clean and all up to date. After that was said and done I took a few items in the Not Listed folder and put them in
my shop. Those are the photos you see throughout this post.
I updated Twitter a few times, showcasing the new items I've listed and caught up on some Tweets from my favorite folks. Tried not to spend too much time (or money!) browsing all their goodies.
Before starting this blog post I went through and caught up on my blog reading. Again, tried not to spend too much time and money browsing and buying everything I saw. Made a few comments here and there.
I also went through all my blog posts and LABELED all of them! This is something I frequently forget to do. I love it when I read someone's blog and want to see more posts on the same topic and they have their little handy label cloud/list for clicking. This is such a handy tool. If only I remember to label!!
And now this! This is my last task on my Virtual Cleanup. Blog about cleaning. LOL!
What am I going to do now that my Virtual Cleanup is complete? Probably make more crafty messes with beads and trinkets. Thinking about making more car mirror rosaries today and taking more pictures tomorrow.
