Thanks so much for dropping by 🙂
I’m writing this the day before we go live ….. I am excited and nervous at the same time.
I’ve been hobby crafting for friends and families for years. Got into proper selling late last year, tried really hard to promote and get seen, but it just seemed increasingly difficult to get a steady flow of orders and income. And with 3 kids aged 4 and under, and being a trustee for an animal charity, I seemed to spend all my time promoting rather than being able to get crafty and started to get really despondent about the whole thing and lost my crafting mojo.
Started to think it was just me, til I came to senses and realised there must be lots of crafters, who make fabulous stuff at great prices, and work themselves to the bone, feeling like me, with a random sale once every three weeks, and ghost town page that can’t even get interaction with a giveaway of (if you could call it this) your most popular seasonal product!!!
Once I realised there were lots of crafting me’s out there, questioning their products, questioning their skill, wondering what the point was, and so I reached out to them, asked them to join my new venture to boost those struggling by utilising one piece of the internet as a marketing and selling tool for everyone. A way that every time a member shares their own stuff, yours get shared automatically.  Reach and being seen is by far the hardest of breaking the craft market, but with that comes even more admin time spent networking, liking pages, commenting on products, sharing content …. and in the end is it really worth it, with Facebook changing algorithms to completely control what gets seen, by how many and how often.
And thus, The Octopus Garden was created. With currently 11 members, the group itself has already proven to be a great little “club”, members have got help with pricing, tags, even logo creation and on top of all the practical help there is an emotional support network, other crafters that know what its like to start losing hope and can pep you up with a friendly word and virtual hug.
I wanted to create a selling platform, affordable, unlike other “websites”, where people can look fora wide range of personalised, custom and generally awesome gifts and treats by lots of sellers, to try and help sellers struggling break the cycle. And that’s exactly what I done.
Im terrified of everything, for tomorrow lol. I’m scared the check out wont work, or I have gotten postage wrong, or the website is just going to crash lol But nothing ventured, nothing gained and everything has teething problems right 😀
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