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Despite what all the so-called internet gurus say, internet marketing is not as easy as collecting money while you sleep. No, we did not wake up today to piles of money being deposited into our personal bank accounts. Not yesterday, not today and probably not tomorrow! But that dream is still there and we continue to work on it hoping that someday all our hard work will pay off, big time!

Until then we’ll continue to do what we have always done, sell handmade jewelry and unique gift ideas. I guess what I’m trying to say is don’t quit your day job quite yet. A lot of people get fed up with their life and want to start something new. One of the easiest looking things to do seems to be working at home on an internet business. Looks can be deceiving and frustrating, very frustrating. The list of things to do never stops with an online business and it takes a long time to establish that internet empire. If we didn’t have an existing business we would have been broke a while ago.

The only ones making money on the internet seem to be people telling you how easy it is to make a million dollars online. There are so many scams that it becomes frustrating trying to do an honest business online. When all is said and done, it seems the only thing left to do is put ads on your site and make a little money to pay a few bills. That really wasn’t the plan we had in mind. We have worked hard to get traffic to our site to sell our handmade jewelry and unique gifts; we don’t want people clicking off our page to some other jewelry supplier. We want visitors to our site to become our customers. We have a 90% re-order rate with our wholesale jewelry and gifts.

Perseverance is a virtue and today I’m feeling virtuous (that doesn’t happen all that often!). I’m not ready to jump at that dangling carrot, I’m going to stick with it and keep doing whatever needs to be done to get quality customers to our site. I’m not going to give in to the lure of easy money. If we made a successful business offline, we are sure to be able to make a successful business online.

We initially went online so we didn’t have to print an 80 page catalog, the expense was killing us as we are constantly adding new products and handmade jewelry lines and revising items to make them sell faster. The website is so easy to keep up to date. We have saved a lot of money, quite a few trees and made it easier for our customers to order. Our website has done its job.

Our main source of targeted customers comes from Wholesale Jewelry and Gift Shows, but more and more we are getting inquiries from around the world because of our website. It takes a lot of time and SEO work to get the targeted traffic so don’t waste your efforts on the wrong keywords and phrases. Do your homework and you’ll get lasting results!

The effort you put into your website shows to your customers and the search engines as well. Approach it like a “real world” business and you will do well.

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When starting out in the handmade jewelry business or any business for that matter, look to the future by making sure to dot your i’s and cross all your t’s. There is no business that is immune to taxes so make sure all your books are in order from the start.

The best way to ensure that all the tax rules and regulations are being followed is to get your business a chartered accountant. They are more knowledgeable on tax matters and the required government paperwork. Although chartered accountants can be quite expensive it is an investment in a happy future.

Purchase a business accounting program. Everything may be easy to keep track of now but when your business grows it is too easy to forget important dates and information. We used to spend many hours every month trying to input invoices and amounts. With accounting programs everything is kept up to date and reminders such as due dates just pop up in front of you. This is a time saver and well worth the small investment.

Get a bookkeeper! Right from the start is much easier as there won’t be a backlog of transactions to input. Make sure to go with the accounting program that your bookkeeper is familiar with, just to lessen any learning curve. Everything will be input in the proper account and all bills and receipts will be reconciled at the end of every month.

Make sure your accounting is up to date. Make all payments and returns ready early, missed payments or late payments are red flags to the tax people. They see these as your inability to keep track of important information. If the tax people are continually seeing your business name next to red flags it won’t be long before they pay you a visit. No one is ever happy to see them at their door.

The tax people are becoming more diligent in tracking down home-based small business. Sometimes I think we all have a big bull’s eye on our forehead. It seems everyone you talk to has had a run in with the government, though few readily admit it. It feels like it’s only a matter of time. Make sure you are ready, better safe than sorry.

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If you make handmade jewelry or have a retail store that sells handcrafted artisan jewelry you need to be online! With millions of handmade jewelry websites how do you get your product seen online? It’s not going to be easy and it takes a lot of hard work, not to mention time. If you pay someone to get you to the first page it’s going to cost you. If you do it yourself it will take time, effort and a lot of reading, but it will be worth it and its kind of fun. Even though the competition is fierce, there is still room at the top if you want to play the online marketing game. Let’s play!

So where do you start? The first thing you will need to do is take great pictures of your handmade jewelry. “A picture is worth a thousand words” or not. Make sure the photos are in focus clearly showing your design. Don’t put jewelry on a rock or a hunk of wood, although it is very natural and artsy, it is too hard for people to make out in the seconds you have to catch their attention online. Your handmade jewelry should be on a plain background so it stands out clearly.

Now you need a website, if you’re just starting there are lots of free blogs out there. I prefer the WordPress.com, mostly because it’s easy and has lots of plug-ins to do all the SEO work for you. Once you are up and running you can invest more into the site but we are trying to save some money and do it all for free, for now.

Read, read and read more; you can never have too much information. The web is filled with great information; every time you see something new do a search until you understand what it means. SEO is the most important part of getting good search engine rankings. Make sure to have meta title, description and keywords tags. Don’t forget image alt attributes as well. Do your keyword research and write it into your content.

Off-site SEO factors means links to your site. This is probably the hardest and most time consuming because you need to get related sites to link to you. Make sure your site is ready and has good content that other sites will want to link to. Stick with it and bit by bit links will come. Check other related sites link pages to get more links. Make sure you have your target keywords in you link information.

Do all these things then continually read and update your site as you go; this is a continuing process always needing to be tweaked. Check your statistics to see what is working and what isn’t. Change the things that aren’t working.

Time is also an important factor. Everything takes time so try not to get frustrated when things don’t happen overnight. Patience is a necessary virtue in wholesale handmade jewelry and online marketing. Good luck to you in all your online marketing efforts!

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