It’s time to kick-off the creative biz challenge! WooT! Thank you to all of you who volunteered to have your shop critiqued and posted your questions – it was great to have so many options. And of course while I won’t be able to do everyone’s shop, I hope that the critiques and the information in this series will be valuable across the board. And really, I think that won’t be too hard – everyone asked pretty much the same things! It broke down easily into just a handful of categories. But there was one HUGE topic no one really asked about at all … and that did surprise me. And it is the topic we are going to be taking about today. I’m curious if it jumps out at you…

All great topics, of course! But does anyone else find it interesting what is NOT there? What is the big whole section that no one asked about?

Products.

Our creative business products – the core of running our own small business. Now, of course I didn’t expect anyone to ask “what should I be selling?”. No one knows better than you what you are capable of making. And perhaps it is because of the more personal nature of choosing what products to sell that caused it to not be among the questions, and I understand that. There are a wide variety of product questions that are good to investigate, even just on your own. For instance, “Is this product marketable?” or “Should I consider adding a new line of products?” or “Should I discontinue this type of item?” … I know these are questions I had to consider seriously.

I don’t know if you know this, but I actually had two Etsy shops before my current one – both of which did only so-so. The first, at the end of a year, had only about 40 sales. The second shop, at the end of its first year, had about 75 sales. But once I decided to focus on this third shop, and close down the previous two, I had over 300 sales in about 3 months. What changed? Primarily, product.

And I’ll say this – I really did like the products I had in my previous shops: jewelry which I made from books pages, maps and clock parts, as well as vintage clothes and various other items. Here is kind of a sampling:

I liked it a lot! But even with promotion, marketing, tweaking descriptions, etc., while the products were selling, it was at a very slow pace. I started to let some products (like my sewing) go fairly early, while others (like handmade jewelry) I kept longer. But it was only because I was experimenting with different types of products that I finally stumbled on what started to really blossom and sell quickly (my art prints)- and that is what I now sell in my shop, FlourishCafe.

At this point you may be thinking, “Well, but I don’t have the time or know how to make a bunch of completely different products!” They don’t necessarily have to be in such a wide variety of categories. My friend Danielle, for instance, owner of the fabulously successful shop The Merriweather Council, has had a HUGE number of sales in her embroidered initial necklaces. Her shop did well, even from early on, with great photography, beautiful workmanship and everything else. But she didn’t start out selling the necklaces. I remember she sold her sewn buntings and there was more emphasis on her wishbone embroidered hoops at that time. And she has stayed within her field of sewing and fiber art and embroidery and added this new product of the embroidered necklaces … and her sales took off even more! Those necklaces even made an appearance on the Today Show. So you can stay within your field, but still come up with new products until you find what really sells well.

I’d say the majority of you who posted question have had somewhere in the range of 10-50 sales so far. We’re going to be talking a lot in future posts about aspects of how to approach marketing, getting traffic, target market, pricing, etc. … but the very first thing I want you to think about is your product. It might be a good product, like I had in my first two shops. The thing is, there are lots of good products out there that don’t sell very well – and that is what happened to me initially. But sometimes you have to let go of something good to move on to something great. You want to have a GREAT product, something unique and that has a direct target market. Because, after all, you will have a much easier time marketing if you have a highly marketable product. And, again, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to leave the type of category of workmanship you are in – but you might consider launching a related, but new, line of products.

It may take some experimenting to hit on what works, but once you find that niche, the rest of it is much easier. I’d suggest, if you’re considering a new product, start out in small amounts at first. Don’t list hundreds of a new product, only to find out people aren’t really interested in it. Perhaps try a few different types of things (especially if they are related somehow) and list them, at least enough to fill one or two pages – and see what sells. If you find that the handmade dishcloths are selling well – then make and list more. If the crochet key rings aren’t getting many views or any sales, realize it might be time to let that go and try something else. Especially in the early stages of running a shop, I think it is good to do a lot of tweaking and experimenting to find out the market’s reaction to your products.

I’ve made a printable to help you think about your product….

And many of these questions tie into the topics you asked about in your questions – but I want you to look at them a little differently, and think of them in terms of examining your product first. These six questions will also serve as a loose guideline of the types of topics we will be looking at in future weeks of this series (for instance, this week was the first question – next week will be about your target market, as mentioned in the second question). I hope this will give you some good opportunities to brainstorm about your products, and consider whether you want to tweak them – or if you are happy with the product you have.

It is my plan, as I mentioned earlier, to offer a critique each week on the particular subject for that week. This time, though, since no one asked any questions about products, I feel it would not be my place to critique that subject in particular. I hope the printable and the points mentioned in this post can help you do a self critique this week — and I’ll plan to make up for the fact that I didn’t do one this week by doing two critiques in at least one of the future weeks. All of the rest of the topics are ones that various people asked about specifically, so there should be no shortage from now on. :)

I hope this has been helpful to you, though! What is your product? Do you ever think about branching out? Or letting a certain product go? Feel free to share some answers from your brainstorm sheet – or just your thoughts in general! I love to hear your reflections on these things. :)