20 Things I learned from my first 1,000 Sales
When I first started this business, I was learning everything as I went. How to design, how to start a business, how to provide online customer design services, and so much more. I learned so much along the way! Here are 10 ideas that were “aha” moments for me, and I hope they help you too!
SET CLEAR BOUNDARIES
My hardest lessons were due to putting out products that I needed to customize without any rules listed on the product description. One of my first pre-designed sales didn’t mention number of revisions included, and after 16 revisions to her design, she said, “I think we’re making progress in the right direction!” I can’t even begin to tell you how this transaction made me want to give up and never do this again - but I realized this was my fault for not communicating what the parameters were for the design process! Once I stated in advance that up to 2-3 rounds of revisions were included and additional revisions were available for purchase, I rarely had anyone go over. Instead they were very clear from the get-go what they wanted!
EXPLAIN YOUR PROCESS
This goes hand-in-hand with setting clear boundaries. The more clear your process is, the fewer emails you will get with questions like, ‘How does this work?’ or ‘When will I hear back from you?’. When I first started, I couldn’t believe the amount of time I spent emailing and updating all of the customers where I was at with their designs. After I put my process in the description page and began to communicate my process more effectively, I eliminated at least 90% of those emails!
CREATE NEW DESIGNS THAT YOU WISH YOU COULD BUY
Over the years, my most successful products were ones that I wanted for myself but couldn’t find anywhere else. You would be surprised that if you really want it, others probably do too! And when you are the ONLY ONE offering it, it makes you much easier to find. My only regret here is that many times I was the first to offer something and didn’t really work on marketing it or offering variations. I was so so so busy working on custom requests all the time that I almost never got to expand on original ideas before other designers grabbed hold of my idea and made something similar/better.
CREATE YOUR OWN WEBSITE
While I’m so grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow on other platforms, my biggest regret is not getting my own website sooner! I was selling things in 4 different places that all required a lot of time and effort to customize and learn to use. I wasn’t able to grow or raise my prices because of the competition in each of them charging much less than I could afford to. Instead, I should have had my own website where I could sell without worrying about being listed side-by-side with other designers, and spent all of that time marketing my designs instead.
RAISE YOUR PRICES
As to my last point, having reasonable prices to actually earn an income is essential! Without the right prices you are not making money - and without a profit you are not running a successful business. This sounds so simple but I spent years not charging enough because I was scared to raise or was following the lead of others. I think if I’d had my own website, I would have reached my goals much sooner!
MAKE A MARKETING PLAN
My first few years I never had a plan. I just created things, listed them for sale, worked on custom orders that came in, and hoped for the best. I was growing, but not at a pace that would allow me to reach my $ goals! Once I sat down and analyzed the products that were making money, researched how to market them and automate those processes, I finally started reaching the goals I set!
GET YOUR PICTURE TAKEN
I knew I needed to put my face out there, but I kept putting it off! I kept thinking, it’s not that important or ‘I’ll do that eventually’...I finally realized there is no time like NOW to just get it done. And now that I have that photo shoot behind me, I’m so happy to have photos to use and wish I had done it sooner! If your small business is online, people like to see that you are a real person and showing yourself is part of your brand.
PINTEREST
I can’t even begin to tell you how much of a difference using Pinterest for marketing has been for me. I wasn’t even putting my products on Pinterest in the beginning; customers were saving my designs on there and then other people found me that way. After several people told me they found me via Pinterest I started uploading my designs there and the traffic that it brought me was so rewarding for the effort it took to do so!
RE-DESIGN
Every year I used analytics to determine what wasn’t selling or bringing traffic (was anyone looking, saving, pinning, buying it?) and rather than tossing everything I tried to improve the design. Adjust the color, update to current fonts, make better example pictures. Giving these a fresh new look not only improved my whole collection, it brought more clients and moved up my rankings on platforms and SEO online.
NICHE
I was always hearing that you should pick a niche but didn’t know what to narrow down to! I was offering so many different products and trying to get everyone’s attention - because I was scared if I picked the ‘wrong’ thing I’d corner myself into too small of a market. But, once I narrowed down I became much easier for the companies I actually wanted to work with to find me!
ONLY OFFER WHAT YOU WANT TO DO
This
SHARE, SHARE, SHARE!
This is another point about marketing. For years I was so excited about design that is all I did. I worked on making new designs and uploading them to multiple platforms, which brought in waves of clients that wanted custom work. I was always so thrilled to have been found by people who liked my work and wanted to work with me that I said ‘yes’ to everything that came my way. Every time I was caught up on custom work I worked on new designs, never marketing and rarely showing off anything I’d already designed. If no one can find you, how can they buy what you have to offer? Once I spent time making mockups and featured my designs on my own website, I started seeing more steady streams of traffic - clients were finding me and buying things I’d already designed.
“Thank you so much for clearing explaining everything! You made this process so easy.”
13. KEEP UPDATING YOUR PROCESS
14. CONTINUE LEARNING!
15. DELAGATE
This is advice I still need to take. Find help to take over the tasks in your business that don’t serve you well. Stop ‘working for yourself’. I know so many take the path of hiring employees but as a mom that wanted to spend time with my little one and had such odd hours, I looked for different ways to free up things on my plate. Some of the best moves were: finally handing over my taxes to a professional instead of doing myself, partnering with other vendors so I could do what I’m good at - while they do things for me that I dreaded or took me too long to complete because I didn’t like or wasn’t good at those things.
16. RESEARCH TRENDS
Another no-brainer, but one of the platforms I sold on released reports about what people were searching for. This is GOLD! I would read that report and then make something to answer what customers were looking for, and these items were fun to make and sold really well! For example, one summer the report said there was a very high number of searchers for things with Llamas. I would never have thought about llamas, but I just threw together a few invitations with llamas (in my design & style) and it brought so much interest and many sales to my store!
17. QUICK TURNAROUND
This can be hard to do but I cannot stress enough how important this is. When someone is shopping, they are excited! The faster you can get their order to them, the closer they will stay to that same excitement level. But, if they don’t hear back from you and/or have to wait a long time for their product, their excitement fades. The faster you respond & provide, the more likely they will be to leave a positive review and share your product with friends & family. If someone is on the fence about purchasing, your quick response will likely be the deal breaker for their decision!
18. CUSTOMER SERVICE
I would hope this is a ‘given’ but it bears repeating…I read that the service you provide is a part of your BRAND. I love this idea. So, keep in mind that part of your brand will be providing excellent service; effectively communicating with customers, providing products or services within the agreed upon parameters, and striving to exceed expectations. I’m definitely not perfect, but I really care about my clients and try really hard to treat them well.