Work Work Work!

It seems like pretty much all I do is work. ;) I don't mind it though...I enjoy what I do. But running a business is definitely time-consuming. There's always so much to do...and so much more that CAN be done. Sometimes I struggle with deciding what to focus on. It all ends up working out though. Sometimes I'll get burnt out with one particular thing and I can just move on to a different thing. 

Honestly...my favorite things are a lot of the boring parts. I enjoy updating my spreadsheets and organizing everything. I enjoy coming up with ways to make things more streamlined. I've spent many years of my life in administrative assistant or office manager roles and it's something I do really well. I get it from my mama. :) 

My sticker shop is doing well. I'm getting pretty consistent sales and nearly every day. Yesterday I had four sales in one day and then another after midnight before I went to bed and woke up to another one this morning. :) Right now I'm at 135 orders and 159 sales (not including when people order multiple quantities of the same item...I really wish Etsy would change that!). I've also sent orders to 39 states so far! My "goal" is to reach all 50 states plus Washington DC by the end of the year. It's not really a goal I have a whole lot of control over...but it'd be pretty cool. 

One thing I would like to work on is social media promotion...but I just don't really make the time or effort. Maybe that'll be a goal for next year! My goal this year is to break 200 orders...and at the rate I'm going, I should be able to achieve that goal. Each month has seen an increase in sales from the month before. Well...except April. April was kind of a dud month where I didn't get any sales for a couple weeks in the middle of the month. But that's not unusual for retail. And actually...summer is normally a pretty slow time for retail, but it's been pretty good for me. So I wonder if things will pick up even more in the fall and leading up to Christmas. :) 

I have some fall/Halloween designs that I'll be listing soon but I want to work on some specific back to school things as well. Right now I'm kinda focused on some administrative things in my shop, though. I am wanting to redo some of my mock-ups and retake my size comparison photos. But before I can do that...I'm going through my "backgrounds" graphics because I started with over 30k files and my computer is not wanting to let me look through them all without freezing up for a few seconds and then going back to the beginning of the folder. :P So I'm categorizing them into subfolders based on the type of background they are and that's starting to help. 

So...that's my "to-do list" right now. And on that note...I'm gonna get back to work! :) 

Ugh...4th of July

I'm just not a fan of the 4th of July. I'm not a person who likes loud noises...and it's SO LOUD for an entire week around here. And of course no one can actually follow the law and stop shooting fireworks off at 10pm/12am (depending on the night). The other night there were people still shooting off fireworks at 3am. And since the artillery shell fireworks are legal here...there's a LOT of noise. We also aren't far from the park where the city has their fireworks show. So yeah...I'm just not a fan.  

Nova hates fireworks. For about two weeks after the first day people start shooting off fireworks, she is very apprehensive about going outside. And if there's a loud noise while she's outside, she immediately goes to the back door wanting in. We give her trazadone which has been helping quite a bit. Without it she just wanders around the house whining and hiding in the hallway any time there is a noise. It's interesting...Boz is the generally fearful pup, but he's not scared of fireworks. He'll hang out with us outside and just goes about his business like it's no big deal. Then Nova pretty much isn't scared of anything EXCEPT fireworks (and thunder around fireworks time or when it's super loud any other time). She's a daddy's girl so when she's scared...that's who she wants to be with. So she's mostly been relaxing with Johnny in the bedroom for the last week. She wouldn't even come in to eat until after midnight...and she LOVES her food. She's the one who tells me when it's time to eat (sometimes before it's actually time to eat) by standing in the kennel and staring at me until I go get the food. But she wasn't even doing that until after the fireworks stopped. :( After it stopped raining this afternoon, people started shooting off fireworks again. So I had to give her some more trazadone and actually let her in the bedroom with Johnny while he was working so she'd calm down and go to sleep. Hopefully people will actually stop after today...but I'm not holding my breath or anything. They were supposed to stop at 10pm...but they're still going on at almost 11:30pm.  

And on top of that, I've had a migraine for the last three days now. The fireworks definitely weren't helping that, either. We didn't end up doing anything for 4th of July. We watched Tom Segura's new special with Aubry and that's about it. Interestingly enough...most of the bits were the same ones from his show that we went to with Aubry last year. It was still good though. :) We watch a lot of stand-up comedy specials, but he's our favorite comedian. 

Other than that, I've just been busy with work stuff...largely a lot of administrative stuff. On the 1st of every month I reconcile my spreadsheets and my Etsy account. Then I make sure all my receipts are logged on my spreadsheet and update my profit-loss sheet for the month. After spending the last almost two years buying new equipment, testing quality of different materials, etc...it's nice to be showing a profit at the end of the month now. :)  

I revamped the pricing for my chose-your-own bundles. They're now specifically 30-45% off depending on how many stickers are ordered. I also went through my profit calculation spreadsheet and updated the pricing for all my postage since it's about to change again. I printed more packaging stickers and worked on some new cardstock folders to send in my rigid mailers that go as a package instead of a letter. My rigid mailers are slightly smaller than the half-letter size kraft envelopes I send my regular sticker orders in. So I condensed my regular sticker folders (a letter-size piece of cardstock folded in half) so that I can get two top-fold cards out of one letter-size piece of cardstock. I don't send many packages out that way...but now the packaging will match my brand more when I do. 

I'm Star Seller again for July...and I've already met the requirements for Star Seller for August, too. :) Orders keep coming in pretty regularly. I'm up to 121 orders and 141 sales so far this year in my sticker shop. My views and favorites have been steadily increasing...which is awesome to see. I'm much better at the office management side of business than I am at sales...but I'm working on it! Global average conversion rates for e-commerce is 2.9% and for Etsy...a typical conversion rate is about 1-5% (generally speaking...the higher the number, the better). For my sticker shop...currently my conversion rate for the entire year so far is 6.1%, 7.8% for the last 30 days, and 8.8% for the last week. :) 

I liked doing sublimation when I first started CandiMaker...but I really, really love running my sticker shop. I like coming up with designs, making the stickers, thinking of new products...I just enjoy all of it. Plus I have a wonderful husband who loves and supports me...and that makes all the difference in the world. :) 

Father's Day Weekend!

We mostly just relaxed for Father's Day weekend. It was also a three-day weekend (yesterday was Juneteenth). We mostly just relaxed all weekend. Friday night I made creamy chicken enchiladas and we watched Where the Crawdads Sing which Aubry recommended to us quite awhile ago. It was a really good movie. This weekend we also watched Mindcage which was pretty interesting. It has John Malcovich in it and we're big fans of his work. Oh and we watched Gifted which was a really sweet movie. 

Saturday Aubry went out to my mom's house to give my dad his father's day gift. She got him a cool mug and his favorite peanut M&Ms. I also had her take some "dad" and "papa" stickers that I made since she was already going out there. She'd already given Johnny his father's day gifts... a travel coffee cup that says "Best Dad Ever" and then a leather coaster thing that says "Best Dad in the Whole Wide House" lol. Johnny is definitely the best dad I could've ever hoped to have for my kids. And they definitely like him...especially because he has usually been the good cop to my bad cop. ;) 

Aubry brought home a pool noodle from my mom for me because TWICE now my phone screen has broken from falling off the couch onto the legs of my laptop desk in the living room. Aubry happened to get a new sharp knife so I had her cut the pool noodle down to size and cut a slit down the side so I could wrap it around the legs. It doesn't really match our living room decor...but it's much safer for my phone. ;) LOL. And I think mom will have some black foam with sticky strips when they're done with a project at my grandma's house...so they're going to let me have any leftovers to replace the bright blue pool noodle held in place with packing tape. ;)  

Other than that, I've pretty much just been working on CandiMaker stuff. As of today, June has been my most successful month on Etsy. :) Right now I'm at 100 orders and 118 sales in my CandiMakerStickers shop. Currently, I have 170 listings in that shop and I've been regularly releasing new designs...usually a few a week. I've also maintained my Star Seller status for the next review period. So that's pretty awesome. Oh and I've been tracking my sales as far as which states I've shipped orders to...and I'm at 35 out of 51 (including DC) so far! I'm hoping to reach all 50 states plus DC by the end of the year. 

Aubry's 21st birthday is also this week! Tonight I'm making her favorite food for dinner: Crackpot Chicken. She likes a lot of the things I make...but that one is definitely her favorite. She also picked Applebees for going out to dinner with my grandparents. 

Well...that's about it for now. :)

 

Well that was lots of fun! :P

Nothing like an impromptu complete cleaning of the refrigerator. :P We noticed that the fridge wasn't staying cool like it should be. So...of course I googled it. :P I thought maybe the freezer was too full and blocking the vents...since the freezer was still staying cold just fine. We watched to see if it improved, but it didn't. So we googled some more and then assumed the fan in the back of the fridge was probably frozen over. We had to remove everything from the fridge so that we could take the panel off behind the shelves and defrost the fan. While we were at it...I decided to take the opportunity to wash the fridge shelves and drawers. Our fridge is actually a bit too big for the space it's in (that'll teach me to impulse buy a fridge without measuring the space first)...so we can't open the refrigerator door wide enough to remove the shelves without moving the whole fridge. So...since we had to move the fridge anyway, I decided I might as well make the most of it. :P So...now we have a clean AND working fridge again. :) Luckily it happened on Thursday right BEFORE I was going to get groceries on Friday and not when we had a whole fridge full of food I just bought. :P We only had to throw out about half a gallon of milk, some eggs, a couple pieces of lunchmeat, some cheese slices, and a container of sour cream. Oh and the last little bit of Aubry's cookie dough. So...not too bad. And we'd just finished the huge bowl of leftover creamy chicken and noodles the night before...so I'm glad that didn't go to waste either. We've had the fridge for almost 10 years now without this happening at all...so hopefully we won't have that problem again for awhile! It's been a really nice refrigerator...aside from the fact that the ice maker stopped working a few years after we bought it and Samsung's official solution is to buy a whole new door. :P I did find a possible fix for it at one point, but I just haven't bothered to actually try it yet. 

I've spent the week mostly working on CandiMakerDesigns and getting some new transfers uploaded as well as renewing some of the expired digital downloads. I started getting visits to my listings right away so I'm happy about that. I've been needing to work on the SEO in my sublimation shops but just hadn't gotten around to it...so I was able to do that as I was renewing the expired listings. My stats for the last week are back up to what they were the previous year when I was more active in my shop. So that's a good sign. :) It's easier to find the motivation to keep going when you can see actual progress to show that you're on the right track. AND...today I got another order for custom transfers from the same wonderful customer who placed a large custom transfer order last weekend right before I merged my shops. It definitely makes me happy. :)

I've also had several sticker orders to mail out this week...four went to the post office today! I'm up to 102 sales for CandiMakerStickers now...which has surpassed the 100 sales in CandiMakerDesigns. :) This morning I had to print some more packaging stickers and the cardstock folders that I ship my stickers in. Then I printed two sticker orders and got them packaged and dropped off at the post office. Now I'm working on some new sticker designs for the rest of the weekend. :)  

And on that note...back to work! 

And now it's June!

Things are going well with my work. CandiMaker Stickers achieved Star Seller for the first time on June 1st, so that was pretty neat. :) It's basically just a badge in your shop which shows that you have mostly 5-star reviews (all of mine are 5 stars), answer all messages within 24 hours, and ship all packages on time with tracking. I always meet those metrics in all of my Etsy shops. However, you also have to have at least 5 orders and $300 in sales during the review period...and that has been the factor as far as why I haven't gotten Star Seller in any of my Etsy shops until now. I sell items that have a very low price point (most items are less than $5)...so it takes quite a few orders to meet the minimum. But this month, I did it! :) 

I opened CandiMaker Stickers on January 13, 2023 and had 8 orders that first half-month. In February, I had another 8 orders. Then in March I had 22 orders including my first two multi-quantity orders totaling over $10. April was slower with only 16 orders...most of which were at the beginning and the end of the month. I also got my first orders for the custom name stickers that I'd added. :) And then in May, I had another 22 orders which included several multi-product orders including magnetic bookmarks AND a repeat customer (other than my sister). Her first order was ten 2" rare disease awareness stickers and then less than 2 weeks later she ordered three different 3" stickers and my first magnetic bookmark sale! And four days later, someone else ordered two more magnetic bookmarks, which prompted me to revamp my magnetic bookmarks packaging to match the vendor/wholesale packaging that I have for my stickers. And now I've already had several orders for the start of June. As of today, I'm at a total of 81 orders and 96 sales. Make that 82 orders and 97 sales! I literally just received another sticker order. :) Oh, and "sales" means the number of items sold...although an order that has multiple quantities of the same item only counts as 1 item for some reason. So the order above where she ordered ten of the same sticker, that results in only 1 sale. But her second order for three different stickers and a magnetic bookmark...that one counts as 4 sales. 

Ever since I started CandiMaker Stickers, I've paid a lot less attention to my other two Etsy shops. CandiMaker Designs has slowed significantly. I still had several orders between January and March for my He Is Risen design, which has been the most popular since January 2022. Then I sold a few other designs in April...but it's been pretty dead since then. I've also not uploaded a new design since I opened my sticker shop...which definitely has an effect on sales. And then in CandiMaker Transfers, I get about one order per month. I made a lot of changes to CandiMaker Transfers this year. My prices in that shop were pretty low to start (but pretty much on-par with my competitors), because I hoped that it would encourage multi-quantity purchases (since shipping is a flat fee regardless of how many items are ordered)...but that wasn't the case. So what I did was increase my individual pricing and then offered a far more deeply discounted rate for 10-packs...which has been working out a lot better. 

I've been thinking a lot about whether or not I want to continue offering sublimation transfers. If not, I can switch my sublimation printer back over to a pigment printer...as it prints larger pages and is a lot faster than my current pigment printer. But I didn't want to do anything until I used all the brand new ink that I'd just put in my sublimation printer. Since I haven't been getting frequent orders, that's taken awhile. :P BUT...yesterday I got an order for SEVENTY total pages of custom 11x17 and 13x19 transfers! I got them all printed today and dropped them off at the post office before they closed. I'm taking this large order as a sign that I should keep my sublimation printer going...at least for now. :)

However, I do think I'm going to switch back to combining my digital download and printed transfer Etsy shops. It will be easier from an administrative perspective to maintain two Etsy shops rather than three...especially since CandiMakerDesigns and CandiMakerTransfers products are so closely related. So I'm going to be working on that this week. 

In other news, we will hopefully soon have a riding lawn mower! My parents found one at a garage sale that needed a battery. So if my dad can get it going, we'll finally have a riding lawn mower! We have a fairly large lot so it'll be a lot better than the push mower, that's for sure. Hopefully we'll have good luck with it...our house tends to be the place where lawn mowers go to die (even if brand new!). :P I think we've had, like, 6 different lawn mowers in the last 10 years...two or three of them we bought brand new. So we shall see! 

Bozley turned THREE years old on June 1st! He's been doing really well. He's eating a lot better lately, too! He would rarely finish his entire bowl of food and I'd have to try to get him to finish it again later...but this week he's been eating it all! We still feed the dogs twice a day...and Nova still tells us whenever she's ready to eat. ;) One morning last week when Johnny had a doctor appointment, we got up earlier than usual. Nova was ready to eat right away so they had breakfast. Then I had a headache so I laid down while Johnny was gone. Well...when we got up she wanted to eat breakfast again. LOL. She didn't get another breakfast...but the rest of the day she kept trying until it was finally dinner time. ;) 

We finished watching Manifest this past weekend. They released the final 10 episodes of season 4. It was pretty good. I was SO tired of the Angelina storyline, but I like how it all eventually played out. I really liked the ending. Actually...it's kinda funny because the short story that I wrote in 7th grade (based on a recurring dream I had as a child/teen) was basically the same ending. I can't really go into much more detail though without spoiling the ending. ;) 

I've also gone back to watch Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. I loved that show when I was a kid. I think a lot of kids get their ideas about relationships from watching Disney movies and other fairytales...but I think the Dr. Mike and Sully relationship was the fairytale relationship in my mind when I was little. ;) It's amazing all the social and political issues that show touched on that is still relevant today...like banning books. :P It was one of my favorite shows as a kid. That was back when you watched cable TV and could record shows with a VCR...and my mom recorded every single one! 

Well...I think I'm going to get back to work on CandiMaker stuff. I hope everyone has a good week!