SMP Craft

Do you use Evernote to organize your life? No? Well, I highly recommmend it. Evernote is an excellent way to store all your notes, ideas, and inspirations online all in one place, which you can then access from all your devices (your office, your smartphone, your tablet, etc.)  So obviously, this is an overwhelmed crafter’s dream come true! By creating different notebooks (say, for example, one for crochet scarf patterns, one for home decor inspiration, and another for cupcake recipes you want to bake) you can organize any images, or web articles and blog posts that inspire you by clicking on a “web clipper” button which you can quickly and easily install on to your search engine’s toolbar, and you can add personal notes, as well.

I am a new convert to Evernote, and let me tell you, it’s the best way I’ve found to keep all my ideas and interests in one place. My ideas for blog posts, DIY projects, recipes, wedding centerpiece ideas, and even my apartment-hunting notes and addresses are all in mine.

I found this great post on Evernote’s community page by their Craft Ambassador Jenni Lathrop. It contains some great advice for how crafters can stay organized using Evernote. She had some helpful ideas like scanning in yarn labels so you know exactly what you bought in case you run out of materials mid-project, and creating an inventory notebook that contains the weight, color, and amount of all your yarn stashes, so that the next time inspiration strikes you can quickly verify whether you have the yarn you need or if you need to get more. I highly recommend giving it a read and downloading Evernote, if you don’t already use it.

…sigh… If only organizing all my craft supplies in one place were this easy!

(click on cover to buy)

Here’s an incredibly helpful guest blog post from our bestselling author, Derrick Sutton. Derrick is the author of How to Sell Your Crafts Online: A Step-by-Step Guide to Successful Sales on Etsy and Beyond, so he knows a thing or two about having the widest possible reach for selling and promoting your work. In his post below, Derrick provides concise directions for how to find out whether images of your work have been pinned on Pinterest and how to encourage fans to pin your images. We hope that his advice helps spread your work far and wide!

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The rise of Pinterest, the social photo sharing site, has been phenomenal. At the time of writing this post, Pinterest has become the third most popular social network in the U.S. So having your crafts, art, and photography shared on Pinterest could be a fantastic way to gain further exposure and might even lead to viral sharing potential. But aside from creating your own Pinterest page and uploading your own well-photographed, sharable content, how do you know when other people are sharing your images beyond “repinning” your uploads?

Pinterest Search
The easiest way to find out whether your Etsy or online craft store items have been pinned on Pinterest is to type your business name into the Pinterest search box. For example, if I was looking for my book How to Sell your Crafts Online, I’d simply type that keyword phrase into the Pinterest search box, which can be found at the top left-hand corner of the page:

As you can see, the second image showing on the resulting page (at the time of writing) is my book cover:

Try this out with your own Etsy shop name to see whether your items have been pinned.

The Pinterest Search Source
If you own your own website and post images of your work, there’s another, less well-known way to discover if your images have been shared on Pinterest. To use this technique, you’ll need to use the following URL:

http://pinterest.com/source/URL

But before you copy and paste the address, you’ll need to edit the part at the end which reads “URL” and substitute it with your website address, minus the “http://” or “www.” For example if I was searching for images pinned from my publisher’s (Macmillan) website, I’d use the URL from the Macmillan website: http://us.macmillan.com/and amend the Pinterest source URL so it reads as:

http://pinterest.com/source/us.macmillan.com

And when you copy and paste the above into your browser, you’re taken to a page that shows images shared and pinned from Macmillan.com:

Try this with your own blog and website and see if you’re being pinned!

As a further tip, if you use WordPress for your blog or website, as mentioned in my book How To Sell Your Crafts Online, you can also encourage people to pin your images by using a Pinterest button plugin:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pinterest-pin-it-button/

Action Steps:

• Create a Pinterest account if you don’t already have one.
• Check that the images from your Etsy shop or website being pinned.
• If you use WordPress for your website or blog, you can add a plugin to encourage and prompt people to pin your content.

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For more easy-to-follow helpful advice for how to attract more customers, boost your Etsy sales, and expand your online presence, check out Derrick’s book How to Sell Your Crafts Online and website http://howtosellyourcraftsonline.com/.