a crystals & jewelry adventure

Meet Cheysuli. Yes, Cheysuli is a Siamese cat, for those of you who are feeling confused about it. Her human, "the woman" had ordered a couple of custom necklaces for her wedding, and Chey was kind enough to model them.  I’m using the photos here with permission (Cheysuli’s of course). Chey is the most beautiful model of my jewelry I’ve ever seen.

This one is the Cheysuli with the bridesmaid’s necklace.

"The woman" wasn’t fast enough to catch a really good photo of Cheysuli in this photo of the bride’s necklace. You see, Chey decided to keep the necklace for herself and ran off with it. So Chey deigned to allow a photo of "The Woman" with the necklace, at the wedding no doubt, to show off the necklace better. Rumor has it that after the wedding, Cheysuli reclaimed the necklace, as is obviously her Meezer right.

By the way, Cheysuli is running for President in 2008. Considering how badly we humans have done with it historically, I think I’ll have to write her name in on the ballot here. She can hardly do worse. And she has great taste in jewelry, if I do say so myself. hehehe Chey also has a great site on all things for you and your Meezer, that you might want to check out, too, including a blog. 

Thanks for modeling the jewelry, Chey!

Gotta Market Your Jewelry Website

I did a post  in May about Making a Jewelry Website. This is the next article in the series.

Build it and they will come just doesn’t work on the web. So you have to market your site. Over and over and over again. It’s a never-ending process.  And they all cost time, energy, and some money. Some cost a little. Others cost a lot. 

Email Newsletter

It’s almost impossible to have a successful website without having an email newsletter. And as marketing tools go, email newsletters are inexpensive. My sales go up by 300% or more the day after my newsletter goes out. Whoa!  Why is that?  Basically, because it reminds folks about your site. There are literally billions of sites out there, and there’s no way any one person can remember them all. So send them a reminder. Start one yourself as soon as you start your website. Need more convincing?  You can go all over the web and find more info about it, just google it or yahoo it.  Try "email marketing" for a search term.

The mailing list service I use is  Your Mailing List Provider and they’ve been great for the whole time I’ve used them. Their double opt-in and bounce handling options make doing a newsletter so much easier than it used to be. Plus, you can do HTML or text newsletters or both. And they keep adding features that are super-handy. For the money, they’re the best I’ve found.

Tips for Email Newsletters

• Do it in HTML within the email itself.
  Make it pretty. Use photos judiciously, but do use them.
• Put the newsletter IN the email. Don’t expect your readers to open your email, then click on a link to go to your site to read your newsletter. Make it easy for them.
• Make it interesting to your readers.
  Readers might become buyers. So make it fun for them to subscribe to it and read it.
• Do NOT make it just "I’m selling this now." 
  That will kill an email newsletter almost as fast as not sending one at all. You can do that occasionally — if your newsletter is normally interesting — but doing it regularly makes people unsubscribe or delete the newsletter.
• Write your newsletter like you were talking to them personally.
  Grammar and punctuation need not be perfect. A friendly tone is needed.
• Send out your newsletter no more than once a week.
  More than that and it comes across as spam. Unless you have that many really fun things to say, that is.
• Write your newsletter regularly and purposefully, even when you have a small number of subscribers.
  If you don’t, you’ll end up with no subscribers at all.

Email newsletters are great marketing tools, but they also have to be fun and interesting to your readers. 

Eni Oken has 2 new tutorials up! I highly recommend her tutorials if you like making wire jewelry. I always learn something from them, even if they’re things I may not want to make specifically.  So go grab ‘em*

*And do Eni and all of us all a favor, don’t share them or give them to folks - if we all pay for them, she can keep her prices outrageously low like they are now. These two new ones are only $5 each and for the quality, that’s definitely outrageously low.

You guys are something else! I got so many happy birthday wishes, it floored me.   I had the best intentions of thanking everyone personally, because I really appreciate it. But at this rate, I’ll still be sending thank yous next week.  Although that would be a lot of tun, I think maybe I’d better get on with making jewelry and stuff instead.  So please accept my thank you here. Thank you! All of you! It was really awesome to get all your birthday wishes and notes.

For fun :) 

*

Mingle² - Free Online Dating

*Of course, the rating may change, but I keep it in the G to PG area 

Sterling Silver is 925 parts out of 1000 silver by law in the USA. So sterling silver is mostly (92.5%) real, honest-to-God silver. The other 75 out of 1000 parts can be any metal and may vary by the recipe any given refinery uses, although it’s normally mostly copper. Sterling Silver, .925 Silver, and .925 Sterling Silver (sometimes called "traditional sterling silver") all mean exactly the same thing: that it’s  92.5% silver and 7.5% other metals.

.925 Argentium® sterling silver, (Argentium®) is a proprietary alloy that contains germanium as part of the 75 parts out of 1000 that are not silver in sterling. The germanium in Argentium® makes it a real sterling silver that is far, FAR more tarnish-resistant than traditional sterling silver.

Anything I have that I show or mark at CrystalsAndJewelry.com as sterling silver or .925 sterling silver is 925 parts out of 1000 silver. Additionally, anything that I show or mark Argentium® sterling silver is 925 parts out of 1000 silver and also has germanium in it.