enJOY it

read part eight here.

I entered 2012 without much of a plan for how I'd make money. There was no plan for anything really. Paul was still deployed. Our new townhouse was mostly decorated. I was running out of steam on prints and minibooks. My online workshops felt like they had run their course. I really had no idea what was next.

At the end of December 2011, I had received an email from Becky Higgins asking if I wanted to try out the Project Life scrapbooking system. While it hasn't entered my business story too much yet, scrapbooking was always in the background (and sometimes foreground) of what I've been doing on the blog since the beginning. I have shared many paper projects over the past few years (though admittedly, not many these last few years as my interests have shifted a bit).

I was flattered to be asked by Becky and excited to try a new documentation method. Six weeks after sharing my weekly spreads (most of which included cards I had made) on the blog, I got an email from Becky asking if I wanted to design a new edition of Project Life that would launch in 2013. At the time only two editions were released each year this felt like a huge & unreal opportunity. I didn't have the Adobe Illustrator skills needed and so I teamed up with my friend Meredith Carty (hire her for design work, she's rad). In secret, over the course of six months, I conceptualized the kit.

Meanwhile, in May 2012, I opened the stamp shop. Talk about a game changer. There was no long-term plan here except for the fact that I really wanted a THIS in an arrow in stamp form. I ordered one for myself and shared a photo of it. The response was positive and so on a whim, I designed six more stamps with a similar feel. I launched the stamps and had an overwhelming response those first few days, selling something like 500 stamps. It was completely unprecedented and I was not prepared. Neither was my stamp producer and it ended up taking me three weeks to get the designs to customers.

With the rubber stamps, I transitioned away from Etsy and started self-hosting through e.junkie for more customization and less fees. A few months later I completely rebranded my website (it looked a lot like it does today) to reflect my new venture. At the time, this felt like it. If you'd asked, I would've guessed that rubber stamps were going to be my new career path. My designs were incredibly simple, but they sold well. I loved using them and enjoyed creating samples which helped keep them moving.

In retrospect though, this was not a sustainable long-term business. My markup wasn't high enough to expand and sell them wholesale because I was selling them at just over double the cost it took to have them made. I was having them produced in the USA (yay!) but the factory was on the East Coast so orders took awhile to get to me and it was hard to keep the right stamps in stock to meet demand.

Regardless, it was fun product to sell. Every few months I would launch a new "line" and continued to add to the shop. New designs always sold but never at the rate and speed of that initial launch. My biggest sellers continued to be from those first six designs.

In August 2012, the fact that I was connected to the Seafoam kit was announced and it was a really exciting time. The response was positive and it was incredibly satisfying to have my name on a product that people wanted to use. At the time, the Seafoam kit (still available for sale here) was the biggest thing I had done. You would think that I could look at my resume and think "Oh that's it. That's the moment where I 'made it'." But if I've learned anything from this path is that there's no such thing. No one event is where you've "made it." It's a constant process of "making it."

I used to think "If only I could get X amount of hits." or "If only I could get a mention on X's blog." or "If only I could sell X amount of product." or "If only I could have the opportunity to do X." But over many years I have had some of those things happen. I have gotten the hits or the mention or the sales, only to realize I'm still exactly me. Those big things are exciting and satisfying but they are also just a blink. There is no "made it."

I'm always thinking about what will be the next thing. I understand that that might sound discouraging; I've been called out on it before. But for me it's so encouraging. I love this entrepreneur life. I've signed on to it because it's inspiring to be working towards a finish line that moves. If that finish line stops moving, I'll know it's time to pack up my desk and find a new career path.

2012 was a really big and great year. The stamps felt like the start of something. The kit design process was so much fun. Towards the end of the year I teamed up with the A Beautiful Mess girls to teach an ecourse on blog web design (version two of this class is available here) that had incredible reach and really pushed me to develop my own coding skills. I was riding a high and I entered the new year excited about the business but mostly looking forward to welcoming a baby in the summer of 2013.

The first half of 2013 moved fairly quickly, especially from a business standpoint. Most of my money those months came from pre-existing online workshops, stamp sales and affiliate programs. I wasn't thinking about growing the business or trying anything new because I was so singularly focused on getting our baby out and becoming a mom.

Those months really are a blur, but I vividly remember being 36 weeks pregnant and telling someone I was looking forward to the "challenge" of fitting a baby into the fold.

[Insert manic laughter here.]

to be continued…read part ten here.

read part seven here.

Sometimes when I start talking money or financial goals people get a bit nervous. "Oh, I hate to think about the money." Or "Oh I'd rather not discuss money."

But, let's get real, to make money you've got to think about the money. As we learned from The Baby-Sitters Club and Kristy's Great Idea, money comes when you recognize a need and you get organized enough to fill that need.

You don't have to talk about the money with everyone (like I apparently want to do) but you have to find someone (even if it's your accountant or your journal) to talk with about the money. To make a real go of owning your own small business, you have to be realistic about what sort of income you want to be bringing in.

My dad always says that "money is a tool to get things done" and it can really help to think of it like that. Money is not the finish line, money is a tool to keep you participating in the race. I'm not trying to make piles of money so I can stack them up and sit on them. I am trying to generate income so that my family can work towards the lifestyle that we want to live. That's it.

Setting a financial goal for my business in 2011 was a tremendous turning point. Having a dollar goal made it real. This is something real now that I am doing. If I hit my $30,000, I've succeeded. If I don't I have failed. Obviously it's much more complicated than that but it helped me to really see the numbers as black-and-white.

Financial goals also encouraged me to think more about what actually made sense from a money standpoint. I quickly realized that selling sidebar ads for $50 to four-six small shops a month wasn't going to make that big of a dent in my $30,000 goal. I also had to really consider if for $200-$300 a month I was willing to give up my own retail space. Between giveaways and welcome sponsor posts, I was sacrificing my own brand and content for a small percentage of the income I was hoping to earn. In my case, that wasn't worth it. (This was the first sign that I was a business with a blog and not a blog that's a business, you can hear more about this on podcast episode 014b.)

Around this time I remember transitioning towards affiliate programs and away from sidebar sponsors. I vividly remember blogging about a pair of gap shoes and then getting comments and emails that many people had bought them. "Man," I thought. "I wish I had made commission on those sales." I started looking for more affiliate programs that would make sense with my blog.

Thankfully, over the past few years affiliate programs have grown stronger to help support bloggers AND brands. Today I rely on affiliate programs for small but steady income. (You can read more about this here.) For me, this works well since I am always going to be trying and blogging about new things. I'm selective about what I share and I don't think it takes away from my products or "brand" to use affiliate programs. I am careful to disclose these programs (and really everything business related that I do) so that you don't ever think I'm "trying to trick you." Honesty is more important than $$, obviously.

But back to the financial goals. Setting a number to hit also helped me think more logically about my product output. If, for example, I planned to sell a widget that netted me three dollars, I would have to sell 10,000 widgets to hit my goal. Realizing that makes it clear that I would need to drastically improve my reach, raise prices per widget or diversify what I am doing.

In 2011, I knew I'd never net $30,000 on poster prints and mixed paper books alone. So the first big thing that I launched was Blog 2.0, a web design class for TypePad bloggers. I put so much work into that class and I am still proud of it. I priced it at $115 which even now makes me a little nervous. But it sold. My first class was capped at 40 so I could offer one-on-one help and it was a success. I made about $4000 after fees and was beyond thrilled.

That class, with what felt like a very high price point, was a game changer for me. It lead to bigger teaching opportunities in the following years and showed me that taking risks can be worth it. That nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach? That can be a very good thing.

In June 2011, Paul and I were in Palm Desert before he headed off to his first deployment. I remember hitting $15,000 (half my yearly goal) on June 30. We celebrated with mimosas at 9am in the morning. This crazy job? This crazy career path? I might be able to make it work.

Paul deployed in August 2011 and suddenly I had more free time than I knew what to do with. I packed up our beloved San Diego apartment and moved to a new townhouse in Oxnard in December. At this point in my "career," blogging had become second nature. I was easily writing every day and developing editorial calendars quickly. My photography was finding its own groove. I was increasing traffic again thanks to the DIY focus (and pinterest friendly content) of the 26 Projects.

I was still selling on Etsy and my biggest sellers were season-focused mini books that I worked on along-side with customers, often sharing video tutorials (this category is an example). I sold about 250 of my summer books and maybe 150 holiday books. I was experimenting more with product launch hype and created my first video trailer.

When I think back on this time, I was in such a bubble. What I was doing felt totally independent from what anyone else was doing, although I was just starting to meet my online friends in real life. As you've learned from this series, my career has progressed slowly – in part because it's just been me alone and there has been no one else to bounce things off or push me to expand. In many ways I am grateful for this bubble. It's helped me figure out how I work best and what I really like. When I do collaborate with others these days, I feel like I have a stronger voice to bring to the conversation.

After a year of different things: a big online course (and two successful reruns), many (many) mixed paper books, affiliate programs, a deployment and my first big year of sharing DIY projects, I was still in that bubble but had found my grove. I had reached my $30,000 goal and was excited to think 33% bigger in in 2012.

to be continued…read part nine here.

Today on ELISE GETS CRAFTY I am chatting with author, Kim Werker about letting creativity be ugly. Click here to subscribe or stream the episode from your computer here.

read part six here.

It's now June 2010 and I'm trying to make a real go of working for myself. This is, honestly, where things start to get fun. Don't get me wrong, the juggle of a day job and an internship and a commute and the snow was interesting and it definitely taught me how to use my time efficiently, but our first year married in San Diego when Paul worked all the time and I learned how to work for myself all the time was FUN.

I'd totally do that year over. (And I never say that.)

I had some real time now to devote to this THING. First things first, I got a reseller's license (this is easy to do, learn more at your state's board of equalization website) which made it legal for me to sell product in California. As part of that, I started collecting CA sales tax and purchasing product at wholesale price. I then got serious about branding. Back in Maryland (just for fun since HTML is like ice cream to me) I had built the first iteration of my website as sort of a catch-all for the stuff I was doing.

In the summer of 2010, I re-branded from "Enjoy Design" to "ELISE JOY." It wasn't a big change and if I did it over, I'd probably not use my name, but still. It felt good.

I switched things up and ordered multiple designs of business cards from moo.com that I still think are one of the most creative thing I have done. I had created a business card that people wanted. People emailed me to tell me that they stuck my business card on their bulletin board as a mantra for themselves. I could get behind that.

I started to have more fun with my product packaging. I ordered rubber stamps (foreshadowing!) with my logo. I picked some actual brand colors. I basically got some logistics in place THREE YEARS after I had opened up shop.

This is why I am perplexed when people start worrying about what color font to use on their thank you postcards before they've thought about how they'll produce their products. It matters, but it matters little. Getting caught up in the small stuff is a really great way to procrastinate on the big stuff and never move forward.

I had a 2000th sale celebration week on my blog in the fall of 2010. I had never done something like that and the hype was rad. Today my business and my blog are so blended. For better or worse, people expect me to chat in detail about this crap, but back then it felt novel. I loved it (obviously).

I was selling 11×14 and 5×7 text art prints at the time along with mixed paper books. I launched The Goodness Book in November and that was one of my best product launches ever. I was starting to get more creative with my product photography, for sure.

The blog was doing well – I probably doubled my audience size that year. The truth is I never know what exactly is driving traffic, but if I had to guess, that year it was due to the wedding hype and that I had more time to devote to blogging. My photos were improving, thanks to better light in our new apartment and a DSLR camera purchase. I had tried sidebar sponsors for awhile (I did this on and off for a few years before scrapping the whole idea) and was making some extra income from that. Things felt like they were clicking and it was an exciting time.

As so, as 2011 approached, I set my first ever financial goal:

I was going to net $30,000 working just for myself.

to be continued…read part eight here.