Welcome to the Merriweather Council Blog
3 Things to Consider Before Investing in Your Handmade Business | Episode 142
I’m excited to dig into the big sometimes-scary topic of investing in your handmade business today. For the past ten (nearly 11) years, I have been operating and making financial decisions about my businesses. I have spent about half that time working...
entrepreneurship
podcast
empowerment
diy & education
Yes, You Should Always Fully and Properly Categorize Your Etsy Listings
Rumors, myths, and flat-out falsehoods (that’s a nice way of saying lies) about Etsy come into our inbox daily. We’ve addressed many Etsy rumors and myths before, but recently, we received a question about a new one that I had not seen or heard before. I won’t lie; this one had me shook. “Hey, Danielle! I recently was advised not to fully categorize my items on Etsy or to categorize them randomly so that Etsy wouldn’t publish similar listings on my item page.” My jaw dropped, my spine...
When is a Good Time to Run a Sale in Your Handmade Shop?
One of the tenants of my religion is that handmade business owners should not lead with discounts. I find opt-in coupons particularly offensive because they devalue your work from the start. When you are trying to build a base of ideal customers, people paying full price is pretty important! I’m sure we can all agree that having customers pay full price and not need a discount in order to buy our work is an ideal situation. Other kinds of coupons we discourage handmade business owners from...
Should You Use Etsy or Shopify in Your Handmade Business?
Recently, we published a story to our Instagram account to answer a prevalent question we get: 'should I use Etsy or Shopify for my handmade business?' Our answer to that elicited such an interesting response. “I had not thought of it this way…” (Something we always like to hear! It means we are breaking through to new ideas.) We are so glad to know that handmade business owners are interested in Etsy are ALSO interested in Shopify. However, asking which one they should use is not the...
hey, i’m danielle
A maker, craft business ‘biz bestie’ and educator who loves iced americanos and pop music.
My first year in business, I made a whopping $4,000 in revenue from my handmade business (that’s not even enough to support my Starbucks habit). In year two, I earned almost $80,000 in revenue! And guess what? I did NOT make $80K with the same approach that I used to make $4K. Not even close!
Since I saw such a drastic transformation from year one to year two in my business, I know I have to share what I learned about turning a crafty tendency into profits with you (so, if you’re anything like me, you can support your Starbucks habit, too).
Be inspired and supported as a maker through The Merriweather Council blog and podcast where I share insights from my 8+ years experience selling handmade work online and working with hundreds of students to do the same.
