Since my primary business is an internet based shop, you would think I would have all the time in the world to blog. NOT! I have no idea where people find the time to maintain their sites, field emails and phone calls, let alone BLOG! This is how my day usually goes:
Get up (that is, if I have been sleeping- today I am up because I have been coughing and can't sleep) at around 6AM.
Make coffee and get my daily bran muffin (oh how this keeps me healthy!)
Straighten whatever mess is in the kitchen and surrounding areas (on a good day).
Mosey into my office and check/respond to emails from four active email accounts.
Check listings on ebay, if I have any (lately I have not because it has been dead on ebay).
Check to see what sales I had overnight on http://www.mamashecrazy.etsy.com.
Check convos on etsy account and answer them.
Enter any sales into my sales journal/pick sheets for filling orders later.
Make sure no listings have become inactive because they have expired.
Check the search pages for keywords and see where my listings come up (if mine are in the back, I list something right away).
Check the competition for price adjustments, etc.
If I have responded to all my correspondence and nothing more is pressing, I leave my office and go attend to shipping. This is where I lose the most time, my friends.
I pride myself in sending out only 1st quality goods to my patrons. I am also not cheap with the yardage. If you order a yard, you do not get 36 inches; you'll get more like 40"-42". Your merchandise will not be packed cheaply either. The last thing I want is for one of my customers to tell me that they received their key fob clamps all bent up. Therefore, If you order hardware, it will be sent in a bubble-wrapped envelope, at the very least.
When I am running a sale, like I am right now, shipping gets to be a real drag sometimes. Like right now I and selling 1.25" solid colored heavyweight cotton webbing for $1.00/yd. My regular customers will order 10 yards of a color, which is labor intensive. But then I will have a new customer want one yard of 24 different colors. This is not only labor intensive, it's just a downright pain in the neck. Every yard is cut by me and packed by me. I should actually be charging more, not less for this.
My favorite orders to pack are bulk rolls. A 50 yard roll of cotton webbing normally fits into a flat rate priority box. Although I have to unroll half the roll and re-roll it so that 25 yards are on top of each other, it still only takes me a few minutes. I stick it into the flat rate box, add some bogus paper and seal the box. Voila! That', my friends, is why "bulk" is cheaper. Done with that order.
After a box or envelope has been packed, the "pick"ticket is marked with the weight and size of what is being shipped and set aside. The package is marked with the last name of the customer and their zip code. Then it's time to print out the postage.
I use pay pal for my etsy customers to pay me with. Their program allows me to bulk ship a bunch of packages at a time. Even though the program could be improved, it's pretty fast. Basically, I go to the mulit-ship program and all my customers who are waiting for their merchandise are listed there. All I have to do is match the customer on the screen with the "pick" ticket in front of me and enter the weight and size of the package being sent. Sounds easy. At this point I always get aggravated. I am looking at a ticket that says, "Mary Jones, zip code, 91743." All I see on pay pal is "Creative Crafts." The only clue that I may have that this company name and Mary Jones are one in the same, is that when I originally entered the information onto the pick ticket, I noted the person's etsy name (which may or may not be "Creative Crafts"). Why do people make my life miserable? How come their etsy name and their pay pal name can't match? In my quickly advancing age, I find it hard on my eyes to track linear information. So, looking for a name that does not exist is infuriating. I guess things could be worse...
After all the postage is printed, it's back to the shipping room to apply the labels to the boxes. This is pretty fast since the boxes/packages have been marked already. It's just a matter of taping the labels on. And then all I need to do is get to the post office.
Now, people have told me that I can leave my packages with my postman- this would make my life easier. My eighty year old postman... The one and only time that I handed my packages over to dear Willy, five of them came back with insufficient postage. I then had to go to the post office, only to find out that the postage was fine. So now, I just go to the post office to drop my packages. There's a 24 hour a day accessible drop, so I can drop them at the end of the day when the post office is officially closed. This is great because although I may be done with my shipping by 3PM, you haven't really seen in this blog when I take my shower...?
In between everything I have described, the phone may ring from either my manufacturing parent company, or a friend who figures since I'm home I can chat a while, or a customer. Any of these three choices could eat away at my day. And who does the accounts receivable and accounts payable? The filing? Moi!
And so my dear friends, although my day doesn't sound especially horrid since I don't have a boss hovering over me, it is sometimes hectic. And I ask again, who has time to blog?
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