How to Start a Gift Basket Wahm business on a budget

Opening a gift basket business in your home can be one of the easiest ways to enjoy doing something you love, while making a nice profit for yourself. According to a recent government study, the home gift basket business is growing by leaps and bounds. If you have a creative mind, and like the idea of selecting unique items for gift baskets that make people happy, then this is a great business idea for you.

Learning how to start a gift basket business begins with coming up with cool ideas for creating gift baskets at home. To make this task easier for you, remember that most gift baskets have a theme like:

*Anniversary

*Baby Shower

*Birthday

*Christmas 

*Easter

*Get Well

*Mother's Day

*Retirement

*Thank You

*Valentines Day

*Wedding

* New Home 

When you start out with a theme, this makes it very easy for you to begin finding items that can go inside the basket. Keep in mind that you can buy the same items for each basket that shares the same theme. You can add little touches to make it more personalized for a particular recipient when required.

If you have trouble coming up with ideas for making gift baskets, you can go online and visit various sites that feature them. Use these as guides to making your own unique creations. Once your imagination has been sparked, you should have no trouble coming up with ideas.

Okay, now since you are going to be making this a profitable business venture, you need to switch hats for a moment and think like a small business person. You will need to find customers for your baskets, which means you need to set up a marketing system that works well.  (Etsy is a great way to market your gift basket business) 

If you already have a large network of family and friends, this is a great way to market yourself without having to spend much money. You can create some attractive brochures using your home computer, make up some sample baskets and take pictures of them, and include the photos in your brochure. Be sure to give your business a catchy name.

Hand out your brochures and business cards  and let everyone know that you can make any type of basket for their special occasions. You may begin to get inquiries and orders right away.

If you don't have the advantage of a large personal network, you can still get your business going relatively easy. Go ahead and name your business and make up the brochures. You should also set up a simple website to display samples of your baskets. Be sure to put the website address on the brochures.

Go out and visit small gift shops, beauty salons, doctors offices and other small businesses in your area. Ask if you can leave a few brochures with them. When people are waiting around at the counter, or for their appointment, they'll see your brochures and take one home. This can get the ball rolling for you fast.

There are a few other things you need to know in order to successfully run a gift basket business from your home, and you can find out more by visiting a site that has a list of the best home business ideas. Starting a gift basket business is definitely one of the top ideas where you can use your creativity in a fun way to make money.

How to increase sales at your Etsy online craft store

I have some really great tips for all you Etsy sellers that will hugely improve your popularity and profit on Etsy. And I know that it's a lot, but they will definitely improve your success in a short amount of time.

Tell your friends and family about your new business. It can be nerve-wracking to do this because you might feel like you don't have a product that is worthy of being admired. Or you're probably just really nervous of people who you know seeing your work and then judging you for it. So then you don't tell anybody and then when you do tell them they might end up being really supportive and actually buying jewelry. Therefore it obviously makes sense that you would tell them what's going on. My point is just to not be ashamed to tell people who you love or care about what you are doing.

Post as many things as possible. The products you thought would be popular might not be and then you might have something that you  made on a whim that ends up being really popular. Most people open an Etsy  craft store because they have a particular vision of a product line that they want to sell. And it is truly important not to deviate too much from that but it's also important to see what's working and to just run with that. It may be different from what you originally intended but if it's a product that you feel comfortable standing by and if it's selling well and people really like it then you should probably switch gears. Now you may or may not want to do this and truthfully, it can be a tough call. Just make sure that you are providing what people want.

Once you can show up in someone’s search, you still have a huge obstacle. At least 20 other products showed up too. So, your goal is to look hands down the best. You have to know your market. Know your audience and look the best to them. You cannot sell if you don’t know about photography. It’s the way you tell your customers your products are better. Your products, at the quickest flash to the eye, have to cause the seller to stop.

Once you go through all that and you figure out what works, you'll definitely want to try to focus on those things more than other items that you're selling. And this point ties into the last one in a way. But you know once you find that product that sells really well make sure that you make more of it. For instance, if you make five necklaces and sell all of them immediately, then you should probably make some more. Even though it can be frustrating making a lot of one product, the money earned is what will enable you to keep moving forward.

The worst thing you can do as a seller is to have a poor product description or, worse, no description at all. Be sure to be descriptive, and incorporate as many keywords as you can to help boost your shop’s SEO ranking on Google search. Additionally, you should include any relevant information that will eliminate guesswork from a potential customer, and will also eliminate the added step of an interested shopper having to message you to ask you for more information about a product, then possibly lose interest and move on. Include any product measurements, product condition, color description, age, and the different uses of the item. Try to envision what someone might ask about the item, and provide answers to those questions within your description.

Plan ahead for holidays. Think about it as being in retail. When you go into a store and Halloween isn't even over yet, they're already advertising for Christmas. I know a lot of people can get really frustrated with that, but if you think about it, there's some sense to it. If you don't post a Christmas item until December 15th then there's not enough time for people to find it, finally decide to buy it, and then wait a week for it to come in the mail. A reasonable time to start selling seasonal items is three months ahead of time. So if Christmas is in December, then you really do want to have your holiday stuff posted in October or maybe even earlier. Just make sure that you have those things up and ready as early as possible. Now you may also have a day job in addition to selling stuff on Etsy. That can get tough, staying on top of your personal life and working to plan three months in advance. Let alone an Etsy shop that's just a hobby. But the thing is, if you want it to be anything more than a hobby, then you have to start thinking that way. You goal should be that you're always one step ahead of yourself on everything.

Most importantly, give yourself a time slot, at the least three days that you have that you can go to the post office. It's really hard to mail stuff out on when you work all the time because the post office has pretty limited hours. That screws yourself because you have to upgrade the shipping more than you normally do and then just lose all the money that you made on selling the item. People buy stuff because they need it and they want it, and I'm sure that they don't want to wait a month to get it. It's a really easy thing that you can make sure to put in your schedule that literally takes twenty minutes.

In review: share everything with your friends and family, create as many listings as possible because you don't know what people might actually like. Once you figure those things out and find the things that work and really like focus on them, plan ahead for seasons and holidays by at least 3 months. Also make sure that you plan post office trips, you could probably do two days a week at a minimum. I'm also really interested to know if anyone who sells on Etsy has any tips from their personal experience. Thanks!

Cheap and Free ways to get traffic to your Etsy Website

Etsy is an eCommerce site that specializes in helping artists of different fields, reach out to customers and sell their products. Etsy is not a setup and go kind of eCommerce store instead it requires you to put a lot of initial work to help your store rank better. This means generating traffic and optimizing your store so that Google and other search engines rank your store higher and in return increase your profits. By utilizing the following steps, you will slowly increase your ranking and drive more traffic to your store.

1. Optimize Your  Etsy Store for Search Engines

Hover over your Etsy store name and you will see a link called "Info & Appearance". In here, fill out all the information asked, especially "shop title" section. Include keywords related to your store or the product your selling in all fields. Keep your character count under 160 for your store title otherwise Google and other search engines will cut out your description when displayed.

2. Blog about your Etsy crafts 

Nothing gets indexed faster and is easier to use like a blog. Sign up for a free blog account either with Blogger or WordPress and blog away about your products. Remember to always post a link that points back to your Etsy store. This is a quick and easy way to get traffic and increase sales.

3. Tweet or Facebook  your Etsy sales 

If you don't have a twitter account, I would advise you to create one. This is another method of getting your followers to see what is new in your store and exactly what you're selling. If your twitter account doesn't have many followers, try using services such as "fiverr". Fiverr is a cool way of paying someone five bucks to almost do anything for you. Search for someone with many twitter followers and use their service to post a link to your site. 

4. Write an Article about what you are selling on Etsy 

Spend an hour or two creating a unique, well constructed article talking about your products and post it to high PR article sites such as Ezinearticles or Articlebase. When writing, remember to keep your article at a minimum 600 words otherwise it won't get accepted. Also add links at the end of your work pointing back to your Etsy store.

5. Create How too Videos and Upload to YouTube

Another easier way of getting massive traffic to your store, is by using your skills and creating how to videos. YouTube is a gateway to millions of visitors a day looking for something in line with their interests or needs. Use programs such as Camtasia to create your videos and directly upload them to YouTube or any other popular video media site. Again don't forget to add a link in your description.

6. Outsource Services

If you're not an internet guru like many people out there don't give up. You can always outsource your projects to professionals and get everything done at an affordable rate. I recommend using "Elance , which is amazingly cheap and all you do is submit your request and qualified professionals bid on your project and in the end, you chose who to reward the project. Benefit of this method, is that you can set your budget and bidders are forced to give you quotes within that budget range.

There is no particular order in completing these steps, instead try and focus on completing each one correctly. In the end, all I can tell you is that by following these steps, you have a great chance of seeing your website/store rank higher in the search engines plus drive massive amount of traffic directly to your store. Good luck.

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