Happy holiday weekend! If you’re reading this from the US, we hope you had a great 4thof July! We had a small get together to watch our local display … and I loved seeing all the STARS! (of course!) A short funny story about an old Davies dad tradition. My mom and dad are British - my dad is Welsh. The Welsh are VERY proud of their heritage, and after 40 years of living in the US, my dad still sounds as Welsh as when he first got off the plane. For years, every year, my dad used to have his own fun on July 4th – he would fly the Red Dragon (The Welsh national flag) and the Union Jack at half -mast outside our house. And every year the local police would come around and ask him (tell him) to take them down. He thought this was very funny and I think the police (friendly small neighborhood) also found it amusing and had this on their 4th of July “to do list”. I suppose this is where I get my sometimes off-kilter sense of humor (!)
On to The CraftStar! 
We’re running a promotion on The CraftStar for new members to sign up and get their first month free. Unlimited listings! This promo will be active until Sunday, July 7th, so please tell your friends!. Since changing over to the monthly membership instead of listing fees, the site is growing faster than ever. I absolutely love watching our new members load up their shops.
Last week I spent a couple days with various journalists, magazine editors, bloggers, etc at an event in New York talking about The CraftStar. The event was based around Holiday Gifts and it was great to be able to show them such an amazing and quickly growing collection of handmade items, fabulous vintage finds, and crafting supplies on our site! The bloggers have already hit their keyboards as we’ve seen quite a surge of traffic since the trip. 
I hope you’ve bumped into some of our ads in your travels online! I love checking in for my hourly dose of news and seeing The CraftStar – SUPPORT SMALL BUSINESS ad! We have various forms of these targeting buyers of different interests, and sellers.
At The CraftStar, supporting small business is our main aim and we do everything we can to help you. Our ever-growing team is promoting YOUR shops and YOUR items on every social media site out there! I hope you’re doing the same with your CraftStar items. As a team and community, the support we give each other is crucial for success – and sales! A couple housekeeping notes: please remember you can have more than one shop under a single log-in on The CraftStar. So if you’re selling handmade AND vintage, you can have two separate shops and access them both very easily. Titles, tags, and text are VERY important for your items and their chance of being seen in internal and external searches. (We have a great HOW TO GUIDE on this at the bottom of the site). Through our research we have found top search terms and these should be included on your items. If you’re selling handmade jewelry, make sure you have that tagged. If you’re selling amazing vintage finds, try to put the date / age (or approximate date) of the item in your description. And every item should be tagged: unique gifts. Also, don’t forget to add colors into your tags ... a lot of searches are based on colors. So if your item is red, make sure you tag “red”. Finally … I have become a BNR convert! I never really understood it while I was selling at the other site so never participated. Rhonda (Steampunk Beadery), one of our VERY active CraftStar members approached me a couple weeks ago about starting a BNR on The CraftStar. I said sure, let’s give it a go. Having seen, with my very own eyes, 22 sales in just over an hour, I am now a huge BNR fan!! We will be doing these every Monday at 8pm EDT, 5pm PDT – and tonight we’re holding a Friday night special at the same time. What’s great about BNR’s on The CraftStar is our chat functionality on site. We can chat and buy and sell and have loads of fun all at once! We LOVE to hear ideas from our community … so if you have something in mind that you think would be beneficial to The CraftStar, please drop me an email. MANY of our current features are based on your ideas and requests, and we have more to come. I think that’s enough for now! Next time … we’ll catch you up with our holiday plans. Think parties and LIVE broadcasts = very unique! As ever, Bethan and The CraftStar Team |
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