How to make a Shoppable Gift Guide for your Business - The Friday Bean Coffee Meet

hello i wasn't ready guys happy friday do you hate the background be honest let us know how does that look i'm actually going to pull it up on my phone because i want to see if it looks grainy and crappy yeah we normally have a backdrop but we uh we decided that the backdrop is getting wrinkly so we're getting it's very wrinkly it's been wrinkly yeah um so we've decided to stop using it of course boy boy but it's dark back there well we might buy something else just let us know if you hate this if you hate this i'm thinking a curtain right across this bad boy right here to get rid of the black background yeah because there's like a whole music area back there so let us know mine is back you see it there's some drums right there looks fine backdrop looks better is over here all right guys today we're going to be keeping things a little bit tighter i know during the friday bean we normally chitty chat and have a lot of fun which we can do after the main like portion of this that way anybody who's not interested in you know the banter can go away and not watch the rest of it i'm hearing everything twice there's only one mic i can see that there's only one mic does it sound okay or is it just the one person yeah let us know you might have us open twice yeah no it looks fine let us know if we sound okay oh yeah we look good we do it we look good nope just that one person sounds fine sound is fine okay so you might have us open in like two tabs or something okay um guys today i'm gonna be teaching you how to make a shoppable gift guide a couple nights ago i was walking around my house cleaning we that's all we've been doing the last few days is cleaning um and uh it was a little dark i messaged amber marie and i was like hey so weird idea what if you made a gift guide for amber marie's studio where you did like your product but then you did some products that you recommend to pet owners like dog treats and callers because she does pet portraits um but i'm like what if you did that and made like a full gift guide for dog lovers and then of course she took that idea and like ten times did past what i had expected and made it super duper cool and then i was like okay let's share this with the alphas and then i was thinking wouldn't it be cool since we have like 10 000 alphas now if you guys were able to collaborate together with each other um and kind of build boards together where if you sell mugs maybe you could work with alphas who sell crocheted cup cozies and coasters and little coffee spoons and make your own gift guide where you have your products and you can add some of their products where you're helping them and maybe even throw in some amazon affiliate links for for things that you also like things that you know that you like and you get a little bit of money from those purchases from amazon and you also get money from the purchases that people make from your shop but then you also help alphas and then in exchange those alphas that you've helped will put your products on their gift guides and then when they share their gift guide with their audience their audience who you might have never had exposure to gets to see your products and then it's just this big endless cycle of everybody being able to share these gift guides with their audience and trading you know uh the their audiences so i asked you guys if that sounded interesting to you and we had like an overwhelming amount of alpha say yes show us how to do it so amber billed out her gift guide and i'm going to show you hers i sat last night and built out a gift guide can you increase the screen sizes on mine and on amber's for when we know that make a difference it's it's the same on me each oh okay and i gotta do it on one that that's good um so we're gonna do that now what you guys are gonna be responsible for is collaborating after this is over okay so the handmade alpha facebook community for anybody who's new it's our facebook group we've got 10 000 alphas in there it is linked down below way down below you'll have to click show more and then there's a bunch of links in there but if you're not already a member um there's three questions you have to answer make sure you answer those or else we'll decline you um but join the group and say i sell this and i'm looking for alphys to collaborate for my gift guide i'm looking for alphas who sell this this and this um you could do you know things based on a theme like maybe it's gemstones oh everything gemstone and maybe you collaborate with alphas who sell like incense then and things like that you could do uh per recipient you could say i'm making one for like teenage boys like a teenage boy gift guide because teenage boys are really hard to buy for right um so anything like gaming related or anything cool that you think a teenage boy might like i would like to collaborate with alphas on my gift guide um and then you guys just have to work amongst yourselves and swap so that's your guys's job after this is over after i teach you how to build it so just start thinking as we're working through this and as i'm showing you how to do everything start thinking about the theme of the board that you want to build because when you see popular gift guides like gift guides are huge right now because they take the guesswork out of shopping um people will actually google like you know coffee lover gift guide yeah and see what the top i'd google uh gift get like gaming gift guides all the time to see if there's any little knick-knacks or news that'll be hard because i'm not a normal gamer no it's all like couch like weird couch lap pads and things um there's like you know musician gift guides gift guides for the hard to buy for it's all in one place and when you complete your gift guide you're going to share that with your audience you're going to share it on social media you're going to send it to your email list if you have one and you're going to treat this like a gift because what you have done is you have taken the guesswork out of shopping for them by taking something that they're already interested in if they're following your brand whatever it is that you sell they're already interested in that general theme and you are showing them here is this cool thing that i have created for you where i've done the hard work i've already built this for you these are products that you know that i sell or that i really like or they're from sellers that i like or it's things that i think that you'll enjoy and you've done everything for them so that's why gift guides are so popular right now because you know there's so many products on the internet i noticed that when i go online shopping if there's too much i don't look like i get overwhelmed because i don't know what to look for so i prefer to find things that already kind of figured out for me um what did you do he's all wet are you playing in the shower probably all right so we're gonna start by showing you guys exactly how to set everything up i'm going to do this step by step and then afterwards if you have questions we will do questions afterwards and then we can get off topic and talk about other things yes i did want to point out that etsy released some information uh last month that i just now found apparently there are now over 90 million active buyers on etsy which is 50 more buyers than what we had last year lots of them that's insane 90 million i can't even think think of a million and try to imagine a million of something and you can't and then multiply that by 90 like that's insane um so black friday this year is going to be insane i know a lot of people are like oh the pandemic made last year really really great and it can't possibly be as good this year no no 50 more shoppers this year so you have to you have to consider that with people making as many sales as they did last year that means more buyers were coming to the platform more people are overall aware that the platform exists and every person that shops on it that's somebody that's talking about the platform and getting three or four more other people aware even if they don't shop there are significantly more people aware of etsy yeah so this is huge even if you're not doing a black friday sale still optimize and now that we've got kind of peak audience i do want to let you guys know that our alpha gift that we do for everybody every year is available now it is our black friday toolbox it is free it is full of free resources cheat sheets uh marketing calendars to tell you exactly when to market a checklist to tell you exactly what to do what date to do it what day to set it up uh video trainings uh royalty free graphics to use in photoshop canva i picky whatever you know edit photo editing that you like um i cut them all out myself like they are photos that i took and cut out for you guys so you guys know for sure that they're royalty free no 90 million active buyers they're something like 4 million four and a half million sellers yeah active is less than half of those though active buyers yeah there's 90 million buyers i didn't mean to say sellers did i say sellers no you said buyers oh okay i'm pretty sure buyers 90 million buyers 50 million but anyway freebies down below get those look for the little toolbox emoji uh all you got to do is enter your email if if you're already on my email list you won't get double signed up unless you're a handmade alpha academy student in that case you don't have to sign up for it because everything that's in there is in the handmade alpha academy holiday resource library and the bonuses fyi for haa students you like almost all of our resources if not all of our resources are always available in the course yeah because if you sign up for them you might get added into our uh into the email list my email list yeah you don't want to do that and then you just message us and let us know and we'll remove you but it's it's like a big thing that we have to do by hand so all right are we ready everybody good no can we can we nope can we jump in no all right there goes rubbers bobbers okay wait oh okay okay we're good we're getting a bouncy camera he likes to jump up on that screen all right let's just go and do no faces that way they can see the whole screen yeah this is not the correct all right oh skidios so this is trello.com this is your first step to building your gift guide i have tons of different trello boards just for different things that i do because i also work for e-rank amber and i have a book podcast for a vampire fantasy i'm writing a book um there's all kinds of things in here so just ignore anything else but what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to create a new board so create a trello account create a new board it's free you don't have to pay for anything you'll land on this page yours will be blank because you won't have all these boards you want to create a new board so you're going to give it a name can you give my board a name please uh just gift guide something gift guide bungas gift guide that's perfect obviously you guys want to use like your brand name or your niche or something related to your products uh you could do you know the i don't know eco friendly mom's gift guide or new mom's gift guide nursery nursery gift guide coffee lovers gift guide that's what i did um whatever you want it to be then you're going to start by making a list so this is going to be how you categorize your gift guide now you could do this by age you could do like gifts for teens gifts for dad gifts for mom gifts for grandma uh you could do it based on product type t-shirts socks handbags depending on what it is that you sell so we don't know what bunga says can you make this like a pro can you make this a product music lovers music musicians musicians gift guide because smart's a musician okay i think bungas was fine gifts for let's do gifts for guitarists he's staring into space he doesn't know where he is you're just going so fast i'm gonna keep going fast i can't hardly see that screen sorry if i spell something all derpy uh gifts for drummers we're just pretending that we have a music etsy shop sure gifts for vocalists just do all the do do all the band people gifts for bass players facey boys gifts for bassy boys gifts for alto saxophone is every man needs a sax player okay you guys get the picture you have to do it based on whatever it is that you sell and it doesn't need to be gifts for blah blah blah it can be um you know gifts uh for example we did for the home cozy gifts tasty brews brewing tools for the soul so whatever it is that you want to make yours then after you do that you will start creating your cards this is where you're going to put images of your product so you add a card we'll title it i don't know guitar t-shirt guitar t and then you're going to click attachment which i'm not going to do because it'll pull up our files yes thank you but never open a man's files then you click attachment you added a photo of your product or an alpha's product or an amazon affiliate link which we'll get into how to do that later if you want to make a little money from amazon because who doesn't like taking money from amazon right yeah right um you add your attachment and it will add a photo then you want to add the listing link so whatever it is that you're selling whether it be an amazon affiliate link whether it be another alpha shop link or one of your product links you add that into the description that way somebody can just grab it and click it can you just put www.i don't know handmadealpha academy.com since we know that's a safe link type the longest possible thing in here you can sweetheart there we go and then it will make it an active link that you can click on click on see that's me so add your link in there next thing that you can do that's kind of fun is you can add labels and this is a really cool way to organize your gift guide there are multiple ways you can do it you could do your labels like gifts for mom are in green gifts for dad or yellow gifts for kids in orange gift for dog in red you could do it by price gifts under five dollars gifts under ten dollars gifts under twenty dollars gifts under thirty dollars um you could do your personal recommend or recommendations everything that starla recommends is in green so we'll just do let's do starla recommends okay and then i can add this label to my board now when you arrive at the board it'll look like this just click it and it'll expand it open so starla recommends this um you can color code them however you want there's a lot of other different things that you can do like dates maybe you're having a flash sale and you want to put the date that your flash sale ends um maybe you add a label that says let's do on sale and we want to let them know that it's on sale until october 20th so we'll just add that on there it says due date but it'll show this little date on here okay are you guys starting to uh starting to get it now a couple of quick things make sure that you keep it relevant if you just make this even if you sell a lot of different things you can make more than one gift guide but try to not throw every single thing into a gift guide if they don't like connect together if you have all different types of products that are completely different in style you might want to separate them out but if you have for example maybe you make t-shirts but the overall like design style is the same maybe it's all just like quirky t-shirts but then you have them for dad grandma dog mom then that's fine could you put your shipping cut off date you could put whatever you want to your trello yeah um you could even make one that says important info and you can grab it and drag it and maybe you add a card that says shipping deadlines he's having to look like way across the room i can't look at the keyboard at the same time and then in here you just type out all your shipping deadlines blah blah blah blah stops in december there you go that works um you could do you know u.s shipping deadlines do one for international you can make one that just says read me and put in for important information um but just keep in mind that if the point of this isn't to just do your product you want to also sprinkle in other products so if you're doing shipping deadlines um make sure that you specify that it's for products that you personally sell or put them directly in the uh cards for your product so maybe like on guitar t if this is your product you put in guitar t order by this date in your description so i know that this is a little bit abstract because we're working with a blank board and i'm not able to add a bunch of photos so i'm going to show you one that i all built this presupposes that we have an active audience that we're currently marketing to like a mature email list right um either an email list social media yada yada but this is a great way to grow that audience because even if you don't have a huge audience right now you could also begin working with other alphas who do have a bigger audience and maybe you could include a special discount code that they can use so let me show you an example of that in amber's board here's amber's board is that not the cutest freaking thing that you've ever seen she's doing a holiday gift guide for pet owners so she has all these different products uh items for humans she has a little arrow pointing items for dogs are pointed this way god amber you little overachiever you is this free to use yes trello is free to use yes so with amber she's adds stickers with her logo for anything that she personally sells if it's something by another etsy seller she has little etsy tags um if she has a discount code included she has a tag that says discount code attached so let's open this one for the blanket she has all of her listing photos in here so you can see exactly what she's selling you can buy it here and then she has her discount code right there already attached to it um i think that's your only tag right amber just the discount code attached so this is an example of a perfect freaking gift guide and she could you know work with other etsy sellers who also sell similar products these are all other etsy sellers that she has found that sell products that fit her niche and she can work with them and get them into her board she also has amazon stickers on her board as well um i'll teach you guys how to do the stickers too but these are super duper cute guys so let me show you mine that i made last night for alpha adapt mine is coffee lovers gift guide um so i have for the home and i did my tags based on price so i have under let me pull open my labels under 5 under 10 under 15 20 30 40 under 50 discount code included and anything a hundred dollars and over has a dark blue tag i have the link to buy right here um don't know why i'm set as a member and then i also have some with amazon affiliate links so this is an amazon affiliate link if someone were to buy these little gnomes i would get paid for it and it's not a lot amazon affiliate money isn't much but it's better than nothing it's a nice little trickle right so it is a way to make a little extra money and i will explain how to do that in just a few minutes um so here are some of the other alpha products oh no this one isn't an alpha product sorry here's an alpha product we've got some alpha products included i did some of some of them with etsy shops some of them with websites anything from an alpha has a paw print sticker anything from amber and i has me and amber as coffee beans we also did some of our favorite coffees and i have little bean stickers with mark's head on them for anything he recommends like here's the french press that we personally use um you don't need a lot of money to get a good french press yeah we used to use it well use it when we travel aeropress aeropress and this is just a temperature controlled kettle it's not the one that we use but i know you prefer temperature control yeah so all different ideas and you guys are free to explore this board i will give you access um after we're finished i made a little glossary with our stickers so to add stickers in fact i will remove one just to show you to make your own custom stickers amber just figured out how to do this today you go into stickers right here stickers and there's a lot of cute ones you know you don't have to upload your own um these are all free trello's logo is a little dog so that's already super cute but then you can you can add your own um so i'm going to grab it my little starlet amber sticker oh it's like way way over can't move it after it's already on the board let me uh let me do that one more time and you can really do anything you want with these guys like it it's completely up to you i'll put like this little gold one little gold dog up here but i figured that making a glossary will explain to your shoppers exactly what it is that each of your icons mean and i would put if you have a glossary or anything that your buyers need to know make it your first card everything that is on here you can drag and move around the big thing that you want to do is just make sure that with your products mix them in you'll notice that i don't have a bunch of our products all smooshed together like i've tried to kind of mix them up a little bit all right um last thing that i want to cover is the um amazon stuff actually i do have one more thing that i wanted to touch on i added shops that could be considered direct competitors uh for example we we sell t-shirts but i also added alphas who sell t-shirts while collabing i wouldn't recommend doing this i just did it for the sake of examples because i posted in the facebook community last night and i'm like if anybody has coffee themed products can you send me your links so i can use you as an example but i would try to work with alphas who don't sell exactly what you sell like i said before if you sell mugs try to find things like like this t-shirt with coffee or you know uh coffee tools coffee books coffee chocolate coffee beans and things like that but i wouldn't work with sellers who also sell t-shirts so maybe when you make your posts in the alpha community while collabing say i sell i'm not looking for t-shirts or i sell t-shirts so i'm not looking for t-shirts i'm looking for alphas who sell things that will complement my t-shirts my primary demographic is this you know and maybe give some examples or you know post your shop or post some photos from your shop to give them ideas of what you sell um i just don't want anybody to get offended if they get turned down because they have products that are in direct competition like that's not what this is about no butt hurt yeah we don't like butthurt here exactly exactly so don't just make sure that there's like no hard feelings if you don't end up wanting to use well we're all adults we understand business is business yeah first first and foremost business comes first yeah because i went for like you'll notice that i went for a very specific color scheme everything is like warm colors and if somebody would have sent me like a big purple image i probably wouldn't have used it just because it wouldn't have fit my my aesthetic so there's no shame in saying like that's a really great product but unfortunately it doesn't fit my aesthetic um thank you for offering it you know so that's also a suggestion now as for the amazon stuff one second before you move on to that you're not given there's stuff that needs addressing here oh go ahead um so charlie had asked how would i ever discover that your gift guides exist there's a couple people that actually commented on this because they said one person said that uh they thought you were just showing us how to organize this is specifically so you can advertise this as a gift guide for your audience yes you will take this you will grab this link and you will send it to your audience and they will they will be able to shop from it or you can do facebook advertising with the link in the description with that right this you are sending this board directly to your audience you just want to make sure that you go to your settings see this button right here you click this it will be set to private when you first start build your board and then switch it to public and then others can access it without editing it in fact i will uh this is already set to public let's say just do it up there i'm trying to send it right there it goes i'm trying to post it in the chat okay there you guys should be able to click on that so you guys can start exploring it this is what you're going to send to your customers you can do it in social media you can do it via email list and when you say they can shop from it do the links take them to the links take them wherever you whatever link whatever link you posted to it works just like a link anywhere else right like this is the link to an etsy listing i copied and pasted it into the description and if you can click it and then if they click it it will take them to the product are those emojis in the url yeah oh yeah very top yeah because i put them in the actual name of the uh yeah it's displaying them as emojis but it would be displaying them in their in their code when you actually paste it in okay does the buyer need to have a trello account to view the board no they do not you guys should be able to click that link and see for yourself um but no you don't need to have a trello account to open it it should open for everybody did you upload your stickers to trello yes which i showed you how to do all right so stickers and greeting cards i'm going to have some other gift tags and things added to my shop for christmas is this something that would be good for me it doesn't matter what you sell yeah it doesn't matter what you sell just think of other things that would complement gift tags and things wrapping paper pens um scissors things that that complement you know fancy gift wrapping i would say would be bows yeah yeah where do you get emojis you make them you can make them or you can just use the ones that they have you can go to emojipedia and use anything from there wait do you mean you mean these emojis these i copied and pasted from emojipedia.com if you mean the stickers you upload those yourself you can make them or you can just use the ones that they already give us um they give us like hearts maybe this is your favorite so you give it a heart all right we're going to go ahead and move on and we'll catch up with questions when when we're done um okay so add the stickers here this is you you make them in canva and add them here yes i made i made them in canva and did transparent backgrounds on them watch our we do have canva tutorials too um that you can watch if you don't know how to do that now i took this all the guesswork out of this for you that's why i keep like saying let's let's wait and keep moving because your questions will probably be answered um i sent you guys the link to this board you can access it now it's up in the chat above right here it says readme alphas i just dragged it right to the front this is the full tutorial everything that i covered today steps one through ten you can follow along with this later and literally read through exactly what you're supposed to do like this is exactly how to create your gift guide everything that i covered today is here the next thing is how to set up an amazon affiliate center so that you can recommend products from your associate central account this is how you set it up um you set up your account here this is a tutorial that will teach you how to link your affiliate ids you just want to make sure that you add an image of the item by saving it directly from amazon and then adding it to your board along with that affiliate link and the best part is anything that that customer purchases 24 hours after going to amazon from your link is credited to you and you receive that commission even if it isn't an item that they originally clicked so exactly because they don't clear their browser history so if someone was like oh what's this coffee oh cool let me click this this coffee oh wow this is really cool but i don't really want the world's strongest coffee so instead i'm to buy i'm going to click this coffee and i'm going to java yeah i'm going to buy this coffee instead um you will still get the the money for it you will get a commission from it so like i said everything on how to set up your affiliate account is right here um i sent direct amazon links the reason that i did this is because we were looking at the actual setup of the amazon partner center because i was going to show you how to do it but there's so much information that we'd have to blur to be able to show you how to do it that i would unfortunately not be able to do it live but these are full tutorials that will show you exactly what you need to do you just want to make sure that you get you just want to make sure that you get the link uh and basically it'll just give you an amazon search box you type in a product i just did coffee decor and i found these little gnomes and i got my link from it i used the there was an uh an option for a short link and i used that so all right you wanna right amber is your board set to public now no it's still private no it's public right okay i could show amber is yours ready to show off can i send them yours if we were an etsy affiliate would it be okay to use etsy affiliate links for products that are not ours um i would assume so there's i didn't know there were etsy affiliate links am i behind on something is there something that that that i missed through the cracks probably i would assume i didn't know that we had etsy affiliate links i must have missed that amber said it's public can everyone access cool all right i will also paste in amber's gift guide as well so you guys can check that out so here's amber's if you guys want to check it out feel free to shop from it if you want to give amber some love and then i will one more time give you guys the alpha board if you want to explore that make sure that you look at the first card that says read me alphas and it has all of the uh all of the information that i covered today and a nice little 10 piece checklist so yay um guys i mentioned this towards the beginning but i'm going to mention again make sure that you go down below and click show more in the video description and get the free black friday toolbox every year we do a freebie for the alphas around the holidays just to make black friday a little easier black friday is historically the very best day on etsy for sales because there's more traffic on etsy than any other day of the year even if you're not planning to host a sale you should still optimize for black friday and plan ahead um and that includes black friday small business saturday and cyber monday i have a full like toolbox full of resources graphics the graphics by the way that are in the black friday toolbox you can use as your trello stickers uh all you got to do is upload them and they will work as trello stickers as well um but yeah make sure that you get that because it's going to have all of my black friday resources inside of it does the company that you link to the amazon product know that you're bringing people to them no i doubt it no but it's it doesn't matter because i mean the majority of pinterest is people doing amazon affiliate programs yeah so it's amazon if that's just part of amazon is being a part of their and not everything qualifies for the affiliate program not everything not every product not everything qualifies no yeah like if you sell like amazon handmade it's not probably not going to fall under that yeah as far as i know at least um but it doesn't they are opted in so you're supposed to advertise for them a w i n has affiliate links i don't know what that is but we better find out awin no idea what that is global affiliate marketing network okay um sounds like a pyramid scheme i don't know i'd have to do more research into it i don't know anything about it i mean sure you guys can put whatever you want in your boards i don't care what you put in yours do whatever you want just uh aviation week intelligence network sure that's it yeah that's probably the one was that supposed to be british no it was just supposed to be a stupid accent i did yeah do you have to apply to be accepted as an affiliate from the different companies no uh for amazon i actually for amazon you i think they're saying for the different products that you affiliate on amazon no you up you apply to be an amazon affiliate yeah but it only it doesn't take very long that was really bad mark i don't care that makes you think i wasn't trying to be good i'm not an actor he's a he's he's not a good actor he just he just makes stupid voices too amber yeah how could i go this long without knowing about this amazon affiliate thing i don't know it's so easy too like literally anybody can do it yeah you don't have to be an influencer you can just recommend products yeah and and the cool thing is like if there is something that your audience already needs like maybe it's a jewelry rack or something that you own and you love it you can share the link and be like hey guys um this is the jewelry stand that i personally use and i figured that i would share it with you if you want to help me out you can buy with my amazon link and you know it leads directly to the product but i'll get a little bit of the commission for it i think that most of the time with amazon affiliate links you do have to disclose that they're affiliate links you do yeah anytime it depends on what platform you're putting them on but just to be safe like if you're making a commission off of something even if the website doesn't require it it's best just to always do it because you know you never know if they're going to put that kind of rule in place and then you'll be right retro retro actively safe from any rules just like facebook going back and like hitting people for saying stuff 10 years ago you're right it's um it is based on the platform for example you are not allowed to share amazon affiliate links on youtube you're also not allowed to put amazon affiliate links in an email did you know that you're not allowed to email it but it's amazon's rule right that is amazon's role but you can put them in a trello board and email the trello board so if you have an email list all you got to do is email the trello board with all the amazon affiliate links and that's fine just like i can send you guys the trello board through youtube even though you can't post amazon affiliate links to youtube and you guys could go to the trello board and click the amazon affiliate links and it doesn't break the rules it's it's the internet um if you guys have questions go ahead and get those in that way we can get some questions answered on here yeah should you contact etsy sellers you want to include or just include their products you don't have to if you want to you can however i will say if you're somebody that has a huge audience and you're going to be advertising a seller that's relatively new or small and isn't used to an influx of orders and you might bring a huge influx of orders to them i might contact that yeah warn them because you don't want somebody that's used to filling out like five ten orders a month to suddenly get hit with a hundred orders because they have a cool product and then end up putting them out of business because they can't fulfill the order so just be just be careful be thoughtful yeah um and and guys that's why i did the like collabing thing because if you just add random people you're not going to get any extra exposure what i what the hope of this would be is that you guys go to the handmade alpha facebook community link down below um and you work with other sellers so that they put you on their boards and you put them on your board and then their audience sees your product and your audience sees their product so it's an exchange because then you're going to be able to reach people who you wouldn't normally have been able to reach these will be new people who have never had exposure to your brand just like i said make sure that you set your board to public if you don't do that they won't be able to see it i also recommend testing first test by taking your link for your board and sending it to a friend post it in the handmade alpha facebook community just to make sure that everybody can view it and make sure that the link is actually public before you start pushing it out on social media to all of your followers you don't have an email list how are you sharing the trello board social media everywhere everywhere any anywhere that you would normally post links yep anywhere that you normally advertise i would post on social media and i wouldn't just post the board like don't just take the board link and slap it on social media make yourself a nice graphic go watch one of my canva videos uh my instagram reels video will teach you how to use canva um go in there and like make yourself a nice photo that says something something gift guide like customize it make it pretty you don't just take the link and slap it on social people don't care about that so did you guys come up with this lately do you regularly pop out money making ideas or is this a one-time thing she's weird this one i was she she went from running an etsy business to learning how to help others run an etsy business and others running etsy businesses is our business so now her product ideas are things to make you guys do better so yeah that makes sense that's the creative process instead of dedicating the brain power into new products it's dedicating brain power into resources for you yeah but i still have products too because we have elf adapt it's crazy um this idea came to me while i was cleaning the house and i contacted amber about it and like i said she's her board has like graphics and animations and things and now it's it's so pretty chandra said the ftc legally says you have to disclose that they are affiliate links i think it's a weird gray zone because if it's an unedited link it shows that it is an affiliate link in the link itself but you should always disclose if you're making money off of something anyway that's just kind of the morally polite thing to do yeah make one you know the tags the labels that i here pop pop the screen over no here we go you can do um let's grab a label create a new label we'll do purple purple and type in um fungus affiliate link there you go there you go affiliate link affiliate link and then you can go through and anything that's an alpha shop anything that is an affiliate link you can go through and add a blank link yeah now let me actually see which one was that was it this one yeah is this actually an affiliate link yes it's right there i can't see it the a-s-i-n you want go away link code yeah that's that's what makes it an affiliate link yeah but you should still always disclose because it's the polite correct thing to do and you know what that actually y a that might make your customers want to buy from it more because you're like hey you know check this out this helps support my business if you buy from this link i thought we weren't allowed to use save and use amazon images even if we are affiliates they have to be embedded whenever used i googled that and i wasn't able to find anything about it if all el i mean if they didn't want people saving the images it would be impossible to save them without actually capturing a screenshot and we didn't have to do that so maybe and we're not we're not directly selling from the platform we're sending them to the link it's probably a lot more complicated than just you can't use the images um but we did try to find that and weren't able to find anything direct if all else fails then just try to find the image elsewhere of the product like ultimately what you're doing is advertising for them so if yeah because a lot of the time amazon products on amazon aren't using the original images that they took either they're off they're drop shipping or doing whatever for other companies and they stole the image so they don't even own the original image to the product right all else fails like i said so find the image elsewhere um but yeah uh in the uk there's an etsy affiliate signup link directly on the website try googling it we're not in the uk we'll uh we'll check yeah we'll check it out you're being a smarty pants today i know i'm sassy i'm tired he's sassy today sassy so if i have loads of items that aren't yet at the end of the clickable wink that aren't yet at the end of a clickable link how would that work what do you mean what products aren't in a link if they're not on etsy then they're not listed yeah then you can't do it they have to be listed on etsy because you have to be able to link them so you just have to add them to etsy and then you would have a link does anything that's on etsy has a link because anything on the internet has a link so good i meant to try googling it if there's a similar one [Laughter] i'm not really in a bad mood i'm being stupid on purpose i hope nobody's taking that serious i'm not really like being a jerk he gets sassy he gets sassy when he's sleepy hoping it hasn't been changed but folks in minnesota can't be in the amazon affiliate you guys got some stupid law that prevents you from doing affiliate stuff that's silly well and guys there's nothing to say that you have to do the amazon part i just threw the amazon part in if for any reason you can't find like enough alphas to collaborate with um there's nothing saying i am not an amazon expert the amazon info that i threw in here is just like some impromptu stuff that i tossed in um you don't have to do it if if i've messed something up feel free to to are you googling it minnesotans can again participate in amazon's affiliate program looks like you can now yeah it looks like you weren't allowed to but you now can how recent is this article 2014 oh so maybe it got removed again i don't know weird i wonder why who knows anyway closing all these freaking tabs there we go get your questions in we're almost through them all sorry i'm late happy friday from rb designs hello happy friday in a training they said that you're not allowed to use the image i don't okay well that if it's if it was said in a training video but then it's not published anywhere else on the internet like on amazon specifically right could you have a look through the virtual affair for sellers that may have products relatable to your holiday gift guide um yeah i i guess that would be okay i don't see any reason why not we do have an alpha holiday fair that you guys can participate in it if you just google or not google look on facebook and look up handmade alpha virtual holiday craft fair um it's you don't have to do any application or anything you just join the group and all i ask is that you please read the announcement pin to the top of the group it kind of runs down the rules of the uh of the virtual craft fair i also asked that if you guys decide to join the virtual craft fair please try to add like at least one friend or family member who is a shopper not a buyer because it's only going to work if we also have buyers in there and shopper not a buyer a a shopper not a seller so try to add some shoppers in there too because if we're all just sellers selling to each other then we're not going to see that any results try to add some family members there's no cap on how many members can be in the group so if you've got any friends or family that might want to shop or you can post the link to the craft fair on your social media amber murray just posted the craft fair for anybody that wants to take a look at that later thank you amber yeah you can join and uh and post your products just make sure that you read the rules first and maybe add some some shoppers you said you can also link your own website i tried to i link to both my etsy listings and my own website some people trust etsy more and like to click on yeah that's i completely agree 100 agree yeah because a lot of people it's the same with us selling our course every year a lot of people are really really kind of scared to buy stuff from a small time website yeah so just making sure that you give them the option i mean that's that's huge because they know that they also have like etsy's security there as well exactly i have a canva question i hope that's okay yeah your questions don't have to be entirely related to this they can be etsy business questions in general uh where i feel like people always think that it has to be about the topic at hand it's nice if you have a question about the topic at hand but it doesn't have to be that yeah this this concludes the uh the tutorial portion now we have the question portion the question and goofing off we're ready to go when i download canva pics and videos and then add them to my social media or my etsy banner it turns out grainy not sharp at all any ideas turn the quality up yes you there when you save it you'll have the option to turn the quality up if you're doing it as a video or a gif you likely haven't started the project at the correct resolution size i would choose custom size and make sure that you're doing um two thousand by two thousand if you're doing it for social media also if you're adding anything to the image and you're having to stretch it the more you use it like some pictures aren't some pictures aren't lossless so it doesn't really matter if you stretch a picture that's so many pixels those pixels are being stretched you can only do so much without like a really expensive ai program yeah so just be aware that can cause some grain as well um gifts are always going to be a little grainy though because gifts are just not yeah their gifts will always be grainy what size do you think is good helpful well that's a personal preference jokes aside for what for what i created a page on my website and put amazon affiliate links with images there i put that website link in my emails and all good just a tip yeah i mean that's the same thing as doing this putting them in here yeah uh in the other black friday email i got from you there was a whole section about the link to run a sale on etsy etsy has their own sales sections now is that not valid anymore you're probably thinking about the etsy on sale thing um that's the whole point of running an etsy on sale is for a double dip sale and that's only if you want to do that type of sale and you cannot do a double dip on etsy through their sales platform it's not to run a sale etsy's always had a sales feature it is to run a double dip sale which is a very specific type of sale um and if you sign up for the black friday tool box down below i have the double dip video in there but you can also search you can also search on my channel and find it it's for a very specific type of sale that you can run that has a cool psychological effect on your buyers um but if you just want to do a general sale you can totally run that through etsy when i download it it looks fine we're talking about the images being blurry when i download it it looks fine it just changes when i upload them to etsy or social media it's because when you're opening them on your computer you're seeing them at the resolution when you're uploading them they're being stretched to the resolution that they need to be which makes them grainy because they're being pulled and stretched if you have a picture that's a thousand by a thousand it's going to look like crap if you put a 500 by 500 picture and it doubles that size but if you open it on your computer and you're looking at it at 500 by 500 it looks fine that's why because your your actual image you're doing is the correct aspect ratio which is like the actual shape of the image but the incorrect resolution does that make sense yeah it's the social media is gonna blow it out yeah it's gonna blow it up sorry it's my stomach are you hungry i'm hungry too i think burritos is gonna be the thing though friday i'm so hungry i think for going to burritos i'm so starving um hey let me apply to amazon affiliate from minnesota i would assume that they would not have allowed when reading my address yeah i would assume so too i would hope so but then again it's one of those things most things business it's kind of up to you to educate yourself like gdpr you're just starting a business you probably have no idea what that even is uh we don't have any more questions it's not even one you all better get your questions in or i'm going to cut this crap early dog we're going to go eat okay and we're going to go eat burritos oh man um guys i did have a couple little quick things that i wanted to go over while i'm waiting for your questions um handmade alpha academy is going to be opening on december 1st i haven't really talked a whole lot about it because i try not to bug you guys with it until it's actually closer to enrollment time but now we're starting to near enrollment time that is for everybody who's messaged me i get so many emails of people saying do you offer one-on-one help i don't because i have a program that is work at your own pace that you can follow and and log into whenever you want and because we all have busy lives right i hate the idea of like oh everybody get on a zoom call at six a.m and meet with starla no i'm not going to do that to you guys because i don't want to do that so i have a course with over 600 successful students in it i've been running it for four years now we only open twice a year for 10 day enrollment windows and there is a waiting list link down below signing up for that does not obligate you to buy but it does ensure that you get a huge discount when doors open on december 1st and it will be closing on december 10th so you've got a very small window to get in but um yeah it's it's a lot of fun and there's also some information about the program on the uh waiting list page but if you have any questions about it you're free to ask those here as well uh sarah said you skipped me sorry i didn't see your image we've got studio light here studio light here monitor here it's very bright so reading white text can be kind of hard sometimes my creative juices are not flowing but i'm in jewelry i specialize in tiny gold studs at the moment what would i have in my gift guide i'm totally lost uh it sounds like you do minimalist jewelry so i would also incorporate in minimalist decor minimalist fashion maybe minimalist purses with gold accents um minimalist you could even do um like some some like chunky blankets and sweaters okay go for images that fit the aesthetic of your images i would even think less about the products themselves and more about the aesthetic of your board and the customer think about the kind of person that it's just like when we teach about finding your your target market customer for anybody that's uh we're doing nha we're doing uh brand planet in december yes we are doing brand or she's doing brand planet i just sit over here and make sure the stream goes well brand planet is a live master class that we do once a year yes think think more about the customer and less about your products what the what else does your customer buy if you sell if you sell beanies you sell them back of the head beanies you know you're probably selling to some coffee some coffee nerds right so so something like a coffee list would work if you're selling big gaudy earrings then you need big gaudy necklaces and off-the-shoulder sweaters and anything yeah think think be stereotypical about your customer like what you're selling to is probably the stereotype that you think it is so go roll with that yeah it's it's it's like when you target custom or do target customer exercises it's almost like you have to think of the extreme when it comes to the type of customer so for a minimalist customer i want you to assume that everything about them is minimalist their home what they wear their decor choices their jewelry choices and then you build a board as if that person only lives the life of a minimalist and everything has to be minimalist and that might not be the case with the true person who's shopping but you're going to catch every little person with every small bit of that niche if you go full extreme you're you're selling to like goth kids go like full pale face black jewelry black makeup goth kid and every little detail will be picked out one goals yeah one little detail for each little person you're going to catch every person in that niche instead of one specific person you're not just selling back of the head beanies you're selling back of the head beanies to the guy that only goes to craft specialty coffee shops that only deals in fair trade coffee pop open the coffee one again the coffee one so this is like there there is nobody who lives this life i mean i'm sure that there are but like i love coffee but i i am not i am not reading you know reading call only reading coffee books and drinking all the coffees and not having i want my coffee brewed at exactly 203 degrees like i but everything is themed right i'm pretending that the person who is shopping this board is so obsessed with coffee that they wear coffee shirts they drink coffee out of coffee themed mugs and they talk like they're a valley kid they want coffee candle they want coffee decor it is everything coffee now how many people are that obsessed with coffee probably not that many one in a million however these products on their own though they look very pretty together it gives you the feeling of that nice warm coffee shop and that person who likes coffee might say you know what i think i do want this coffee cozy you know this gives me the mood for coffee i am now in the mood so i'm gonna buy this crocheted coffee cozy um so just go to the extreme with whatever it is that you are trying to market next don't be don't be afraid to to overly stereotype your customer especially since it's just something you're keeping in your own head yeah yeah it's it's more about a fashion like or a lifestyle that you're trying to capture just making sure i didn't skip any questions here because i had skipped sarah's before what is a decent sized gift guide oh what size should the gift guide be i would try to make it so that um the products like the actual there's no blank spaces when you have the board open does that make sense like you open the board and it looks filled out um i think that amber's is perfect i posted hers in the links um amber if you're here can you post your link again so they can see it do you think canva has a problem resizing images in chrome i got an svg and tried to resize to certain inches in canvas saved it and uploaded it to cricut and it wasn't the right size at all canva does weird stuff with sizing i will say that and there it does random things from time to time too i had in the past i had a lot of issues with every single picture she sent me being a gif instead of a picture but it's it's it was weird in the formatting i don't use chrome anymore i use uh opera opera gx which i highly recommend to just about everybody it's new but it's wonderful um maybe maybe i could do a video on that for i'm afraid you're gonna hit me with that your stomach dude i know um but i don't know i have had issues in the past where she has saved images where they say that they're going to be say 1920 by 1080 and they end up being 720p instead of 1080p that that hasn't been happening recently i think that was a prior issue make sure that your chrome first of all is updated and if you're having weird issues with canva try disabling any add-ons that you've got to chrome you don't need i know a lot of problems that she has with chrome is specifically just because of add-ons and things that you've added to the platform so try that first um and if not hit me up at support at handmadealphacademy.com and we'll see if there's anything else weird yeah because we'll try to figure it out for you because canva is a little strange sometimes yeah um not a question just want to say handmade alpha academy rocks love you uh i haven't finished it yet but so far it's been great i learned so much and stick around next year because we are going to be recording the whole thing in 4k with glorious audio and it's going to be wonderful same content just same version yeah same content just more clean and crisp i might actually redesign the website next year too so it depends on how motivated he is do you guys like his it's a lot of work to do because i'm going to be doing it by hand instead of using a pre-build so uh hia students do you like the way the website looks let us know does it look clean does i know my stomach is growling i'm so hungry surprised they can't hear it can you guys hear my stomach they can't because i've got nvidia going oh uh what's the best way to do a name change for your business on etsy change the shop name or open a new shop with a new name change the shop name because you'll get to keep all your your customer and marketplace experience score and your listing quality scores if you start over from scratch you will literally have to build yourself back up from scratch so i would just change your shop name that's my i hate having this mic here i cannot wait to we need to get our new mics um where did it go where did it go does running out of stock hurt your etsy listing slash indexing um no but letting that item stay out of stock if you're wanting to restock it here's how a listing quality score works here it comes listing quality scores are what help to boost your listing in rank that's why when you add something new it takes a little while for it to climb in search ranking for it to be shown higher in search and be shown on higher search pages that's why you have to be patient with your seo and not touch it all the time because then you just keep messing with it it's like picking a scab if you keep picking it off then it's just going to keep scabbing so listing quality scores are accumulated by activity etsy monitors how people interact with that listing when it is available on etsy if they find it in search organically which means they type something into etsy search and they find your listing it doesn't work when you just post your listing somewhere they have to actually find it in search organically um if somebody buys your listing if somebody reviews your listing and your overall reputation on on etsy um so these are just a couple things that will help your listing to actually grow in search and build its search ranking but if people can't interact with that listing whether it's because it has sold out you've deactivated it you've gone on vacation mode um if they cannot click it and interact with it etsy stops collecting data because there's no data to collect because nobody's able to touch it it's almost like you've put it in you know you put it in a drawer somewhere and nobody can see it um and that's when you start to see your listing quality score tend to drop off now it doesn't disappear it just takes a little bit more time to build it back up if for an extended amount of time it stays sold out if you were to leave it sold out for like six weeks yeah it would probably drop in the stats a little bit but it would be better to just reactivate it rather than start a new listing because it would still have history i hope that makes sense somebody i'm going to just get this real quick because amber mentioned the tech guide yeah i do have a tech guide in haa it's a little outdated but i don't recommend i don't think i recommend mike's in there do i no i do you just redid it in june you redid it right you're right did you just redo in june i redo it every every season we use a blue yeti on a road boom arm amber uses the rode snowball which is good i think it's the just one model down they sound about the same but i prefer that you're going to show them our fancy mic if you yeah if you are experienced at all with audio stuff you don't really have to be super experienced it's pretty well explanatory if you know how to like install drivers and stuff i would get yourself a focusrite 2i2 or solo the shure sm7 sierra mic 7 bravo sm7b they also recently came out with a cheaper usb version of this mic um however i prefer the regular version because it's better but because you're able to add this is called a cloud lifter this makes it louder this gives it significantly more gain this is a very quiet microphone it's able to do like stuff on stage very very loud things without it being blown out so if you don't have a cloud lifter you have to talk with it like this close to your mouth yeah so i recommend that um you can if you if you want a little bit of advice and you're not quite sure yeah amber did it you can email me again support handmadealpha academy.com i'll get back to you within one to two days and i'll we can we can talk more about it i'm an audio nut but i don't want to get too far down that rabbit hole here uh in trello do you have to create images first no you create the card first you add the card and then you put the image into the card yeah we've done two other videos on trello in the last like two months so check out some past videos i think our first one was actually how to use trello it was how to set up a how to build a marketing calendar with trello but we went full in depth on how to do it we do it in all three i use trello for everything guys i use it for my marketing calendar i use it for idea board yes i use it for gift guides i use it for everything i have a trello board for everything yeah thank you for the recommendations you're welcome the yeti i think runs you 200 bucks the interface cloud lifter sm7b is probably going to be around seven or eight hundred dollars and the sm7b usb version i wanna say is like 375 dollars but i could be way off but this is what we will be upgrading to soon we will both have one of these sitting like this sexy just like six hundred dollars for a microphone and a that's just a lot of money to spend all at once especially when we already have one uh have any ideas for decorations party decorations for the gift guides invitations uh tablecloths uh gifts gift wrapping anything that you would need for a birthday party i would google birthday party christmas party anniversary holi any holiday here you go party props uh i am about to open a new etsy shop can i create a gift guide with just my own products do i have to collaborate with others no you do whatever you want this is your board collaboration just helps you build it it helps you get exposure because if you shout them out they might shout you out right and if you're working with alphas i would hope that you guys are helping each other that's handmade alpha or academy handmade alpha facebook community is linked down below like work together don't make sure that you're if someone's helping you help them in return because that's how these are gonna get traction uh this is how they're gonna get viewed as i sell wooden carved gifts what a gift guide for grandma work or am i alienating mums no no you could even do why not do your gift guide like you know do it like wood themed but then do every single list based on retic recipient do one for grandma one for mom or you know you could just do a full gift guide for granted don't don't worry about like alienating don't worry about alienating unless you're like gifts for nazi sympathizers like right don't worry about offending people yeah don't nobody's gonna be offended at a gift guide for grandma you know just keep it appropriate yeah alphas won't wanna help you with your board if you do inappropriate yeah no unless you're like alpha's after dark and then yeah you should start a separate facebook group for that too i was just thinking about that the other day where only alpha's after dark people can go because it's one of those things where people are going to have to post products and pictures and things and you have to have a separate group for that because no matter what we do somebody will report things to get the group shut down so if you're an alphas after dark seller and you want a separate group or a separate place to talk let me know i might just stick that i've got a discord up i just don't have it fully set up yet alphas have those are for alphas who sell 18 plus products yes um there was a question when are you doing after dark again uh we should fro we're not going to be able to do a friday bean next week maybe the week after that i think we well i think we decided we were going to do a friday be next week because it's not only that's right it's the day before our anniversary y'all are lucky sacrifice so much sacrifice uh have you got any ideas on what affiliate to use with my fluid art lazy susans and our black walnut charcuterie board uh do other cheese boards jams um cheese cutter cheese cutter knives cutlery different different brands of jam and cheese coasters cutting maybe like an actual like marble cutting board there are tons of small companies that sell like smoked meats and things that you could get things for charcoal report like yeah think about the customer and not specifically the product yeah what think about a party that someone might be hosting where they might use your products like what other items might they have like on their table spread um with your products uh what if not all our products are applicable does that matter or should i create different guides to incorporate everything i would try to keep it relevant if they're pretty wildly out there then i would keep them separate but if you can put them all on the same board because you can if you can think of a use that the two things go together like your products and the thing go together then it's probably okay yeah like our board like we've got hoodies and then we've got coffee but the hoodies are all like cozy yeah when you think of like when i think of like a coffee i think of you know cozy i want to curl up in a blanket wear a big baggy hoodie um journaling i've got the starbucks pour your heart into it which is a story of howard schultz um you know everything is just kind of related to a feeling not necessarily drinking coffee otherwise everything would have to be coffee scented will current students receive the new high quality course recordings no you have to pay double the price and you're contractually bound to do so within the next three months he's lying no yes of course you're gonna get it for free any content we any content we add on to haa other than possibly other full-sized courses that we do in the future you're going to get which we don't have plans of so don't worry about that no but we're going to we have to get another camera i'm going to get a camera that does full 4k 60fps recording i've got that microphone i've got another like 800 microphone i got i got i guess you can't see it but then i have a vocal isolator back here that makes the mic quiet in short um we're recording it all it's gonna look and sound great you guys will get it for free you guys get it all for free you don't have to ever pay again if you've paid us for haa you don't ever have to pay us again we will not make you pay for anything again unless you want to if you want to shoot me an email if you want and i'll send you an invoice i'll you can pay as much as you want that's the beauty about doing this kind of thing is i can charge whatever i want you guys can pay for has many you can buy me a car you can pay in cars any billionaires out there watching our channel hit me up otherwise no you get it for free because you already paid for it not gonna turn down money i'm not stupid i think the aji website is very clean and organized oh thank you i use pinterest a lot what are the benefits of doing at trello as well um trello trello is for organization and you have full capability and it's only going to be your things pinterest i mean you can use pinterest and build a gift gift guide if you wanted to but you won't have as much customization uh opportunity and people can get sidetracked and start clicking off to other people's stuff directly from your pins like maybe they'll end up on your pins but then they start clicking through other things um this just keeps them in one central location and it allows you to customize a little bit more but you could totally do it on pinterest if you wanted to uh i dread vacation mode i'm leaving town for eight days and i feel like that's too long to extend my process no it's not it's no it's not no extend your processing time i would much rather see you extend your unless you unless you absolutely won't be able to respond to messages during that time period um i would just extend your processing times because eight days isn't a significant amount of time uh my listing went out of stock last year and here and nearly a year later i reactivated it should it today should i create a new listing no it's fine no because it'll keep its uh original listing quality score it'll just take a little while of activity for it to bounce back but it has a history i took the architect course and built a website it was good and that it was step by step and made it easy for me to get everything right mark you're tech savvy and don't need that kind of help uh yeah i do i'm not a programmer i'm not a programmer i know i know like a very minimal amount of like python and html and that's it i can read coding language but i cannot write it from memory but what we're talking about isn't using like a wordpress site we're talking about building yeah though i think the next iteration probably still be wordpress except i will be using a a builder instead of using a uh plug-in instead of a plug-in yeah i will be actually using a builder as a matter of fact just because i know there's a lot of people here oh i can type lobby it usually comes out really fast when i do it no it's not going to come up anyway yeah i'll be using a builder next time around as i continue to learn language and then i will program it myself it not using a builder has its own host of problems because if i break one thing then i might have to fix the entire site or to add something i might have to completely redesign the site to get it to work and i don't want to go through all that there are already two 18 plus sellers in the chat so if you guys end up wanting to do collaborations with each other if any other 18 plus sellers want to do collabs do me a favor you guys can totally use the handmade alpha facebook community just post a photo that says um like not safe for working comments yeah and that and put like admin approved 18 plus shop you've been warned and then put the discussion in the comments be careful with your wording and stuff don't put any like dirty words or just people can still report you and get you in trouble with facebook so just be careful with what you type yeah but put like starla approved in the in the chat links to products there's nothing wrong with links to products as long as the thumbnail isn't showing yeah just post the link and don't upload the photos directly just in case facebook decides and if it if you post the link and it pops up with a little thumbnail with the image of the product yeah click the x or remove preview whatever it has for your platform yep because we're not stingy but i know that there are numbers there's probably somebody who's going to be offended so but you guys know how our opinion on it everybody on etsy deserves to be on etsy no matter what they sell because there's there's a lot of dingleberries so just be careful wash them out watch them i signed up for h.a and it's wonderful you're proud program we love you too it's wonderful uh okay there we go all the haa students in the chat we've got a whole bunch in here i claim the naughty after dark board i'll have to check it out well send us your naughty after dark boards we'll look at them people so afraid of naughty love man sometimes you just gotta be naughty that's how it is it's almost christmas time be naughty be healthy have a good relationship don't that's true none of that i might i'll stop 30 days to not lose quote unquote ranking on a renewed back in stock listing found this out when i struggled to get more of a posting made no there's no there i don't know where you heard that but it's not 30 days there's no there's no time stamp and if you read somewhere that there's a time stamp and it's not direct from etsy then it's somebody guessing there is no time stamp and trust me we would know because we work for you rank and uh that's our whole job is knowing as much as we can about how etsy's algorithm works and etsy's never disclosed how many days it takes for you to lose ranking as far as we know but if there is contrary and you have a link direct from etsy feel free to let us know and i'm also going to throw out the thing that if you've met with an etsy employee through one of their little like support like meeting things where you can talk to an etsy employee and they critique your shop they are not always right in fact they are wrong a lot they are wrong so many times they they i keep in mind that like like with most companies it's probably not somebody that's an etsy professional that you're talking to it's somebody that's gotta work for yeah it's somebody with a little book in front of them with the answers to the questions that you're asking that's the kind of person that you're getting unfortunately it would be impossible etsy is still a relatively small company they don't have the resources to train tens of thousands of people to be professionals in their platform they have to hire people and hope that those people get good enough at their jobs to provide good support yeah so there is room for error look for etsy official articles by at the staff but with the etsy like logo on the article that's when because then it's been approved by multiple like editors and etsy employees and it's not just like a one-off conversation from somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about because i you know i'm not saying that all etsy staff members who do these meetings are like that but i see very bad information that comes from critique staff members uh an after dark facebook group would be great we might do it it's one of those things where it could get us in trouble if somebody posts the wrong kind of thing and we're not there to remove it before somebody gets in trouble i feel like we'll get in trouble we won't well your page can get in trouble now too i get alerts for a lot of the meme pages i'm groups in because if you share something from a group that has a warning you can get in trouble just for sharing it now so you have to be very very careful with that kind of stuff i think a reddit might be a better place for that i think i think a group i do too i think it's such a cesspool of gross but i think reddit would be a better place for that because then we can do whatever we want as long as there's nothing illegal so we'll figure it out you guys are awesome we love you guys too still haven't been able to get into the after dark group we don't have one we don't have one we have a we have an email list and we uh we've done two little after dark live streams my son is a programmer lead engineer for app development unusually he has good communication skills too proud mom why does everybody think that we're all mouth breathers us nerds aren't all mouth breathers oh i prefer to breathe out of my mouth but i'm not a mouth breather my nerd he is a nerd he's the biggest nerd thank you for supporting the 18 plus sellers i think it's silly not to i think stinginess in the year 2020 and up is stupid i think people need to grow up and realize that love is love and things happen uh any comments about the etsy reserve crap are we all headed to reserve i've not heard of it i don't know what that is is it like is it like the the military reserves the etsy sprite uh it's the payment reserve oh is this where they they where they're holding your they're holding funds for new sellers is that what you're referring to we had covered that in a couple past episodes that's your reserve they hold 75 of your funds if you get a copyright strike they will hold 75 percent of your funds for a long time i don't know enough about it yeah to be honest with you let us look more more into it um don't do i mean don't do stuff to get a copyright strike i know that sounds stupid but it's really easy to not get a copyright strike i mean there are stupid cases where someone will copyright a phrase and you didn't know uh yeah but that's few and far between right a majority of copyright cases that come up are people who know that they shouldn't sell disney but they say well everybody else sells disney and don't sell disney don't sell disney don't sell star wars don't sell harry potter don't sell video game stuff don't sell anything nintendo don't sell pokemon don't yes we know it's influenced by but influenced by firebase yeah is a very very very fine line inspired by is a lie you don't have the right to say and i doubt that everyone's going to get thrown into etsy reserve and if they do do an everyone it will be all new sellers for a short period of time to make sure that it's safe and not somebody that's a chinese bot drop selling on etsy yeah just be careful follow out these rules they're very cl clearly pointed out for us i got a strike recently for a freaking skull and crossbones one piece anime claims it's their property but uh sorry no yeah uh fight it dispute it just fight it dispute it that that's silly i saw an etsy seller that's having their funds held until 2022 not sure how true it is though i'm gonna i'm gonna put a big fat doubt on that one yeah x x to doubt bro what's the best place to research copyright um i mean honestly start with google and then beyond that get with a like like an attorney yeah if you're working on a get with a lawyer yeah and if you just have a quick question for a lawyer uh i always recommend this website it's called justdancer.com and you can ask a lawyer a quick question for a few dollars um that way you know because when any time someone's like oh you got it be sure to talk to your lawyer who the heck has a lawyer who just has the lawyers sticking around who has the money to sit down to ask a lawyer a question i i'm not gonna do that i'll that's something where i'll be like oh okay i'll go talk to my lawyer that i don't have no go to justdancer.com you can just post a question to a lawyer and pay a couple dollars and get the answer to your one question i'm trying they won't talk to me and etsy won't help just keep getting on etsy and if it's bad enough that you think that it needs to get a lawyer i mean that's that's the best thing that you can do unfortunately and it might be another one of those cases where i mean continuously bug etsy bug them all the time bug them all the time bug um who owns one piece i don't know is it fun is it foundation probably either for the nation or bandai oh it's shown in jump okay they own dbz right yeah a lot of stuff yeah contact them directly um and say hey this i yeah or whoever filed the dispute you should get the name of whoever filed the dispute with you uh contact them directly contact etsy repeatedly and say this is not they're probably if it's shown in they're not in america they're not going to reply yeah but they also it would be weird that they would even file the claim to begin with that's it's very odd because i see i see a lot of uh yeah toei shown in yeah uh definitely not people with copyright violations or just new sellers lots of comp uh comments on the forums and 2022 is true i would need i would need to see it if you have a if you have a link i guess you can't send a link here we'll look into it guys yeah we'll we'll look into it because that seems a little out there i don't think that you can make money in one year and then hold the money out to another year because that gets in the way of taxes yeah that becomes a tax issue we'll look into it more i'm a maker and i'm trying to get my business going my issue is i have so many interests and skills that i find it hard to be a production machine i like variety from what i gather uh though to be to be to be that's the main that might be a product i have to sign a signature um brb uh i will say that i understand like the scatter brain mindset i do a lot of different things um but i don't do all the different things on etsy it's okay to be into a lot of different things you don't have to put all of those different things in your etsy shop because really etsy shops that you see that are successful usually specify in one type of thing or a style or one single type of target customer if you you know want to sell all different dog products you could do that but the theme is dog there's a central theme maybe you sell collars and dog mom shirts and dog bracelets and bandanas for dogs and dog bowls and that's all fine those are all different products but they all are tied together by a theme um if you sell you know jewelry but it's all gemstone then gemstone is the theme uh you know if you sell minimalist to minimalists and you've got minimalist jewelry minimalist decor the theme is minimalist um being into a lot of different things i mean amber and i have a podcast about a vampire romance series that we read i wrote a science fiction book that i'm going to be marketing and it will hopefully be releasing in january guys check go join the email list at explorethechannel.com uh to sign up for my book um you know we have so many other hobbies and things that we do it doesn't necessarily mean that we throw it into our etsy shop though you gotta you have to do what customers want and what is known to sell and things that are known to sell are typically cohesive product lines and themed shops that tend to give a specific feeling or are meant for a very specific type of customer what are you doing this person said that they've tried to join the email after dark or the after dark email list twice and nope post your email address without the dot com on it for me uh maybe they maybe that's not a good idea if you don't want that in there then don't but yeah maybe that's not a good idea maybe email me at support handmade alphaacademy.com i'll get with you yeah we'll check you out here's the thing if you've joined what's happening because we haven't sent anything so if you're joining and then nothing happens and you're expecting because we haven't set any emails right it's not something we actively continuously do right we only do it when we have an episode you're likely on the list we just haven't done anything because there's nothing there's nothing going on with it right now so you're probably on there all right that's it for questions are we done i think we're done guys black friday uh toolbox is down below it's full of goodies there's so many goodies inside there's so many freebies there's graphics there's a checklist to tell you exactly when to start your sale when to start marketing your sale when to prep your listings for your sale when to when to prep for you know your actual launch what time the launch your sale everything is in the checklist uh there are marketing calendars that go through october november and december to tell you holidays to optimize for when to plan collections when to plan sales uh and you know when to post seasonal products things like that there is my ssar swipe file series that is my five-star customer service strategy that can help you to get more five-star reviews by keeping constant communication with your customers my 74-piece graphics pack that has 74 unique royalty-free graphics that you can use for your marketing is included and there's a tutorial to teach you how to use them uh there is last year's black friday lifeline live stream that you can go back and watch and there's also an invitation to this year's black friday lifeline which will take place later in november so you can actually join us and we are going to be sitting and coaching you through black friday and making sure that all your questions are asked right before black friday so while you're getting everything set up you can listen to us fun fun fun sign up for that it is free handmade alpha academy is opening december 1st if uh if you're interested in that there's a waiting list signing up for it doesn't obligate you to buy but it does ensure that you get a discount when doors open and it will be open from december 1st through december 10. so when do you suggest we start sending out the link to the gift guide as soon as it's done yep people are shopping now um we actually started in august seeing the initial people searching or no i'm not sorry uh september we started seeing the big spike in people searching for gifts on etsy and october and november are the most popular months for gift buying so you want to make sure that you're getting it done soon and post it as soon as you can just like i said make sure that you set it to public and you test it first by sending it to a friend uh to open to make sure that they're able to access it before you post it out because that would be really embarrassing if you sent it to everybody and it was private and then they couldn't access it what advice can you give me for mentally producing a product over and over when i have a mind that likes variety i i have a very suck it up and do it kind of attitude he was in the military so we called it shut up in color yeah like uh it sucks because i think every business owner gets to the point where they start to hate what they make even though they started out loving the product you have to kind of like a relationship you've got to find a way to keep it fresh money right money is your motivator there money if you want to make money then you keep making the thing that people want to buy it's like if you work at a restaurant and everybody orders the steak after a while you probably get sick of making the steak but if the steak is like the number one thing that people order you're gonna be making a lot of steaks yeah so you gotta find something you like about it if you're working in that restaurant you're making a lot of steaks just think of the appreciation that the customer has receiving a great steak or the money or the money money if you're making a steak you're not making the money from the steak you're getting money from the restaurant they're definitely not paying you enough because you're working in a restaurant but that's different because with etsy products it's money yes where's the link to your gift guides amber just posted them thank you amber and they should be down in the description right no no not yet i want to wait until after the thing you're right you're very very welcome oh and if anybody's in the dayton area we'll be playing a show on the 22nd 23rd 23rd 23rd of october 23rd uh pretty sure it's a friday no 23rd 23rd i guess it's on the 20th 23rd at the court yard courtyard lounge in inglewood ohio yeah it's not sure the time yet follow my band at the rendering silence on facebook on instagram come hang out with me i'm gonna hang out we're gonna be bored it's gonna be we're opening and we're the youngest band there and not everybody's gonna be a bunch of old beer drinkers and it's gonna be it's all like medieval type music that fantasy metal yeah except for his band that isn't it isn't no we're like bullet from my valentine and mud vein had a baby yeah so um come hang out with me so i'm not sitting there all by myself what fun we're gonna go eat burritos now we love you guys please subscribe to the channel if you haven't already that way you get notified when we upload videos hit that little bell icon if you want to get an actual notification on your phone when we go live like the video and tell me how much you want to pay and i'll send you that invoice craft wizard said is it okay to put the shop link in the facebook group specifically for the purpose of collaboration yes don't be afraid to post your shop links as long as you're saying i am looking for alphas to collaborate with here is my shop what i would prefer you do is post a product specifically or um you know just if we can tell that you're advertising we'll know because normally we don't allow you guys to post your shop links unless you're specifically asking for feedback um we're going to be monitoring these please be cautious of how you're like posting them don't just throw your shop link and then drop it like that we will delete those make sure that you actually write in the description i am looking for alphas to collaborate with i sell this i am looking for these types of products not an excuse to try to sell things to other alphas exactly exactly what is that world map behind you this in here we bought that in california at a thrift shop it's so freaking cool i'm not getting it down because i have it perfectly level otherwise i would bring it over it was 15 at this old ladies like little thrift shop and it's a bloody world map like zombie we were super into zombies when he bought it it's super cool it's way cooler in person once we get this area all set up if i can get the back of see i got a compute extra computer monitor and a whole bunch of other crap back here right now but we were it came out we bought that like right when we were super into the walking dead when we lived in california we need to get rid of this stupid boob light that's up here i hate these things we got one above us too but i like that one because it like disperses light very well yeah i hate those all right i think that we're gonna need all right we love you guys we will see you next friday on the friday bean

Channel: Starla Moore

Views: 2,323

Keywords: etsy tips for beginners, etsy tips and tricks, the friday bean, handmade alphas, starla moore, get more etsy sales, etsy earn money, start a home business, home based business, starting your own business, grow my etsy shop, etsy for newbies, etsy holiday prep, erank for etsy, etsy trends 2021, etsy black friday, etsy black friday sale, get more sales on etsy, make more money on etsy, how to make money on etsy, etsy christmas, etsy gift guide, etsy marketing ideas

Id: 8BBD_wzM-4s

Length: 94min 28sec (5668 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 08 2021