advertisement & blog giveaway!

Advertisement plays a major role in the retail business.

Unaware of the amount of advertisement blogs had available, I stumbled upon a few sites that inspired me to move forward in showcasing my business online.

I joined etsy & added a majority of our products months ago.

Before long, I began to broaden our products and handmake more & more of our items.

Being from a small town, your clientele is only so big.

In order to make my business a successful career, I needed to move forward taking some big steps.

We currently own a website domain: TheEmbellishBoutique.com, where I've worked endless hours on taking pictures, resizing images, adding attributes, descriptions, prices, inventory amounts & customization options. It's more work than you think. It's actually pretty hard to keep up with an etsy shop, a blog, an e-commerce website, a facebook page, and a physical storefront on a weekly basis. But, don't get me wrong. I love every second of it. I like to see the expressions on our customers faces when we hand over their personalized item. It's priceless. They love them! And we love creating them.

Two weeks ago, I contacted a few ladies that I follow on Blogger.

They have successful blogs, in which numerous people flow in and out daily.

Advertisement links are posted on the right side & giveaways are hosted frequently.

Normally, when I used to see a blog that was hosting a 'giveaway', I would immediately skip right over it. Then after seeing some of the cute stuff being 'gave away', I opted to enter into a few of them. I even won a super cute monogrammed acrylic drink dispenser!

Now that I own a business, I completely understand the advertisement perspective of these generous shop owners. It's a must. In order to show people your products, to get your name out there, one must advertise. How else are people going to know about you and your fabulous products?

These three or four ladies have agreed to let us sponser their blog by placing our 'button' on their page & by hosting a giveaway (for a small fee, of course). This way, they have more traffic increased to their blogs, while I get new advertisement & traffic into my shop during the process. It's a two for two.

I'm excited to see the results.

As of today so far, our etsy shop had 92 visitors.

In the last 7 days, we've had 688 hits & 2 orders.

In the last 30, we had 2,229 visitors & 13 orders.

This blog has had 34,784 hits thus far.

As of today, I have 120 followers.

I'm not out to get increased traffic to my personal blog or to just gain followers by any means.

This blogger world does have great opportunity for me to advertise my business, however.

I will use this blog to post my weekly ramblings, findings, thoughts, and special memories, just like before. Nothing is changing here. These are just stats for me to look back on one day & remember where I first began.

Tomorrow is the first day.

Hannah over at Young & Crafty is hosting my very first giveaway.

Make sure to visit her & enter to win!

Here's to the first day of making my business a successful one!

yo yo bobby pins & hair clips: {1}

if y'all have never heard of ashley over at 'little miss momma', you must check her out.

she's super cute. hip. in style. trendy. crafty. fun. oh, the list continues.

i find a lot of inspirational ideas from following her blog.

this is my new DIY project.

i tackled it today!

pictures to come.

for her tutorial, click here.



I'm ALIVE & ALL is well!

Hi fellow blogger friends! Let's just say......"I'm BACK!"

I never intended to take such a long break nor did I intend to lose touch with all of you guys. One thing led to another, and well needless to say, I pretty much have spiraled out of control.

I have recently opened up a vinyl monogramming business in partnership with my future mother-in-law. We have been SLAMMED. It all started about the week I quit blogging... say, October something? We actually started out slowly by selling Geneva Silicone Watches & little what-nots that could be monogrammed easily. Shortly after, we began broadening our inventory daily. We purchased a domain, a website, an online storefront, a few machines, hundreds of sheets of vinyl, ohhhhhh the list continues... picture frames, clipboards, notepads, re-usable totes, glass plates and platters, buckets, tin pails, baby items, glassware, glass blocks, ornaments, etc.

Since we had such a short amount of time to get the business up and running prior to the holidays, we worked 24/7. FYI: staying up till midnight or later e.v.e.r.y. single night and waking at the crack of dawn just isn't my thing. But I did it. We pushed forward and although it didn't seem like progress at the time, we have certainly came a LONG way from the very first day when this whole business was just an "idea" being tossed around in our heads. 

Now that Christmas and the Holiday's are over, business has began to slow down and I have a few moments to catch back up on the life I've put on hold for quite some time now. I hope to take it back a few months and catch up on posting about things that have happened and document this whole "business" process. I want to one day look back and see how far we've came.

For those of you that are interested, feel free to take a look at our website: theembellishboutique.com
Also, "Like" us on Facebook!

Here are a few store photos.

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!

I can't wait to catch up on everyone's stories & share some of my lost time :)