Nice advice. It seems my specialty is going to be tee shirt and I spy quilts. Not what I had envisioned, but seems to be what people are looking for right now. Our community has been declared the 5th most depressed area in the US. And one of our few remaining companies is laying off 1/3 of its employees Oct 1. Most of the buildings in town are empty, and anyone who has a job is holding on to their money. It seems I'm going to depend on online sales, so I want to get it right.

Photos, Photos, Photos.

If you have grandkids, neighbor kids you can recruit (get written permission for the neighbor kids), any young children - show photos of them playing on an I spy quilt. Show a teenager with a t-shirt quilt. Remember, sell the sizzle, not the steak. You want them to look like it's the best game, quilt, etc ever.

If you're going with the I spy thing, think about what you send with the quilt and the story your are going to tell online about your quilts. Somewhere I have a paper that is included with the quilt outlining the games that can be played. I'll see if I can find it.

Just start with the photos and keep working on them until you get better. Learn to edit them (software is free).

Think about what you will do when you have sold more quilts than you can make, because if you do well, someone has to buy the fabric, update the website, handle the business and take the photos.

You can start all this on your etsy page and your facebook page. Don't wait for the website.

Bloom where you are planted.

bk

The I spy game file won't copy to post. I'm not sure how to send an email with Houzz. I'll need to send it as an attachment via email. Email me at bkay_2000 at yahoo dot com. I'll send it to you.

bkay

Thank you so much for the booklet. What a great idea to include with the quilts.

You're welcome.

Here are a couple of groups that do I spy swaps. The squares are not always exactly correct, so you may have to cut them down. It will help get you some variety, though.

quiltingboard.com
Yahoo I spy swap group

The yahoo group does about a swap a month. Most are 6.5" with different themes. The quilting board is more sporadic and is usually 5" without a theme.

Good luck with your endeavor.

bkay

Selling requires exposure! The more groups, forums, and yes BLOGS! that you can handle, the more your exposure zooms! (that, however, can be very time intensive!). I agree, tho......your wording is key in any area, be it Facebook, Etsy - because your hits are all going to come from the various search engines. (Google, Bing, etc.) So you need WORDS that will cause the search engine to target you! Of course, you want to be first!!! You need 'catchy' words - and phrases that folks would put into their search engine when they are shopping. "Lap robe" for instance, gets about 839,000 results!! Anniversary quilts gets 728,000 results, while "hand stitched anniversary quilts" gets a whopping 1,770,000 results! (these are all 'Google', by the way!). I guess you have to think of what people would be typing into those search engines. Oh, and if you don't do Pinterest, that's another one that will pop things up in searches really well, too! Good luck!!!! Your quilts are really wonderful!

Beth, I've forgotten how you find those phrases on Google. Can you refresh us?

bkay

I'm too far out of date in this field, but I think Google had one called Addword or Keyword?? Something along those lines. What you want to search for are articles that tell you how to increase your hits, for instance "How to improve your search engine ranking on Google." It's the type of article that website designers would use. I've seen those little 'clouds of words', too, that kinda float about someone's page ...key words that will cause the search engines to target them, but don't know how to actually make them.

I'll ask my computer person. It's a google site where you can look up those phrases. It's been a couple of years since I looked, so I've forgotten.

I'll report back.

bk