It's Been Awhile

Where has the time gone! I've neglected my blog again...last blog post was 9/18! So again, I have come here without a plan, and shall just ramble (as usual) and maybe something will pop into my head! Wait...there's something there-oh, never mind, it was a donut.

Since I mix it up in my blog with personal stories, inspirational stories, and information about my shops http://www.jenscloset.etsy.com/ and http://www.mymilkglassshop.etsy.com/ (you know I had to do that), I think I'll write about my Etsy shops.

As some of you may know, I started my first shop in April of 2008. At over 900 sales now, I feel pretty good about the way things are going! I have 229 sales, so far, in my milk glass shop also!

So I think I'll talk about the things I've learned so far, the trials and tribulations, the good, the bad...and the ugly! Actually, there really hasn't been too much bad and ugly!

Let's start with shipping! I would have to say that has been the toughest challenge. Most of the items I ship are fragile and usually pretty heavy. I have my official USPS scale to weigh my items. What I do when I'm listing an item is to put a box on the scale with some bubble wrap (that gives me more of a realistic idea of the weight when the item is actually being shipped), and then put the item on top of that. I will still add a little weight to that and check my handy-dandy postal sheet that shows me the cost for priority mail for all zones. Let's say the item weighs 2.5 lbs, I will usually use the 3 lbs information and go with the farthest zone, zone 8, which would be $11.95.

This really shouldn't be a new paragraph because I'm still talking about shipping, but I've read that people become disinterested if you write too much in one paragraph!

Okay-so back to shipping! I would say in my first year, I messed up quite a bit on shipping, and lost some money since I didn't charge enough! This year is going so much better (okay, so I'm a slow learner!). What I do now is refund the buyer if shipping costs are less than my quote, but I do add a small fee for packing material, since I usually use a ton of bubble wrap! Shipping to Zone 1 or 2 is obviously going to be quite a bit less than zone 8 (e.g. 3 lbs for zone 1 and 2 is $5.50 and zone is is $11.95!).

I know I've blogged about shipping before, I think because it has been the biggest hurdle. Of course, my most favorite part of having my Etsy shops (if you haven't check out Etsy, you must.. http://www.etsy.com/ there is so much talent there!) is shopping! I now have an excuse to shop for all the pretty things I love and pass them on to others!

I also love wrapping everything I ship out so the buyer feels like they're receiving a gift!

I think in my next blog I'll talk about the listing process (that's right, there is no sequence to my blogs!). So stay tuned, I promise not to be gone so long next time!

Thanks for stopping by!

Jen