It's great - someone sends you a list of rules like how many photos you can include, the date you need to get them to the organiser by, and then asks you to share a few goodies from the other pages to advertise the market. Pretty easy stuff.
As the hour of the market approaches your heart beats a little faster in anticipation of the sales you're about to get, the tv gets turned off (or at least put on mute!) so you can concentrate on business, and you flex your fingers so your super fast typing skills will impress a potential customer and of course make the difference in getting a sale.
The reality is often quite different.
There are goods from every area imaginable, and a few services thrown in to the mix as well. It takes you 15 minutes to even find your own stuff (and you know what it looks like) - and there you are, photo numbers 463 to 468. Not surprisingly, many potential customers either lose interest before they scroll that far, or have spent their money on something from the first 462 items up for grabs.
And what have you gained from your participation? Often not that much, except you missed out on your favourite tv show and now have super flexy typing fingers. Although flexy fingers when you make jewellery is a pretty good thing to have gained, you probably didn't need to join a market to get them.
I started to think how a market that suited me would work, and came up with a list.
1/ Jewellery only. I would have a far greater chance of selling jewellery if the only items in the market were jewellery. This would mean that people who checked it out were looking to buy jewellery, rather than chasing up an oh so cute softie or teeny tiny pink dress with the sweetest little applique on it that you ever saw.
2/ There is no 2. Really, my only criteria for what would suit me best was a jewellery specific market.
So I sat and waited for someone to organise one. And waited... and waited... and HELLO???? ORGANISERS OF MARKETS - waiting!! For 4 months I waited.Then the little voice inside my head said "why don't you organise it yourself then?". Which was quickly shouted down by the big voice of reason and why-take-a-risk-like-that, that said "are you mad?".
Lists, that's what I needed - lists. I actually have pretty good organisational skills, and us organised types have lists. We like lists. We like the making of them when we put our thoughts down in some kind of order, and we absolutely love crossing things off them because we know we've accomplished something. If a list maker is having a slow day they'll write things like "make coffee" on their list, just for the sheer pleasure of being able to cross it off again once the aroma of caffeine fills the room.
The first thing needed on my list is what I would like to gain from such a market. Obviously the joy of using my organisational skills for everyone's benefit except my own wasn't going to be enough, there needed to be a business advantage in there somewhere. Gaining fans for the MinzBeadz
Facebook page, fans that really liked the page, was the first. Gaining new customers, or potential customers was the second. Making sales during the market was the third.
What were the negatives though? The big voice of reason and why-take-a-risk-like-that said I might completely stuff it up and look like a total fool. As in a beetroot red, never show my face in public again foolish. As in I might be the only person in my online market kind of foolish. That one went on the negative side of my list.So I told the big voice of reason and why-take-a-risk-like-that to shut up. (You should hear the inner dialogue some days! Honestly, I just wish for some peace and quiet), got on with making a pretty little pic to post on Facebook asking for expressions of interest, and held my breath. Good thing the first EOI came back in about 5 minutes, because I was starting to black out!
All up, in only a matter of days, 30 lovely jewellery people showed interest, and a few more trickled in over the next week or so. Fantastic! The market is going to happen! Woo Hoo!
Oh shit! The market is going to happen!
