Hi Friend,
Happy ‘almost’ end of the year.
This has been a big year for me. I started my very own online shop scraping together bits and pieces of business and tech knowledge as I went along. It was not without tears and thoughts of giving up.
Setting up the shop was relatively easy compared to what came next — promoting it.
I’m learning now more so than ever, that I’m really bad at self-promotion. Terrible, in fact. Whenever I try to talk about what I do, to my ears, it sounds hollow and false. Often, I feel so awkward doing it, I start sweating and my words come out all jumbled. I end up saying things I had no intention of saying.
If what I do is good, I reason, people will see it and they’ll be interested. But that’s not what happens at all.
I see other people self-promoting with such ease, I always wonder why can’t I do that?
These days, social media has made space for creative people to readily showcase what they do. Sadly, the corollary of this is that the rest of us watch these videos and are led to believe that we too can become artists, chefs, musicians and writers. We too can become internet stars. We can become these things because — why not?
Unfortunately, the consequence is that there is a glut in everything. An overabundance of so much content and products on the Internet, that people no longer know where to look. AND if promotion isn’t being done on social media, then whatever is being promoted/sold isn’t worth being seen.
I say all that because I did not promote my shop on social media.
My ‘marketing strategy’ was to reach out to people individually, tell them what I’m doing and ask them to pass the word along. I’ve heard this be referred to as ‘calm marketing’.
The result? Suffice it to say, this particular strategy worked but since my products did not fly off the shelf, I’d say it wasn’t a huge success.
I made a 2025 calendar which is the one product that’s time sensitive.
What I can say to promote my calendar is this:
I created a product that is beautifully printed and packaged — beautifully turned out. Everything for this calendar was created by my own hand — the illustrations and the fonts.
(Note: I derived so much pleasure from creating this product, I can’t even begin to tell you. 🙂
Naturally, these illustrations will never be used for other calendars in the future. In that sense, it’s a limited edition product. Only fifty were printed and ten remain.
If I were to be honest with you (and myself) I truly thought I’d have to get more printed because people would buy them up.
Am I disappointed that didn’t happen? Sure I am but I suppose, I have to learn from this and move on.
Does it mean I will turn to social media? Probably not.
I’ll keep working, making more things for my shop. Whenever I feel discouraged, I am lucky enough to have a group of people who are unstintingly supportive so what I’ll do is wake up and keep creating.
I wish you all a beautiful 2025.
Lisi-Tana
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