Thinking Thursday...Tutorials? Please cast your Vote!

I have been thinking of summer fun and thought, "How about some cool tutorials for the summer months?" Great idea, but what to do?

Now, you can have your say! You tell me what tutorials you want to see using the poll in the left sidebar. If you want to see a tutorial for something that is not on the list, comment below so I can add it to the list. I'm multi-crafty, meaning there really isn't much I can't do (besides knitting!) Go ahead, tell me what's really on your mind!

Thinking Thursday.....Advertising

So, I'm thinking about the whole advertising thing and need your opinions. When I met with my accountant to do my taxes for last year, I had a very small amount put into advertising; something like $40 or so. She indicated that the IRS wants to see advertising expenses in your taxes which is a great positive reinforcement to do it. By the way, she also said it helps to show that you have your own website, which I do, I just need to finish tweaking it.

As far as the advertising thing, I have done Adgitize, EntreCard and Project Wonderful, however, Adgitize and EC advertise my business blog, not my actual business. Advertising is advertising and I have made sales through my blog in the past, so I will keep that up, but I want to start incorporating more diverse advertising into my business this year. My main form of advertising is renewing items. If you think about it, it's cheap ($.20 an item) and brings the item up to the front (advertising is drawing attention to your stuff, right?) My husband suggested we make up fliers and put them in people's newspaper slots in their mailboxes. I'm not so sure I like this idea...I hate when we get junk in ours. It just annoys me (I don't know why) so I am trying to keep him at bay on actually doing this.

Here is where your opinion comes in:

1. What forms of advertising have you relied on for your business?
2. Which one's worked the best?
3. Can you state to the IRS that Etsy renewing fees are your advertising?

Please take a moment to comment your opinions on this :)

Thinking Thursday...Storing Left-Over Seed Beads

How do you store your left-over seed beads? Not new one's, but the one's that you have just a little bit left. Not enough for a complete project, but enough to embellish something.

So, I'm thinking today that I may want to change the way I store my left-over seed beads. I already have a terrific storage system for my other beads that serves me quite well, but what about those darned seed beads?

The picture above is how I store my left-over stash. I keep them in little plastic bags in one of those tiny drawer chests that men use to store their hardware. Of course, one drawer per color (pink, red, orange, yellow, etc.)

I prefer to keep my full-supply stash in a dresser drawer in the studio and also prefer to use the same brand Japanese seed beads for uniformity in my pieces. However, I tend to inherit a lot of people's left-over stash (as well as my own), and I guess I was thinking of different ways of storing them without spending a small fortune. Sheesh, storage boxes can be so expensive!

Maybe I already have this simplified as much as I could possibly have. That's where you come in. Perhaps you have a better storage system than me and would like to share....

So, how do you store your left over seed beads?

Thinking Thursday -----> Google Analytics

So, I am thinking.......I look at my Google Analytics every couple of days. Why? You know, I'm really not sure. I guess to see how many visits my Etsy shop, blog and website got. That's about it. Seriously.

So I'm thinking....there's got to be a way I can analyze those results to find out things such as:
---What impact did listing 3 things on a certain day have on amount of visits to my shop.
---What impact did featuring another seller have on my blog impact traffic to the blog.

How can I take what I see on the Analytics screen and use it for further analytics to see what is working and what is not working for my business.

Any suggestions? Websites? Blogs that explain this?