Mia Bella Soaps and Candles

I've recently added Mia Bella Pie Candles and Mia Bella Soy Soap Bars to the product line. Soon, I'll be adding votives as well.

Mia Bella soy candles burn much cleaner than parafin wax candles. They also have lead-free wicks and smell amazing.

Once I have them listed, I'll be listing the Lia Sophia jewelry as well as the rest of the Cookie Lee Jewelry that I have. I'm too late for Mother's Day, but oh well. I'll make it in time for Christmas :D

I also have a lot of noname jewelry sets that I'll be listing. Some very pretty sets for sure. OK, not sure how many of those will make it into my store ;)

Have a great evening!
Christi

Thank you for visiting!

Forums - Which ones to join and why.

As I sit here thinking about how much time I just spent posting on forums, I must also ask myself if I really thought it helped my business.

It's nice to feel as though we belong and fit into a group. It's also easy to get comfortable interracting with the same people.

When I started selling online, I had so many questions. I needed to know where to sell and which sites had what I was interested in. I joined some selling forums to interract with other sellers and get the information I needed.

Once I decided on a site, I began to post in the site forum to gain knowledge about my store and new features that came out. However, once I figured out where to sell, I should've started minimizing my time spent at the selling forums. I should've transitioned to forums where I'd attract buyers instead of other sellers.

Of course, it does depend on who my buyers are. If I create templates and do custom work for other sellers, I should continue to participate in selling forums. However, my customers typically won't be other sellers. Many of them make their own candles, bath products and jewelry. They are looking to make money online versus spending it at my store.

So, where should I spend time? I'd still spend some of it where I have my store checking in for new options and codes. However, most of my time should be spent at forums that allow me to reach my customers.

I've found forums that are female oriented. The only problem is that they don't allow banners in signatures. Mostly all of them want you to participate in their forum, promoting their advertising without being able to advertise anything for yourself. Is that fair? I don't think so.

So the next time you want to spend time promoting your store, think about where your buyers are. Reach out to them whereever they are. Break out of your comfort zone and try new forums.

Thank you for visiting!

Forum 4 Women

I had been spending a lot of time on marketing forums and the issues were always the same. So, I decided to find a forum where one could discuss a broad range of topics. That way, I wouldn't have to join 5 different forums. There seem to be so many forums out there for mothers or professional women and so on. It's like each forum is a group that includes a certain type of woman.

What about women that don't have children or those that don't feel so professional? There were only a couple of forums that were all inclusive. Most of those were geared around articles, so one has to do a lot of reading before asking a simple question. Who has that kind of time?

A few forums weren't monitored very well and had naughty posts on them. I mentioned the posts to the admin of one of the forums. She stated that she had 19 forums and didn't have time to monitor them all. OK, so now I know her forum had not much to do about helping women and more to do about making money. That just really doesn't seem right.

I also saw a lot of organizations for women without a forum. Wouldn't it be nice to have a place where an organization would be seen by many women? There were sure a lot of organizations that I hadn't heard of.

I also thought it would be nice to have a forum that wasn't plastered with advertising. Many of the forums I saw seemed to have one goal. That goal was to fill every inch of space with an advertisement.

I think women are worth more than that. I think it would be great to have a place where we all can go to discuss whatever we'd like. A place more interested in helping women than making money off of them. A place where we can help each other instead of pointing to a list of articles. And, a place where we can support each other no matter what.

Thank you for visiting!