Sweet Treats

Two new designs, just in time for the season...
I bought the cutest little crocheted hearts on Etsy (since I can't crochet, what DO you do with just one needle/hook anyway) but I am so grateful that there are sellers who do crochet and sell their appliques.

ruffle brim beanie with four valentine hearts

ruffle brim beanie with knit flower and valentine heart center

Both hats are available in size SMALL (3-6 mo) and for immediate shipping.  I can make more when I order more hearts.

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.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

The northeast just had our first measurable snowfall last night and it is now a winter wonderland outside. So what perfect timing that this beautiful treasury is up on Etsy, I love the earrings in this treasury, and am honored to have my little hat included. It was 70 degrees a few DAYS ago and now we have snow, ahh New England!

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.

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!

When green is all there is to be

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why?

Wonder, I am green and it'll do fine, it's beautiful!

And I think it's what I want to be.

~It's Not Easy Bein' Green by the Muppets

The Green Revolution has really taken off. Organic food, hybrid cars, energy-saving light bulbs, small steps and ways to make a difference is everywhere. I like to think that buying handmade is a part of this, learning how products are made, and where your sources are coming from. It all matters.

I started knitting to keep my hands busy in grad school so I could concentrate on the lectures, but, tragically, I am allergic to wool. I am teased and tantelized every time I walk into my LYS and see the rows and rows of beautiful skeins that I cannot knit with. So I was forced to find alternatives to wool, and the most popular was acrylic, imagine my dismay when I discovered that acrylic is petroleum based. So I was basically knitting with oil? So I switched to cotton, that's earth-friendly, right? Well better than acrylic, but then as my research shows here cotton has it's downfalls too, unless you get organic, and many companies are realizing this.

So now that I have found suppliers for organic cotton, is there a call for it? Sort of. Customers would like it, however when push comes to pennies and dollars, many want to save the extra dollars and buy my regular cotton hats. I will continue to make and offer them, but I know they will never be popular as my other items. I am also a member of NaturalKids, an Etsy team dedicated to natural products for children.

However, like many things in life, it comes down to marketing, and that is where I heard about Cosa Verde. This is a place to showcase your earth-friendly wares, but your don't sell from there, you link to your selling venue like Etsy and Artfire. What I have noticed, they bring a lot more attention to my organic hats, and with this trend becoming more popular, all it can do is help. And it is a direct place for the people who like to shop with the earth-friendly products in mind.

The Great Watermelon Hunt

Etsy Admin Update 6/18/08 There will be changes to this once Etsy rolls out the updates and they get integrated in the search engines. I will run this experiment again. It took a while for my listings to get bumped off, it may take a while for them to reappear.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Further using my watermelon hat as an example, I thought it was time to do a thorough search of google for my listings of my hat. I have it listed on several sites and with all the hoopla on Etsy, I wanted to see, in real time, how the other sites were holding up against each other for the who's on first listing.

First I cleared my cache, my browsing history and anything that could be lurking that could filter my search. And I logged out of Google.
Next I did a simple search in Google for "watermelon hat" without the quotes, thinking like a buyer, that they want a watermelon hat so that is what they would enter.

Here are the results:
Artfire: page 1 in the shopping results
Cosa Verde: page 5
iCraft: page 6

Other hits:
Twitter iCraft: page 14
my blog, previous post: page 14
iCraft (for a different listing): page 15
another blog: page 17

Note: My Etsy and My 1000Markets listings were not found

I stopped looking after page 50, forgive me. Now as with all experiments there are flaws, so let's point them out. First I did not look at all 79 pages (there may have been even more), and I may have missed a listing on the 50 pages that I did scroll through, but I believe I was looking pretty carefully. A few other Etsy shop's listings did appear, but not mine, and not near the number for sale on the site. Also, since this is my personal computer there might still be some residual memory that would muck up the page numbers a bit, but I don't think it would make a listing disappear. Also I am a new member to 1000Markets, so maybe they are slower to put up their listings, however my listings for Artfire and Cosa Verde are also new and they made it in somehow.

And it should be noted in an attempt to find my 1000Markets listing, I searched for my exact title listing "Watermelon Cotton Hat by Boston Beanies" and still I got nothing, so I am really puzzled by that. I checked my tags, and there are enough and not too many repeating words, so it really should come up.

And when I did the same search, "Watermelon Cotton Hat by Boston Beanies", a completly different listing on Etsy came up on page 1. It is like the Twilight Zone for those two sites.

So what did I learn? Well I know the average buyer will never scroll though 50 pages, I'm lucky if they look through 5. And that Etsy is not the only site having listing visibility problems. And it should be noted, I have been watching my Google Analytics very closly this past weekend, and will continue to do so for the next few weeks, and that while Etsy is still having listing visibility problems, somehow, I manage to get more Etsy hits than Artfire hits, despite being on page 1 with Artfire. And many more of these hits come from search engines. I will not jump the Etsy ship, but I am puzzled at where the leaks are.

So the mystery continues...

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.

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!

Build-a-Bunny

Bunnies abound! With all the great yarn out there, there are many different kinds of bunnies you can get for your little bunny from my Etsy shop!
This nice cotton blend yarn is perfect for newborns and small babies.

I also sell it with the book, The Runaway Bunny, perfect for showers or Easter gifts!

I make a Peter Rabbit hat out of a snuggly soft acrylic yarn that is sadly no longer made, so I am on the lookout for new colorways in cotton yarns. But in the meantime I am using up my stash that matches the sepia-tawny browns of Potter's illustrations of our favorite bunny. While supplies of the yarn last I sell the Peter Rabbit hat with or without the book.

I also have an organic cotton Bunny available. This snuggly-soft yarn has been grown without chemicals and dyed with low-impact dyes. A true delight and an heirloom gift for years to come!

Many more styles are available, as I love custom orders, and have an array ofcolors in stock of 100% cotton, organic cotton and acrylic yarn. So celebrate spring and bunny season in style!

CPSIA Changes?

Well, there is hope.

My cotton yarn and organic cotton yarn hats have been deemed lead free by the government.

Duh.
And now resellers, such as thrift stores, and consignment shops have some reprieve from this strict law. http://cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml09/09086.html

Or do they? Read it carefully, it says that they can sell it, but at their own risk if it contains any lead. I'm not sure how many consignment shops and thrift shops are going to take this news. Exempt should be exempt, and that's that. These are not individually recalled items.

But like I said "The two-member commission, reacting to complaints from manufacturers, also agreed to exempt natural products such as gems and cotton from mandatory testing for lead. "

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a0Xr2Iw1Vi_8&refer=us

So this is good news for now.

And read this wonderful blog post from Rick Woldenberg , I especially love the title, but the entire post is dead on.

http://learningresourcesinc.blogspot.com/2009/01/cpsia-emperor-has-no-clothes.html

I Made the Front Page of Etsy!

My Falling Leaves hat made the front page of Etsy a week or so ago. I was fortunate enough to snatch a screenshot. I got tons of views and hearts, but alas, no one has bought this OOAK hat. Good thing I have three craft fairs coming up this fall!

Blueberry Bummer

I have sold only one hat and book set from my show at the Needham Library. I hope people are waiting to see me at the Needham High PTC Craft Fair next month! But what was interesting was that my blueberry hat and the Blueberries for Sal book sold. Not a problem, I thought. So I made the hat, and went off to my local bookstore to buy the book, and was shocked to find that they have all been pulled from the shelves.

All copies of Blueberries for Sal are no longer for sale because of negotiations between the McCloskey family and the publisher, Penguin. What is even more interesting is that next to nothing can be found on the internet about this. This great classic of a book has silently been pulled from circulation, and that saddens me more.

From an online Publisher's Weekly Children's Bookshelf August 21, 2008:

Rhalee Hughes, director of publicity at Penguin Books for Young Readers, acknowledges that the classic picture book is currently unavailable, but says, "We have been in negotiations with [Robert McCloskey's] estate and we are hopeful that we may be able to put Blueberries for Sal back into circulation."

So please, don't buy inflated used book prices you might find. Wait it out. Reprinting will happen in due time.

My Blueberry hat collection:

A Labor of Love

Several months ago I was asked if I could display my children's hat and book collection at the Needham Public Library in Needham, MA. I was thrilled and accepted the opportunity at once. I began designing new hats in my mind. I wanted to blend familiar titles with new favorites and create new hats to go with them. The result is a kaleidoscope of color and memories. So you can have Pinkilicious cupcakes and eat your bluberries with Sal, too!

If you get a chance, stop by the Needham Public Library and check out my hats, and a book!