Well I made a very difficult decision concerning my Hand Made shops, after intense conversations with my husband, I am shutting them down due to lack of sales.
After constant critiques of my shops, and trying to retake pictures, to no avail, and trying to learn a photo doctoring program to get the pictures up to par, it still wasn't working. No matter what I do the pictures are too bright or too dark, and with a paying job that takes up on average 60 plus hours a week, I also have run into the problem of not being able to make new product to keep it "fresh". We are still doing the Craft Fairs, that has actually turned out to be the best business solution for my items, people can touch, feel and see the true colors up close, and I actually make sales that way.
The larger items have been donated or given away already, and the quilt tops that are finished will be donated for raffles and given away as gifts just like before. There is too much completion online for what I make and no matter what I did off of the sites to get my name out there for the handmade items, nobody bothered to check them out, so the Etsy shop is already gone, and Artfire is paid up to October 31st and will be gone by then as well.
I had also explored the option of a eCommerce web site through someplace like Weebly, but with the hate relationship between me and my camera, I didn't see that working out any better then what I had before, you still need nice crisp pictures, and that is something I just don't have the ability to do, and paying a professional to do it is not in the budget at this time.
The only shop being left open is going to be the Supply shop, that has received good comments and reviews so we will have to continue down that avenue for a online venue that actually will work.
I honestly don't think people really appreciate Hand Made, and until they do, my shops were doomed from the start, I just didn't realize it at the time. I, at this point, consider it a lesson learned, and so we made the decision to continue with what works and drop what doesn't. I truly would much rather make things to sell, then order from my supplier, but I guess it wasn't in the cards.
