By Bob Beacham

Whether you are running a craft blog or a traditional website there are certain craft business basics that you should be following if you want to succeed. One of them is making your site “sticky” – making your potential craft customers want to stay – or come back often.

Interesting information is important, of course. As is nice clear design and easy navigation. People have very short attention spans online so if they can’t find what they’re looking for quickly they’re off… probably to your competitor!

But even if you have a bright, fun, interesting craft blog which engages your visitor and makes them want to come back, there’s a high chance that they won’t. Even those that think they will, might well not. Haven’t you done exactly that yourself? Said you’ll go back to a site later – but then not bookmarked it or got distracted by something else, never to return?

So your craft business has lots of visitors that might well have bought from you… but didn’t. What’s more you have no way of knowing who they were. To some extent that’s business life. If you had a real-world store you would have lots of people visit who never came back. But what if you could encourage them to do exactly that? What if you could do so relatively easily?

What your craft business needs is a newsletter or e-mailing list. They’re relatively easy to set up (all you need to do is copy and paste a bit of code), very low cost, and they allow you to contact your potential and existing customers with news and special offers as often as you like. Your visitor doesn’t need to come back to you – you can go to them!

It’s not a system to be abused though. Your craft business is just one of many trying to grab your customers’ attention and lots of other people want that email address for marketing purposes. You have to offer something of value in exchange – a discount perhaps, or a free gift – and then you have to provide them with useful information and ongoing value, otherwise they’ll feel you are only interesting in “selling” to them.

Of course we all know that selling to them is precisely what you are trying to do – you just have to be a bit cute about it! Make your newsletter subscriber feel valued and important, give them a sense of exclusivity and your craft business hasn’t just hooked a visitor it has gained a valuable, loyal, repeat customer.

For more details about setting up that vital newsletter visit Craft Business Basics. At the same time you can pick up your free copy of the highly acclaimed ebook “Craft Success Online”.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bob_Beacham — Craft Business Basics – Hooking That Visitor!

By Liz Raad

Most Knitters don’t realize that “Knitting For Profit” is really possible! But people from all around the world are living the knitter’s dream and actually making money from their passion – read on to find out more.

There are many different ways you can make money knitting, but no matter how you do it, if you are getting paid for your knitting skills in some way, then you are “Knitting For Profit“. You could be selling the pieces you knit, or you could be getting paid to teach others how to knit, or you could be selling your own designs or patterns.

The main thing is that you are being paid for your knitting skills, and once you are doing that, you have become what is now known as a “Knitterpreneur”. That may sound like you need to be a seasoned business-person with million-dollar turnovers, but there are many different levels of business.

There are of course knitting empires with million-dollar turnovers such as huge fashion-knit design companies, or big established pattern designers, or widely distributed knitting or crochet magazines or yarn manufacturers. These companies have worldwide distribution and teams of staff. It’s a huge vision, but one that has been proven to be successful, so in knitting, the sky really is the limit!

Many knitters’ vision is a little smaller than this, and there are plenty of small to medium knitting businesses. Some based at home, others in retail shops. They can often support one or two employees and create enough income for the owners to live their passion and be surrounded by the things and people they love. Then there are the small businesses that make a bit of extra income for the family; knitters whose goal is to make enough money to be able to stay at home and care for children, enough to keep their family comfortable, and let them keep on expressing their creative spirit.

There are even micro-businesses that allow a knitter to buy all the yarn they desire, and brings in enough money to let them knit for free!

No matter what the size or shape of the vision, you can actually make money knitting and really live what most knitters only dream of!

So how can you join them? It’s not as hard as you may think, the main ingredient for success in Knitting For Profit is to know what to sell and how to sell it, which I will cover in another article.

Liz Raad is a small business coach and author of the book “Knitting For Profit – Your Step-by-Step Guide To Making Money From Knitting and Crochet“. She also gives great free information and ideas about how to make money from knitting on her blog at http://knittingforprofit.com/blog

Article Source: Liz Raad == What Is Knitting For Profit? And What Is A Knitterpreneur?