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There's lots of tips and tricks I've tried, too much for just one or two articles, so here's is another 'installment' - Hope you find it useful.

Did you finish all the suggestions from the first article? No??? What ever have you been doing? snicker - sorry - ahem - There's a little more to Blogs and Flickr, I wanted to mention....

For those of you just starting out, if you don't already have a blog - Get One? Blogspot.com makes it incredibly easy to create one - there is a nice selection of standard templates, and tons of help and how-to guides for creating one. They are easily updated when you get brave enough to mess with the html code...And before you start groaning (I can hear you), if I can do it, anyone can! Now there was a time I swore I would never have one, and couldn't for the life of me see the point - Now I have 2. Aside from showing off what I'm up to jewelry wise, they're fun and a great "release" of sorts.

When you start getting your work "out there", people want to know what you're working on, how you made it (what inspired you). When people start to find your blog more and more, they become more interested. You can even attract followers - folks that like what you're writing about, and want to keep up to date. Talk about your shop you have, Etsy, Artfire, or whatever - do a post about the latest craft fair you went to and/or were in - a great new piece you just struggled to make and now your tickled pink with. Every now and then, throw a personal post in there - not the new sexy nitey you got to wear for hubby, you won't like the followers you get with that - but say - What you got or made yourself for your birthday - A great holiday to Australia you went on - Your roommates hilarious attempt to bring a motorcycle home in the car. Something that adds a feel for who you are, what you're like - a more personal touch to the jewelry they are going to go buy in your shop. And yes people become interested in your work, and want to buy it - or ask do you have a tutorial for it. That's exactly how I got started selling tutorials on-line BTW. I have taught in person for years, but it wasn't until my blog that interest in tutorials came about - Well that and the encouragement of a very dear friend.

When you write your posts, make sure you add photos (blogspot does most of the work on this one too), but try not to over load it, remember some of your readers might be on dial-up. I try to keep the number somewhere around 3 or 5. The odd number comes from my art and photography classes, many years ago - It helps keep the piece balanced and pleasing to look at. If you write just a short post, use just one photo, place it to one side, and wrap the text around it.

One of the biggest things to remember about adding photos, is to make sure, they are crisp, clear, and well focused. You don't know who's going to look at them, and while they may look okay on a small screen, you have to think about if someone is going to look at them from a bigger screen computer, or if they are going to blow it up to get a better look.

Once you have a blog and Flickr started - tie the 2 together. Blogspot makes it so easy to add a slide show from Flickr. All you have to do is go into your 'dashboard', click 'layout', select 'add a gadget', enter your Flickr user name, click 'save' - poof you're done. That wasn't so painful, was it? If you already have an Etsy shop, you can add your 'Etsy Mini' in a similar fashion. Artfire has some great promo buttons, that unlike Etsy, actually link back to YOUR shop. You can even easily add a link back to Jewelry Lessons. After you save the logo Eni provides at http://www.jewelrylessons.com/jewel/linktous to your computer, from the dashboard, go into layout, add a gadget, pick picture this time - upload the JL logo, type in the JL address, and save.

Both Flickr and Blogspot have wonderful widgets to add to your Flickr and Blog to provide more information, or to be entertaining, just try not to get TOO carried away - (I'm still working on that one BTW)......

see ya soon.....I'll Be Back with more :)

~Bobbi