Christine AbelaWeb site designer. Quilter.

There was movement at the craft shop, for the word had passed around
That the shop had something new that very day.
It had joined the modern era — on Google it could be found,
So the locals came to see, and buy, and stay.

It was not the only craft shop in that happy little town
But it really could be quite a job to find.
So it missed a lot of traffic that usually went down
To the big shiny chain store – you know the kind.

It was a simple little web site, not too flashy, not too slick,
That Christine had built for Susan’s shop.
But it told people how to find her, it really did the trick
And that first day, the phone just didn’t stop.

They came to buy the ribbons, they came for the stamps,
The fabric and the paper on the racks.
And the travelers with their smart phones, using Google Maps
Really liked the cute little packs.

Susan’s fingers they were flying on the till all through the day.
She had to call in help from sister Anne.
“How did you find me?” she told Anne to say.
“Oh, on Google”, the answer always ran.

That first day was but a trickle, and from there the business grew
And they came to buy from far and from near.
With the video on YouTube and the web site, Susan knew
That this would be a most amazing year.

So if you think you can cope with a busy life like Sue’s
And want to make your craft shop really hum,
Get in touch with Christine – you’ve got nothing to lose
at www.local-business-online.com

—————-

With thanks to A.B. Paterson for his inspiration.  Copyright Christine Abela 2010.

You may know me as a web site builder. Yes, I do build nice web sites for craft businesses.

But I do so much more besides. I have also been able to help hundreds of people to increase their online craft sales.

If you want to find out how I can do this for YOU, even if you don’t have (or want) a web site, you need to have a look at the video on http://www.HelpMeSellCraft.com .

And I’m not just talking about people with big craft shops either. I can also help you if you want to sell just one hand-made item, or a whole range of masterpieces.

As you have probably worked out by now, I am a web site designer. Most of the sites I build are for craft businesses, and so I have developed an understanding of the needs of this very special group.

The sites I normally build might have a shopping cart or they might not, but they are all able to be updated by the site owner. So the content can be kept fresh and up-to-date.

But there is a large group of people who run craft businesses, particularly the bricks-and-mortar shop owners, who simply don’t want to be bothered with a web site. They don’t want to have all that extra work of loading their products onto the Internet, or checking a site every day to see if they have an order, or mailing things out.

These people are more than happy running their shop, and don’t want the extra stress and work of also running an Internet-based business. But what they really want is to generate more traffic for their store.

There are two groups of people who go into a craft shop – locals and people traveling through the area. So the challenge for the craft shop is to get the message out that “Hey, I’m here!”. One of the best ways to do this is to be able to be found on Google.

Google has been described as the new Yellow Pages. If you type in your craft name followed by your town, does your business appear? This is how people will be searching when they are trying to find you. They will not be searching on your business name, unless your business happens to be a big well-known store.

So what you need is that when someone types into Google your craft name and your town (e.g. “Scrapbooking Liverpool”), your business name and contact details appear in some form on the first page.

But how, I hear you asking, can this happen if I don’t have a web site? Well, I am going to let you in on a little secret. There are a lot of other ways to be found online if you don’t have a web site. And if you do have one, you can still use some of these techniques to get people to come to your site.

Before I go on, I want to slip in a little bit of blatant self-promotion. Because of demand, I have set up a new “arm” of my business to do just this for people. You can see the details at http://www.local-business-online.com . It is still early days, and I am still working with the first few clients, but if you think it would be easier just to pay someone to do all this for you rather than having to do it yourself, that’s what I am offering.

If you have the sort of business where you have a street address, and are happy to have walk-in customers, one of the best ways to get into Google is with Google Maps. Go to http://www.google.com/local and look for a link that says “Put your business on Google Maps”. Here you can find your address on the map and add your details. You will need to provide a valid phone number, because they will contact you to confirm that you are actually the owner of that business (it is an automated thing). With Google Maps, the map appears right at the top of a Google search (depending on your preference settings) and the closest matches appear first. This is a great way to get to the top quickly!

If you are putting in a Google Maps listing, it is a good idea to make sure you fill in as many of the boxes as possible. If you have a video of your business in YouTube, for example, that can be added to your listing. A picture also makes your listing stand out. Fill in your opening hours (this helps travelers a LOT) and any other details you are happy to share. The more detail you give, the more it will help searchers, and the more Google will like your listing and rank it higher.

Speaking of YouTube, don’t forget that YouTube is owned by Google. This means that when you submit your video to YouTube, it is likely to be picked up by Google very quickly, and ranked high. Make sure you use those keywords (your craft name and location) in both the name and the description of the video. And if you have a web site, put the link in the description on YouTube.

There are a lot of other free video-sharing sites on the Internet too. Just do a search and you will find lots. The idea is that you want your details to appear in a LOT of places on the Internet so that when someone searches for you there is a very good chance that at least one of these will appear on the first page. And if you totally dominate that first page of Google, well that’s great for business! It makes you look like you are the only business in town for your craft.

With regards web sites, as I said you don’t really need one if all you want is walk-in traffic. But it does help to have a simple one-page site where you can direct people that is a concise presentation of your contact details and opening hours. A simple site could also include your YouTube video embedded, and maybe a map from Google Maps embedded to help people find their way to you. You can set up a simple web site for free (if you have time/energy!) which, while it won’t look as “professional” as one under your own domain name with all the bells and whistles, will definitely give the person who wants to visit your store exactly what they need to find you.

Another often-overlooked free online promotion tool is the classified ad site. The Big Kahuna is Craig’s List (http://www.craigslist.com) . You can make up a simple advertisement and submit it for free. You will need to renew it every six weeks to keep it current though. If you can put in a picture as well that will help a lot – have a look at one I did recently http://adelaide.craigslist.com.au/art/1877975298.html (if that link doesn’t work please let me know because the link might change when the ad is renewed).

There are lots of free classified advertising sites on the Internet – I found over 50 for Australia alone in a Google search. The ones you need to go for are those that appear on the first page of Google. So if you are selling scrapbooking products in Liverpool, for example, but you do a search on scrapbooking or another craft in Leeds and you find that certain classified ad sites come up on the first page, those are the ones to join.

So, in summary, with a bit of effort you can have lots of places on the Internet that will tell people about your business. Aiming to dominate the local market in the search engines is going to be great for your business!

Of course, if it all sounds like too much work, you know who to turn to (grin).

Christine.

…especially crafters! I have set up a new site so that those of you who have free craft items to offer can show them off.

It is called Free Stuff For Craft, and you can find it at www.FreeStuffForCraft.com

It isn’t quite ready for general public type visitors yet, but it certainly is ready for advertisers. And even advertising here is free!

So come and join us, and spread the word! Launch will be in about a week, so get in quick and get the benefit of all that free publicity.

If you are running, or thinking of running, a web site selling craft-related products or services, you will enjoy the latest site I have set up.

I am often asked for advice on how to get more online sales, based on my experience not only with running an online craft supplies business, but also with helping other people set up their sites.

As a result, I find myself spending a lot of time on the phone, telling people the same thing over and over again. Not that I don’t enjoy meeting people this way, but sometimes I think I would be better spending my time on the huge volume of web site building work I have on my books!

So I have started to write it all down. It could be a massive book, that nobody would pick up because there would be Too Much Information in it. So what I have done is break it up into bite-size pieces and turn it into an emailed course.

You can find out all about it at http://www.sellingcraftonline.com .

Of course, a lot of it is designed to steer interested people towards getting me to build their web site, but there is still a lot of information there for people who already have a site, or even those who don’t want one at all.

At this stage, I have only written the first few lessons, but I have a LONG list of topics to add. So I don’t know how big it will get. You can unsubscribe at any time, or stay on and you will get any additional topics as I write them.

Enjoy!

What if you have a web site where, say, you sell lots of products for a craft. Let’s use my site http://www.geckogully.com as an example.

I can have a Twitter account that will bring in visitors who, in general, are interested in quilting. In fact, I have such an account – it is called geckogully.

But since I sell quite a few different products on that site, I could have several Twitter accounts, all bringing traffic to different parts of the site.

You have seen an example of that in the freequiltpattns account that I set up. That specifically targets people who are interested in quilt patterns (especially free ones!), and sends them to a particular page on my web site where I have the free patterns listed. I also have non-free patterns listed there, as well as links to other parts of the web site.

I could also have, say, a Twitter account that targets people who are interested in appliqué, and which sends them to the page where I sell silk threads, or the page where I sell fusible webbing. I could have an account targeting people who like to make the Dear Jane ™ quilt, and send them to the part of the site where I sell the Dear Jane ™ products. And so on.

In other words, I could have lots of Twitter accounts, all apparently unrelated, that all send traffic independently of one another, to my web site. The only things stopping me doing this are: (1) I need a unique email account for each Twitter account – but then I can get hotmail or gmail accounts for free, and (2) time.

As far as time is concerned, I have worked out that it takes me about twenty minutes to set up a new Twitter account, add it to Tweet Adder, and add some messages to Twaitter. Then, using the automation features in Tweet Adder, I spend about two minutes a day adding followers. Plus about ten minutes a day (but it is fun!), replying to messages and retweeting.

So maybe time is not such a problem after all…

What’s stopping you?

I would love to hear your thoughts on what I have written here about Twitter, and your experiences in following the system I have outlined.

It is not a unique idea – it is just the result of quite a lot of research and trial-and-error on my behalf to work out what works and what doesn’t.

I wish you all the best with your business, and I KNOW Twitter will help you to grow the business, if you follow the steps I have outlined.

Good luck!

Christine.

There is not much point in having lots of followers if you never say anything to them. You need to tweet, or post a message, occasionally.

There are a few ways you can do this. Obviously you can log into your Twitter account, and write a message in the box like you did when you set up the account. This is great, and I strongly recommend you do this, at least once a week.

Make it “real” – post a message that is not necessarily advertising. Try something like “Working hard on my next design”, or “This heat is making it hard to dry the background paint on my latest creation”. No links or anything – people who are curious enough will visit your profile and click on your link to your site.

Another way to keep it real is to reply to messages posted by the people you are following. When you go to your Home page in Twitter, you will find LOTS of messages posted by people whom you are following. You can click on the Reply link beneath any of these messages and send a reply.

That reply will be seen by all your followers, so keep it nice. You can send a word of encouragement, or answer a question. Don’t include your link unless it is specifically asked for – like if someone posts “Where can I get…”, you can post a link to your site where you sell it.

Another way to keep it real is through re-tweets. This means that if one of the people you are following posts something you really like, you can click on the Re-Tweet button, and you will echo that same message to your followers. Since the original tweeter is mentioned, they love this!

A brief word about the people you are following. Sometimes you will find you are following someone who is obviously not interested in the craft you are promoting. For example, they might be sending links to pornography, or might be writing in a foreign language, or might only ever talk about football, or they might have lots of followers but hardly follow anyone themselves. You can click on their name and see their profile, and if you want to, you can click on the and unfollow them.

You should also look at your Direct Messages every few days. Most of the time these will be automated messages people have sent out when you followed them, thanking you for the follow. You can delete these (or, if you use Tweet Adder, there is a bulk delete function to clear out all your Direct Messages in the Misc tab).

Sometimes you will get a Direct Message where someone has actually tried to get on touch with you personally. You might get a message like “I love that quilt on your picture – where can I get a pattern?”. So you can reply to them, with a link, and maybe make a sale.

But quite often you will mainly want to send out semi-spam messages to get people to come to your site. Things like “I have just designed a new range of doll patterns: (link)”. Sure, you can send these out manually, but how about automating it?

There is a function in Tweet Adder where you can do that, or you can use an online service called Twaitter. And yes, it’s free!

The advantage of Twaitter over Tweet Adder for sending out these messages is that it all runs on the Internet, and you don’t have to have your computer on for it to happen.

Twaitter can be found at http://www.twaitter.com . I am not going to go into the lengthy explanations of how to use it that I have with other things here – you can work it out!

But basically, you can log into Twaitter with your Twitter username and password. You can then enter messages the same way as you do on Twitter, except that you have the option to send them immediately (like on Twitter) or to schedule them for later.

And, if you schedule them, you can make them a once-only message, or recurring. So, for example, you could set up a series of messages (say, fifteen) that are all different, to go at two-day intervals over a month, at different times of day. Then repeat.

By the way, at the time I am writing this, there is a message on the Twaitter site that this will soon be known as “Gremln”. So if you have any trouble finding Twaitter, perhaps you will find it under its new name. Please let me know if this is the case, so I can update this guide.

With Twaitter, you can effectively “set and forget” and so automate your tweets. But it is still important to do the real tweeting sometimes too!

Another “real” tweet that can be done is an automated feed from a blog, if you have one. Depending on what blog software you use, there are often plugins that can be added that will automatically send a message to your Twitter account when you enter a new blog post.

So now you know pretty much the whole system! You know what Twitter is and how it can benefit your business. You know how to set up a Twitter account and make it look gorgeous. You can get lots of followers, either manually or automatically, and can unfollow people too. And you can send out messages to those followers that will bring the traffic flooding into your web site.

Now, how would you like to put this thing into overdrive?

Christine.

You can see by now that while it is not hard to follow people, or unfollow them, it is going to be time-consuming.

If you are happy to continue spending this time doing this, and don’t want to spend any money to speed things up, you can skip this section, because what I am going to tell you about is not free.

Before I go on, let me be up-front and honest with you. If you click on the link I will provide, so you go to the site where the software is sold, I will get a percentage of the sale if you decide to buy. But I have bought it myself, and am using it daily, and am very very happy with it. I would not be recommending it if this was not the case.

The software I am talking about is called Tweet Adder. You can click on those words – Tweet Adder – and go to the site to see for yourself what it does.

In a nutshell, you enter the things you were entering in the search boxes in Twitter, and it will find people for you to follow. Then it will follow them for you (you tell it how many you want to follow per day). You can also set it so that it will unfollow people who don’t follow you back. I have it set to the default – unfollow anyone who hasn’t followed me back in three days since I followed them.

It is software that you download and install on your computer, so you do need to start it up every day and run it. It takes a while to run – on purpose. Twitter has limits on how much automated activity is allowed, and so Tweet Adder staggers the follows and unfollows so that they appear natural.

Speaking of limits, this would be a good time to talk about following limits. You might be thinking that you will simply follow a million people, and that hundreds of thousands of them will follow you back. Well, maybe.

But Twitter has limits built in to help stop spamming. Once you are following 2000 people, it won’t let you follow any more until the number following you back is at least 1800.

In other words, once you get to following 2000 people, you need to keep the number following you within 10%, in order to be allowed to follow more.

This is where Tweet Adder is wonderful. By automatically unfollowing people for you (I set it to unfollow up to 200 per day), that leaves “room” for you to follow at least 200 new people, even if you are close to or over the 2000 mark.

Another limit to be careful of is how many people you follow in a day. I am not sure of exactly what the limit is, but I did some experimenting. I have been able to follow 500 people a day without any problems. But when I tried to follow 800 people in a day, my account was banned. So I abandoned it and started again. So don’t start getting excited and try following a whole lot of people in a day, or you might be banned.

Back to Tweet Adder.

The way it works is that when you buy it you can choose a one-account license, a five-account license, a ten-account license, or go completely crazy and do what I did, which was to get an unlimited license.

I recommend you start with the one-account license, because you can upgrade to the larger licenses by paying the difference later. Later on, I will tell you the advantages of having multiple Twitter accounts, even if you only have one web site, and you might then decide that the larger licenses are what you need.

If you are not sure, there is a free version of Tweet Adder available, but it has restrictions on how many followers you can have, and other restrictions too. But it is still worth a try!

Once you have Tweet Adder, and have entered your license, you put in your Twitter username and password and click Add User. Then click on that username in the list, and click on Login. You will find a number of options, but the ones I use all the time are Search, Follow, Unfollow, and Automation.

Here is the screen when I first started setting up Tweet Adder for my new Twitter account freequiltpattns: (If any of these pictures is hard to see, click on it and you will get the full-size version)

You will see I am following two people, and one of them has already decided to start following me!

The first thing I will do is find some people to follow. I have already found that there is a twitter user called fatquartershop that has a lot of followers who are probably all interested in quilting. So I click on the Search tab (which is already there by default) and select that I want to find the followers of fatquartershop:

Clicking on Search brings up a list of numerical Twitter ids – click on Save All to add them to the list of those you want to follow:

So you can build up a list of people to follow, but entering keywords for searches, or usernames of people whose followers you want to follow, or plenty of other options.

When you have at least a couple of thousand names in that list, you set up your Follow settings. So click on the Follow tab.

I have changed the default settings to say that I want to follow 500 people at a time, with a maximum of 500 a day. I don’t want to automatically follow anyone back who follows me.

I can at this point click on the first of the Start buttons and start following people. But since I have several Twitter accounts set up under this Tweet Adder system, I want to set them all to go automatically, so I won’t do that yet. (I will explain the automatic thing shortly!).

The next thing I want to set up is the Unfollow:

Here I have said I want to Unfollow 200 people at a time, with a maximum of 200 per day. I want to unfollow anyone whom I followed through Tweet Adder, who has not followed me back for the last three days.

Of course, this won’t have any effect for at least three days, but once it does, it will work just fine, weeding out people I am following who are not interested in following me back. It will also mean that I can add more followers once I am close to that 2000 limit.

The last tab I use often is the Automation tab:

There are several options on this, but the ones I use are to do my unfollows and my follows, and that is all.

Tweet Adder can also be used to send messages and tweets. Personally, I don’t use it for that, because I like another (free) system that I will explain in the next section. But you can play with it and use it for that if you want to.

By the way, if you are wondering whether this Tweet Adder thing works, I am writing this in the evening of February 13, 2010. If you go to http://www.twitter.com/freequiltpattns , you will see how many people I am following, and how many followers I have. So you can judge for yourself.

A word about the automation process. I have, as I said, multiple Twitter accounts running in Tweet Adder. On the main menu screen, where you log into each account, you can tick which ones you want to run the automated processes for.

I do this every day. First I tick all the newer accounts – the ones where I am not following 2000 people yet. And I click on Run Automated Tasks. The system then logs into each one in turn and does the unfollows then the follows. In order to not go over the Twitter limits on how much activity is allowed in an account in an hour, it takes its time. This is why I do the newer ones first. Once they are all done, I then tick the older accounts and run the automated tasks for them.

The whole thing takes me (maybe) two minutes a day. But it is a LOT faster than searching for people to follow and clicking on all those follow buttons! I do have to log into each account every few days and make sure there are still people in the To Do list to be followed, but that doesn’t take long.

So, in short, I strongly recommend Tweet Adder. But following people and getting lots of followers is not all you need to do! You also need to send out tweets. That’s what the next section is all about.

Christine.

Thanks lots to Angie from www.angiesbookshelf.com for the following tip.

Angie told me about a wonderful source for free Twitter backgrounds. It is at www.TwitterBackgrounds.com .

I have changed my background on www.twitter.com/christineabela , so you can see the sort of thing they do. Very nice! And also, very quick and easy to do. It is all done on the Twitter Backgrounds site itself.

Thanks Angie!

Christine

The whole “secret” to this system is that the more people you follow, the more will follow you back.

So you need to follow lots of people! In this section, I will tell you how to do this manually, and for free. It is time-consuming, but don’t despair – there is an easier way, which I will tell you about in the next section. But it will cost you money, so I want to make sure you have the free alternative first.

First, you have to find people who are interested in what it is you will be tweeting about. There is little point in trying to sell quilt patterns, for example, to a whole bunch of teenage boys playing online war games.

So you need to use the Search function.

Once you have logged into Twitter, you will find this on the right side of the page:

Where you see the word “Search”, type what you are going to be tweeting about. In my case, it is quilting, so I will put quilting in that box. Then click on the little magnifying glass symbol. This is what I got when I did the search:

All those usernames (rachelhatesjazz, alienmeatsack, etc) are links to the Profile pages of people who have recently mentioned quilting in their tweets. I can click on any of them, or their pictures, and go to their Profile page to find out more about them.

When I clicked on rachelhatesjazz, and read her recent tweets, I decided that perhaps she was interested in quilting, so I clicked on her Follow button:

It changed to this:

The moment that happened, depending on how Rachel had set up her preferences, she may have got an email from Twitter saying I am now following her. So maybe she will go and look at my profile, and follow me back, or click on my link (or both).

So I go down the list of the people who have tweeted about quilting, and choose which ones to follow.

Another way to find lots of people to follow is to find someone who has lots of followers, and who is tweeting about the craft you are promoting. There is a good chance that their followers are interested in that craft too.

Here’s one – overallquilter, whom I found in the list of people who were tweeting about quilting.

You can see they have 1,140 people following them. If you click on the word “followers” you will get a list of the followers:

If you click on the button, and choose , you can follow each person.

Another option is to reduce the bulk on this screen, and increase the number of people shown – this will speed up the process. To do this, you will see at the top of the screen:

Click on the symbol on the right, and your list will change to look like this:

Again, on the right side you have the buttons you can click to follow them all.

That’s it! You can follow as many people as you like for now. Don’t go over 500 in a day (I will explain why in the next section!). Hopefully some of them will follow you back, and some will click on your link.

But even if you don’t get any followers, you have just sent out, free and legally, up to 500 tiny advertisements for your business. Well done!

There is one more thing you will want to do a bit further down the track though. I will talk more about limits later, but there will come a time when you no longer want to follow some of these people. You might decide to unfollow those who are not following you back.

It is hard to find, in Twitter, which people are following you back. You basically have to look through the following list of all the people who are following you, and see if you are there.

But there is a facility online (and it’s free!) that will help you with that. Go to http://thetwitcleaner.com . It is pretty self-explanatory.

What is does is analyse your who you are following, and gives you a report on who is not following you back, who is posting a lot of spam, who is not posting at all, etc. The report can take a while to run, but they send you a direct message, with a link, when it is ready. (To read your Direct Messages, go to your Home page, then click on Direct Messages – the link is in the column below your picture, a few lines down).

From the Twit Cleaner report, you can choose which ones to unfollow, and it will unfollow them for you. It is free if you are following up to 2000 people, which will be fine for you for a while. After that there is a fee – but the software I am going to tell you about in the next section will also handle unfollows.

Christine.