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1) Jewelry Business Blog Turns One Year Old!

2) Entice Visitors to Read Your Blog or Newsletter Regularly

3) What's New at Home Jewelry Business Success Tips - super new articles

4) Featured Article: A Way to Get Customers to Look at Your Entire Display

5) Neat Jewelry Related Website: Shirley Anne's gorgeous vintage-style beaded purses

Jewelry Business Blog
Turns One Year Old!

This week our Jewelry Business Blog celebrates its first birthday - one full year of tips, information, questions, answers, and news about the business of making jewelry!

Woo Hoo! :o)

An Idea to Entice Visitors
to Read Your Blog or Newsletter Regularly

If your online jewelry business includes a blog or newsletter, here's a suggestion for encouraging your readers to return regularly:

Include some form of a serial or soap opera related to your site's theme.

How can this possibly apply to jewelry? Well, I'm going to give you two examples of non-jewelry products that have been given a huge boost when a serial story was added to their marketing. Then, if this concept feels right for you and your jewelry, you can brainstorm ways to adapt it to your own marketing methods.

1. Taster's Choice coffee:
   From 1990 through 1997 in the U.S., this instant coffee brand received an enormous boost from a series of print ads and TV commercials in the form of a romantic soap opera.

   In episodes of less than a minute of airtime (or a page of magazine space), an intriguing single guy and gal met because of Taster's Choice coffee, and then had a series of coffee-based encounters that advanced their relationship.

   Would they get married? Would they break up? Would they overdose on caffeine? Even if you insisted you weren't getting sucked into their story, you couldn't help watching the next commercial or ad installment to find out.

2. Alice White Australian wines:
   I was pouring a glass of Merlot the other day and noticed an interesting paragraph on the back label of the bottle. It began:

   "I'm Nick," the cowboy said with a smile. He assured her he would guide her to safety . . . .

   Of course I read the entire paragraph (only for newsletter research purposes, of course!) and discovered that it was a fragment of story called "Adventures in a New Land".

   After a few more sentences of rugged adventure, the episode ends with the cowboy and our heroine Alice in cliff-hanging peril - to be continued on the back label of a future bottle of Alice White wine.

   Next time I buy a bottle of wine, which brand do you think I'm going to look at closely? :o)

I think you can see the potential for this technique to attract and retain a following of readers. It can really be a great marketing method for your online jewelry business, blog, or newsletter if you tie your serial into jewelry, gems, crystals, clay, glass, or whatever your niche is.

One of the keys to success is to leave each entry or episode with a cliff-hanger that will make it impossible for your readers to keep from coming back to find out what happens next!

If you decide to start a serial or soap opera on your blog or newsletter, please let me know - I'd love to see how you've adapted this idea!

What's new at
Home Jewelry Business Success Tips

Since our last issue, I have five new articles for you.

The first one was written by me, to address the questions I often get from young jewelry artists wondering how they can sell their work:

Success Tips for a Teenage Jewelry Artist
If you're a young jewelry artist, you have some great opportunities to sell your work and start your jewelry business. Here are ideas and success tips to get you started.

I'm also excited to bring you these fantastic new guest author articles:

Ready to Start a Home Based Jewelry Business?
Taking the plunge into your own home based jewelry business is an exciting step. Guest author Christopher Gage of When Peace Talks helps you find out if you have what it takes to run a successful home jewelry business.

History of Costume Jewelry
Costume jewelry came into being in the 1930s as a cheap, disposable accessory meant to be worn with a specific outfit. Guest author Sherry Matsen of Estate Jewelry International believes costume jewelry can add the finishing touch and show your fashion sense.

Creativity Yields Income Opportunities
Applying creativity to all aspects of your business can bring unique income opportunities. Guest author Patricia Snow of Patricia's Art Gallery demonstrates how she combines handcrafted jewelry with her other creative endeavors to yield a variety of income opportunities.

The Animal Jewelry Market Niche
Animal jewelry is a major market niche, and a great gift item. Returning guest author Angela Davis of Merry Jewelry presents some of the most popular motifs and styles of animal jewelry.

I invite you to become our next famous guest author by contributing your own unique jewelry business perspective to Home Jewelry Business Success Tips! Submit a jewelry business article and receive a free permanent link to your website. Our guest authors report a significant flow of traffic coming from their article links on Home Jewelry Business Success Tips.

This idea was inspired by a great quilt show I attended last weekend. (I don't quilt, but I stand very much in awe of those who do!) :o)

At this quilt show, each visitor who attended was given a ballot and asked to vote for their favorite quilts in six different categories. Well, I can tell you, not a single person rushed through that exhibit, knowing that they had to choose their favorites.

Everyone scrutinized each quilt, studying them up close and from a distance, going back for a second and third look, examining the backs, and discussing each quilt with their friends. The quilts on display were incredible, and it was very tough to choose our favorites for each category.

And while I was voting on the quilts, I realized that being asked to vote for our favorites was a fantastic way of getting the attendees to really stop, notice, and appreciate the nuances of each quilt.

This technique can be easily adapted to a jewelry show. What a great way to get folks to look closely at each piece of jewelry in your display! You could ask them to vote for just their single favorite piece, or have a few different categories for their votes (favorite bracelet, favorite pendant, etc.). You might also include a blank space for them to write in any additional opinions or suggestions.

People love to be asked for their opinions. And in addition to getting lots more attention for your jewelry, you'd have the side benefit of learning what styles your customers and other passers-by like best.

You could provide additional encouragement to vote by having all entrants add their name and phone number to their ballot, and at the end of the show do a drawing from the ballot box. The winner receives a free piece of jewelry (something nice but under $20).

And by the way, if you haven't attended a quilt show lately, I highly recommend it! The color schemes, creative details, geometry, materials selection, interpretation of themes - everything is so inspiring to your jewelry-artist eye.

One quilt in particular really showed me how powerful it is to add just a touch of black to a color scheme. I voted for it, and couldn't wait to get home and dive into my beads to play with a similar color scheme!

Interestingly, I also discovered that quilters are as obsessive about collecting fabric scraps as beaders are about collecting beads! One veteran quilter told me that the nice thing about collecting fabric scraps is that they're small - so you can have quite an enormous collection without your family realizing the extent of your addiction.

Hmmm - where have I heard something like that before??? ;o)

Neat Jewelry Related Website

Our neat site this time is Shirley Anne's utterly gorgeous Victorian-style beaded purses. Scroll down the page and enjoy! Although the background image on this site is distracting (which is why I always go for white or pale solid-colored backgrounds), these little evening bags are to die for. Bedecked with delicate swags, fringe, crystals, organza flowers, etc. - how could you choose? My "wearable cash register" when I do shows and parties is a little black beaded purse similar to these - a lovely souvenir from a relative's trip to Germany.

Find Specific Jewelry Business Info

Looking for specific jewelry business information or the answer to a question? Try our "Search This Site" feature to scour Home Jewelry Business Success Tips for any keywords you enter. A link to Search This Site is available from the bottom of the navigation bar at the left side of every page.

We have well over 180 articles now, plus lots more coming up - and sometimes knowing where to find specific information among so many articles can be tricky. But now you should be able to search easily and find what you're seeking.

If your search doesn't turn up any results for our site, then you've discovered a topic we need to add - please let me know the info or tips that are missing from our site.