ArtFire Studio

It's been a busy week. My muse deserted me, so I've been working at the computer all week.

I've opened an ArtFire Studio to showcase my goodies. While ArtFire is easy enough to navigate it's still a new site to me and I'm easily confused. I added a few things the hard way, then found an easier way by browsing around, taking time to read the many, many guides they provide. There are a few tweaks I still need to make, but I've got quite a few items uploaded for sale. The hardest part for me is writing the descriptions for SEO. I finally gave up and just made sure my keywords were somewhere in the description, or vise versa.

I'll keep my Etsy shop for a while. Both sites have pros and cons. I like that Artfire doesn't require listing fees or commissions. I've heard you really need to be a Pro studio and pay a monthly fee to do well there. The monthly fee is reasonable considering I'd probably pay that amount in listing fees and commissions if I kept my Etsy shop stocked the way I'd like.  I'm not great at writing SEO and it takes a while for me to get a site up and running, so I'm going to give it a six months try.

I also joined the ArtFire Beadweavers Guild. Lots of friendly, helpful people in that guild and I think it will be a big boost to my confidence and my studio.

I've had many request for pattern coming from my jewelry galleries at Fotki, so I created a seperate album for jewelry patterns and linked them to BeadPatternsBoutique and The Bead Coop. Now I'm thinking of creating an album for jewelry for sale and linking the pictures to Etsy and ArtFire.

For right now I think I'd better find my beads and patterns I've created for this year and get started beading those two dozen ornaments I'll need for grandkids and great-grandkids