And the Winner Is...The Duck

Well, it's been quite some time between blogs. What with one thing and another - winding up the first MinzBeadz end of financial year, still trying to master Facebook, going to markets, re-jigging the website, and generally running around like a lunatic with no time to scratch -  let's just say I've been busy!

So what have a learned during my first year (or part thereof) in business for myself, you might ask? (And even if you didn't - bad luck, because I'm going to share some of my fascinating insights).

Like me back or else!

• I've learned that Facebook is neither a book nor do you see people face to face. And just today I learned that there are some really peculiar people (and I use the term 'people' loosely) who want you to like their page - apparently an extremely clever dog has now liked mine and wants a return like. Dream on dog, dream on.  

• I've learned - a little anyway - how to talk about my business without feeling like I'm that excruciatingly boring person that everyone avoids at all costs. I count myself lucky that most people don't feel that way, or are way more polite than I give them credit for and don't show it. (Thank you to those polite and well brought up people).                                                                 
• I've gained a better understanding of what my "unique selling point" is, and might become, in having found a little niche area for MinzBeadz - sourcing jewellery for people, which has enabled me to help, and get to know a little, some really lovely people in the past months.

• I've learned that getting people to take 30 seconds to look at your website can be likened to  pushing the proverbial "stuff" uphill - and I can't think of any reason other than laziness! (Oh, just thought of one - they might be the polite people who I've bored, so I take back the lazy comment for those people).

Freebie 0 VS Duck 95

• I've learned that, despite the number of articles I've read on what makes a Facebook page engaging, following the formula can work really well one day and not at all the next!  And that it can be excruciatingly difficult some days to even give away something for nothing, to the point you think you're the only person left in the world (or the world of Facebook, which some may think is the whole world, but us older and wiser folk know there's more out there), and 3 seconds later 95 people hit the like button for a photo of a duck. Isn't it great that we're not alone and the duck likers are still watching us... I really feel comforted knowing that.

A lot of what I've learned in the last few months relates to people - myself and others - and how they behave.  Of course I always behave wonderfully, but there's some really, um... (trying to think of a word that isn't a swear word), um....well shit, there's some real bitches out there!  And we won't dwell on them because in the end, karma will take care of them. It always does.

Another really important thing I've learned is that Zen Cart (the shopping cart software on my website) does not induce a zen like state and would be more aptly named Wonky Wheel.  Wonky Wheel was written by someone cleverish, and then tested by someone cleverish, then they patted themselves on their mutual cleverish backs and gave it out to innocent bystanders for free. Just to laugh their cleverish laughs at our attempts to understand what they mean with their software.

It is impossible to believe that they gave Wonky Wheel to the average person, asked them to use their help file, then paid attention to any feedback. 

Yesterday I discovered that there does not appear to be a way to have a screaming red sign jump out at you if you haven't chosen a shipping option! I mean really...are you joking??  The default "choose your shipping area" option, which I can't seem to shift from being the default, just bypasses charging any postage costs if you don't go in and select your country. What's with that?

Consequently, we now have one very happy customer who was charged no postage, and international customers will have to email and request a postage fee and be invoiced separately. So much for fully automated and saving me time and energy.  So if anyone is a Wonky Wheel expert, it would be wonderful to hear if it's actually possible to have a loud red sign that waves a flag, saying something along the lines of 'YOU HAVEN'T CHOSEN A SHIPPING METHOD YOU DODO, WHAT DO YOU THINK THAT ENTIRE PAGE WAS ABOUT".

And having just passed the end of the financial year, I've remembered how horrible finalising all the accounts is. Stupidly enough, I'm struggling more with the formula for my stock spreadsheet for the new year. Every night, right before I slip into sleep, I have the formula worked out, then in the morning it's totally vanished and I sit staring stupidly at an Excel page. What's worse is that I know it's just a simple formula. I'm taking the position that once the books are finalised and I have time to stop running around like the aforementioned itchy lunatic, that it will just come to me in daylight.

I know, I live in dreamland...but it's my dreamland and I like it here. The natives are friendly and I'm the Queen. 

Knitting a Website

Wouldn't it be great if you could knit a website? There'd be so many advantages - just pick the pattern you want "I'll have the jewellery store one please", select your wool "Hmmm, I think the rainbow with silver streaks would look nice", then go home and relax in your favourite chair and knit while you watch tv.

Of course the techie geek people have made it too difficult to follow their pattern, even though they make out it's quite simple. And it is - if you only have a single product to upload, with a single description and a single photo. And you already know the best way to photograph your one and only product, use imaging software and describe your fabulous product in such an emotive way that people can't resist purchasing it.

Then there is the tiny matter of understanding how the website and shopping cart work together, where everything is kept in each - and actually finding these things, in the construction end of your website, for a second (and third) time. A complicated fair isle is much easier.

You may have guessed by now that MinzBeadz was not actually knitted or constructed overnight. In fact it took a whole lot of overnights to get it to the point it could safely show it's pretty little face in public.

Figuring out how to insert products into my new website was relatively simple, but I have to admit that I've never really gotten the hang of Photoshop and prefer an old freeware program called PhotoFiltre - it's sort of like Photoshop for complete and utter dummies (as opposed to your regular dummies). Which means fewer bells and whistles and more of your basic 'must have' items, like the little lasso thing that cuts around your image.

Somewhere around 2am on a night where I was going cross eyed and thought I was never going to finish getting everything ready, I did question the wisdom of starting a business with multiple teensy tiny products, said a small thank you to whoever invented the digital camera, and cursed whoever invented imaging software. The cutting out part (which I'm sure some lovely photographer type people will have a proper technical term for) is really really (and one more just to emphasise it) really time consuming. It was at this point that the brilliant idea of knitting my website occurred.

Knitting a website is quite easy

There are a lot of pros to doing this:

• I enjoy knitting
• Intricate patterns are easy with needles and wool, limited only by my imagination instead of handicapped by my lack of knowledge
• There are only two stitches to learn and remember, rather than three and a half million things, most of which I don't know the terminology for
• The wool industry in Australia would sing my praises

 Just imagine it, I could be the first non-designer person to be completely relaxed doing my own website.

Even after all the practice I've now had, achieving a pure white background in a photo has defeated me. No matter what type of lighting (front, back, sideways, and sticking my tongue out left then right whilst hopping on one foot) the background always ends up greyish. Like Grandpa's old white underwear that's been washed too many times without a good bleach.

Exactly, totally unattractive. Unattractive Grandpa underwear background thus equals cutting out of images with the miniature lasso.

At this point I was thinking how I might convert my new jewellery business to being a service business with no products at all (i.e. a website knitting business). In my sleep deprived state it seemed quite possible, however with each new day the fantastic and inventive ideas of how to do this taunted me, just out of reach of my almost conscious brain. Most frustrating.

Given that I had rather a lot of products at this point, I finally gave up trying to retrieve the ideas, tucked away behind what was needed at the supermarket, and how to whiten grey underwear, and stick to selling the jewels.

Welcome to my nightmare

And besides, I was beginning to have disturbing dreams of strange little baby lassos cutting out every dream image... chasing me... chasing me.... 

Needless to say (have you noticed how people say "needless to say" right before they say the very thing that is needless?), eventually the virtual shelves filled in my store, I was happy with the descriptions of each item and I could at least, at this point, tell a potential customer that of course I had a website. (Duh, just knitted one didn't I?)

Except that my terms and conditions, my return policy, my shipping policy, my information telling all about "us", and hey, Welcome You Managed to Find My Website! needed to be tweaked. So tweak I did, and twiddled and I think I may have twitched a bit too, if the truth be told. And now I could, at long last, begin my marketing campaign in earnest.

As to how the marketing plan has gone in real life, well... that's a story for next time.