Photos and Marketing, Woot Woot!

Finally!  The sun is back out, and I can go outside and set up for photographing the new earrings!  I want all of my product photos to be consistent for etsy and other online venues, so I've been waiting for a pretty day for shooting.  I had high hopes about yesterday afternoon.  It was nice out, but lots of clouds passing by, and just not consistent light.  I know, I know, I could set up a photo booth and use artificial light that would always be consistent, but the glow of natural light is just so much more pleasing to me.
So I occupied myself otherwise.  On these past couple of dreary days, I set up and took a few shots by the window, just for business cards and promo materials.  (It took a good deal of photoshopping to get brightness I wanted, but I think it will work just fine for this purpose.)

Here's what I came up with for a new business card

I thought it was kinda cool to use the photo of the actual earrings as a graphic element.  It's important to show off your style and your actual work if possible, and I think this was a good way to do both.  And I had a bit of help on text sizes and placement from my marketing whiz sister.  Thanks, Cat! 

And I thought my web banner should coincide, something to carry the theme through all my marketing.  And I will extend it to other things in the future.  So here's the banner for my etsy site (which will have new pieces up this weekend!  I'll post the link as soon as I get them up!)

So I'm pretty pleased with all that. And here's an interesting marketing tip I got from an etsy blogger:  She said that one thing that really impresses your buyers and makes them want to be a repeat customer is just to add a little something extra, a little piece of SWAG or something that comes in their order. And to make it even more useful to you as a seller, make it something that they might actually want to use so your name gets out there even more.  Something like a pin or sticker or a magnet, just something small but interesting-looking, so that when their friends see it, they'll ask about it, and your marketing is working!  Well, I wanted to include a link to that post, but I can't find it now.  Sorry.  But that's the general idea. 

I like the idea of magnets.  I mean, if i ordered something and got a cool magnet for free, I would totally stick it on my fridge.  Right?  Sure, postcards are great, but they don't stick by themselves... So I'm thinking I might order a few magnets in the style of the business card when I order the cards from Vista Print.  They do a great job for a great price.  If you want to use your own design like I am, you just upload it right to their site and they'll print it up. You can even get free business cards if you like one of their 45 templates and are willing to let them print their logo on the back.  Doesn't work if you want to use your own design like I do, but nonetheless, a viable option.  Just puttin' that out there.

So there's a little bit from the marketing end, and I'll be posting photos of finished earrings later on!  Thanks for reading!