1. Exciting New Markets for Your Handcrafted Jewelry

2. What's New at Home Jewelry Business Success Tips:
   Four great new articles

3. Submit Your Article, Project, Tip, or Photo -
   and Get a Valuable Link to Your Website

4. Featured Article:
   A No-Cost Way to Market Your Jewelry to Tourists

5. Neat Jewelry-Related Website:
   Newly expanded Jewelry Business Blog

6. Get Ready to Profit from Your Fall Art & Craft Shows

Discover a way to sell your jewelry to customers who are VERY willing to buy from you – again and again. It's the main way I sell my own jewelry now.

You'll find everything you need to get started selling your own jewelry this way, in my new ebook Secrets of a Handcrafted Jewelry Shopping Service.

A reader named Susan says,

"Oh my gosh, Thank you! This is just what I needed for my jewelry business. Your ebook has really opened my eyes to new possibilities. My brain is humming with new ideas that I would never have thought of!"

Invest in this 115-page, easy-to-read guide now, and be prepared to sell more of your jewelry this Fall and Holiday shopping season:

1. Photographing Jewelry: Light boxes, tents and backgrounds
   Elaine Luther reviews light boxes, tents, and backgrounds for photographing jewelry. These professional-level tools have become extremely affordable, and really help you get better jewelry photos.




2. Networking Your Family and Friends
   Becky Johnson details how she brought networking to a personal level by contacting her family and friends about her new jewelry business.




3. Increase Jewelry Sales with Layaway
   When Valerie Gillis increased the quality and prices of her jewelry, her sales slumped. Find out what happened when she started offering a layaway payment plan for her jewelry.




4. Starting a Jewelry Business
   Bruce Justice shares what he and his wife discovered about starting a jewelry business, based on their mistakes and successes.

Share your own jewelry business story, tip, project, or advice - and build traffic to your website at the same time. You can also include any photos you have that illustrate your contribution.

(Watch for an exciting new way to have your work published on my website - I hope to announce it in the next issue of this newsletter!)

When I publish your contribution, you'll receive a free permanent link to your website from my website - and your content will be read by thousands of people in the jewelry industry. My guest authors report a significant flow of traffic coming from their links on my site!

One of the stops on our family vacation this summer was a tour of Boyd Glass Factory in Cambridge, Ohio. It's a small business that manufactures glass figurines, and then ships them all over the world.

The owner, Mr. Boyd, is an entertaining gentleman who gave us fascinating, behind-the-scenes tour of glassmaking, including some fun photo opportunities.

We didn't necessarily intend to buy anything when we went into the Boyd Glass Factory / giftshop.

But after our tour, we all very much wanted to buy a glass item - partly to have a keepsake from the interesting tour, partly because we liked Mr. Boyd, and partly because after the tour we really had a much greater appreciation for the glass items created in the factory there.

So he made a nice sale after our tour - and we left with beautiful glassworks, great memories, and a new understanding of the glass industry.

It was a very pleasant win-win situation.

Now here's the part I especially wanted to tell you about:

How did we find out about this tour?

From Mr. Boyd's free listing in the AAA Travel Destination Guide for the state of Ohio, a free book we had ordered a few months earlier to help us plan our trip. Mr. Boyd said he receives a fair amount of visitors just from this listing.

The AAA company (which you may be familiar with because of its automotive services) provides lots of travel information, and they publish free Travel Destination Guides that cover all of the United States and much of the rest of the world.

It doesn't cost you a penny to have your tour or attraction listed in the AAA Guide for your region. AAA is simply trying to make useful guidebooks of things people would enjoy doing when they travel.

And you don't have to be a big company to be listed. Many of the attractions and tours listed in these guides are small, out-of-the-way things and places, and some have either very limited hours, or even seasonal hours by appointment only. In your listing you can choose to omit your address if you prefer, so people would have to call you for directions and come only during your appointment times.

Once you're listed in the guide for your area, each year AAA sends you a card inquiring as to whether your listing info is still current or needs to be updated.

If this sounds interesting to you, you can find out more about the AAA Guides at http://www.aaa.com/AAA_Travel/Guides/travel_destination_guide.htm , or phone 1-800-477-4222.

You might also try contacting your local AAA office, and let them know you're interested in finding out more about being listed in the guide for your area.

And here's a similar opportunity: Motels, hotels, and resorts often have their own small "local business guides" in each room, listing restaurants, shopping, and attractions in the area. Check with your local motels and hotels to see if they have such guides, and how you can have your jewelry business listed in them.

Now, can you provide a tour or activity for tourists? Remember that there's a huge variety in people's interests, so nearly anything you do will probably have an interested audience.

For example, you might provide tours of your jewelry studio, give jewelry making classes, provide jewelry making activities for children, give a gemstone or rock tour, a lampwork demonstration, a polymer clay or PMC demonstration, etc. Can you relate it in some way to the area where you live? Travelers especially enjoy activities and tours that evoke the place they're visiting. Also try thinking along the lines of "themes".

Once your tourist group finishes your tour or activity, they will be very motivated to buy your jewelry, just as we felt about buying Mr. Boyd's glass. They'll feel a connection with you, and they'll have a much greater appreciation of your art. Also, travelers love to bring home mementos from their vacations.

So end your tour or activity at a nice little "gift shop" display that's all set up for your visitors to shop from. Of course your jewelry is the star of this gift shop - but be sure to also include a selection of related, lower-priced items that appeal to young girls and boys. You could even buy small quartz crystals in bulk and sell them individually from a neat container.

And why not have postcards made up with photos of your jewelry, and sell them from a pretty rack in your gift shop display area? I can't tell you how many times I've bought postcards from a place I just enjoyed touring! You can have postcards made from your own images at online printers like iPrint. Be sure your website URL is somewhere on the postcard - and you'll be marketing your jewelry not only to the person who receives the postcard in the mail, but also to everyone who handles it along the way.

I'm a bit biased about the Neat Site this time. It's my newly expanded Jewelry Business Blog.

My blog has really outgrown its space on my main Home Jewelry Business Success Tips website, and there were so many features I wanted to add to it that weren't possible before. All of my posts before August 1, 2007 are still available on my old jewelry business blog, which you can access from the blue menu at the left side of every page of Home Jewelry Business Success Tips. And all posts from August 1 onward (there are over 20 new posts so far!) are on my new blog.

So please come visit my new, improved Jewelry Business Blog - and tell a jewelry-making friend! :o)

It's the place to stay updated on the latest content on all my jewelry-business related websites, plus other interesting tidbits on the business side of jewelry art. If you use RSS feeds, be sure to subscribe to the feed for my new Jewelry Business Blog!

Got jewelry shows this Fall? It's the best, most profitable time of year for selling jewelry.

Sell more of your jewelry with the secrets you'll learn in my downloadable ebook, Ultimate Guide to Your Profitable Jewelry Booth.

Don't wait to discover hundreds of things you can do to sell your jewelry like crazy at shows, fairs, and festivals. Invest in this 176-page, step-by-step resource before your next show:

Looking for specific jewelry business information or the answer to a question? Try my "Search This Site" feature to scour Home Jewelry Business Success Tips for any keywords you enter.

I have over 370 articles on Home Jewelry Business Success Tips now, and new posts several days a week in the Jewelry Business Blog - plus lots more coming up - and sometimes knowing where to find specific information among so many articles can be tricky. But now you can search easily and find what you're seeking.

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