Did you check out the Market Hub deal in artfire?

Now you can add links to a lot of your other stuffs over the net.

here's the forum post by the staff regarding the Market Hub

there are etsy, facebook, twitter, myspace, etc and they will show up in your product page on the lower right hand corner. it's the colorful icon over there. i even joined indiepublic just because AF had the icon! LOL. i only left out youtube since i didn't have any videos.

very cool! check it out :D

 I've started feeling like I'm in a little bit over my head.  Are these tools for our use or for our prospective clients?  Should I be signed up with Etsy, even though I've not heard much good about them?  And all these other "accounts", twitter, myspace, flikr, facebook, etc. -- why do I need to be signed up with them?  How does any one person keep up with all this online stuff AND still have time for creating AND hold down a full-time job, not to mention have some kind of life apart from all this?

 Is it just me, am I making a mountain out of a molehill, or is anyone else feeling the same?  

well, you don't have to have all of those accounts. they're just networking tools that AF added if you want people to find you else where. i just like seeing those little accounts active that's why i made the effort. lol. i don't really visit myspace anymore but i do use twitter as one of my marketing tools. so if people wants to follow me on twitter, they'd know which one is mine.

see it like: people not always visit your artfire but they could be a regular in one of those networking sites (facebook, myspace, twitter, flickr, youtube) and if you made an update in one of those sites, they might catch your update, you know what i mean? i try post my artfire products to facebook (using the share button on the left side) when i listed something new, and i also spread the links through twitter. who knows by doing so someone would see and like and buy.

there is no guarantee that by posting your product updates in those sites would generate you more sales but at least it would get you more place in the internet world. get your name out there. free advertising :)

if you prefer not to have any of those, that's fine too. :)

 Dawn - I am with you on this one. Between hubby, son, full time job, treasurer for our community building with is a volunteer position, trying to get decent pictures in 0 degrees yesterday, then editing, then posting, catching up here, checking e-mails to make sure that I have not missed notice of something, billing paying for home, totaling receipts etc for taxes, dog, cat, cleaning, laundry, etc, etc, add that to the headaches that have returned to some degree...

Yes Dawn I am with you on this. I would love to just do the creating and let someone take over the marketing and selling aspect. I wonder if I could talk my niece that just left college into moving in and trading her work for jewelry and a roof over her head that is not her mom & dad's? I am serious. I have given it some thought and I have really thought about it. I may really consider it as I have also been feeling a little overwhelmed.

Maybe I am onto something...

first please excuse me for not using capital letters where they should be, it is just too hard with only left hand in use.

no wonder you have headaches. you keep running into youself going around in circles. you need to delegate a few chores. girl you just keep banging you head against itself. i think your neice my just jump at the chance to help you market youself so you can get down to the reason for the business in the first place. does that make sense?

 Actually, I have slowed down. I stepped away from a couple of other committees at my son's school a couple of years ago that had me at the school almost every Friday or Saturday night for sporting events.

And to top it off, I am starting to have insomnia again...UGH!!!! I am going to talk to hubby tonight, then call my niece and see how it is going. I don't think her living at home will work very good. Her and her dad butt heads a lot to put it nicely. He is very controlling over every little thing. So sad! I have been at this pace for a few years and the headaches just started this past summer.

Anyway...I had some thoughts for some new pieces so I am going to try those tomorrow. I have not really set down and designed anything since right before Christmas. All I will say is it is out of my son's old gitar strings. We'll see how it works...

I am looking at reorganizing a few things. Hubby's hours are being cut one day every other week. He already helps with the cleaning, but he will help with laundry if I ask. That is an all day Sunday event. I only do laundry on Sundays so that I have full loads. Weird I know but it works for us.

Sorry I got off track!

Ladies I agree it does seem like an awful lot! I was thinking today that I had a beading project I really wanted to get to this week, and I simply didn't have the time. I really need to get some pics taken too, but that seem like the same story :)

On the other hand if you have social networks you are using anyway, I try to check my Facebook daily, then it might be a nice feature to set up with ArtFire. Especially if you just have to do a one time set up thing.  If only there were more hours in the day :)

RE: ArtFire.  Have a friend or two selling on ArtFire so I decided to check it out thinking this may be another good place to sell.  Started looking and decided to buy.  The first thing that turned me off as a buyer was that I had to register?  That's the last thing I want to do is fill out more memberships, remember more user names and passwords, all I wanted to do is buy something!  I quickly got turned off and didn't.

I've done tons (more time than I wanted to spend) on marketing research.  The checkout process is one of the most important things to a buyer.  You wouldn't think it was but it is.  They want checkout to be fast, simple and secure.  They don't want to spend extra time filling out pages or becoming members in order to purchase something. 

ArtFire seems to be a good sight, it's less expensive than others, but they need to do something about their checkout process.

i think most places that are formed by groups of sellers want you to fill out registration so it would be more secure and easier for the mother companies to track every purchase made. i think i had to register with ebay when i wanted to buy something from one of their sellers. as well with etsy. i remember some of my customers made an account in etsy just to buy my products. they didn't seem to mind doing it.

i think that's because they expect loyalty and they have feedback system for both buyers and sellers. buyers apparently love getting feedback too. some buyers actually left bad feedback to some sellers whining about why the sellers didn't left them any feedback.

also artfire would ban "naughty accounts" that are proven to join only to attack certain sellers. without memberships, that would be harder to do i think. maybe if it was a personal website then you wouldn't need to make any new accounts to buy something from them.

if you don't want to be bothered creating and remembering new usernames and passswords, just use the same name and passwords for every shopping site you're gonna register. :)

I'm with you Dawn!  It's hard enough trying to keep up with the few forums I use now, and I've honestly never even looked at Facebook or MySpace.  I know hubby has accounts there, but I couldn't be bothered.  On the other hand, how the heck do you get yourself noticed if you don't make yourself known outside the beading community?  I sent my info to all my friends and family, but I don't know how many will actually pass it on to other people.

I guess that's one of the hard parts about getting noticed.  I suppose there's no simple answer to it.