My Blog: Please Give Input

[jbird]

Howdy gang

would you have a look at my blog and give me feed back please.'

Thanks a lot all

Josh

http://dustychapsleather.blogspot.com/

[CitizenKate]

Looks good, Josh. Look forward to seeing more articles.

Kate

[leatheroo]

Good start josh, maybe you need to add a few more things to the blog...gallery, slideshow etc..... I would also recommend the statcounter...it give you great insigjt into where visitors are coming from and how long they stay etc.

I love my blog!!!!

[JohnBarton]

Howdy gang

would you have a look at my blog and give me feed back please.'

Thanks a lot all

Josh

http://dustychapsleather.blogspot.com/

Boy are you in for some headaches :-)

I like the general idea. I think though that you need some more description of what each step entails - not a tutorial per se but something that lets people know that between step 1 and 2 is a lot of hours of patient hand work.

I'd also like to see a little more about you, your experience motivation, life etc....

Saddle making looks HARD. I just protect pool cues, you have to protect the horse and the rider's ass :-)

So like I said, it's a good start and my only thing is that I didn't get to know YOU I only saw some pictures of a saddle in various stages of completion.

A tip for your pictures is to put them on the web somewhere where you can find them and refer to them.

I don't recommend using blogger's storage. If you can get a cheapy web hosting account and use that to store everything. I put tons of pictures online so that whenever the need arises I can draw on them.

This is my main library,

www.jbcases.com/cases when you click on this link then this should open a directory where you can see a bunch of folders. I use a add-on in Firefox called Unlinker to make the links show up as pictures. Then whenever I want to put a picture in my blog, or on here, or in an email I can just copy the location and paste it into the place I want to show it. This is called hotlinking and it just means that you are telling the browser where the picture is. If you do this then you have complete control over where your pictures are. I have been using HostGator for three years now and they are the best host I have ever used. What you get for $5 a month is incredible.

Here is an example:

This is the location of the image.

http://www.jbcases.c...ter-a-front.jpg

And here it is displayed

I find that if I do this then I can quickly find just the right example to show a customer when I need to and it's on the web waiting to be shown. I don't have to hunt for a picture and then attach it and hope that they get it ok on their end.

All the pictures are uploaded via FTP.

You can also do the same with an online gallery:

www.jbcases.com/gallery

But sometimes some places won't accept the link that that a gallery provides. Depending on the gallery type you might have to look a little harder for the type of link that is acceptable.

So the blog is a good thing - but keep in mind that it's sort of meant to be an ongoing news outlet rather than a good way for people to browse your products. You will need to think about the structure of the blog if you intend it to be a product showcase because blogs are generally not very good at letting people find things in them.

So set up your categories and pay attention to your titles.

I don't use blogger but I assume that you can assign a category to each post. So if you want to have it be where customers could browse all your saddles you might have a Saddles category.

Then under that Category your first post might be something called Saddle Types. In this one you would explain to the customers what each type of saddle is.

Then each subsequent post would be titled something like this English Riding: Super Floral High Crest etc... (obviously I am completely ignorant of saddles)

The point is that it pays to think of how you want to structure it so that people coming to your blog can find their way around easily AND so that you can also find your way around easily when you need to refer back to your blog's content.

Well alright then, that's a long winded way of saying welcome to the world of blogging! Nice job so far.

Edited August 10, 2010 by JohnBarton

[King's X]

It looks really good. You need to post some pictures of other items you made since you made reference 'leather' smith/worker. Just a suggestion.

Best of luck!