When I first started making jewelry I noticed right away that the 20 gauge wire wasn’t strong enough to hold on the ends at the clasp. This was a big problem since first off the clasp is the most expensive part, secondly because my business is online sending items back and forth just isn’t practical. I have no problem with fixing the issues for people, but still isn’t great practice to sell jewelry that will fall apart. So I started adding two rings to hold the clasp in place, this worked well for me and I never have any issues with the jewelry falling apart. But over time just like with a single ring sooner or later one of those rings inevitably gets loose and falls off, then leaving you with just one weakened ring… so I beefed up the wire used to 18 gauge which is much thicker and stronger. Once again this works great for me and I never have any issues… For my customers however this creates a totally different set of problems. Although the end rings are now strong enough the inner links get bend and fall off thus creating the same issue. I’m doing what I can and working to make my jewelry stronger and have decided that the only way I can do that is soldering each ring. Once I start soldering the rings with copper or silver solder the issues of falling apart will be issues of the past. Problem is it is expensive… the least expensive route for me to go is a $950 torch, and with all the solder, ceramic heat shields, goggles, etc. well into $1k so the soldered work won’t be available this season… however next year for when I start going to faire’s and advertising more abundantly online the craftsmanship will be much better than before.
Archive for the ‘Site News’ Category
Strengthening the ends
Saturday, August 29th, 2009New Shopping Cart Installation
Thursday, December 4th, 2008I just thought that I’d update you on the new shopping cart installation.В The process is a little bit tricky, and therefore slow, everything can’t just be copied over, and I’ve run into a number of problems with the installation.В The new shopping cart is installed on another directory of this website… I’m just working now to get it switched over.В I have most of the products, and some other minor things switched over.В One issue now though is with the template of the website.В The site looks okay as is, and if I could take the current template and just copy it that woudl be awesome!В That’s not exactly possible though… And because it’s not exactly possible and I have to completely recreate the template I was thinking of just starting from scratch.В The template design that is on the site right now is aimed towards capturing a more high end market, crisp, clean, easy to navigate.В Nothing wrong with it… it just has no selling power… So I’m going to redesign it for hopefully increased sales, and definitely looking for increased browsing from the Ren. Faire crowds.
It’s obvious that my main group of people on the site are Ren. Faire types, so why not market to them?В I’m a renny myself and it’s becoming increasingly more obvious that is the only group that is going to purchase my items.В That’s fine, I plan on embracing this with an increase of stock as well.В Cheaper stock will start to flow into my store with steel jewelry, more copper, and hopefully some armor items added to the cart.В Anyways that’s where I stand right now… I’ve got a functional cart with all the same stock as on here, and once I have the new template made I’ll start the switch, which also means creating 301 redirects for every page and product on the site now to the new shopping cart.В This is a painstakingly long process… but hopefully it pays off in the end!
So much to do, so little time!
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008Oh my, so the goal is to get ArchmailleDesigns.com into the black.В I know, such an odd time to choose to do so with the way things are going in the economy.В But I still think it’s possible… I’ve got TONS of work to do in an effort to make that push, but things should be looking up.В I need to get the new shopping cart up with 301 redirects from everything that is up, to the new stuff.В I’d like to create a new sector for armor designs, I need to get more stock up, with the PDF’s… and I need to continue making money from other stuff the whole time…
Oh, and not to mention my wedding coming up 
so needless to say, I’ve got a lot on my plate for right now, and it’s not been easy keeping up with ANY of it.В I would also really like to get at least two of every piece made on my site… just so that people have choices, and if something is purchased, the stock does not decrease.
A new plan
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008Alright, so I’ve got a little bit of a new plan going on!В For the Holiday weekend I’ve been doing everything I can to “pimp out” Archmaille Designs.В I’ve been linking to the site to try and increase popularity of the site, and actually increasing advertising.В I’ve also changed the goal of some other sites… such as “ApplyMyWay” the site was going to be launched as a money maker/link popularity increaser for some of my other sites.В Now the link popularity that it will be increasing is Archmaille Designs.В I’ve had a recent invigoration that says this site is worth the effort!В I’m not really ever going to achieve “financial freedom” from this site, I mean, lets be honest here.
I guess it wouldn’t be unfair to say that my goal for online is to increase the amount of money I make from advertisements to $20 a day, keep my blogging income of $25 a day, and increase sales on this site to two a week.В Well either this site, or at art/craft shows in the area over the summer (Since I know that’s a hard sell time with any thing else).В It’s not an extravagent living, only about $450 a week or so… but it’s enough for me.В Of course as part of that goal I’ve also got to increase the stock of the website by like 10 fold… or at least get EVERYTHING that I have made up already on the site 
Anyways, that’s what I’m off to doing… increasing stock, and getting some stuff sold!
Outsourcing…
Friday, October 24th, 2008There are just some times when you can’t do everything.В Unfortunately I make little enough money that paying someone to do things for me would be out of the question… so I get stuck in this perpetual cycle of not getting things done, and them not being done so I can’t make money from it.В There comes a point in every persons life though where they have to realize that they can’t do everything, and just suck it up.
I still don’t have just tons of money, but what I have found is a trade!В 
В I’ve got a guy who’s trying to launch a java website, and myself trying to launch ApplyMyWay.В I’ve also got 4 years of marketing experience.В So the trade is some help from him on Ajax stuff for the site, and to him I give 4 years of online marketing experience.В Not only by telling him things he could do, but I will also gladly help him out by creating some buzz around his website.
Jewelry Posting
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008Things are going good!В Not gonna give away any of my secrets but I’m actually coming up with a lot of good ideas for my postings.В Jewelry tips and tricks, cleaning and maintenance, supplies.В You name it and I’ve got an idea for it to come up on the ol’ blog here!В Just hope that I’ll be able to run like this for the next month… slightly worried since I’m running low on ideas for Archmaille.com, but then again I AM posting 6 posts a day on there so this should be a little bit easier I should think.
Anyways, back to writing, posting, and getting things ready for the day when this site is rollin’ in the fatties!В Woot!В haha, should be good.
Challenge
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008Okay… so the challenge is to keep this blog updated every day, three times a day.В Three jewelry related posts a day though?В Is it really possible, or even feasible?В I mean, of course everything is possible, but how possible is it to have quality content with every post for a number of days… oh say even one month.В I’ve done it on my new blog at www.archmaille.com and trust me it’s been a pain, anywhere from six to TWELVE posts a day… I mean it’s paid off, but man… it’s going to be a stretch to say the least!
So that’s the goal for now, every day, three times a day, for one month.В That’s all I gotta do and this site will be popping!В or I sure as heck hope so.В I might not be selling jewelry like mad like I would want, but I should be making a little bit from advertising, and that is a huge deal as well!В If I can move up to making $300 a month, from my current $100 from advertising then things will be golden.В $300 a month nearly pays all of my basic bills… with a few left over.В The rest can be picked up by P3 stuff that I’ve been doing on CodySortore.com and Archmaille.com both of which are doing well!В Then when I launch ApplyMyWay I’d like to move on to making… oh say $1,000 a month from advertising, and $1,000 a month from P3.
Delaying the site changes!
Monday, October 6th, 2008Hello world!В This is your captain speaking and we will be descending here shortly… lol, ok, enough with the flight jokes.В So Since I’ll be launching ApplyMyWay.com here very shortly, and then I would like to put up my own petition website, since I sort of put up TONS of petitions every year (think I’m up in the hundreds easily now).
So the site will be redesigned… no doubt about that it NEEDS it.В But it’ll be a little bit of time ya know?
Handcrafted!
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008You know, I saw this one label once that confused me nearly to death.В You’re all lucky that I’m still standing here alive today!В The label was on a juice container when the “health craze” really started to break out.В The bottle said very boldly and obviously “100% Juice!” across the front of the package about as big as you can get, in fact I noticed it from across a couple of aisles… but I thought it was odd because it was made by like Sunny Delight or one of the other well known faux juice producers.В I was intrigued that this company would actually make a juice product that I had to see for myself… especially since in a clear bottle it didn’t really look like “juice” but more like a juice colored cool-aid mix.В Upon closer inspection they had in much smaller text under the 100% Juice! label that said “From concentrate”В alright… that sort of explains the odd look of it… and it’s really hard to find anything that’s not from concentrate anymore, so I was forgiving them… until I spotted in minuscule almost illegible text the words under that “With other ingredients”В Now… don’t get me wrong, but doesn’t 100% mean 100%?В How can it even be legal for this company to advertise that they have 100% juice if it’s from concentrate, with added ingredients?В Don’t the added ingredients take up some percentage?В I mean if it was like .5% other ingredients fine, but reading the ingredients label the reconstituted juice wasn’t even the first item on the list!В Which means that it can’t even be 50% juice, and I’d say you were lucky if it were…
I’ve been seeing the same kind of propaganda with handmade items any more too.В Many of the items I see sold as handmade or handcrafted should have a little label that goes along with them that explains that they were handmade by a person running a keyboard that input information to a computer that controlled a robotic arm that assembled pieces of the product.В It just makes me mad to see stuff like that, you know that there are people who fall for it too!В If they didn’t the companies would have no reason to lie like that.В Of course it still doesn’t really cut into my market being that I like to think that the people who are looking for my jewelry items, and purchase from me are actually looking for quality products, having some understanding of how to decipher the difference… I guess I could say that mostly I just feel bad for the fools who get tricked by such blatant lies.
Cost Captain
Friday, January 4th, 2008Alright, it’s time to take the Queen CD out of my player and put Linkin Park in… this is a job for Linkin Park. Storyline: I took an opportunity for a company called Cost Captain from the P3 website to blog about CostCaptain in my personal blog here. Cost Captain was offering $9 for the post and only required 50 words, for a link that said www.costcaptain.com pretty easy right? I thought so! In fact it was too easy… CostCaptain sells Microsoft products, Cost Captain specialize in the order of selling Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows Vista packages at student discount prices. I wrote a 100 word article about such deals because the more my site relates to Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows Vista products the more they get the value for it to their website which in turn translates to more search engine queries for the terms Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Windows. The problem with my post was that I also included CostCaptain’s description on the P3 website IN ADDITION to the article that I wrote, because it gave them a much better link rating because of the keyworded specificness of Cost Captain description. I thought I was doing Cost Captain a favor, Cost Captain thought otherwise. This is the description:
CostCaptain.com is a Microsoft Authorized Education Reseller. We sell the brand new Office 2007 Suite and Vista to students and staff of schools, libraries and research labs. Home schools qualify too. We have served hundreds of schools, colleges and libraries and thousands of students and staff members.
We offer:
- 100% Authentic Microsoft products at academic discounts
- Microsoft Office 2007 from $129, Vista Upgrade from $89
- Friendly customer service.
- Buyers provide academic eligibility and after that the product is shipped
- Gift certificates that are a great way to give especially during holiday season
Very good keywording if you ask me… but hey, I’m no SEO expert or anything, just because I ranked number two and three on Google for the term “Cost Captain” simply by writing the Cost Captain article on my website… I mean I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about apparently… so therefore I won’t know what I’m talking about all over the net. Cost Captain said that they wouldn’t pay me and denied my post until it was rewritten because I “wrote the article using their description” Obviously the company didn’t want any sort of SEO relevancy so I rewrote the post, I put a 150 or so word description of why I rewrote the article the way I did on top and left what I had described before on the rest… just translated it. You see not only am I a blogger, webmaster of over 9 websites, internet marketing coach, but I also use Opera as my main browser of choice… I just like it. It’s not for everyone, I suggest FireFox for most people (as most of you already do since my stats say that 2/3 of my visitors are FireFox users). I used a widget on my Opera browser to translate the article into Г…ВЃ337 5ГЏВЃ34|< (or more commonly known as 1337 5p34k the translator is just hardcore). They didn’t like that either and banned me on P3 which is fine, ban me all you want… my site is more SEO friendly and optimized than your site will ever be, that’s your loss. Of all the bloggers who took your opportunity who ranks for your websites keywords? Oh that’s right, it’s me. I just want my money from the deal… that’s all. So therefore I’m taking my money that Cost Captain won’t pay me. If I can’t get it from the P3 website I will make damn sure I get it from ad revenue on my website.