Blog About Crafts

From time to time I get great submissions to Crafty Tips that just don’t seem to be a fit but are great sites worthy of discussion. This week brought one such site to my submission queues and I will warn you now, it is a bit addictive…Think Draw - a fun new online drawing site.

It’s been a long three weeks. My soon to be former webhost moved servers, including the one Blog About Crafts was hosted on. In the process, they dropped some of the required files to run this site. Apparently a common thing with the blog software I was using. Had my hosting provider apologized and offered to help restore the site, I might not have made the move. Instead their support person told me the site was working fine. Oh, yes a 500 error and no loadable pages was his idea of “working fine”. Mistakes I can forgive, lies like that are inexcusable.

This awesome graphic by an artist on the photo sharing and gallery website Stock Exchange is something I thought would exemplify the resurrection and awakening of Blog About Crafts.

If you’ve never been to the Stock Exchange, it’s a wonderful site were photographers and graphic artists share their work and allow others to use it; often for free or with an on-page credit.

The biographical information on this image lists it as the creation of a young artist named Zeth Lorenzo who is from the Philippines. Artists like Zeth often provide a number of variations on their work and the one I’m using has five different variations. Along with great graphics like this one, Zeth also has a great collection of true stock photos that are superb.

As a rule, I like some noise in the background when I’m working. The radio is on almost all day. When I do heavy duty writing for a client, there’s typically a classical CD softly playing (no words to sing to that way). I bring all that up because it was a spot for a radio station’s own advertising program that inspired this post.

Most business owners spend a great deal of time and money searching for places to advertise and often give little thought on what to advertise. I’ve seen this with my writing clients. People know they want to advertise but do not do their homework on what to advertise.

Seems like a fairly obvious thing. Ask most business owners what they advertise and they will respond with a question, “I advertise my business. What else would I be advertising?”

What else, indeed.

There seems to be almost a science to determining what makes people click on Adsense ads and how that relates to the quality and length of the content on the page. I have been working on a new site as something of an experiment in both Adsense optimization and conducting research that combines web materials, library books, and pieces found on Gutenberg.org.

The research has been fun and quite interesting. But, despite some well-placed incoming links, the site is not being indexed as quickly as I would like. Yahoo and Google are sending me traffic but neither has even half of the site indexed after over 3 weeks. Hate when that happens. lol

No this isn’t another rant on a site taking too long to be indexed. I am wanting to explore content quality and length to see how it can impact click through rates on a new site of mine.

I was looking at someone’s blog today and noticed a conversation on how to advertise a crafting business on the cheap. One of the things mentioned was to ask bloggers if they would be willing to interview artists or review their sites.

I’ve toyed with the idea to review each of the sites submitted and accepted to Crafty Tips Arts & Crafts Directory but my concern was trying to be fair and impartial. I mean, let’s face it not all sites are created equal. Some directory sites have started adding blog entries for sites being submitted but it would seem that could become a real black hole of time and frustration.

In the past, I’ve offered free profiles on several forums. I did ask for a link to this site or one of my other craft-related sites and was disappointed when only two artists took me up on that offer. My thought was that since my blog is not on the fast lane that it was simply a matter of not being popular enough to attract interested folks. The blog I was reading happened to have a comment from one of the editor’s in the jewelry section of a very popular crafting site. She too lamented that she could not find folks who wanted to participate and receive free reviews and profile pieces.

So, rather than try another round in the forums, I thought I would make the offer again here on the site where the profile would reside. Do take heed, that this is free advertising for your business and I take that very seriously. Your site or shop must offer something of value for sale or offer information and project tutorials that would be of interest to crafters.

Participants might also receive a bit of free business consulting advice along the way and when combined with a bit of free advertising both will hopefully bring a some new visitors/customers to your site.

Just let me know if you are interested. The profiles/reviews are free.