Who should read my blog and visit my site? Who is my “target audience”? Why the heck am I blogging anyway? These are all questions that I’m sure anyone who writes a blog asks themselves at least once, after all there are millions of blogs out there in the sea called the internet.
A couple of weeks ago I signed up for a Blogging 101 course offered through WordPress because even though I have successful blogs currently (on topics totally unrelated to what I’m doing on this site) I was looking for insight on making this blog and website better than the others. One of the assignments was to identify my audience.
In order to identify my audience, I first have to identify who I am and what I hope to accomplish here. So, let’s start with….
Who am I?
My name is Nancy Smyth, and I’m:
- a bookkeeper. Yup, I’m one of those gawd awful number crunching people that likes things in neat columns that all add up!
- a business owner. Actually, I own two businesses. Fanciful Things, LLC and a software business. The software business is still a full-time job and I want to get Fanciful Things off the ground so that when I retire I can focus on it full-time.
- a fiber artist. Yup, that’s right I said fiber artist – not a crafter, not a crocheter – but an ARTIST! Why an artist? Well that’s fairly simple – taking a non-descript skein of yarn and turning it into something lovely and wonderful is an art form, not everyone can do it. Creating a crochet amigurumi is more than just reading a pattern and following instructions (although that is definitely part of it). You have to be creative, conscientious, have an eye for detail, etc.
- a yarn addict! Ok, that one is supposed to be more funny, so it’s ok if you just laughed 🙂 But it’s also the truth. I love yarn and I have the stash to prove it!
What do I hope to accomplish?
This one is more difficult and I think I have conflicting thoughts and goals, so I need to focus. This section will probably be more thinking out loud than anything else, so please excuse me if I ramble LOL
- I want to sell finished handcrafted items. You wouldn’t think that if you visit the Store here on my site, because their isn’t a lot there. I have a fair amount of very lovely finished items – I just haven’t taken the time to put them up in my shop. (See “What’s Holding Me Back” below.)
- I want to show people what I’m making. People love looking at handcrafted items! (That’s why I have the “What’s On My Hook” page). There is just something special about handcrafted items – other than the fact that they are not the same mass-produced “stuff” that we find in every big box store.
- I want to be transparent. This one is difficult to explain, but I’ll try to keep it short. Everyone loves the look, feel, and uniqueness of a handcrafted item – BUT – no one wants to pay for a handcrafted item. Handcrafted items are made individually and they take TIME! They are not mass produced by a machine or cheap overseas labor. So, it’s important to me to be upfront with why I would charge $110.00 for a completed Tassey, for example. (See “Pricing Handcrafted Crochet Items – How I Do It“)
So, those are the main goals. Now onto some other things that I would like to do.
- provide business tips. So, here is where the bookkeeper in me comes out! I’d like to provide fiber artists with bookkeeping tips – it’s a necessary evil and not all of us are good at it.
- offer free and paid crochet patterns. I designed and made myself a very lovely long cowl last year and an iPad bag last year that I haven’t done anything with.
Who should visit my site & read my blog?
- Those who want to buy finished handcrafted items
- Those who love looking at handcrafted items
- Fiber artists looking for bookkeeping tips
- Crocheters looking for patterns
So what’s holding me back?
The short answer to that question is – ME (and a healthy dose of fear)! One of the things that I do after running through my various pricing methods and determining a final sale price for an item is go to Etsy and search for similar items and compare pricing – the pricing on Etsy is MUCH lower sometimes as much as $50.00 lower – these people are recouping just the cost of materials, Etsy fees, and putting maybe $5-10.00 in their pocket for something that takes 20-25 hours to make!
Every serious handcrafter faces this same dilemma and I’m no different. We all compete with those who look at crochet or any other fiber art for that matter, as a hobby.
So what’s my plan now?
Well, actually this little exercise has helped me to focus and take a look at some of the things that have been going through my head and now it’s time to form a plan of action. This is what I’m going to do, starting next week because this week is crazy at my full time job.
- Take a closer look at my pricing
- Add finished items (that are sitting in a closet where they aren’t doing anyone any good) to my store
- Perhaps set up an Etsy store as well
- Clean up the patterns I’ve designed and put them somewhere here on my site
- Come up with some ideas for bookkeeping tips for handcrafters to blog about and create a monthly schedule of tips to blog about
I think that’s enough for now. Don’t want to put too much on my plate otherwise I’ll have no time for hooking!
Anyone have any thoughts they’d like to add?
This is a great blog post Nancy and something I need to do for my own blog once I figure out the new theme and whether changing themes is going to have a negative impact on my traffic (e.g., new urls for current content). I’ll probably message you on FB at some point to get some tips. I love the look of your blog. Keep up the great work.
Thanks Patrice – it was both difficult and easy at the same time to write – but it was a good thing for me to do.
Themes… OMG I’ve gone through 4 or 5 in the last year! The one that I’m currently using is a purchased one – but it had a HUGE learning curve! I bought it in October and it took me a couple of months to get everything the way I wanted and it certainly has the functionality for this site to grow – which is good.
Changing themes shouldn’t have any impact on traffic and you shouldn’t end up with new urls just from changing a theme —- unless of course you are changing the entire structure of your site and of course there are some things that you can do that leaves the urls the same but categorize content better.
Feel free to contact me via FB.