CitizenKate

Now that we've had the Leatherworker.net business directory up and running more than a month, and a few of you have set up your listings, we're already starting to see some trends developing in what listings seem to be drawing the most traffic, and what you can do to improve the performance of your directory listing. Just to give you an idea of what we're seeing so far, as of March 6, with just the few listings we have so far, our listings have received almost 7,000 hits, and almost 3,500 of those resulted in web site click-outs. A hit is when someone clicks the title of a listing to view the description and contact information. A click-out is when someone viewing a listing clicks on the link to visit the lister's web site. We also keep track of what is called a click-through rate, which is the percentage of listing hits that get click-outs. It helps us determine how effective the ad is, or how likely the ad is going to produce a sale. So far, the overall click-through rate for text listings in the directory is running around 51%, which is a staggering rate, compared to traditional pay-per-click advertising (such as we offer on the forum). But even without the stats, we see the inquiries coming in, some involving volume work, and people are already telling us they've gotten orders from people who found them in the directory. Considering we're just getting started, that's a very good sign! That sounds great, but why isn't my listing getting that kind of traffic? One thing a lot of people need to realize is that a banner ad or directory listing is not a magic bullet. Just having one there is not going to guarantee you're going to get more sales. What you put - or don't put - in that listing does affect how many shoppers will click that site link, send that email, or pick up the phone. All listings are not equal. There are some listings that are attracting a lot more traffic (and business) than others. The good news is, you have a lot of control over what to put in that listing to improve its performance. Here are some tips to keep in mind when setting up or modifying your directory listings: Use the logo box. Use the "logo" box in your listing to upload an image of your work, which will appear in the listing. This will make your listing more attractive, and serve as an enticement to click your web site link to see more of your work. Include a description. My first tip for a good listing description is: include one. This seems pretty obvious to me, but I'm amazed how many listings have nothing written in the description box to tell shoppers about what you're offering for sale. Not surprisingly, these are the listings that get the least number of click-outs. Most don't get any. Don't expect the listing title to do it all. Use all the words you have available to you to promote your work. Include a call to action. Write a description that urges people to visit your web site, send you an email, or pick up the phone and call. I know most of you will think this wouldn't make any difference at all. I know I didn't at first. In marketing, this is a "call to action", and I found out after years of working with pay-per-click advertising, that it does encourage people to take that next step. Sometimes all it takes is a simple suggestion. Toot your horn! Write a description that "toots your horn". Sometimes it amazes me what a humble bunch of people we have here at Leatherworker.net - never quite happy with their own work, despite how others admire it, which is a sign of a true artist and is the reason your work possesses the quality it does. But when you're trying to sell your work, that's a BAD thing! When you're selling your work, you need to focus - just long enough to write your listing description - on what you (secretly) LOVE about your work, and what you know others love about it. Use enough keywords. Here's a really sad reality: About 95% of all the searches done in the directory for specific items are coming back empty. And a lot of them are searching for things that are offered by makers or businesses in the directory, or searching for specific makers or businesses that we know are members of Leatherworker.net. It's a sad reality because this represents a lot of missed opportunities to get found by your customer. It means a lot of you are being searched for, but not being found. Adding keywords to the keyword box in your listing will help directory shoppers find you via the search function. What keywords should you enter? It's pretty simple: choose words that people shopping for what you offer would search for. Do you specialize in holsters? Then at least one of your keywords should be "holsters". If you make lots of different items, try to include any other terms that are inclusive of the range of what you are offering, such as "equine", or "outdoor sporting". A Basic Listing can have up to 10 individual keywords. You can also use phrases that are more than one word, but each word will count towards the 10 word limit. Each search word or phrase should be entered with a comma to separate each one. What's the difference between keywords and meta-keywords? The search terms entered in the keyword box will help people who are searching in the directory to find you. The search terms entered in the meta-keyword box will (eventually) help people who are searching from places like Google and Bing to find your listing on our site. What do you mean "eventually"? It sometimes takes awhile before the search engines can pick up that information and get it indexed so it begins to appear in their search results. We are working on ways to get more traffic from the search engines sooner. Get your site in shape. If your site is getting traffic from the directory, but not much of it is converting to sales, take a good critical look at what people see when they visit your site. Is the layout clean and attractive? Is the photography the absolute best you can make it? Is it filled out, or does it look like there are pieces missing? Are shoppers finding what they thought they would find when they clicked on the link? Is the ordering process free of any obstacles? If you don't have a site, consider creating a gallery photo album to display images of your work. Having a web site makes selling on the internet a lot easier, but it is possible to sell your work on the internet without a site of your own. I can almost guarantee you won't sell a thing on the internet without at least displaying some images of your work that shoppers can see before taking that critical step closer to an order. One way to do this is to create a photo album in the gallery and upload your photos there. Then you can make your "web site" link go to that album. Consider upgrading your listing. You knew I would bring this up eventually, didn't you? Sorray - just had to put in a plug for the paid listings! You can do any or all of the previous tips without spending a single dime. And you probably should, whether you are considering upgrading to a Feature Listing or a Banner Listing, or not. But one reason to consider an upgrade is that the Feature and Banner listings really are getting a lot more traffic. It's still a little too early to come up with more accurate averages, since there are only a few so far. But we can safely say they're getting more than 3 times as many hits as the Basic listings. Regardless... We want to help you get the most out of your listing, whichever one you use, because the more successful you are at selling your work, the more we all benefit. So if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!

Hey, suppliers! The Leatherworker Directory is already bringing new customers to businesses we have already listed there, and is very quickly becoming the place to look for suppliers for leather, leatherworking supplies, tools, and equipment. Are you one of them? With 600-1,000 page loads a day, a supplier listing in the Leatherworker Directory is the best advertising value you can get on the web or anywhere else. Your listing will be seen by thousands more people than any printed ad, yet is a fraction of the cost. On March 1st, our February Special on Supplier Basic listings ends, and the monthly rate will go back to $15/month. But for a limited time, you can get your first month free by contacting Johanna and saying, "I want the March special!" We'll even set up your listing for you! So what are you waiting for?

I've used both, and prefer a maul. For me, it just works better, and is easier on my arm, because of its heavier weight and balance. Kate

The biggest issue in these photos are glare and lighting/exposure. There needs to be plenty of light on the subject, and the exposure of your camera needs to be set so that all of the subject is light enough to see all the color and detail. Often, the "auto" exposure features of your camera will not choose the right exposure for the subject if there is a lot of back-lighting from the background. This gives you a photo that is underexposed. To get rid of the glare, change the angle of the lighting and/or the position of the strap so the light's "hot spot" doesn't bounce off the subject straight back to the camera. It also helps reduce glare if you have a way of diffusing the light from your light source. A soft box (or "light box") is a good solution for that. Kate

It seems to work best for me if I place long strappy things in a loop. A part of it will get hidden by this arrangement, but if what is hidden is the same as what appears in the parts that show, I don't worry about alternate views. If the hidden part does have something unique to the part that shows in the main view, I make alternate views. Can you show us an example or two of the ones you've done? Kate

Hi bronc, The speckling is most likely done by stamping around the inside of the border with one of the E294 series stamps, hitting the stamp progressively lighter as you work towards the inside of the area being stamped. The dye work around the edges can be easily done by just spraying dye around the edges with an airbrush. If you don't have an airbrush, you can get a similar effect by dripping some dye into a piece of cotton cloth and rubbing it around the edges. It takes some practice with this method to get the saturation of dye just right so it fades gradually towards the inside of the area being dyed, but it works fairly well once you get the hang of it. I'll defer the question about neetsfoot oil and oil dyes to someone who has worked with those products together. Kate

Yes, I'm talking about the inlay. That is neat, Ken! Kate

I like the ones that have included border stitching. What is that in the middle? Kate

Hi Amber/Ty, PM sent. Kate

That sounds even better than what I was thinking of. Kate

That's a cool idea, Ed! What do you think of possibly adding an adjustable gate to serve as a feed guide? Kind of like on a routing table... I think some leather sewing machines have some kind of guide for the leather, too. Just a thought, though. Kate

I swear, I'm going to remove that post! That is not what we thought it meant when I was growing up. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CLAY! AGAIN! Kate

Ooooo... very nice, Andy! I love it! Kate

We've been hearing that there is some confusion about how to get listings set up in the Directory. So I have added a Help & How-To section with step-by-step instructions on how to do this, along with some other useful information. So if you have been wanting to set up a directory listing, but haven't been sure where to start, visit this page to get started: http://leatherworker.net/pmd/pages/general-how-to.html And any time you're in the Directory and need help figuring something out, click on the [Help & How-To] link in the menu on the left side. We plan to keep adding to it, so please don't hesitate to contact us and as questions if you're not sure about something. Thanks for your participation, and keep the feedback coming! Kate

Looks good, Josh! Good to see you're all settled in with your new digs. I had the same thought about the round knife, but Bruce already pointed that out, so no need to beat a dead horse. Kate

CD, you are light years ahead of a lot of of writers out there who advise beginners to design their booth primarily for aesthetics. I am a little more interested in observing what sells, too, because I feel that stopping and looking is just part of the process. For me, the bottom line is, what is getting bought, and why? We have noticed the same thing, and decided to re-design our display so it places everything to the front of the booth and around the sides. The booths we saw that were arranged that way were getting the most browsing traffic by far. Oh yes. I can't believe the number of vendors I've seen who stand out in front of their booths, greeting people as they pass by, but inwardly almost begging people to come in... you can always see a wave of traffic steering around them. I did see one leatherworker at a show who had his bins of twiggy stuff set towards the back of the booth. For some reason, the swarm was all over them. It was hard to get in and out, but people couldn't resist it. I dove in myself just to see what was in the honey pot. Came out with one of his key fobs, which I still carry today. When I figure out what happened to me, I'll be sure to let you know. Ha! (He really did have a lot of great stuff, though.) We set up a demo table at the show we (Deb59, azrider, and I) did in September, and we will definitely do it again. It certainly did attract people to our booth, and while we were talking to people about what we were demonstrating, others figured our booth was a happening place and stepped in to browse. Kate

Very interesting discussion. It boils down to, what is considered a copy or reproduction, versus what is considered inspired. Seems like there is too much room for a double standard. In other words, if I copy something, I can say it was inspired, but if you are inspired by something I drew, I can claim you have copied it. I suppose some discussion about the actual process of using one piece of art to create another might shed some light. I thought what Troy mentioned was interesting. I had a recent exchange with a site that contains a very large collection of tattoo art. Their terms of service said the art on this site could be used either by individuals looking to get a tattoo, or by tattoo artists as reference material to create tattoos, and they encouraged paid subscribers (of which I was one) to grab all the art they wanted. At first, I assumed that if it was okay for tattoo artists to charge their customer a fee to reproduce the art in a tattoo, it must be okay for a leather artist to reproduce the art on a piece of leather and sell it. After using some of the art on a couple of pieces I made, I decided I wasn't so sure I really had permission to use the art in the manner I was, so I emailed the site owner, told them what I wanted to do and asked them if it fell under the terms of acceptable use. They responded, no, you do not have our permission to use our art for leather work. I was surprised and disappointed, but since they own the copyright, I also assume they get to say what we can or cannot do with the art. So I have complied with their wishes, but reading this topic makes me wonder. Of course, I won't do anything with the art for commercial purposes unless I am 100% sure it's legal to do so. We really can't rely on just what makes sense to us, because sometimes the laws just don't make sense. But it sure would be nice if we could get some clarity on these rules, so we don't have to keep guessing, even with art that we draw ourselves based on something else that inspired us. Kate

Ya done your duty, mister! LOL Savor the coming moments, they are so precious! Congratulations! Kate

Thanks for mentioning that, Ben. We archive all our content pretty regularly, but there's nothing we can do to preserve it if it is hosted elsewhere. Kate

Whenever I need to see a "real" something, and that something happens to be out of season, I do an image search on Google. This image might help you figure out how you want to make a sunflower seed pod: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Sunflowers.jpg Kate

It's my maker stamp. A little different from the oval-style signature, but it seems to suit what I do. LOL I use a 6lb maul. Kate

I held off posting mine until dirtclod received it. He let me know this morning it arrived there already, so here's mine: Kate

Nice, Tim! The oil finish really brings out the natural beauty of the leather, and your tooling gets cleaner all the time. Kate

LOL That's so funny... I saw that title and thought to myself, there's a question for Mr. Post-Apocalypse... and then I saw who make the first reply! Also, you can give leather more of a kind of hammered look using a pear shader like a matting tool. A combination of the two stamps would probably give you the look you're after. Kate