Trending Results
- ¾ of you are handmade makers and buyers, the rest are buyers only
- Most of you access the blog via Facebook, clicking through when something interesting catches your eye
- People visit the blog an average of 2 - 3 times per week
- You highly rate the quality of the content we publish, and especially like the Store Spotlights, Product Spotlights and Reviews
- Some of you have already made purchases as a result of information you have seen on our blog; with most of you expecting us to lead you to a purchase in the future
- What you like most about our blog is finding new handmade stores, keeping in touch with what is happening in the industry and competitions
- You would like to see bigger pictures, and more of them
- You would like to see us offer at least 1 free advertising option
Thanks for your positive comments. Here is a selection:
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- Your emails are great at alerting me to sales and new businesses.
- I like that each spotlight is short and to the point, otherwise I'd lose interest!
- Your blog has a great mix... which is why I keep coming back and referring your blog to friends
- I especially like store spotlights to discover new stores
- I love the reviews. I would love to see more of them. It’s a great way to find new handmade businesses.
- Especially enjoy reading the store spotlights and have found some great people to purchase handmade items from.
- Excellent on all fronts
- Great to keep up to date with what is happening and LOVE competitions!
- Just keep doing you're thing its great!
- Love the [advertising] price, great for someone with a craft business 'on the side'!
And thanks for your in-depth thoughts, ideas and suggestions. Here is a selection, with our response.
Why is everything you do it paid for?
The SCH blog does currently offer 2 different, paid options to advertise Aussie handmade businesses; $5 for a one off adhoc spotlight, and $20 for monthly sponsorship. These amounts are designed to be reasonable and within the reach of all handmade businesses. Accepting Paypal payments or EFT payments is also designed to offer flexibility.
Funds raised with sponsorship and promo fees allow SCH to pay for:
- Printed advertising for handmade markets and stores
- Advertising insertion into Goodie Bag
- Prizes such as spending money for online handmade stores
It also goes just a small way towards covering the time, knowledge and experience required to run the blog. For those advertisers that are unsure of how to word their promos, take stock photos or otherwise present their business, I provide advice and support to help them get the most from their experience on the blog.
I open the wall up every Sunday night to allow people to share details of their Aussie handmade stores, products and events. Also, I publish SCH Favourite Finds of Aussie handmade products that I come across in my online travels, love and want to share. Finally, there is the weekly review provided by Angela of the Yes, Dear blog who is our voice of the shopper. These are all free forms of publicity on this blog.
Finally, I often offer free sponsorship as the prize for some of our competitions. I see this as WIN/WIN to assist me to spread the word about SCH, and also to help businesses that perhaps are not in a position to spend money on marketing activities.
It takes me approximately 10 - 15 hours per week to run the blog, and whilst the primary reason for running this blog is a passion and support for the industry, it is also important to place a value on my time and experience; which does mean time away from my family. In reality, this blog would not be able to operate without sponsorship and paid advertising spots.
Having said that; I agree that I can take the step of offering a new, free option on the blog. Read on to see how I will do it!
I would love to see maybe a monthly calendar where people can advertise their sales/market nights so that it can all be seen in one place. It would be something I would check regularly to see what is happening around Facebook.
I agree - thank you for the suggestion! I am introducing a new, FREE adverting option: Facebook Events listings.
Now, any Aussie crafting page that is holding an event on Facebook such as an Auction, Sale, Charity Event, Stock Release or Market Night can have their information listed on a new dedicated Facebook Events page. To submit your details, complete our online form. Each night, 1 event will be selected for publication to our wall and newsfeed.
Please note that this option is for events being hosted on Facebook only, and does not apply to events which are being hosted/run on other platforms such as online stores, websites and blogs.
Request your listing HERE.
Request your listing HERE.
I only know about the blog through Facebook, maybe external advertising in the future?
Whilst the SCH concept was specifically built to utilise the benefits of marketing on social media (primarily via Facebook) I also advertise the blog with inserts in goodie bags at various handmade markets around Australia, advertising in some handmade stores, and also promote the blog by contributing content to different relevant publications, which links back to the SCH blog.
I will continue to look for other economical ways to promote our service, as I believe the more people following and using SCH, the more all people will benefit.
There are resources out that would really be good to show your readers but you don’t seem that interested in giving resources. I would like advice on how to set up/sell products on sites such as madeit, for beginners.
The sister site The Contemporary Handmade Alliance (blog and Facebook page) was established for this very reason, in May 2010. Since then, my own unique content has been published, and I have also shared resources from other people around the world whose knowledge and ideas will benefit CHA followers.
Some of my popular posts include Handmade originality in an online world and Facebook Etiquette; as well as the Market Week series which included 8 separate posts to help people learn to set up their market stands effectively. I encourage all crafters who operate as a hobby or business to check out the Craft Business Tool Kit to see all the different resources available.
I don't like the {name of advertisement} format; maybe it would be more effective if it wasn't announced as a paid advertisement?
I have made a very deliberate decision to title all posts, whether they are paid or unpaid, to assist followers to quickly assess the information being provided, and determine if the post is something they are interested in.
I would love to see business reviews more. I have a small business and would happily send a 'gift' to have a spotlight review done.
All business reviews are written by Angela of Yes, Dear and are based on her real life experiences as a shopper of a large number of Aussie handmade businesses.
Angela does not receive items for free nor is she influenced by different people in the industry to determine who she reviews or what she writes. We are therefore only able to review businesses that Angela has purchased from and has had a positive experience with.
We do not wish to take advantage of our position contributing to this blog for personal gain, nor do we want to be seen as having had the reviews ‘bought’ with gifts.
Also, the cost of promoting your business with a $5 Spotlight is much smaller than the cost of materials, time and postage to send us items!
I often miss posts from SCH in my news feed. So I think it would be great if paid spotlights could be posted more than once, to allow for better exposure.
I am very conscious that followers likely receive 100’s of posts through their news feeds daily, from many different pages. I do not want to become spammish with excessive or repetitive posting as I feel this would turn many people away from the blog.
To help increase visibility of past posts, I have added the LinkWithin functionality where 3 past, random posts are published at the bottom of all posts.
To help increase visibility of past posts, I have added the LinkWithin functionality where 3 past, random posts are published at the bottom of all posts.
If you would like to ensure you capture all the posts, you can subscribe to the blog and receive 1 daily email which contains all of the previous day’s post. To sign up, enter your email address into the Follow By Email text box at the top right of the blog.
Alternatively, all blog posts can be accessed at any time via the archive on the left hand side of the blog.
Some days I feel a little overwhelmed by how many posts you do and other days I wonder where you have gone! The life of a WAHM I suppose.
I try my very best to space out posting activity out across the working week, take most Saturdays off and just open our wall up on Sundays for Market Night.
When posting during any given night, I only publish between the hours of 8pm and 10pm EST, and aim to spread the posts through that period evenly. Some nights, I may only have 1 or 2 items to publish; other nights there is a heavier load, all based upon requests submitted by advertisers. I aim to limit posts to no more than 4 in any 1 night.
You seem to be bias towards madeit.com.au whereas there are other marketplaces out there in Australia. This competition is even sponsored by them.
I have featured madeit.com.au as an online handmade shopping destination through past treasuries, and have also offered several prizes of virtual vouchers to be spent at madeit.
I believe that madeit is the largest Aussie online handmade shopping destination, and I am therefore confident that winners of Virtual Vouchers to madeit will have the widest possible selection of sellers and products to choose from. Their size also makes it easy to pull together coherent treasuries of complimentary, quality items.
I have featured other online stores such as Blue Caravan and Little Shop Of... in past treasuries, but take on board that you would like greater variety in online shopping destinations.
This survey is not being sponsored by madeit. SCH are paying for the $40 virtual voucher being offered to one lucky participant as our way of saying thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts with us.
Would love to see some stats about the number of blog followers you have as well as daily page views/visits and unique visitors.
It’s always interesting to know how many people are active on a blog and which posts are popular; but daily posting of visitor activity is very labour intensive and impractical. It also adds another post to our already heavy posting activity each evening.
For this reason I utilise the blogger functions available for this data:
· Total Page Views - to display how many visits the blog has received.
· Popular Posts - We show the top 5 most popular posts in the previous 30 days on the right hand bar; and also re-publish the most popular posts at the end of each month into the Facebook Newsfeed.
In addition, I list the average, daily visitor hits for each month on the Promote @ SCH page of the blog; and you can see the number of followers I have on the blog and also the Facebook page.
