During April I was lucky enough be one of the inaugural participants in Jess Van Den’s Set Up Shop course – a course designed to take your online shop from go to whoa!
Having had various shops online (with all of them languishing due to the-paid-job committments) I decided that now was the time to bite the bullet and get my blog shop in order again.
Over the 30 days of the course Jess sends out a daily email, in which she shares her 5 years worth of online-small-biz knowledge.
At the end of each lesson, she also sets you a task – starting with deciding on where you want your online selling venue to be, followed by writing descriptions, branding, your about page and pricing, photographing product, packaging and shipping and social media (to name a few of the topics covered).
My light-bulb moment was that while I had previously prided myself on exclusively having one-of-a-kind items in my store, Set Up Shop helped me realize that I needed to include repeatable designs – which has led to me including limited edition pieces (which will be capped at 10 pieces in a limited edition design) in the store.
I’m also going to work in Collections (something I had done successfully previously) – with two Collections to be released each year – the first of which will be the Spring line to be released in mid-August.
I’m not sure when Jess will be running the next round of Set Up Shop (Jess!?), but if you’ve been trying your damndest and not having much success at getting yourself established online, the I highly recommend you sign up to be notified of when Set Up Shop will run again.
Really appreciated this Tasha, I think we are in similar situations. Will keep my eye out for the next one!
The-paid-job is the one that helps pay the bills, but my jewellery designing (and photography – that’s the next goal!) are the ones that feed my soul.
It’s definitely about finding that happy medium – feed our souls, pay our bills. And if you need anyone to sound off against, Kellie, let me know 🙂
T xo