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Hello Fellow Bead Lovers, Welcome to this month's edition of
The Bead
Gazette.
First, We'd like to introduce some new sections that
will become regular features. Those are:
- Beading Tips : Each month we'll offer a
new tip related in some way to beading or jewelry
making.
- Marketing Tips : Each month
we'll offer an
article to help you market your jewelry and beading
items to the public.
- All About Beads : Each month
we'll choose
a particular bead type or related jewelry making
item and write an article about it. It's a fun way
to bone up on your knowledge and bead making jargon.
- Fashion /Color Forecast :
Each month
we'll bring you fashion and/or color forecast for
the coming season. This month's forecast is brought
to you by Bead
Style Magazine.
These features will be in addition to our monthly
tutorial
projects.
We want to make this newsletter something
you'll enjoy and look forward to receiving every
month. We hope that you enjoy these new sections as
much as we will enjoy bringing them to you.
We will also be archiving copies of The
Bead Gazette (starting with this
month) so
if you miss a copy or need to reference a past
article you can just come to our site and find what
you are looking for under the tab “Tips, Tricks &
Snippets.”
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Marketing Tip
Pricing Your Handmade Jewelry
Pricing your work is
probably one of the
most difficult aspects of marketing. Price your work
too high and you
limit sales, possibly pricing yourself right out of
business. Price
your work to low and you’ll give your labor away, as
well as your
profit. Most beginning jewelry designers will price
their work too low.
An often used excuse for this is “I do it because I
love it.” That’s
fine if your intention is to just make the
occasional piece. However,
if you have even the tiniest hope of someday making
a living (or just
some extra spending money) selling your jewelry then
you should start
now. Let’s be honest, why else would you be reading
this, right.
This is a
competitive
business, built on customer loyalty and word of
mouth. If you start out
giving your work away you will not only give the
illusion that your
work isn’t worthy of a decent price but any customer
base you build
will suddenly turn up their noses when you see the
light and raise your
prices to fit what they are truly worth. Does that
mean you should
start charging premium prices right out of the gate?
No, probably not,
if you are a new jewelry designer there will be the
inevitable learning
curve, the time when you are perfecting your
techniques. Due to this
learning curve, even if the design is the same, the
quality of early
pieces will be dramatically different from those of
later pieces. We’re
all constantly improving and perfecting our
techniques. Just think of
your self as a jewelry making apprentice. As your
skill improves so
should your hourly rate. This allows for small price
increases over
time that can easily be explained as inflationary.
So how
should you price your
goods?
by Debra L. Long
Read
The Rest of the Article....
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Tutorial Writers Wanted
Judy has been busy getting her own site up and
running, as well as taking care of her family and
hasn’t had as much time to focus on doing the
tutorials as she had in the past. We don’t want to
loose her, she’s too valuable! So, were looking to
add one or two tutorial writers to our staff to take
some of the pressure off Judy.
Tutorials can be in html or PDF format. You should
be able to provide good clear photos and
instructions. The tutorials are expected to be your
own work and not borrowed from another source. If
you borrow from another source you will be liable
for any damages we suffer as a consequence.
Compensation varies depending on the complexity of
the project and the quality of the tutorial.
Compensation is provided via your preference of
PayPal, check or
store credit. We deduct the cost of the tutorials as
a business
expense and, by law, you are required to report it as
income (even if it’s in the form of a store credit).
We do not require you to send us your tax id
number unless the total compensation for the year is
expected to be more than $600.00
All tutorials for which The Beading Emporium
provides compensation become the property of
The Beading Emporium and can not be resold or used
on another site without the express written
permission of The Beading Emporium. Our copyright
pertains to the tutorial only (including photos and
written instructions). We do not claim any rights to
the project design unless explicitly stated
otherwise in our agreement with you. However, you
may not claim any
rights that would limit or exclude our use of the
tutorials once we have compensated you for them.
While I do sometimes have specific request for
certain types of tutorials or the use of certain
items from our site, there is also a lot of latitude
given for good quality tutorials. All items used in
the tutorial do not have to come from our site, nor
does every tutorial have to use even some of our
products. I’m more interested in providing our
customers with a fun interesting project. We will
provide some limited materials for use in creating
the tutorial, especially if the tutorial in question
was a request. We do sometimes request that the
project made in the tutorial be sent to us and you
will be compensated accordingly.
If you think you have what it takes to be one of our
tutorial writers, email
me a sample of the type of work I could expect
from you. Copies of prior tutorials you’ve done are
acceptable, even if they can’t be posted. Tell me what
type of compensation you would expect for each level
of complexity (i.e. Difficult, Medium, Easy). The
complexity level refers to how difficult the
tutorial was to create, not necessarily how
difficult the project would be for our readers,
though the two often go hand in hand. Compensation
rates are not set in stone as we generally negotiate
those for each tutorial, but it does give me an
indication of what your expectations are and whether
or not I can afford you. 
We’ll get back with you within a few weeks with an
indication on whether we think we could use you. We
don’t want any hurt feelings. If we decide not to
use you it could be for any number of reasons. It
also does not preclude you from submitting another
application for consideration in the future should
the need again arise.
Show
us your stuff...
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Until next time, Happy Beading.
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View Printable Version
We've added several new items this week that we
think you'll enjoy. Among those are new tools &
supplies:
