Goals for 2012

If you missed my accomplishments for 2011 post, you can still go back and check it out.  Thanks for all of the wonderful feedback that I have already received on it!  I don't usually set year resolutions or goals.  However, this is the first year in a long time that I don't have to make school, moving, or teaching a priority and am looking forward to focusing on more of the things that I really enjoy.  I am thankful for the time that I had in 2011 to do this and am looking forward to even more of it in 2012.

1.  Have 140 sales on Etsy in my randomcreative shop.  I averaged over 1 sale per week for 2011 and am hoping to increase this to over 2 sales per week for 2012.  If I have anywhere over 100 sales for the year, I'll be really happy.

2. Introduce and continue to develop my new herringbone line and its charm/pendant components.  I have been working on this idea since the summer and am really excited that I've finally started to roll it out.  I have high hopes that this new line and the components for it will help me reach that sales goal.  I hope that this new line does well at my shows, too.

3.  Double my current long term earnings on HubPages.  I have been pleased with how much I've been earning on HubPages thus far, especially considering that I haven't even finished my first year there.  A lot of people don't see real long term freelance writing earnings for well over a year.  Ideally I'd love to triple my current earnings by the end of the year.  We'll see how long it takes me to double before I think about that too much.

4.  Make at least one new greeting card design per week.  As much as I love making jewelry, I'm looking to branch out a little more with my crafty projects in 2012 for a few reasons.
1) I don't want to burn out on jewelry making.
2) I have a lot of crafty interests (hence my shop name) and don't want to neglect ones that I really enjoy simply because I primarily sell jewelry.
3) I want to have another non-jewelry product to offer at craft shows to give me a little edge.  As many of you know, the jewelry competition is very steep.
4) I love to send/give cards and would rather make my own than buy them.  I didn't do a lot of this while Jake was in med school, but I would like to do it more often again.

5.  Expand my craft show lines.  I'm going to start offering button rings, button bobby pins, and glass magnets at craft shows.  I am planning to do some seasonal limited edition ones on Etsy as well.  I greatly expanded my higher end products during 2011 and would like to have some more lower end lines for 2012, especially for craft shows.

As mentioned above, I would like to start selling greeting cards at shows, too.  I'll have to see how the design process goes this winter and spring before I decide what I want to sell.  Ideally I'd like to have a wide range of prices, set options (singles, 4 packs, 8 packs, etc.), and topics/themes, but I will most likely start with limited numbers of seasonal cards and a few all-purpose cards (i.e. birthday) for the spring/summer shows.

I am planning to offer a few seasonal cards on Etsy, too, with the hopes of eventually expanding this.  Again, we'll see how it goes this year.

6.  Complete a minimum of 6 EBW challenges and 6 BBA challenges.  I'm primarily planning to use the EBW challenges to develop new pieces for my existing lines and to use most of the BBA challenges for greeting card designs.  Most likely I will complete more challenges than this, but I don't know how busy I'll be the later part of the year so I'm keeping it at 6 of each for now.

7.  Participate in 4-6 craft shows.  One of my goals for 2012 is to build more of a local following, which means among other things, doing more shows.  I did 3 in 2011 and would ideally like to double this number.  Milwaukee has an amazing art scene and there are so many shows.  Honestly it's overwhelming.  I need to figure out which ones are the best ones for me to do.

8.  Starting making this blog more profitable.  I did make a little money with my blog in 2011.  I'm sure it's not a secret that I put a fair amount of time into this blog.  I would really like to make that time pay off at least a little bit.  While I get a lot of great feedback and interaction with this blog, I don't get a lot of sales from it, so the money needs to come from somewhere to justify its existence.  At this point, I see this money primarily coming from advertising.  One of the ways to do this is private sponsorship.  I am offering a limited number of $10 spots that are good for the entire year!  Take advantage of them while you can.

9.  Better list making organization.  This may surprise some of you because I do consider myself to be a very organized person.  However, my list organization is terrible.  I have a notebook for taking measurements and notes about new Etsy listings.  When I started writing for HubPages, I began brainstorming article ideas in the back of this notebook.  Eventually that turned into also keeping track of blog posts, daily "to do" lists, craft ideas, and a lot more.  While it's good that all of this is in writing, it's very disorganized.  I'd like to start keeping separate notebooks for different topics.

I included this post in Erika's It's a Wrap Link Party 1/9/2012.