The Exciting First Sales!

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I think whining to you guys about waiting for my first Etsy sale was a lucky charm or something, because it finally happened yesterday!  I left for lunch with a friend (and also whined to her, come to think of it) and when I came back, there was my first sale!  One of those treasuries I was in ended up on the front page of Etsy, so I'm sure that's what did it.

But wait, there's more!  I ended up with a custom order and TWO MORE sales later in the day, for a grand total of FOUR!  Here's the screenshot of the front page I was on - it's that bunny on the lower left.  The screenshot is from Craft Cult, which is awesome - they track all kinds of cool things for your Etsy shop.  That shop widget on the bottom left of the blog is from there, too.

Funny thing about those bunnies - I wasn't crazy about making them at first.  I made one for Bridget when she was little, and Kenny LOVED it.  He convinced me to make a few when I decided to open a shop, so I did it just to humor him thinking they would never sell.  Boy oh boy, was I wrong.  That's ALL that has sold.  I should probably listen to my husband more often.

Now I'm trying to figure out packaging and shipping.  I hadn't ordered boxes specifically for my stuff yet, so I had to use a box I had here at home to ship the first order.  After I boxed everything up, my shipping came to about $3.50, but I only charged $3 for shipping.  Boo.

I ordered some boxes from uline.com (which has great prices on their boxes, but their shipping is crazy high because you can only do next day delivery) that are a more appropriate size.  Hopefully that helps on the weight, or I'm just going to have to adjust all my shipping rates.  I want to add in my cost of packaging supplies to shipping, but I also don't want to have super high shipping charges.  This whole shipping thing is still a challenge for me.

We have a local store that has great prices on packaging supplies, so I'm going to go there today to buy packing tape for the boxes and kraft paper to wrap the bunnies in.  I had just a little bit of kraft paper - enough to package the first one - but this place has the big huge rolls that I'm sure will save me money in the long run.  And of course I had like two square inches of packing tape in this place.

I'm excited to have a busy day of packaging and shipping and shopping for fabric for that custom order today.  I'm sure the excitement for that kind of thing is going to last about two seconds, so I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.  Oh, and we are taking our big girl to her very first Meet the Teacher Night tonight!