Achieve Your Traffic and Sales Goals with Crafts

As promised we're going to follow different paths today in reaching goals set by you for your craft site. Whether your craft site is just for people to come visit and comment, a crafts site that wants visits and is also doing a little affiliate marketing on the side, or is a crafts site that is looking to turn a profit, there's something here for everyone. Each one of these topics I could write for days on, but that's a bit much, you just want to create! Instead I'm putting them all into a simple bullet list so that you can print out and tape up next to your computer or craft station to remind you and inspire you!

Getting more visitors, comments, sales and raves on your crafts site

Encouraging Comments:

• Make commenting as easy as possible. No required sign ups, sign ins or captchas (those little boxes you have to fill out with random numbers and letters)


• To protect yourself from spam comments, utilize a spam catching plugin or widget that comes with your site's blogging software or the site software.


• Make the spam filters medium or nice, don't be too mean to start out with.


• When someone comments, always reply.


• Make the comment box or link prominent on the site. Don't hide it or use light colored text.


• Go out to other sites and other crafters similar to yours. Look at what they have, find something you like and leave a comment with your URL. Use Google Reader/RSS Feeds to bring in a continual stream of crafty news. I have one set up for the keyword "glue gun crafts" so that when someone uses that word in their post, I'll know!


• Sign up for RSS feeds of sites that you like and skim that once a day. If something catches your attention, visit that site and check it out.


• Be specific and honest with your comments. Don't spam! Tell them what you liked or if you have a question, ask it!

• Submit your site URL to crafter or vendor directories. If you sell or make blown glass, find a directory of glass blowers and get into it. Use Google's Directory search.


• Blog or write about other crafters in the same field and let that crafter know that you featured them.


• Create a badge or button for your site so that when you blog about another crafter they can embed that button on their site. Their readers will see it and want to know more too!



• Submit specific articles or craft pieces that you're proud of to sharing sites like StumbleUpon, Mixx and Mint


• Brag (modestly) about yourself and work in social forums like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace


• Make yourself a Fan Page in Facebook


• Submit your site's URL to Google, Yahoo and Bing search engines (it's free!) This helps the search engines find you faster. You only need to do this once though.


• Ask a fellow blogger or craft site to feature you!


• Have a blogroll or sites your like list on your site. Let the sites you've added know that you added them through a comment or email.


• Join a few forums about your craft medium and join the conversation. Fill out your profile as much as possible so that when fellow forum chatters want to know why you're so great, they'll come visit your site!


• Purchase cheap pay per click ads to bring in visitors. Look for free coupons first though!


• Set up an RSS Feed for your site and select that it shows the partial entry, not the full. If it's partial and the person wants to know more, they'll click through to the site.


• Use tags on all posts or projects. This helps RSS readers, alerts and search engines figure out what you post is about quickly and enables them to process and pass it on.


• Use no more than 5 tags on any given post, project or product. Be a little bit general, so if you wrote a post on fall wreaths- use the tags like crafts, craft projects, fall crafts and home decor.

• Place ad blocks in sensible areas. Like midway inside of a post or content on the site or in the sidebar.


• Experiment with different ad sizes, like 200x350 one week and 468x60 the next.


• If you don't have a search feature on your site already built in, use Google's free search box. They show ads in the free version on every search result, but you get a piece of the click!


• Blend the ads in with your site, they need to stand out a little to catch a visitor's attention, but not punch them in the face like a flash banner for Viagra.


• Choose banners/ads that fit your audience. Showing ads for home loans on your site about Halloween crafts doesn't make a lot of sense. If the ads are being served dynamically (as in you put a block of code on the site and the advertiser is picking them for you-- it's time to find a new advertiser. I recommend Google AdSense.)


• Sign up for specific vendor affiliate sites like Pepperjam, Amazon Associates, Google Connect Commerce and Share a Sale. There you can apply to specific vendors and use banners made by them to put on your site. So instead of guessing who or what might show up, you apply to the Sizzix program and show scrapbooking supplies banners on your site about scrapbooking.


• Write an affiliate targeted post once in awhile. If you use a Cricut at home and love it- write about it! Then instead of linking to the Cricut site, use an affiliate code from Amazon Associates. This way if someone buys a Cricut on your recommendation, you get a piece of the sale!

Making craft sales for yourself

• Don't require an account or sign up to buy from you. It can be an option, but let people checkout as guests


• It's all about the cart. If people can't add things to the cart, see what they added and checkout quickly, they're not going to buy.


• Don't default to yes! If you have a newsletter, email list or terms and conditions, let people check the check boxes they want to check.


• If you can, keep checkout short and sweet. 5 pages is too many to fill out for a purchase. Amazon didn't create one click check out just because.


• Have specials. People love to think they're getting a deal, discount or special. Even if it's just a little one.


• Be upfront with your return policy and shipping costs. Be specific and place that information in a sensible place- preferably all on it's own page of the site.


• Watch those shipping costs. One of the top reasons people abandon shopping carts is when they see how much shipping will cost. Yahoo did a study on this.


• Write product descriptions that use your craft keywords, but are also to the point, easy to read and informative.


• Highlight unique features or aspects of your craft. If it's a one of a kind, mention that. If it uses all recycled materials, bring it up.


• Provide creation details! If it takes you 10 hours to create one, say so! Don't just price it at $200 and hope that visitors will figure it out.


• Outline the process. If you own your own sheep, shear them, spin the wool and dye it yourself before knitting that sweater....let that be known. I know I'm more impressed already!


• Keep a list of emails of people that order from you. A few times a year, send them an email (undisclosed recipient list of course) with a special offer for returning customers.


• Images are ultra important. No one will buy if they're not sure what they're buying. Images are so important that I am going to take a whole post to talk about them later. For now, just make sure there is more than one image of your craft, from different angles and that the image is clean. Not fuzzy, blurred or out of focus.

I think that's enough for now. This should give any crafter a great start on getting their crafts site in front of more eyes!

Tags: glue+gun+crafts, crafts, search+engine+optimization, crafting,