Starting From Zero in My Handcraft Business

I am Starting From Zero in My Handcraft Business digital marketing journey. My ultimate goal is to increase my newsletter subscriptions to at least 500 true followers in the next 4 weeks. In order to achieve that I had to choose a decent free newsletter plugin that will collect the information from the subscribers and ensure that they are not spammers. These types of things must be tested prior to launch and configured to work with your email provider.

30 Day Social Media Challenge -Purple Edition

I used these two free plug-ins

Newsletter is a cool plugin to create your own subscriber list, to send newsletters, to build your business.
Version 7.6.6 | By Stefano Lissa & The Newsletter Team

Easy WP SMTP
Fix your WordPress email delivery by sending them via a transactional email provider or an SMTP server.
Version 2.0.1 | By Easy WP SMTP

They both have their PRO versions but we will be using the Free versions for this challenge. Of course, if it works out and we get more customers to buy our handcrafted items and sign-up for the newsletter then we will probably pay for the PRO version to expand our efforts.

Authors How to Brand You and Your Books

The Simplest Way to Gain Customers

Is to engage with like-minded people where they reside. For most handcraft artists that means to meet face-to-face at crafts shows and the various festivals that are offered in their area in the Spring and Fall months. These are great but are also very time-consuming. Most of all they, generally, do not offer a significant return for the money you must spend to participate and attend.

So, most of us now, have to get on a social media platform or two, create engaging content, that may or may not have anything to do with our own items we sell (only about 10%), but has everything to do with educating and commiserating with out fellow crafters. The key is to figure out a message, your style and get out there and consistently deliver new content.

To that end I will be utilizing my purple covered workbook – “30 Day Social Media Challenge Calendar”, see above; “Top Ten Ways to Market Your Book for Free”, see below; and parts of my “Authors- How to Brand You and Your Books”, also above; to figure out a game plan, schedule my posts and record my results. Wherever you see the word “Author” or “Writer” substitute “handcraft artist”, the suggestions and tips work the same for both.

The main way to entice people to join your newsletter list is to give-away what is called a “Lead Magnet”. That is generally a digital product of some kind that you have created to give as a free gift. For my part, I have created a couple of small eBooks packed with information about marketing, crafting and small businesses helpers. The first 100 people to sign up for my newsletter in the next 6 days (February 22 to February 28th) will receive my eBook “What is Marketing for Crafters” in their email.

Top Ten Ways to Market Your Book for Free eBook

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