How to sort out a rotten month

This has been a pretty terrible month

But I can only blame myself; I've been putting off all the things I need to do to make my business and home life work well together.

I've had no sales and have made hardly any stock and have done hardly any promotions either -in short, I need to sort myself out a bit.

So from now on, I'm going to give myself a mental kick in the backside and just get on with it.

My first thing to do is to sort out my head;

No more sneaky naps in the afternoon (I don't sleep well in the night when I nap and it means I am wasting time too)

To tell myself that I can make a go of my businesses. Others do the same thing and make money and I have made money this way in the past months so I must stick to the things that work. I'm going to make a few more of the "old favorites" that have sold in the past but I haven't bothered to recreate for the shop.

To not just start lots of projects but to finish them too. - this is a big one - I have lots of items "on the needles" but not much in the shops

Don't forget those that got you here. This has a few points to it. First is that the Greeting Cards sites. These gave me the confidence to see that I could make something that others like and buy, and gave me the venture capital to start the toy shops on Artfire and dawanda. And second is my mates - the friends I've made since I started. I haven't spoken to many of my Zazzle mates in ages and they were always very supportive. and my newer mates I've made at Artfire and Dawanda who really are the greatest.

To talk about my businesses with pride. When you tell folks that you kinda have a hobby and have sold a few - with head held low and mumbling - that's not impressive. So I will hand out my business cards with pride; show them how professional I am - after all, I've made international sales without doing much local marketing at all so I'm sure it can only help. Almost no one around here knows that I am an international best-selling artist in America and Austrailia on the "Print on demand" sites - they may even have my artwork in their houses and not know it (cards, t-shirts, mugs etc)

To promote online sorry, yes, that means more posts on my goodies - but then they are fun goodies ha ha. Must start using my neglected facebook page more -even though I don't really like facebook; it does reach lots of people.

Work to a schedule. some days I work lots, and others I hardly work at all, I'm promising myself a certain amount of time every day to be dedicated to actual artwork, knitting, designing, or promotion every day. They are the times of day I can afford to use up constructively.

Make what the people want As well as making the goodies that have sold well in the past, I must also find out what people want? What categories don't offer enough choice to the customer? what is on at the cinema? what critters are popular? what do people use or need lots of? What would I want as a present? What would the various age groups want as a present?

Don't lose your sense of fun OK so I want this to work, but I also don't want to be stuck with doing "the same old thing" every day either. So lots of variation and you may start to see some new characters appear in the shops and on the cards.