SELL ME

Hi BE,
They aren't really cabochons, they are pendants. My dictionary defines a cabochon as "a gem or bead cut in a convex form and highly polished but not faceted". A pendant is "an ornament allowed to hang free".

A cabochon can be used as a pendant (typically in some kind of setting), but it can also be used in a brooch, ring, earring, etc, depending on the size.

Like I said, I have zero experience with ebay, so I don't know if the buyers there make these kinds of distinctions or not, but I also wonder if terminology might be critical given the huge reams of listings on ebay, so I think it might help to add "pendant" in the list of key words so that people looking for pendants could find John's listings easier. Maybe worth a shot anyway?

Once again, my 2 cents for what it is worth!

Was thinking last night about marketing and selling my rock stuff - when I get enough made -and got to thinking about the little I know about marketing products. The one thing I do know about marketing stuff is that you have to determine who you want to sell your product to.

Although alot of rockhounding folks would be interested, as we are, I think the bulk of your efforts should be directed toward those that are not necessarily rockhounds. This does not mean to completely eliminate those interested in rocks and that tumble, but to concentrate less on them than the general public. Reason being that folks into rockhounding may not be as willing to bu because they can do their own or plan on eventually getting the necessary equipment to do there own. Let's look at me, for example. I love your cabs and I wear the one you sent me all the time (or at least until the chain eats my neck up. I'm allergic to metals and can't wear any kind of jewelry for long without breaking out. ) Although I would love to buy several of them, I would rather spend that money on more rock, grit, etc. and eventually make my own.

I am certainly not saying this to be meanspirited or anything - hope you know that! I want to you be successful with this beyond your wildest dreams! And the fact is that rockhounding folks will be less likely to buy than the general public for the reason stated above, and others. So, you need to shift your focus to those that can't and probably won't ever even tumble a rock. Put them on chains, cord, or whatever and sell them as pendants.

Absolutely DON'T stop listing them under rocks and mineral categories at eBay. Absolutely DO use the word cab, cabs, etc. so they will come up in other unassociated categories. Somebody looking for the cab of a truck may stumble across one and say WOW, the wife's b'day is coming up and this will be a great gift! or some such thing. The point is get them out where they can been seen by folks not into rocks at all. People that know nothing about rocks that see a polished rock are usually fascinated and interested from how that ugly rock got so beautiful! So, DO display them with rough rock as your background. List them on eBay in any and all categories that you are able to. Rocks, Jewelry, Collectibles, etc. Use any word in the description that will bring them up in a totally unassociated categorly - like trucks and such. Get everybody to put their thinking caps on to think of words that can be used in the description that will bring them up in such catagories as kitchen, furniture, books, etc. If someone types in living room decorations or display, there should be some word in the description that brings them up. As an example - picture rock. Someone types picture
in the google search, up comes you picture rock.

Second, you have a great source of advertising your cabs with your daugther. I am sure she gets lots of comments on the ones to you for her. Give her a bit of incentive for marketing them to her friends. "Oh WOW, Christine what a cool necklace.'...."Thanks, my dad makes them. I bet he would be glad to make you one if you want. They aren't very expensive, about $_____. " Send her some pics of some of the rock you have to make them with so she can show her friends and they could pick which one they like.
Give her a commission for any she sell. Kids always need money and in many cases are just natural salespeople because their enthuasium for the product or such is contageous. If it's cool, their friends want one!

You have not just one, but two, jewelers you know. Talk to them, get their ideas. Ask they to put a couple in their shops on consignment. If you know body that has a beauty/nail/tanning/etc. solon, talk to them about putting some in their shop for consignment.

Get some together and go to a flea market where people
can look at them and touch them. Yes, it's a hassel, but people will buy things they see and like. I have bid on many things I thought I wanted on eBay, but then had time to think about it and stopped bidding. Take advantage of mpuse buying - and folks go to flea markets to buy, buy buy! Yes, they are looking for bargains, but if they see something they really like they will buy.

If there are any bead shops or locally owned craft shops, to talk to them. Show them your work, see if you can put some on consignment. If you are uncomfortable about talking to them face to face, then take some great pics and send them along with a letter, asking if you could meet with them and bring some of your work. That would open the door, so to speak for you to show folks your work. Even if for some reason they won't or can't put them in their shops, if they like them, they will tell others.

I don't know if you are interested in making a business of this or if it's more for fun. If it's just because you enjoying do it, then that's great, but if you want to make a biz of it, you need to get them out there where folks can see them.

I discovered yesterday that I have a friend who has done alot of marketing on the net - she encouraged me to get busy with my rock stuff and sell it. I am going to get with her sometime this week and pick her brain. She knows about internet marketing (not one of those net marketing scams!) She used to work for a gal that sold all sorts of stuff on the net and knows how to do it from front to back.

Would be cool if those of us on the forum with a desire to sell our stuff could get together and create our own little net biz to sell our products. Thought I'd ask her how to do something like that, what it would take money wise, how much she would charge to do it, etc. If it would be affordable, I think we should seriously consider starting our own little Rock Tumbling Hobby Rock Art Internet Shop.

Whatever you do - DON'T GIVE UP!

llana

llana i was thinking that same thing while i was up creating a necklace way too late last night. i think it would be great!

kim

Ohh...cool!

rockcorner.com is available!

Waddya think?

well i think it's just a great idea. i'm game. i'm like llana, i'd have to get real busy to have enough to sell. but i can't sleep anyway cause i'm having too much fun late at night when the house is still.

kim

I got all psyched up because I sold two of my walking sticks and a third one sold when I finish it and Maureen wants one.
Also sold a couple of hand fulls of rocks and several magnets.
I think I could have sold everything had I bee somewhere were people were willing to spend money. This was the city wide garage sale and everybody wants something neat for 25 cents. I was willing to negotiate on all the junk I took, even gave some of it away so I wouldn't have to haul it back home. But wasn't going to sell my few rock creations for next to nothing.

I think if I would get busy and get some stuff made,I could go to the huge flea market in San Antonio and sell it with no problem.

llana

Within reason...
I think starting with six to eight people is good. We'll see where it goes from there.

I have a server with an 80 gig hard-drive on it. However, we can NOT fill that...or we'll slow the server down. I plan on having a maximum of 20 domains on the server. Right now, I have 14? Pretty much all the sites on the server are NOT heavy hitters...so band-width isn't an issue. We're barely using our bandwidth alottment each month. I think we're at 10% useage...which is good if we're going to add alot of subdomains.

I would expect everyone to follow some graphic guidelines for their products going into their shopping cart. That will overall save space on the server, make their sites load fast and keep from throwing out the way each page looks. (Kind of like what happens on the forums when you see a huge graphic and have to scroll to see the whole picture.)

I would also set a limit on how much space each sub-domain would have. That will prevent abuse and be fair to everyone....including me. But, it would be pretty standard for most websites.

Doh Andy you could?
What about subdomains?

We were thinking of creating a co-op of sorts....so we can help each other build traffic by working under a single domain name.

Ok,

I'll send my reseller acount plan over on the board tomorrow to show you what it offers.

Windows it is - thats the free i'm afraid.

SQL or SQL server? Standard ODBC I can do for free Im sure, but SQL Server is at a cost to me.

You have to be careful about cross linking IP addresses on subdomains......from xx.xx.here.here. Youll get booted out of the search engines faster than 1 rotation of a barrel for that - especially with same topic sites.

Its getting on a bit here - I'll post what my reseller account has to offer the morrow and you can see if its worth going for.

God im tired.

Andy.