I need suggestions!

[Sharona]

Just looked at your site - mmmmm....the scents look great. Do you have a eucalyptus soap? I'm always looking for a good one to use when I have sinus headaches or general achy bones. Gotta order the lavendar & goats milk and the oatmeal and grits. What's the last one listed? Both times I loaded the site it's double printed and I can't make out what type it is.

Updated - just placed an order. But I'm still curious about the eucalyptus - my DH says I'm a freak about the stuff - I love the smell

 

[PurpleChicken]

The chicken items sound cool for your site. You might make a few
extra bucks on it.

Marketing is everything. Market your site hard through google and the
other search engines. You can do it yourself or hire someone.

Your soap is a specialty item that you may be able to sell through
small stores that sell gift items and stuff like that. Business to Business
is always a good business model. Call every wedding planner, DJ, and florist
and tell them about your product. Pick 3 or 4 types of businesses, make a list
of all within 50 miles, and start selling.

There are a lot of books that can help. Guerilla Marketing & Guerilla Selling
are two that helped me a lot.

From the looks of things you have a good foundation to build on.

 

[Southern28Chick]

Quote:
Eucalyptus sounds awesome!!! I'll find some eucalyptus oil immediately and I'll let you know when I have a batch ready. Thanks for the suggestion!! The last soap listed is Apple Jack & Orange Peel, it's a gardeners/mechanics soap. It has poppy seeds, pulverized orange peel and powdered pumice in it. It's great for a hand soap for scrubbing soil or grease off your hands. I checked my site and it came up ok for me.

Thanks for the order!!!

 

[Frozen Feathers]

Are you going to make your oils and balms etc yourself? Are they going to be in the same scents you already have?

If so...What about offering gift baskets with bath items? Similar to what you'd see at chain stores, but higher quality. I know people (especially guys

) like gifts that require no thinking. You could have them themed on your soap scents. For example, a cinnamon basket could include your cinnamon soaps, some cinnamon sticks and some cinnamon candy hearts, etc.

I think they'd be cute!

Good luck! I have been to your site several times ogling at your soaps and have been trying to "hint, hint" my DH but obviously he hasn't got it yet.

I foresee a gift to my self in near future.

 

[wendy]

purple chicken i was going to suggest this same thing you wrote: Your soap is a specialty item that you may be able to sell through
small stores that sell gift items and stuff like that. Business to Business
is always a good business model. Call every wedding planner, DJ, and florist
and tell them about your product. Pick 3 or 4 types of businesses, make a list
of all within 50 miles, and start selling.

around here you always see boutiques and locally owned stores, beauty shops, spas, selling someones stuff. print out a little brochure too by your items you sell. do you have something like printmaster? i printed a little flyer for selling our eggs. sometimes maybe people can't really buy then because of money like when you were at the flea market. but could later when a paycheck came in or for a gift idea (so a brochure would help there)

 

[Southern28Chick]

Quote:
Yeah I have been doing gift baskets locally. I have to figure out how to do it on my site. In fact I just sold one today to a man who needs something for his wife's birthday. His basket consisted of 2 bars of soap, a bottle of bath oil, bath salts, Southern Pine scented homemade potpourri, a massager, and two tins of solid lotion bars. All handmade by me except the massager.

 

[sunnychooks]

Instead of flea markets have you thought of craft fairs? They're usually a little more "high end" and soap making is certainly an artsy kind of craft!

Also, I belong to our local Chamber of Commerce and I'm constantly getting calls from other members letting me know about their products and services. You don't have to join to get a listing of Chamber members in your area. Call and find out the person you need to speak to and ASK TO SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENT. Business owners don't like people just showing up and it also projects a more professional appearance if you call in advance. Don't try to sell anything over the phone because most businesses will not take the time, and your product is one that you need people to see, touch and smell. Also, it doesn't hurt to make up small samples and leave them as a "thank you" for their time.

One more idea... There are Barter networks that will barter your product "dollar for dollar" with other businesses for THEIR services and products. It's also a great way to network with businesses who will need employee gifts for special occasions. I used to belong to one and was able to barter new storm drains for my house, a water softening system, gift baskets for the holidays, car service and repair and lots more stuff. The nice thing about these organisations is that you don't barter directly. You can accrue credit by selling to a business that you don't want anything from and use that credit at another business for something you want or need.

Good Luck!!!

 

[ruth]

Hi Southern Chick - I looked at your site and it's very nice. I'll probably order some soaps from you as well - they look great. As a website developer and owner of a company that helps small businesses get started on low budgets - here's my two cents: First, put lots of keywords behind the scenes in your Meta tags. Search engines search by keywords - yours only says "Handcrafted Homemade Handmade Soap". Throw in lots of words with soap, country store, country products, country soap, handmade soap, etc. You also need to have your name in there as well (plus any competitors names if you want). You get the idea. That way if someone types in a search engine for any of the keywords you've listed in the META tags, your site has a better chance of coming up. You can also go on every search engine and hunt around till you find the link that says something like "suggest a site" or "add URL". Click on it and add your site. This method is free put takes a lot of time to show results. The better method, if you can afford a small budget each month for marketing expense, is the pay-per-click program that each search site uses. You bid on keywords like "homemade soap" - like EBay bids start at a penny and go up from there. If no one else is bidding on that word you pay the search engine, MSN, Yahoo, Google (whoever) a penny for every time someone clicks on your site. This method assures you your site is listed in the top three of the page when someone keys in that word. Ever notice how there are three in the top box and five or six in a side box to right? Those are who are paying for that keyword. Benefit is you are at top of site and only pay if someone clicks on it and comes to your site. The search engine is not supposed to charge you if the same p.c. clicks more than once - that way competitors can't sit there and run up your bill. You can also set a budget on each site - say $10 a week and your site will be removed from the top 3 when it hits your budget - keeps you from getting a whopping bill. I just used MSN and typed in "homemade soap" and only two sites were using pay-per-click soapbath.com and naturesownsoap.com You also need to add a meta tag for description - that's the info that comes up under your website name that says what you do. Take a look at my website www.edgar2.com and then go to View Source using Internet Explorer and you'll see all of the META tags - that's what drives search engines. My site comes up at the top of most search engines without my having to pay simply because of the keywords. Try it and you'll see how it works. Use MSN and type in "EDGAR Training" - you'll see my site at the very top (for free) and you'll see how the description views. All of that is from the META tags.

All that said - I would also combine your main page with your home page - both are lovely and only 1/2 page each and could easily be combined. Because I was on a page for ordering and then clicked "home" and went to a different page other than the one with your picture.

This is rather lengthy and I would be happy to help you for free in any area you want. For 15 years I have made my own websites and those for others. I also started a vintage jewelry retail shop and now the website business. We also do business cards, brochures, print ads all on a shoestring budget because I could never afford what the large companies charged - that's how I started my own company "Big Business Solutions" for small companies who think big. Just haven't had time to get that website up yet.

Give me a call or e-mail me if you want any more help - I'm more than happy to help in any way I can. I believe in this world we should help one another. You go girl.

 

[Southern28Chick]

Ruth,
Thank you SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much!!!!!!!!!!! I have no clue what I'm doing with my website. I started it by myself and I'm doing everything alone. I'm surprised I figured out how to even create the site. You are very helpful and I will try to do everything that you said.

I just want to say that I love this site and all the people on it. Everybody is so helpful and nice. I think having chickens destresses (maybe not a word) people and makes all chicken owners nice wonderful happy people.

 

[ruth]

You're welcome. You've got a nice site. It has a nice country, homey, home-made soap kinda of feel to it. Now the trick is to get it seen. The best website in the world is no good if no one knows about it. I never pay for advertising or marketing in my business - all of my work comes from people who find my website. I normally have a calendar/registration page where people can sign up for our seminars but had to take it down temporarily because the spammers found it and I was getting hundreds of fake registration forms submitted each day. But oh well, there's a price to be paid for being seen too.

It's very easy to edit the HTML code. I use FrontPage to create and edit websites - it's by Microsoft and has the exact same toolbar as Word so there's no learning curve if you've ever used MS Word. You can also edit the HTML code using Notepad or Wordpad - they come free on every p.c. Just use them to open the files and edit the code to add the meta tags. Like I said, copy mine and then change them to your own search keywords and description. It's funny, I just found a companys site that came up when I did a search for EDGAR and it had my business name and description but was a link to their site. I looked at their site and they had copied my code but weren't bright enough to remove the description tag so their site is described as E-Services, EDGAR Experts, blah blah. Pretty funny actually. I thought about calling them and letting them know but decided to let it stand. Kind of like finding a link to Bellsouth.com but the description under it saying MCI - the best phone company in the world.

Again, let me know if you need more help.