Etsy’s Special Delivery 2013

Every year, Etsy does a Special Delivery project for Valentine’s Day. Viewers from Etsy supply handmade greeting cards for an event Etsy does with Citymeals-on-Wheels to "bring nutritious meals, handmade greeting cards, and companionship to elderly New Yorkers this Valentine’s Day."



You mail the cards to:
Etsy Attn: Adriane Tidona
55 Washington St. Suite 512
Brooklyn, NY
11201

Cards have to arrive by Monday, February 4, 2013 so if you’re planning to send one in, do it ASAP. If you don’t want to make a card, my shop has lots of cards you can send in. Check out my Valentine’s Day section and greeting card section.

I can send it right to Etsy so it gets there on time. Just leave me a note in the checkout box or send me a convo letting me know you want the card sent to Etsy’s Special Delivery and what note you want me to write in the card.

Blue and Gold Marbled Coptic Stitch Journal Sold

I made my first sale of 2013! I sold this Blue and Gold Marbled Coptic Stitch Journal



Yay! I am excited because my sales were down for a while. Have you sold or bought anything from Etsy lately?

Ad Swaps and New Blog Ads

I did some ad swaps recently. You can see new ads on the right side of this page. I swapped with
Eyelah, Foxy Whispers, ElizaK Prints, Twigs and Tea and Artsy Ants.

If you want to do an ad swap with me, email me and let me know. The sizes are 250 x 125 or 125 x 125 pixels. Just let me know what size ad you need for your blog. If you would prefer to pay to have your ad up, you can do that too. I changed the prices a little and added some new info in the Advertise section.

Speaking of ads, I made a couple ads just for my blog. Let me know what you think.


If you have a shop or blog, do you do advertising? What do you find effective?

DogVacay.com

I started a DogVacay dog sitting account as a side job. DogVacay is a website that lets people board their dog in a real house instead of a kennel. I signed up to be one of the people that takes care of dogs. You get paid online through PayPal and everything is taken care of on the site.



I don't know how successful I'll be with it, but I thought it would be something fun to try. If you are ever in the Chicago area and need to board a dog (or know someone that does) let me know! You can get 10% off your order if use the coupon code ANNASDOGHAVEN (only applies if it is your first time using DogVacay.com). Have you ever used DogVacay or an online pet boarding service?

Updated Greeting Card Photos

These are some greeting cards I updated the photos for.

Get Well Soon Beaded Blue Flower Card



Bird Travel Greeting Card



Let me know what you think.

Tea Inspiration

I love the way it looks outside in winter. Here is some winter photography inspiration:

You can see more tea inspiration here.

New Art Journaling

Here are some new art journaling entries I did.




Do you art journal?

Recent Blog Updates

These are some recent updates to my blog.

I added links on the top of my blog under the logo. I also added a few new pages on the blog which are like blog posts, but they are permanent and you can't add comments. The new pages are About, Links and Advertise. The About page is just basic info about the site. The Links page has a list of links of places you can find Move the Needle on the web along with screen captures of the different pages. Advertise has info on advertising on this blog.


To the right side of the blog, I added images with links to older posts on this blog. The first image is an Etsy related blog post, the second is a personal topic and the third is blog posts with inspiration. The images show up randomly.

I also changed the fonts and link colors a little bit. I noticed I had been using the same font for a while so I decided to change it up.

Let me know what you think.

Pastel Inspiration

I love looking at pastel colors. This is some pastel inspiration I found on Pinterest:

Do you like pastels?

New Year's Giveaway Winner!

I had a giveaway on this blog for New Year's here. To enter, you had to post one of your resolutions for 2013 in the comments. The winner got to choose any item in my shop if they won. I had over 100 entries. And the winner is....

Bárbara Moura who's New Year's resolution was to "help myself and my friends get healthy".

She chose this Map of Paris Journal as her prize (which I did a tutorial on last year here):



Congratulations Bárbara! Thanks to everyone else who entered. I plan to do more giveaways in the future.

2012 Blog Statistics

These are the statistics for my blog in 2012:

Visitors

I get a lot more visitors to my blog than my actual shop this year. I had about 12,000 unique visitors. As you can see by the chart above from Google Analytics, I had more visitors at the end of the year. 88.51% were new visitors and the other 11.49% were returning. 982 views were from a mobile device.

Referrers and Traffic



50.00% of viewers came from searching the web. 36.01% were referral traffic and 13.99% direct traffic. Top referrers were Google, Pinterest, Etsy, Facebook and the Birchbox blog (Birchbox linked this blog on their blog). Top keyword searches were for fun thanksgiving dessert, unique desserts and christmas desserts.

Compared to Last Year

My views went up at the end of the year in 2011 too. I had about half the views and visitors in 2011. I've been updating my blog more in 2012 and sticking to a schedule so I think that helped the views and visits. The top referrers are about the same as last year.

Most Popular Entries

These entries from 2012 were the most popular:

Bookbinding Inspiration

Hanukkah Items

Basic Bookbinding Tutorial (Part 2)

If you have a blog, what were your statistics like for 2012?

2012 Shop Statistics

Every year, I write about the statistics of the previous year. Here are this 2012's statistics:

Visitors

I had 28 shop favorites, 147 listing favorites and 3 orders in 2012. Overall, views and sales were down a little from last year. Most people that came were from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. The top searches that referred my shop on Etsy were for journal, photo album and notebook.

Top Referrers

The top traffic sources were this blog, LinkReferral, StumbleUpon and Pinterest (which is about the same as last year).

Most Viewed Items

These two journals were viewed the most in my shop this year

Blue and White Belle Mini Journal



Leopard Print Journal



Top Favorited

These were my most favorited items on Etsy this year. I think the card was poplar because of Election Day. The box was a new listing this year.

Vote Black and Red Flat Card



Map of America Box



Check back for statistics of this blog. If you have an Etsy shop or business, how were your statistics this year?

2013 New Year's Business Resolutions

These are my business New Year's resolutions for 2013:

*I want to get:
- 300 likes on Facebook
- 550 admirers on Etsy
- 20 more mailing list subscribers
- 100 watchers on Storenvy
- at least 10 sales

*I want to do some paid advertising on other blogs or swap ads. I made a bunch of ad graphics and I want to start using them. If you're interested in swapping ads, let me know.    

*I want to continue consistently updating my social media such as my blog, Twitter and Facebook. I also want to keep my Etsy and Storenvy updated. I want to add a new item every week. 

*I want to make a website for Move the Needle so it's not just an Etsy shop. The website will have basic info about my shop, an e-commerce section so you can buy straight from my site and links to all the other places you can find me.

*I want to do another craft show and maybe sell some items in stores. I did one craft show last year, so I want to do at least one this year, but hopefully a few more.

If you have a business, what are your goals for the upcoming year?

Accomplishments in 2012

I wrote my resolutions for 2012 here. Here's what I accomplished this year:

*Instead of making a lot of new items this year, I mostly focused on updating my Etsy photos of existing items. I took new photos with my nicer camera which I think improve my photos a lot. I retook photos of all my items so I'm still working on editing photos and posting them up. You can see a before and after photo below:

*I also put the new photos on my Storenvy, Flickr and Facebook.

*Besides updating my photos, I updated the official Move the Needle logo (on my Etsy and Storenvy) and some other graphics. I made a bunch of advertisement graphics with my new photos which I'm going to use next year to promote my shop.

*I didn't use my Facebook a lot before. This year I updated my photo albums, linked my mailing list and and tried to get more fans by promoting my Facebook link.

*I think I made a lot of positive changes on this blog. I did more holiday specials and tutorials this year. Some tutorials I did were the bookbinding tutorial and color palette tutorial.

*I went to a craft show this year. You can read about the craft show here.

*I consistently updated my shops, blog and social media.

Overall, this was a year of improving things I already had and promoting my shop more. What are your Etsy/business accomplishments this year?

2013 Altered Moleskine Planners

I listed these custom altered Moleskine planners for 2013. I listed them by different types of Moleskine planners. You can see all the planners here. If you don't see the specific size or type of planner you want in these listings, you can always contact me to do a custom order. The photos are just examples of what I can do:

Custom Altered 2013 Extra Large Soft Cover Monthly Moleskine Planner


Custom Altered 2013 Large Soft Cover Monthly Moleskine Planner



Custom Altered 2013 Pocket Soft Cover Monthly Moleskine Planner




Custom Altered 2013 Pocket Hard Cover Horizontal Weekly Moleskine Planner



Do you have a planner for 2013?