Well… so far I’ve got most of the ebooks done? 😅

I’m just shy of two months into the new year and for the most part, the only things I’ve been working on in relation to the microbusiness are the ebooks and related printables.

Not that the ebooks haven’t been a big project!

I’m going wide with the eBooks, which meant reviving my Smashwords bookshelf, polishing up posting templates for Google Books, Etsy, and my own Shop. It will be interesting to see if doing this will lead to more sales or less– compared to last year’s ‘give away ebooks every weekend’ strategy.

I will be continuing that grand tradition with the Yearly ebooks, but I only have/will have 12 of those, completed to the 20+ 31 Days of titles. 🤔

Anywho, it’s one of the big goals for the first quarter and it looks like I’ll get it polished up before the month is over. So yay!

Breaking Even, GOGOGO!

I managed to make two sales in Jan that brought me up into the black… but I don’t think I’m going to manage to pull off the same feat for Feb. (Woe.)

It does look like the October art show will be happening this year, so I’m hoping to make up some of that full-year deficit in one swell foop!

But in the meantime, I really need to start selling things.

And also update the year on the spreadsheet, how did I not notice that??🤦‍♀️

Laying the Art Foundations

On the art side of things… I’ve got a lot of work to do.

I’ve actually sold two of the model horses and two display bases so far this year. That was with little to no posting to the Facebook groups (or MH$P)! Which seems like it would bode well for me starting to be a little more active.

I’ve been chipping away at getting a handle on how I want to recall my time and materials costs and what ‘doing a proper inventory’ actually means, but… it’s a really big task and a bit overwhelming.

I decided the easiest place to start would be with the Made-to-Order things, like the props and resin casts. So that’s been firmly penciled in on my calendar.

I’m also working on coming up with a disc-bound planner layout to help track the various products (and listing rotations). I got a Happy Planner Classic at a big discount so that’s going to be my new art home for a bit.

Getting the Word Out

The other big focus for this year is consistently getting my stuff out in front of people, but after playing around with a few plans… I’m putting it off until I’m a little more organized.

I really don’t get a lot of traffic to my website or to my social media accounts, which is something I really need to work on. I’ve just got this weird mix of art and writing and I keep thinking back to all the advice that says to ‘pick one thing’ when doing SEO.

I split my art and writing out into their own channels, which seems to have worked well, but I’m still at a bit of a loss on how to reorg the website. I have a shop, and a blog, and art galleries, and story archives, and, and, and…

Either way, for a while I was doubling my blog traffic every year and I’d like to see some sort of improvement before the year is out.

But that’s a worry for another day, I suppose! 😅

TL;DR Plans

For the next update, I’d like to have accomplished the following:

• Finish reformatting and publishing/republishing all of the ebooks except for the yearly collection Book 1 (because that is going to require a LOT of new prompts)
• Recalcuate costs and time for all of the model horse fencing and bases
• Update listings for all of the model horse fencing and bases
• Come up with some sort of posting schedule for ‘hey, I have model horse fencing and bases for sale’! for the various sales and social media channels.

So, err…. ONWARDS!