Back in August, I posted about artist Luann Udell’s well written series on bad booth design. She’s added a lot more since then, and I’ve update the post to show her latest advice. If you’ve missed the first post or haven’t kept up with Luann’s series, you can check out the updated list of the booth design topics here:

• Booths Gone Bad

The spring show season is coming up. If you haven’t updated your booth in a while, read Luann’s series to get some ideas!

78%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

I’m a blog feedaholic. I just took a quiz that told me so. But, it just told me something that I already knew. I currently subscribe to about 49 feeds ranging over lot of different topics. In the past it was closer to 110 feeds. How did I keep track of it all? I tell you, it wasn’t easy. As the number of feeds grew, I had trouble keeping up with the posts it sometimes took between a 45 minutes to an hour and a half to keep up with the reading. I’ve finally got control over my feeds using some simple techniques. While you may not have 110 or even 49 feeds to read every day, if your blog reading time is limited, you can use these techniques to catch up and keep up.

1. Prune the feeds- The first step is to just cut down the sheer number of blog subscriptions. If a blog isn’t educational, informative, or entertaining you should axe it. Here’s how I decided to get rid of a blog feed:

* Blogs that posts too often- one blog actually made 15 to 20 long posts a day! Getting rid of this subscription freed up a lot of time…and I honestly didn’t miss it after it was gone.

* Blogs that posts too little- True, there wasn’t much to read, but in most cases what I did read wasn’t very compelling either

* Blogs that appeared to repeat what other blogs posted- I really only need to read it once.

2. Reorganize your reading schedule- I took the remaining feeds and set up a schedule of when I would read them.

* Daily- These blogs usually provide daily up to date information that I like to keep up with. So I read out of this category every day.

* Every Tuesday and Thursday- These are blogs that I like to check regularly, but they aren’t as urgent as the daily category. These blogs I read twice a week.

* Weekends- The rest of the feeds go here, they’re mostly blogs that only update once or twice a week. Since they contain nothing really urgent I can read them at my leisure on the weekends

Reorganizing my reading schedule cut down the time it takes me to read my feeds from an hour to fifteen minutes a day on the weekdays, and a half hour on the weekends.

3. Have a process for adding new feeds- If you’re reading blogs, you’re likely to run across more blogs that you may be interested in. Once you’ve got your reading schedule under control, you need a process in which you can check out new blogs without throwing off your reading schedule. When my blog reading was out of control, I was scared to add any new ones because I could barely keep up as it was. But now, I’ve created a label called “New Blogs” and put this label on all of the new blogs I subscribe to. I read out of the “New Blogs” category only after I’ve ready all my blogs for the day and if I have some time to spare. If after a while I like what I’m reading, I’ll categorize it under daily, tuesdays and thursdays, or weekends. If I find that it doesn’t interest me, I’ll unsubscribe. This keeps posts from new blogs I’m testing out from getting in the way of more important blogs and it.

4. Review your feeds on a regular basis- Remember that you still have to reevaluate how useful your blog subscriptions are on a regular basis. Your interests change, blogs change, the time you have to read blogs may change. I have a label called the “chopping block” if I feel that a blog is coming to the end of it’s usefulness, I put the “chopping block” label on it. If the next time I read that blog I don’t find something compelling…it gets deleted. Don’t be scared to unsubscribe from a feed. There are over 4 million blogs out on the Internet after all.

So that’s how I’ve tamed the feed beast…at least temporarily.

It seems like I run into this problem at least once every couple of months. I’m asked to help someone with their website, perhaps something went wrong on the site…maybe someone got fed up with their web host and the want me to help move them to a new host. “Okay” I’ll say, “Great! What’s your hosting account information?”
“Uh….I don’t know. Do we need it?”

“Um…yeah.”

If you’ve registered a domain name or if you’ve opened up a hosting account for your website, soon after your account is set up, you’ll get several emails from your hosting company or registrar. DON’T THROW THESE AWAY! These emails contains important info that you need in order to help maintain your website.

If you’ve registered a new domain name, you’ll get an email that contains the following:

• The username and password for your account
• Your account number

If you ever need to transfer your domain name from one registrar to another, or if you ever change hosting companies, or if you change email addresses, you’ll need the user name and password to your domain registrar account in order to make these changes. (In case you don’t know, a registrar is a company where you can get a domain name; popular registrars include Godaddy and Network Solutions)

Domain registrars have gotten very strict about making sure that you’re the owner of the domain name before they allow you to make any changes. There have been a number of cases of fraud in which people essentially steals a domain by pretending to be the owner. So if you lose your account information, be prepared to spend some time on the telephone with tech support trying to prove who you are.

When you sign up for hosting, you’ll be emailed some important email as well. This info includes:

• The username and password for your account
• DNS information (so you can point your domain name to your hosting account)
• Instructions on how to set up your hosting account

Again, expect to spend some time on the phone with tech support if you lose track of this info.

When you get these emails, save them in a separate folder and you might want to print them out and file them with your other important records so you don’t have to go digging through your emails to find this information.

Also, if you happen to change the email you used to open the domain or hosting account, be sure to update this information with your hosting company or registrar. Sending emails to the email account on file is one way these companies verify your identity. If you happen to close the email account that’s tied to your domain or hosting…you could be in a world of trouble.

I’ve been catching up on my podcast listening for the past few weeks and I’ve recently finished a very interesting episode of CraftSanity. If you’re not familiar with CraftSanity, it’s a weekly interview show where podcaster, Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood interviews some of today’s most well-known crafters and indie designers. In episode #58, Jennifer departs from her usual interview format to record a panel discussion on craft blogging at the 2007 BlogHer conference, which focuses on women who blog. Some of the panelists included Kristen Roach, Amy Sedaris, Leah Peterson, and Kathy Cano Murillo (The Crafty Chica).

I thought that the most interesting part of the podcast was during the age-old discussion about pricing. One attendee said that she suspected that most people thought that her items were over-priced and she asked how she could convey the time, quality, and hard work that goes into her products. One of the panelists pointed out that when they were first starting to sell their work on the web, one of the biggest mistakes they made was trying to make their site look like Macy’s or Nordstroms. There wasn’t a sense that the items were handmade, but rather, it almost looked as though everything on the site came out of factory somewhere. It was only when they started blogging about the creative process, started telling the story about the creation of each item, and including photos of works in progress that they started making more sales. In fact, some of the items that they featured as works in progress on their blogs were often sold almost before they completed it. People became intrigued through watching the process that they couldn’t wait for it to be available.

This is a tip that I’m sorry to say that I don’t use as much as I could on my own blog and website, but I do plan to implement more in the coming year. One indie designer that does this very well is Australian graphic designer, Lara Cameron on her blog Kirin Notebook. Lara designs printed stationary, textiles, and various other things. She’s always blogging about the process of developing her fabric designs, posts some of the loveliest photos of her works in progress, of items made with her fabrics, and every so often she’ll post directions to a craft project that uses her fabrics.

By the time she posts an announcement that her fabrics are on sale in her Etsy store, her readers and fans are just itching to get their hands on them. I’ve seen her sell out of fabric within hours of posting the announcement on her blog.

So what can you do to start telling the story of the work you do? What parts of your creative process do your customers find fascinating? What techniques can you use to start illustrating the story of your work? You can begin by taking more “in-progess” photographs of your work. Get a digital camera to make it easier to take and post photos quickly. While they don’t have to be studio quality photographs, take some time to make them nice. The Storque, Etsy’s blog for buyers and sellers has a nice tutorial on taking photographs for online sales that can give you some tips on how to do this.

Write about how ideas for your work came about. Talk about what was going on in your life or in your career when you were working on a particular piece. Get your customers in on the action. Ask your customers for photos of them displaying, wearing, or using your items and post them on your website or blog. If you have access to a microphone or a video camera start recording audio or video commentary to include on your blog. Use services like Flickr, Slideshare, and YouTube to get these stories out.

It’s easy for all of us to forget that part of what fascinates people about our work are the stories behind it. Use this tip from the ladies from the BlogHer panel to to show what your work is all about.

P.S. Be sure to check out that CraftSanity episode on Jennifer’s site. The discussion about pricing starts at about 35 minutes and 40 seconds into the show, but I suggest listening to the whole thing if you have the time…lots of great info there!

Happy belated holidays and happy belated New Year! After a busy holiday, I finally finished several new projects, one of which I’m going to announce here later on….so now I can turn my attention back to this blog.

The beginning of the year is always a time of reflect back on the old year and making plans for the new one. If you haven’t done so, take some time to make some plans for your website for 2008.

1. Goals for the year- All planning starts out with goals. What is that you want to accomplish with your website this year? Make more online sales? Bring in more customers? Perhaps you want to expand your website or give it a good overhaul, whatever goals you come up with, take some time to make them and write them down.

2. Make your goals measurable- It’s not enough to just to come up with a goal, you should also have a solid goal post in mind as well. A goal post is just a way of defining when you’ve reached your goal. There’s nothing more confusing or discouraging than a goal that has no clear definition of success. So if one of your goals this year is to write more on your blog, turn the goal into something you can measure such as, “In 2008, I will make at least three posts a week to my blog”. Now you have something solid to shoot for.

3. Break down big, complex goals into simple tasks- A goal of writing to your blog three times a week is a fairly simple goal. But some goals like “making $500 worth of sales per month”, is more complex and long-term. These goals can require a whole set of tasks to accomplish them.

The best way to tackle the big goals is to come up with a strategy and break down these strategies down into simple tasks. Say for example, you decide that in order to help meet your goal of making $500 a month in sales is to 1) do more advertising, 2) build up a customer list, and 3) do more online promotions. Now what you do is to break these strategies down into to-dos. So for “do more advertising”, you’ll break that down into 1) find places to advertise, 2) get advertising rates, 3) set up an advertising budget, and so on and so forth.

Don’t let the size of your goal intimidate you. Break it down into little tasks, do one or two of these tasks everyday and there will be no end to what you can accomplish.

4. Plan ahead- If you are publishing a regular newsletter, a blog, or if you’re constantly adding new things to your website, one tool that you might find particularly useful is something called a editorial calendar. If you’ve ever tried to submit something for a magazine, you know that they typically work months and months in advance. Most magazines have issues for the next year planned out by the October or November of the previous year. They know what the theme of that issue will be and also have a good idea of the kind of articles they will be featuring.

While you don’t have to have your newsletters ready a year in advance, it would benefit you to have an editorial calendar of your own. For example, if you have a monthly newsletter, think about in advance what kind of articles or news that you should have in each issue. Remember to incorporate foreseeable events, like holidays in the content of your newsletter.

If you write a blog and you’re having trouble posting regularly, think about creating a regular posting schedule. Say for example you write posts to your blog on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. This can help you in several ways, one your readers will know when to expect something new on your blog, and two, having a regular schedule can help make posting to your blog into a routine. (This is one strategy I’ll be using with this blog )

5. Be patient and persistent- The New Year’s is a time in which everyone is all fired up and excited about accomplishing their goals. But as January fades into February and February fades into March, the excitement starts to wear off. Sometimes we’re discouraged because we’re not accomplishing the goal as fast as we want. We don’t seem to be getting results as fast as we would like. Or sometimes something comes up and we get off track. One thing that I’m planning on doing this year to help keep myself focused is to do a weekly review of my goal. That way I can remind myself of what I’m trying to accomplish, to see how far I’ve come in accomplishing the goal, and to see what steps I need to take next.

Another way to keep yourself on track is to make yourself accountable to someone else. Tell someone else of your goals and ask them to help you stay on track. There are some local artists I know that’s created a small group in which they meet every couple weeks to discuss what they’ve accomplished, to encourage each other through difficulties, and the light fires under each other if they see a member of the group falling behind.

Whatever method you come up with, be patient and do your best to keep on track…especially with those long-term goals for your site.

So…what kind of goals are you making for your site in 2008? Drop me a comment and let me know!