October Top Droppers and Commenters and November News

It's a new month, which means that it's time to thank my Top Droppers and Commenters once again and let you know what's going on with my shop next month.  Thanks to everyone who made October a great month for me!  I had steady sales all month and a record number of shop views.  I have many of you to thank for that!

I'm sure that it's no surprise that with Christmas less than 2 months away, there is a lot going on with my shop.  I am not going to include it all in this post, but I'll give you an overview and will post more details later.

As always, I appreciate everyone who drops by my blog regularly, especially those of you who comment.  My favorite blogs to visit during my daily blog reading and Entrecard dropping/Project Wonderful ad hunting are those blogs that 1) are updated regularly (at least 1-2 times per week) and 2) are blogs whose authors stop by and comment on mine sometimes.  Whatever your reason is for visiting a blog regularly, please take the time to leave me a message once in a while.  Thanks!

TOP DROPPERS
Here are the Top 10 Droppers for October:

TOP COMMENTERS
I now have a Top Commenter widget on my blog.  If you're interested in seeing where you rank, scroll down and look on the right side of my page.  It's right under my blog roll.  I will feature an item or give a shout out to everyone on that list or who has commented regularly (even if not within the last week) in this monthly post.

Thanks to Grace of Dragon's Alley and Catherine of Living the Gourmet for stopping by and commenting regularly!  Here are some lovely items from the ladies on my list who have Etsy shops.

In clockwise order from the top left corner:
1) Great Hair Clip: Purple & Blue Argyle Owl by ForLoveofCupcakes
2) Weekly Planner - Christmas Cookies and Tea by SherHastingsDesigns
3) Knit Coin Purse in Pink and Purple Triangles by nfall2rt
4) Crochet headwarmer with flower, pumpkin orange, adjustable width by JNOriginals
5) snowman socks, hand dyed for children, flower socks, too by SplendidLittleStars
6) Classy Beaded Bracelet in Purple, Teal Green, Slate Blue, and White Beadwork by AsteropeBC
7) Red and Jasper Golden Shadow Swarovski Crystal Beaded Niobium Earrings by BeadedTail
8) Italian paper beads, 30 count by storybeader
9) Custom Destination Scrapbook Photo Album - XLarge Double Word Album by memoriesforlifesb


REARRANGING
I did a major overhaul of my blog organization this past month.  I hadn't touched my organization in way too long, and my one sidebar was very cluttered.  I widened the entire blog, added a left side bar for advertising, and moved several things into their own tabs.  You can now find my Hubs in the Crafty Articles Tab, my Etsy related links in the Etsy Seller Resources tab, and my PDF Pattern links in the PDF Patterns tab.  Eventually I would like to create a method for purchasing patterns directly from my blog, but I haven't tackled this yet.

REARRANGING Part II
I also completely overhauled a large portion of my Etsy shop sections this past week.  Check it out and let me know what you think.  After the holidays, I'm planning to mark down all of my beaded beads, get rid of that section, and make a "New for 2012" section.

ADVERTISING
The other thing that I've been working on for the holiday season is advertising.  As much as we all love Entrecard (haha), I've been seriously contemplating other means of advertising for the last couple months.  During a recent BBA discussion, I was inspired to check my blog stats, which honestly I never do.  I've always been more focused on my Etsy shop views.  I was shocked to learn that I've averaged a little under 200 views per day for my blog for the past month, which equals just over 6,000 views for the month.  Thanks to a couple of high traffic days this month, my total has jumped to 9,200 for the past month.  Thus, advertising is another thing that is way overdue for my blog.

The first thing that I did is that I finally joined Project Wonderful.  You can now advertise with me on Project Wonderful on the left side of my blog.  Thanks so much to those of you who are already doing this!  I have been and will continue to be placing my own bids on other sites, too.  If you aren't part of Project Wonderful already, you can join here.

The second thing I did is that I added a method for accepting private sponsors.  All of the information about this can be found in my Advertising tab.  A number of blogs offer this now so you may have seen it before.  How it works is that for a small fee, I will advertise your blog, shop, or other web site on my blog.  I will include information about your site in this monthly post and will promote it on Facebook and Twitter throughout the month.  You can contact me any time about advertising via e-mail or by ;leaving a comment on a blog post with your contact information.  For those of you who also offer private sponsorship on your blog, I am happy to trade for ad space.

I am looking to all of you for advice about advertising, too.  Let me know where you have advertised or currently advertise regularly and what does or does not work for you.

SALE
I will have lots of Christmas, red, and green items marked down all of November and December.  Christmas items are 15% off and all red and green items are 15% off.  Check out sale section here.  I will post more about everything that's available later this month.  I have a few brand new Christmas items that I'll include in the sale, too.  Stay tuned!