1) Is Your E-Mail Provider Filtering Out Your Newsletters?

2) Share Your Jewelry Business Tips and Receive Free Advertising for Your Site

3) What's New at Home Jewelry Business Success Tips

4) Article: Using Market Research to Improve Your Jewelry Sales

5) Interesting Jewelry Related Website: Cabochon Making 101

Is Your E-mail Provider Filtering Out Your Newsletters?

Many of our subscribers aren't getting their newsletters because of their e-mail providers' bulk mail (spam) filtering software.

When I sent out the May 20 issue of "Jewelry Business Success News," 109 of our 695 subscribers didn't receive it in their e-mail boxes because of this filtering.

To be sure you never miss an issue of "Jewelry Business Success News" in your e-mail box, please add the following Home Jewelry Business Success Tips domain to your list of trusted senders / your address book / contact list (in your e-mail software) and to your ISP / mail service's "whitelist" -

@home-jewelry-business-success-tips.com

This should ensure that you'll continue to receive your issues of "Jewelry Business Success News".

Share Your Jewelry Business Success Tips and Receive Permanent Free Advertising for Your Website

We're inviting you to write an article for Home Jewelry Business Success Tips, in exchange for some free advertising for your website. (Don't worry about your writing skills - I'll be happy to edit your article if necessary.)

Our guest authors' experiences, tips, and techniques add so much to this site that that we'd like to continue to add authors to make Home Jewelry Business Success Tips the best possible resource for jewelry artists.

In exchange for publishing your article, we'll put a link to your website on your article's page here, which will help boost your site's search engine rankings and traffic. Each article will be a permanent page on Home Jewelry Business Success Tips, so its link to your site is a permanent free advertisement for your business. Our guest authors say their websites receive a good flow of traffic from their links here.

For more information, please see Submit Your Jewelry Business Tips Article.

What's new at
Home Jewelry Business Success Tips

Don't miss these great new articles that have been added to Home Jewelry Business Success Tips since the last issue of Jewelry Business Success News! -

I'm pleased to introduce our newest guest author, Tony Blacker of Niknakgroup.com Jewellery, which offers a comprehensive range of gold, silver, and platinum jewellery. His lines include collections of Rennie Mackintosh and Celtic knot designs, along with one of the largest selections of body jewellery on the Web.

Tony is also our first guest author from our new "Submit Articles" page! Here's Tony's first article for us:

Developing Your Own Website - After evolving his website through seven major redesigns in four years, guest author Tony Blacker shares tips for getting your jewelry business online by yourself, and finding the resources you need to develop and promote your own website.

And here are two new articles from Rena:

Jewelry Website Resources - I've consolidated a list of my top picks for jewelry business website resources, including web hosts, online credit card processing, other forms of online payments, and traffic building. For jewelry business websites, I think these services are the best of the best!

Girls' Birthday Bracelet Beading Party - I've discovered that this is a fun, profitable, and very marketable niche to fill! Here are success tips for memorable, profitable birthday bracelet parties.

Using Market Research
to Improve Your Jewelry Sales

You can save a lot of time and expense by conducting some simple market research on your newest jewelry creation before going into large-scale production of it or developing an entire line based on it.

I'm speaking from experience here. I had an expensive illusion necklace fiasco several years ago that could have been prevented with a little market research! I made dozens of necklaces in a version of the style that sold very well in other parts of the U.S. How was I to know that style would be dead in the water in my local area?

Well, if I'd done some market research I would have known. And I'd have saved myself a lot of time and money (not to mention display area in my booth) that I could have spent on designs that did appeal to my market.

Here are some ways you can use market research to improve your jewelry sales:

1) Search the Web. Go to a search engine like Google and enter some keywords in quotation marks related to your new or proposed design (such as "chainmaille earrings" or "barefoot sandals"). What's the market like for other businesses making and selling related items that pop up in the search results? How are they marketing them and pricing them?

2) Study publications. Clothing catalogs, trade publications, and fashion magazines usually come out a few months ahead of the season their products are intended for. These publications can give you a feel for coming fashion and lifestyle trends to keep in mind as you design new jewelry, that can increase its salability. Catalogs and magazines will clue you in on the forecasted trends, colors, and styles. These are things that the media will be marketing to consumers and telling them that they need to buy if they want to stay in style. So designing jewelry with these factors in mind increases your sales by providing what your customers are already looking for to update their look for the upcoming season.

3) Test your new jewelry design idea at shows or home parties. Make two or three items of this new line in different colors and display them prominently at your next few shows or jewelry home parties. Do people ignore these pieces or pick them up and study them? Do they try them on? What kind of verbal feedback do they give you? What questions do they ask you about the new style? And most important, does anyone purchase them? Selling just one item in this test market is a sign that you may have a have a winner, and that either further market research or a small-scale production might be worthwhile.

4) Wear your new jewelry design someplace where you'll be interacting with a lot of people. For example, a party or a day when you're running a lot of errands will put you in contact with a variety of people. See if they notice and study your new design, and especially if they ask questions or give compliments on it. Does it appeal to only one or two people, or to many? What specific things do people say they like about it?

5) If you have a new creation that isn't selling, get customers' input before dropping the design from your inventory. Display the piece at your next show or party, tell customers you're developing a new design, and ask for their input on what it needs. Jot down responses you get -whether it's suggestions for other colors or sizes, matching pieces to make it a set, less (or more) ornate, a different clasp, different pricing, or anything they recommend. Later, when you review your list of customer suggestions, see if there's a general trend or two in their feedback, or anything that makes a light go on for you about what the piece needs.

Last year I did some market research on a pinkie ring design. I started with six rings in different metals and a range of sizes and displayed them at my fall shows. One sold the first day I exhibited them at a show, and I thought, "Ah-ha! A hot new style!" But wait . . . more than half a year later the other five rings still haven't sold, although all of them are tried on at every show.

So I've begun asking my customers for their input on what would make these rings better, and I'm getting some interesting responses. Because I test marketed this design on a small scale, I'm not really out any money or time on this trial design. And after a trip back to the drawing board to incorporate customer input, a market test of pinkie rings version 2 will debut later this year! :o)

Neat jewelry related site

Our interesting jewelry site to visit this time is a photo-filled tutorial from the Tucson Old Pueblo Lapidary Club. Cabochon Making 101 is a fascinating step-by-step mini-course on making gemstone cabochons, with lots of good photos and descriptions of each step. Even if you never plan to make a cabochon yourself, this is an interesting and informative site!

Visit the Jewelry Business Blog

Stop by the Jewelry Business Blog for the latest tips and information about the business of jewelry art! And feel free to post any questions or tips of your own - just use the form at the bottom of the blog to post your comments; I'll add them when I do the next blog update.