Patterns for Sale!

I have been asked for my patterns for a few years, well now I have finally typed a few of them up and they are for sale on Etsy and Ravelry.

I will be making more of my patterns available as I can.

All Patched Up

http://newton.patch.com/articles/ho-hohold-on-i-still-need-to-buy-presents-part-1

I've been mentioned in the Newton Patch for their Holiday shopping! And they showed a picture of my Red Velvet Cupcake hat.

I am still accepting online orders but holiday shipping is no longer guaranteed, however if you order a hat that I have in stock and ready to ship, there is a good chance it will make it to your destination and ready to put under the tree.

This is what I have available for immediate shipping, no waiting, these will ship the next business day after payment has been received:

Brown Bear (Small 3-6 months) book also available

Spring Flower Fairy (Small 3-6 months) book also available

Winter Frost (Small 3-6 months)

Winter Frost Sweater (Small 3-6 months)

Purple Crayon (Medium 6-18 months) book also available

Pumpkin (Medium 6-18 months)

Lavender Sweet Pea (Medium 6-18 months) organic cotton

Pink Sweet Pea (Medium 6-18 months) organic cotton

Wimsy Citrus Bug (Large/Child)

Cranberry (Large/Child)

I am Thankful for...

Such wonderful customers this year! It has been an excellent year at Boston Beanies, and I am back open after a little hiatus to play catch-up on all the fall orders.

And now my annual list of what I have in stock to help out my online shoppers. This is what I have available for immediate shipping, no waiting, these will ship the next business day after payment has been received:

Brown Bear (Small 3-6 months) book also available

Spring Flower Fairy (Small 3-6 months) book also available

Winter Frost (Small 3-6 months)

Winter Frost Sweater (Small 3-6 months)

Purple Crayon (Medium 6-18 months) book also available

Pumpkin (Medium 6-18 months)

Lavender Sweet Pea (Medium 6-18 months) organic cotton

Pink Sweet Pea (Medium 6-18 months) organic cotton

Wimsy Citrus Bug (Large/Child)

Cranberry (Large/Child)

Ruffles, Ruffles, Everywhere!

Ruffles are everywhere! Dresses, shirts, bags, and my hats. I have received more and more requests to make a hat, but can I add a ruffle to the brim instead of the roll brim? And my answer is always "of course!" I can pretty much customize any hat, including color, flowers, antenna, and brims.

Ruffles can really change the line of a hat, they make a hat more girly, they frame a baby's face and provide a bit of shade.

So go whimisical, try a ruffle!

Go for the Gold Treasury

The Olympics are on and this clever treasury was created with my little blueberry hat in it. Thank you to katsinthebelfry a member of the NaturalKids team for creating this treasury.

Boston Beanies Hits 100

Snow is pounding various parts of the nation, but it seems to be skipping my city, and Bostonians are sniffing the air and thinking of Spring. This week I hit 100 sales in my Boston Beanies shop. A nice milestone since I opened up under this name less than a year ago. It was a hard decision to do so, but I am glad I did, and it is nice to know that returning customers can find me and new one too!

Oh, and the hat that made 100? The bunny, very seasonal. Hop, hop, hop

Stand in the place...

I often get asked, "Where did you get your hat display stands?" I had to shop around, because when doing craft fairs I wanted items that were fairly easy to transport, and would give me a nice clean uniform look to my table.

My Table Topper Stands
I found them at MathewsWire on eBay. They are made right here in the US and are sturdy but good for transport. They have only tipped over during one very windy outside craft fair, and with a little rearranging, even then they were fine.

My Floor Hat Stand
My friend got this for me for free from a candy shop. It used to display puppets, and they were getting rid of it so she snagged it for me. I am very grateful, floor stands cost hundreds of dollars. The stand however is rather heavy and does not spin, which a lot of people think it should and then they try and then it could tip. But it looks good with the table toppers when it is full of hats and a nice clean display is what I am all about.

My Basket, Bookends and more
I like to have a sale basket on my table, it attracts people who are looking for something quick and it helps me move some inventory I want to get rid of. Funny, this is what can draw people to a table, but then not everyone always buys from a sale basket. So people still want what they want, regardless of price or a discount. The bookends are mine, and were a great idea of a friend of mine to display my hat and book sets, but people are always picking them up trying to buy them. I could put not for sale stickers on them, but then people would still just ask how much are they, so I just smile and say they are for display only. The plastic displays for my sign and brochures I got from Staples.

So whether I use the floor stand or not, I like to have varying heights for my display, a sale section, and take away info. The bright colors will attract people, but having what someone wants is what is really going to make a sale.

Local Business Adorns Adorables

http://diasphoto.com/blog/?p=465

My brother got married this past October and he and my sister-in-law used a fabulous photographer for all their pictures. As a thank you, she gave him one of my hats for their little baby, and then he featured me in their blog...an entire cycle of thanks, with one adorable baby at the center! What a great way to start my weekend!

Purplicious!

I have a passion for purple, and lucky for me it is the new hot color of the season! Look in department stores and boutique children's clothing stores and you will find all sorts of purple cropping up everywhere, which is fine with me!

I love designing purple hats, but I make the classic fruit plum too, so this season, get purpled up!

Harvest Craft Fair!!

I am doing just ONE Craft Fair this season, since I am so backordered. It will be at my alma mater, Needham High School, Saturday October 24, 2009. I will be selling all my hats that I have in stock, and offering free shipping to all who place an order with me at the fair. So come on by!

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

So in June many of us were upset by Etsy's meta-tag stuffing, and when upcoming changes were annouced, a lot more of us were thinking "what's that Lucy, a football for me to kick?" (Gilmore Girls reference)

And when our views vanished we were left floundering, frustrated, and wondering what happened. Many Etsy sellers threatened to jump ship, the forums were flooded with angry and upset sellers, myself one of them, but now, I believe the dust has settled and things are back on track. So much so that I am over a month backordered and I had to close down my low selling shops and just keep Etsy open. But I promised to do my Google experiment again, even though I knew the results would be off since my other shops are closed. But I still wanted to see how people are finding me.

So here goes. First I logged out of Google, and then I cleared my cache, browsing history, everything I could think of that would leave a trace on my computer. Not an exact science, but it helps. Then I did several searches. I searched for "pumpkin hat", "knit pumpkin hat", "pumpkin hat boston beanies", "apple hat", "knit apple hat", "apple hat boston beanies". I did all these searches without the quotes, and I only looked at the first 10 pages.

Here are the results:

"pumpkin hat" search
none of my items found

"knit pumpkin hat" search
Etsy-page 1 shopping guide
iCraft -page 2 shopping guide

"pumpkin hat boston beanies"
Etsy-page 1
1000Markets-page 1
Cosaverde-page 1, 2
iCraft-page 1
my blog-page 1
Artfire-page 2 (a review)
Shopping Guide had Etsy and iCraft

"apple hat"
1000Markets-page 6
CosaVerde-page 7

"knit apple hat"
iCraft-page 1 shopping guide
Etsy -page 1 shopping guide, and there was a link under another listing show more results from Etsy, I clicked that and there was my listing on page 1, but how many searchers are going to know to do that?
iCraft- page 4 (a different listing), page 9 another different listing
1000Markets- page 6

"apple hat Boston Beanies"
1000Markets-page 1
CosaVerde-page 1
Etsy-page 1
iCraft- page 1
Shopping Guide had Etsy and iCraft.

So what did I learn? I had no expectations for Artfire, 1000Markets, or iCraft to turn up in the searches. In fact it shows how on top keeping clean their listings Artfire is, as I recall my Artfire listings made it in pretty quickly into the searches last time. Also, Etsy and 1000Markets are now in the searches, in places that I can expect them to be, so this is GREAT news.

The only problem is that to be seen, shoppers have to enter terms like "knit" in order to narrow down some of their searches. I hope they know to do so, or they may be frustrated with their hits. But an Etsy product was always on page one, driving a customer to Etsy, and maybe that person will shop there and try and see what else is available and...

So make a good product, take great pictures, and use helpful, thoughtful tags, and the customers will find you.

FRONT PAGE AGAIN??!!

Missed seeing this one by an hour! But as always I am so thrilled to make the front page again, and another list made by the Etsy admin! Still have a waiting list, but at this point it is better to get on it as I will get to your order as soon as I can. If you wait, the list will not get shorter until after the holidays.

Picture Perfect

One of the suprising things I discovered about being a hat seller is that photographers love knitted hats. Knitted hats make great photo props on babies. Which probably explains why I often get asked for free hats in return for pictures. This sounds good on paper, except photographers often want 10-15 specific hats in specific sizes and this takes me some time to make, and then I am at their mercy for the images.

Because I was receiving so many requests, I started a photographer's rate, my wholesale price with no minimun requirement. But I got burned on this too, with no images from the person, but at least I got some monetary compensation.

Out of all the inquiries from photographers I have only had one positive experience, a woman from France www.butterflymoments.fr/en/ she buys at my photographer's rate, tells me what she would like, I ship them out, and she then sends me these wonderful photographs and I give her credit on my hat listings. A great relationship.

So now I am excited for a new partnership with Boston-based photographer http://www.dianasechrist.com/. She found me on Etsy and I am very excited to be working with a local photographer who has experience photographing children.

For all the photographers out there who are wondering, how do I get a deal like that, keep asking, and try local, it worked for me.

From Caroline Shimanek, photographer, Lyon, France:

Fourth of July Front Page

Again, I sing my praises to The Vault, that's how I found out about my little hat making front page late 4th of July night, just as the fireworks were ending!

Birthday Wishes Front Page

So a very Happy Birthday to Me! I come back from vacation, and I notice a high number of hearts on a hat in my other shop. Did you know that you can search old front page treasuries from the delightful tool on The Vault from Craft Cult? It's amazing, saves you hours of looking for your missing "I was on the front page does anyone have a copy of the treasury?" I don't have a screen shot of the front page, but I'm good with that, I am in the Vault!

Sing it Dean!

Continuing with my music theme, with all this rain we are having here in New England, I can't tell if it is Spring or Summer, regardless, these fun items from EtsyBaby and NaturalKids remind me of summer, enjoy this treasury.

Not all watermelon hats are created equal

SEO 101 from Artfire

So quite a commotion has been going on in the Etsy forums. It seems that while many of us were fretting, wondering why our shops went the way of the Leaky Cauldron and buyers turned into Muggles, Etsy admin manipulated the meta tags of everyones shop listings making sellers invisible to search engines like Google and Yahoo.

I list my hats on several sites. You can view the HTML source by going up to the menu bar and view then source or right click view source. These Title headings are in between the title tags <>
I have edited my watermelon hat titles to the bare bones for some sites.
The title headings for my watermelon hat are as follows:

Etsy: Handmade for Children on Etsy - Watermelon Hat by bostonbeanies (64 characters)
Artfire: Watermelon Cotton Hat : BostonBeanies - ArtFire Children's (59 characters)
iCraft: Accessories, Hats - Watermelon Hat by BostonBeanies - icraft.ca (64 characters)
cosa verde: cosa verde Watermelon Cotton Hat by Boston Beanies (53 characters)
1000 Markets: Watermelon Cotton Hat by Boston Beanies (40 characters)

The problem with Etsy is the adding in the front the phrase "handmade for children on etsy - " all of those characters and spaces take up precious searching characters. Google and Yahoo often will not search after 60+ characters, and Etsy takes up half of them with their tagging, leaving me without my own title tags.

Check out Artfire, they add their tags at the back, that's fine.
iCraft is a little strange and puts tags in the front and back, with the category in the front and their id in the back. Strange and almost as bad as Etsy, note the same high character numbers.
cosa verde is simple, just their name and then my title, what you don't see is that there is a verticle line between verde and Boston, but still not bad, not too intrusive, and still under the character limit.
1000Markets doesn't even stuff the title tags, they add nothing, what you type is what you get.

I am not opposed to Etsy marking my listings on their site, but keep it simple, and keep it in the back end.

Before April, when I would Google and yahoo my hats, my Etsy listings used to be on the first few pages of hits, now my Etsy listings have disappeared because the spider bots that organize the searches have to crawl all the way through the other words in the title tags to get at the heart of my listing title.

But my Artfire listing shows up on page 1 or 2 usually. This is because Artfire lists to Google base (thank you!!) 1000Markets not yet, I am still tweaking to figure out why, and iCraft still needs work, but all are better than Etsy right now.

So what should we sellers do? We can't change the front tag stuffing, only Etsy Admin can, and they should soon. They get .20 per listing but over 3% per sale which is more than .20 per hat. Right now, with my visability down to zilch, why should I bother to relist? I am glad I have my own URL, http://www.bostonbeanies.com/ and now I may just redirect that link to my Artfire shop instead of my Etsy shop. I am in a wait and see mode, and am really upset that people are telling others that this is not a big deal.

We were all left in the dark while Etsy Admin let us flounder.
They knew what they were doing.

They. Knew.

Vacation treasury

My first treasury under my new shop name! So can't wait for summer vacation!

Late Night Front Page

So, the treasury elves were hard at work last night and behold, I was put in a treasury and made it to the front page all in one night! How funny my bunny hat never made it to the Front Page of Etsy during the Easter season, but now it does, I'll take it.

I just love the little doll at the bottom too!

The Return of Blueberries for Sal

Breaking News! According to Publishers Weekly, Blueberries for Sal is coming back into print. As I previously blogged about some adventures I had when trying to get a copy of the book to go with my blueberry hat, one of my favorite hat and book sets.

McCloskey is a favorite author in Boston, and with the recent caper with one of our beloved ducks, the news of this story being returned to print with new attention to ink shades is a treat. Maineiacs should delight in this news, especially when blueberry season gets underway!