Hey everyone! I just moved into a new apartment and don’t have internet access so it’s been a little difficult for me to do updates. Just rest assured, I’m still here, just not on the internet constantly like I used to be. That will change soon, I hope. I will be at the Mead Craft Fair in Spokane, WA on Nov. 15-16, it will be held at Mead High School in north Spokane (302 W Hastings Rd Spokane, WA 99218)

Saturday: 9am-5pm

Sunday: 10am-4pm

We will be in the main gym (the one with the bleachers) so we’ll see you there! Mention this blog to get a free pair of Peruvian earrings with purchase.

So I’ve been thinking about changing my name. My middle name is Christine, and I’ve always liked that better than my first name, Lindsey, so I’ve been weighing the idea of using Christine as my name on the Internet. Not sure. I don’t want to confuse people, but at the same time, you can never be too careful with safety on the internet these days! Thoughts?

I’ve been a little MIA these past few weeks. I’ve been on a craft streak and making a lot of earrings and pieces of jewelry. I learned how to twist wire too and incorporate the wire pieces into earrings. I’ll be putting a lot of them up on my site on Tuesday or Wednesday, whenever my photographer takes pictures of them.<p> I’ve been looking for a place to live too in Bellevue, so that’s been distracting me. I think I found a place so when I move in (this Friday, hopefully!!), I’ll get my computer and office set up and get to work on improving the site again! Comment if you have any ideas on how to fix it up!

Well I’ve been working on the backend of my site lately, hence the lack of posts. Just a recommendation, if you use Oscommerce for your store, I recommend the Header Tags SEO contribution. It takes a little while to install, but as soon as I did, I went from 0-1 hits per day to 20+ from google. And that was before I went in to do more extensive keyword tags. It gives you the option to enter tags for individual items, though when I say option, I really mean, necessity, because you have to do each item individually if you want them to get tagged right. However, once the info is in there, it’s in there and there’s no more upkeep. It took me quite a few hours of work, but it did the job. Just note though, that if your site is already heavily modded, it might be harder to install this one, since there’s a lot of code to edit. It’s best done on a fresh install or if you’re knowledgeable enough about php to improvise a bit.

This is for any newbies to Wordpress. First, you should know there are two versions of Wordpress. The first is wordpress.com, where your blog can be hosted at something like yourbloghere.wordpress.com. Doing it this way is good if you’re just doing a blog, but if you want your own domain name, go to wordpress.org. There, you can download a version of Wordpress to upload to your (previously set up) host server, using your own (previously purchased) domain to access it. This post assumes that’s what you did.

So you’ve downloaded Wordpress right? And uploaded the entire file to your server? But now when you visit it, you have this lame blue header with a lonely-looking font announcing to the world that your blog sucks.

Here’s how to change your custom image header on a clean install of wordpress, since it seems impossible to find clear instructions anywhere on the internet:

1. Create an image you want to use. Mine is 760×200, because that’s the default image’s size. Save it as either a jpg or gif image.

2. Using your FTP editor, upload your image to your server at: (Wordpress/wp-content/themes/default), assuming you’re still using the Default theme, not Classic, and the folder all your Wordpress stuff is in is called Wordpress. Remember the image name (ex. blog_logo.jpg)

3. In the theme editor (open your Admin section, click on the Design tab, then Theme Editor), click on Header (header.php), which will open up an in-browser text editor.

The following is a snippet from (http://www.solostream.com/2007/10/09/how-to-add-a-header-image-to-the-simplicity-wordpress-theme/):

Find:

<div id=”header”>
<div id=”headerimg”>
<h1><a href=”<?php echo get_option(’home’); ?>/”><?php bloginfo(’name’); ?></a></h1>
<div class=”description”><?php bloginfo(’description’); ?></div>

and replace with:

<div id="header" onclick="location.href='<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>';" style="cursor: pointer;">
</div>

Click on Update File. That will remove the default text AND keep your image from tiling across the whole background.

4. In the theme editor, click on Style (stylesheet.css) on the right side list. Find:

#header {
clear: both;
padding: 25px 0;
margin: 0 auto;
background: #0066cc;
}

and change it to:

#header {
clear: both;
padding: 0;
margin: 0 auto;
background: url(blog_logo.jpg) top left no-repeat;
height: 200px;
}

Note that you’ll need to adjust the height to whatever the height of your image is. Don’t worry about the width, it’ll adjust automatically in proportion to the height.

While you’re at it, you can change the background color of your blog (currently an icky gray) to white or whatever color you choose. Simply find the body section (right at the top) and change the background color to #ffffff for white. Click Update File.

And there you go! At least, that’s how it was for me. It seems like there should be an easier way, but if there isn’t, this is how I did it. Contact me if you need help!

Craigslist is a powerful tool if you know how to use it right. Thousands of people check ads each day, already in the mindset of buying things, so it’s great if you learn to use it to your advantage.

Create a Craigslist account to keep track of your posts. Every time a post expires, you can renew it from your account page, which makes it nice and convenient. Craigslist frowns on posting to multiple cities, but it’s still allowed, as long as you don’t post duplicate posts. I probably shouldn’t share this online, but as long as you change up the titles, you can usually post the same item in a few cities, but make the titles different! Pick a few different descriptive keywords for each post’s title to cover more ground.

When choosing cities, it actually works to your advantage to choose smaller cities. If you choose a big city, your post will be buried on the fourth page within hours, but go with a smaller city or area and your post could be on the front page for a week. Plus, the busy cities tend to expire posts every 7 days, but the rest usually give it 30-45 days!

Now. On to writing your ad. First and foremost, learn the basics of HTML. Craigslist not only allows html in its postings, it doesn’t even automatically format the descriptions when you enter them. For instance, every time you hit enter to start a new line or paragraph, you’ll need to use code. For one line, enter <br> (for line break). To go down two lines, you can enter <br><br> or you can do <p> to start a new paragraph. If you want to center your paragraph or heading, you can enter <p align=”center>, which will start a new paragraph AND center it. Just know though, that every time you start a new paragraph, you’ll have to enter the same code to center it again. There’s a ton of ways you can format text with HTML, you can bold it, italicize, make bullet points, and more. Just use the right command, and the post is your oyster.
Next, learn to insert clickable links into your description.  If you just want text to become a link, enter <a href=”http://yoursite.com/”>Adorable Site Name Here</a>. The </a> closes the link. Do NOT forget to close the link, or you might turn the entire page into one big, messy link that you can’t get out of. I’ve been there. For extra pizzazz, you can turn an image into a nifty link as well. Simply upload the image or logo to your server and remember the name of it. Then enter <a href=”http://yoursite.com/”><img src=”http://yoursite.com/logo.jpg></a>.

Those are the basics. And of course, EDIT all your posts for grammar or spelling errors. Don’t trust spellcheck! At first, your posts may be simple and text-heavy, but that’s okay. It can take a little while to get the hang of things. Just make sure your site address with a link is in there!

Since I started LovetheLimelight.com, I’ve been operating on a shoestring budget. The only money I’ve spent has been on supplies and inventory and Web hosting. The rest of it-site design, logos, marketing, picture taking, even most of the jewelry making, it’s all been me. I love it, it’s an amazing experience. So I’m passing on a bit of my knowledge today.

Small business advertising does not have to be costly. In fact, you can do it without spending any money for a while if you have the time to do some viral marketing on your own.

I started off by creating a group on Facebook for my site and inviting all my friends. I encouraged them to invite their friends too. Not a fan of the new facebook, by the way. I’m just anti-change and when you spend 10 minutes trying to find your friend’s wall-to-wall with another person, you’d be too.

Next, I created “passcards” using the business card feature in my word processor (size 2×3.5) and inserting my logo, site name and slogan. I hesitate to call them business cards because that sounds really official and I like the independent sound of “passcards”. I printed some off on cardstock paper and cut them up to pass out to people and to give my friends to pass out as well. I uploaded the document to my server and implored my friends who had joined the Facebook group to print and pass them out as well. (if you want to help, click HERE)

I also went on a major search one day for free online classified directories, and posted either individual items for sale on my site or general summary ads of my site (like craigslist, backpage, etc). There are so many FREE directories out there that you should never pay for a classified ad. It’s just not worth it. Craigslist is by far the biggest classifieds site, but they do have restrictions (more about that in a later post). Don’t underestimate new-looking classifieds sites with few postings either, the fewer posting there are, the more exposure your ads get. Yes, the traffic may not be great, but it’s free, and every link to your site helps.

Another area I tapped into is the selling communities of Livejournal. This is harder to understand unless you’re already familiar with Livejournal communities. Create a good (short!) post with linked photos of products you offer (use an lj cut for more than one photo to be polite) and blanket post to selling communities. check Wants communities too and post if you sell something people are looking for. I don’t recommend this until you’ve been a personal user of LJ for a while though, it gets confusing. And don’t forget to make sure your journal (either personal or created for your business) has plenty of information about your site.

Buying adspace, whether through google ads, facebook ads or link exchanges is also an option, but I don’t recommend it if you’re on a budget. They charge you per click, which means that you’re basically penalized every time someone clicks on your ad, even if they accidentally clicked on it and have no intention of buying from your site. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like a good deal to me. No, what I recommend is ProjectWonderful.com, which charges you by the day, not by how many people click on the ad. It makes more sense, and since it’s populated by independent sites (not corporations), you can get ads for pennies a day. I just started it, so I’ll let you know how my ads do.

If you use ProjectWonderful.com, you’ll have to create a banner ad ahead of time with certain size parameters, so get started! You have to entice people to click, so post pictures of your most popular items with a bright background.
Contact me if you want an animated GIF image designed for you. After hours of trying to figure it out and eventually succeeding, I consider myself quite proficient and I won’t charge you $100 an hour! (see my banner ads HERE as an example)

The next big idea is link exchanges with other, similar sites. For instance, I recently joined Kawaii Exchange and The Kawaii Directory. Contact other sites you like that are in your same genre and offer to exchange links, which means you post the link to their site on your Links or About Us page (just recommended places, you can post them anywhere easily accessible on your site) and they post the link to your site on theirs.

And don’t forget, if you sell wearable stuff, WEAR IT! I get business all the time when I wear my handcrafted earrings, then give a passcard to people who ask about them.

This is a lot to take in, so I’ll end the tutorial here and elaborate on some of the finer points later. Good luck!

~Lindsey
LovetheLimelight.com

I posted the other day about my favorite site for alternative art supplies, Mantofev.com. Now I’m going to talk about what I like to use in my creations. In the past few months, I’ve started branching out from my traditional bead jewelry into using different things, namely, things that were not created with the intent to be used in jewelry.
I started with creating bottle cap earrings out of vintage soda bottle caps. I sell a lot of them to older women who remember when those sodas were actually sold in stores. I enjoy the nostalgic style and I like how no one else has the same earrings I do!
I then got the idea one day to comb estate sales for old jewelry and fix them up to either resell or take them apart and reuse the materials. They often come packaged by the bag, usually for only a dollar or two, so you can spend $6 and get a ton of old jewelry. A tip for those of you selling at flea markets, set up a $1 jewelry basket with those pieces fit to sell without fixing up. I get cleaned out every time!
I was at Walmart the other day (yeah, yeah I know, but I’m a college student on a budget) and was just slowly meandering throughout the store, looking for ideas on new jewelry materials, when I saw packages of buttons, full of assorted colors. My brain started clicking, so I bought a few packs. I had a fun time making pink and white earrings out of buttons and jump rings and other similar pairs. Then I ran out of jump rings, so I found some elastic stretch cord to use and started criss-crossing it through the buttons, like my blueberry bunches.

My favorite materials staple is chain. I have a lot of it! I needed some plain silver earrings one day and realized I didn’t have any so I just made some out of some chunky silver chain. I’ve been experimenting with some really awesome bracelets using a combination of the same chunky silver chain, silver links and some delicate chain, so I’ll release those soon for your enjoyment!

Anything else you use for alternative supplies and sources?

~Lindsey
LovetheLimelight.com

I’m quickly noticing that my blog will cover a lot of topics that don’t seem to have anything to do with my site, LovetheLimelight.com. But I don’t care, blogging has to be fun too, not just business.

I’ve been exploring other online options to get my site out there in the Internet social sphere, and decided it was time to get on the social bookmarking bandwagon. Social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, Reddit, digg, and Technorati essentially work like the bookmarks option in your browser, only your bookmarks are saved on their site and you can share them with other site members by the use of “tags,” like keywords, to describe the site you’re bookmarking.

Now, a lot of people seem to like these sites. They’re popular with the people reading political blogs with the elections coming up and they’re a “hip” thing to do (you’d think us young people used that word more than we actually do). But I’m going to be honest with all of you. I think they’re a pain in the neck. Now I’ll put them on my site because I need all the marketing help I can get, but having signed up for an account on many of these sites and and tested them out, I think they take a lot more time than necessary. I use Firefox as an internet browser and on it, I have around a hundred bookmarked pages organized into folders, as well as an all important bookmarks toolbar right above my Google search bar. Frankly, I think that’s all I need. When I bookmark something through (insert generic third-party bookmarking site here), I am taken away from the site I liked well enough to bookmark and dropped rudely at the bookmarking site, where I then have to sit and brainstorm descriptive tags or a “quick” summary to label this site that I liked. Now the process becomes not so much a “bookmark” as a full-on, in-depth summary of the site. Why do I have to go through all that? I honestly don’t know. So I’ll promote LovetheLimelight.com through them, but as for my personal use, I’ll stick with my old-school bookmarks.

~Lindsey
LovetheLimelight.com

So I tend to be a pretty intense grammar nazi sometimes. Maybe it’s my background as a communication (read: writing) major or maybe it’s just my OCD-oriented personality, but I have been known to sit down with a magazine, pen in hand, and circle grammar errors to then email to the editor. I’d like to share my biggest pet peeve for a moment, if you will. It’s the difference between its and it’s. Its is a possessive, e.g. its shine is dull. It’s is a contraction, where the apostrophe links together it and is. Thus, it’s can only be used where it is can replace it and still be grammatically correct, e.g. it’s going to rain, which can also be, it is going to rain.

Finding incorrect grammar is an egregious breach of professionalism to me. It’s just low-class to find common grammar errors in copy from large corporations that should certain be able to employ grammar experts. I was at IKEA the other day (I love that place, it’s like an amusement park. or a casino.) and I was reading the back of my receipt where it talks about returns and exchanges, when I saw this: “…and please bring the item back in it’s original packaging.” thud. my jaw hit the floor. If you followed the grammar lesson, you’ll now know that there should be no apostrophe in its. You can’t read it as “…and please bring the item back in it is original packaging,” so it does not take an apostrophe. IKEA. I’d understand if it was the independently-owned coffee shop on the corner, or even in a locally-printed IKEA advertisement, but this was on the back of the receipt paper that presumably goes out to most IKEA stores in the country! How awkward for them. Of course, my friend who was with me when I freaked out was thinking how awkward for ME that the biggest deal of the deal was finding a grammar error on the back of my IKEA receipt.

Now, you may find the occasional error on my blog or in my store. I’m human. These things slip through. But I’m also a one-woman operation. What’s IKEA’s excuse? Sigh. I know I’m a geek. It’s okay. I’ve come to terms with it, and even embrace it to a certain extent. I bet some of you will think it’s truly lame to make an entire post just on grammar, but if I just educate ONE person on the difference between its and it’s, then it was all worth it!

**I am currently offering my services as an editor if you own your own Web site or blog. I don’t charge much, it depends on the size of your site. Or maybe, I might charge per mistake found…hmm. Contact me if you’re interested in ridding the world of grammar mistakes, one misplaced apostrophe at a time.

Yours in good and bad grammar,
~Lindsey
LovetheLimelight.com

PS. Another nerdism about me is that it was like Christmas Day when I discovered AP Stylebook’s Ask the Editor page on their Web site. There were TONS of useless but so-cool grammar questions and answers. I spent WAY too much time there.