Enter this Month's Monthly Challenge.

Add your entry for this months challenge. CCCOE members, It's time to begin working on your entry for the August challenge -- Back to School. Items will need to be tagged 'CCCOE' and 'augustchallenge' (one word) so that we can find them and make a list of them. Deadline for entry is midnight (Pacific time) August 31. Voting will take place the first week of September! Check out the monthly bulletin board thread for more concise thread with CCCOE team info. Stop by CCCOE Flickr and weigh in on the weekly business discussions.

Off Etsy Tools and Information for Your Shop

I have been exploring ways to find out more info on Etsy without being able to access html on a site. Here are some things I've found. If you know others please add them! Let's Ets: Tools for Etsy Sellers- (click on link to go there)

The goal of LetsEts is to provide a suite of free tools to make the lives of Etsy sellers easier. In addition to the Google Base formatter, some of the features we're working on include:

1. Statistics to help you analyze your sales and listings
2. Dashboard and Yahoo widgets to monitor new sales.
3. A bulk lister

Unofficial Etsy News- just what it says-but lots of info that is easy to navigate. Heart-O-Tron: See your items with number of hearts Etsy Bitch: A blog pointing out the mishaps and blunders of Etsy. They do it so Etsy will improve for all its users.

SoCal Bench Project Wrap Up!!!

The SoCal Bench Project Nails It! The SoCal Bench Project Artisan Fair is met with outstanding support from it's local community. August 10, 2008 On Saturday, August 9th, 2008 the small grassroots organization TheSoCal Bench Project held it's first annual SoCal Bench Project Artisan Fair in Culver City, CA, west of Los Angeles. Over 25 artists fromacross California gathered together selling their artwork to help raise awareness and funds for New Directions Inc., a local non-profit organization that provides a variety of services for our homeless military veterans community. Supporters from the Los Angeles community shopped for fine art, photography, lithographs, clothing, contemporary craft, jewelry and a variety of other gift items from candles and soap products, to stuffed animals with crazy personalities and beautiful art dolls. Incredible items from local businesses and artists were raffled off to an excited crowd. ABC, Benefit Cosmetics, Kreation Cafe, The Factory and Color Me Mine were among local businesses that supported this years raffle held to benefit New Directions. Participating vendors as well as numerous members of the group California Crafters Club of Etsy (CCCOE) also provided artwork as well as monetary donations. Sandy Collins, Amanda Lockrow and Heather Palleiko, (founders of The SoCal Bench Project), met through the website Etsy.com in early 2008 where the three are members of CCCOE, the largest street team on the indie craft site Etsy.com with over two hundred - fifty members. What originally started as an idea to have a small home show quickly grew into an annual event of California artisans coming together to create positive change in our local community. This year The SoCal Bench Project and it's supporters raised close to $2,000 for New Directions Inc. If you are interested in more information about The SoCal Bench Project and it's founders or vendors please email info@socalbenchproject.com. For information on New Directions Inc. and it's programs please go to www.ndvets.org. http://www.socalbenchproject.com http://sandysimone.etsy.com http://www.aklockrow.com http://www.palleikodesigns.com

West Coast Wednesday Sale brought to you by CCCOE!!!

QuirkynBerkeley, Tresijas, and DennisAnderson put together a fabulous new promotion called West Coast Wednesdays (WCW).

It will start every Tuesday night at 9pm pst because that's Midnight on the east coast. And it will end at Midnight on Wednesday. This makes it a 27 hour sale! Anyone on Etsy can come to the promotion thread and promote their sale. We are hoping it can grow like SNS! There will be a promo thread as well as a chat thread started each week. This week DennisAnderson started us off. Check out the promo thread here. And the Chat thread here.

You can also wander over to yahoo to get your WCW avatar that Wrenay made up for you!

CCCOE July Happenings

CCCOE is a very active and diverse group. Here is some of what is going on for this
vibrant and fabulous group for the month of July.

*CCCOE July Challenge: Christmas in July. Entries need to be posted on the thread
(which will start July 1) no later than midnight July 18, since voting will begin
on July 19 and run through the 26th.

*Lauren of The ChainMaille Lady sells her gorgeously intricate designs weekly
at the Covina Craft Fair & Farmers Market, every Friday night from 5-9pm at
Civic Center Park 400 N. Citrus Ave www.covinafarmersmarket.com

*July 12-13: Wrenay of Shopwhimsy and Wrenphoto will be selling at the fabulous
RenegadeCraft Fair in San Francisco.

*July 12: Handmade Brigade in Cerritos, CA at TallMouse. Jen of Porterness
Miriam of MiriamDema and Amanda of AmandaKLockrowJewels will be there with 20 vendors
selling their wares.

*July 19:Elena of ElenaMary is participating in the GLOW Festival in Santa Monica
from 7pm to 7am. Visit the website:http://www.smgov.net/smarts/glow/

Dave Quick and Elena have created 7 assemblage structures mounted
on backpacks with huge glowing koi fish floating from each assemblage. They
will have a parade from Palisades Park to the end of Santa Monica Pier at
10:30 and at 11pm there will be a concert by Arthur Nakane a one man
band, who they have hired to perform for our project which is called SOLAR
KOI. Hope to see some of you there!

*July 19 & 20: Nina of PrettyCheap Jewelry will be at Pirate Days at the Ventura Harbor on behalf of the Buenaventura Art Assoc

for more info on BAA go to http://buenaventuragallery.org for more info on the Harbor and events go to http://www.venturaharborvillage.com/html/About.html

*July 26: Nine of PrettyCheap Jewelry will be at theVentura Mini Fair (next to the Farmer's Market) http://www.mainstreetminifair.com/

3 Winning Tips - How To Boost Sales on the Internet

Part 3 of 3

by Nina Danza, http://www.prettycheapjewelry.com

How’s your shop promotions going? If you’’re having fun it will show. If you want to key down a little and get serious, this is last tip is for you.

Subscriber Mailing Lists- I once read on a guerilla marketing article (yes, you can call me a frugal, money saving subversive now) that the 2 main reasons people use the internet are for (a) email; (b) news. If you get into a person’s email box you have it made! Why do you think there are so many spam programs out there?

So you need a mailing list for potential customers. How? Well, I do it without spending much of course.

Start your mailing list in person. Put out a sign up sheet at every craft fair you vend and get names by giving out small goody bags ('Free Goody Bag for Joining!') filled with samples of your work, candy, or whatever you ingeniously think up! Tell them what it’s for, “A once a month, or if I’m not too busy, twice a month email”. Most people will agree to that. Our team does a promo swap every few months, contact http://yolandasclay.etsy.com for the promo swap schedule. These items are really nice for goody bags.

Sale to Mailing List Subscriber

Collect subscribers on-line. Put an incentive in your Etsy shop announcement for folks to join your mailing list! (Free gift w/purchase for joining for example?). And every time you make an on-line sale, ask the customer if they want to be added to your mailing list. You can possibly post announcements to your new internet groups but only if they allow low key soliciting.

Now use that list! Send out specials to subscribers at least monthly, including coupons, Sneak Previews, where you are going to be for the next show and more. I do a simple, no cost email mailing without an attachment (many spam filters will see an attachment and into the junk pile you go). There are also fee programs that manage mailing lists.

Now go get ‘em and see you on Etsy!

Say hello to your new secretary, LaveMeSoap!

Our wonderful secretary Nina of PrettyCheap Jewelry for the past year has passed the torch along to Angela of LaveMe Soap and I just wanted to take moment to welcome her to this position.

Angela makes every bar in small batches in a home that uses natural cleaners and recycles everything possible.


She is originally from Ohio and moved out to CA in fall of '06. She moved here to fulfill her dream of living in this gorgeous place...and when she accomplished that, she had to create another. She is a dreamer at heart.


To keep up on what's new and fabulous in her soap world you can always visit her blog.