Getting Business

[JudyL]

I hate seeing discouragement moving in on those of you needing/wanting more business. Please don't give up. Have you read that list of things I posted at the beginning of this topic? Others have added more ideas.

While some of my suggestions may be a bit unconventional (as in not advertising per se), they work. Think about those of us who are booked solid. What are we doing that you aren't? There's absolutely no reason why Quilter A is turning away business and Quilter B just a few blocks/counties/states away is getting little to no business. It's all in how you market yourself.

I'm not trying to hurt anyone's feelings and I'm not thinking of any one particular quilter so please don't take any of this personally.

Here are a few more suggestions:

1. Go to the LQS. Look at the quilts hanging in there. Does your work measure up to what you're seeing on those quilts? One day while at the LQS, I was digging around in the work room and saw some samples that had been left by a few other longarmers. They were worse than awful! There is no way in this world the LQS is going to recommend those quilters. Longarming is not rocket science! I am the most uncreative person you can imagine. I have a hard time drawing a decent stick figure . . honest! But, when I'm stuck for ideas, I know to go to webshots and do a search for "blooming nine patch" or "New York Beauty" or whatever I'm needing and I will get a TON of ideas.

Quick is not always best! Make sure your customer feels they are getting what they paid for. The yellow quilt I showed you earlier this week, the customer kept saying "I know I owe you more!" She did NOT! I made a great hourly rate. Somehow that quilt looks like it took way more time than it did. That quilt is going to be entered in a show in the Virginia/Maryland area and I promise you I will get at least a dozen contacts from that one quilt. Suppose I had made a little less than I would like to have made, it would have been worth it. In that particular quilt, the only real time consuming work was in those yellow setting triangles around that center square but I charged the heirloom rate for the entire quilt. Did any of you really notice what was in the areas other than the solid yellow? I know the whole quilt doesn't show but in the black squares or the printed setting triangles, there's nothing fancy there.

2. If you're in a guild, you need to be bringing something every single meeting to show & tell. If there's no guild near you, there are a zillion quilt groups on yahoogroups, about.com, delphiforums, etc. Join one or two or ten. Don't go in and announce that you are a longarm quilter. They all know you're there looking for business. Make some tops, leave room for lots of quilting, do gorgeous feathers, so lots of stipple, do things that are really eye catching. Then post pictures of your latest quilt. Still don't mention you're looking for business. Someone will ask who quilted it . . then you say "I DID! I have an APQS Millennium longarm and I LOVE to quilt!" You'll get contacts.

3. Get a web page. No one says it has to be the best web page in the country .. just something that looks fairly neat and professional is better than nothing. And, what if you don't have a clue how to make a web page? Figure it out if you can't afford someone to do it for you. It's actually kinda fun!

While I don't live in a depressed market, I live in an area where you're not from here (I'm so sick of hearing that!) if your ancestors weren't the first settlers of Owensboro. Try having a name like "Laquidara" and fitting into this community . . ain't going to happen! I probably do less than 5 quilts/year for the local quilters. Not only am I not from here but because there are a few of the $30/any size including batting type quilters around here, they think I'm outrageously expensive. If I counted on local business, I'd have been living under the overpass long ago. (Not really - DH pays the bills!)

4. Never miss an opportunity to show what you do. Whether I'm at the dentist, the doctor, the airport, even when I go to the tire dealer to get my tires rotated (they have a nice, clean waiting room) I'm usually working on the binding and people sitting there waiting always seem to be looking to strike up a conversation so . . why not talk about quilting. They're captive - I can tell them all about my machine, my business. If they show any interest at all, I hand them a business card and tell them if they ever have a question about quilting, call me. Often someone sitting across the room who doesn't even appear to be listening will also ask for a card.

There's so much you can do . . but I must get back to quilting!

[chickenscratch]

Judy, thanks for the pep talk. The problem seems to be that I have been relying on local business. While it is out there, I'm not willing to do a queen size quilt for $20.

The lady I talked to last night wanted me to quilt 4 queens size quilts for $75 total. I just can't do that. My husband says it just takes time, but I get so discouraged when I hear of quilters being booked up solid for 6 or 7 months and my machine sits empty. I am working on making things to take to a craft show in Olive Branch, Mississippi. I probably won't sell much at the show, but if I can get two or three good clients out of that show it will be worth my entry fee.

Thanks, Teresa

[JudyL]

Do you use EQ? If so, you can enter the "Do You EQ? Contest". You have a chance to get your quilt on the cover of Quilters Newsletter magazine! How cool would that be? What would that be worth in advertising? Someone has to win . . might as well be one of us, right?

Want to know what I'm working on today? It's one of my Do You EQ entries!!

[JudyL]

Teresa: I don't blame you a bit and I know it's hard to turn down business when the machine is sitting idle but 4 tops for $75? No way! You're much better off to spend that time working on something for yourself that you can show to promote what you can do.

Good luck!

[Farmersdaughterquilting]

There are some really good resources on the web for creating you own web site from a pre-made template, kind of like quilting....... You do not need to be a computer savvy person to use them.

Here are a few links to check out;

http://www.pre-made-websites.com/?page=home

http://www.hypergurl.com/webtemplatearch.html

My DH is currently working on mine, lucky me he is paid in pecan cookies!

I got allot of good ideas from looking through the web pages noted above.

So far my experience has been, that the hosting and domain name (www.) are very inexpensive. I am in Canada and my site hosting is about $20 cdn. Per month and the domain names were so cheep that I got two.

My site is hosted by ikrave.com I highly recommend them, they helped get my domain names and made gave some great advice.

Well worth the small investment.

[mrsbishwit]

My DH did my website http://www.geckoquilts.com (turn off your pop up blockers if you want to veiw the additional pages on my site).

My DH is a comp. system admin (basically a computer geek ) , and does web hosting on the side. He only charges $20 per month for hosting a website and for an additional fee (determined by how detailed you would want it) he could also design the site as well. If you want additional info from him contact Chris Kabat at ckabat@cableaz.com and put in the subject line that you "want more info on web hosting"

A good website doesn't have to cost a lot of money, the one I have is easy to add things to, make changes to and it has been an asset to my business.

I also agree that brochures/ business cards are a must as well as show & tell every chance you get. Take a quilt class or 2 at your quilt shops so people can get to know you and learn about your business. Offer to quilt some tops for free for a local charity (I pieced and quilted a twin size bed quilt for our local chapter of Project Linus so they could raffle off to generate $ for their yearley fees, they made $500.00 in raffle tickets for my quilt and handed out one of my brochures with every ticket they sold) the quilt itself didn't cost me much to make since I used 2"scrap strips from previous quilts I had made so just a polyester batting, and a bleached muslin for the back, and I just did a simple pantograph for the quilting. I was able to deduct my costs as a business expense on my taxes.

Don't give up, if you are passionate about quilting for a living than you can make this work.

Joann

[Grammie]

Thanks for all this information your willing to share with us beginners. It is invaluable. I'm sure all of us really appreciate that you take the time. I surely do.

I'm learning all the time.

Boy I love this quilting stuff.

[mrsbishwit]

Teresa;

I just checked out your web site. If you don't mind I have some suggestions that might help generate more business. When I looked around the site my first impression was that it was a family website, not a business website.

Your website is the first impression of you and your business it should be well layed out (easy to get around), informing, and have your location/ contact info (town, state, phone #). With that said this is some of the changes I would make to it.

1)On the home page give a little bio about yourself and what got you into quilting, what machine you use etc..

2)Also on the home page have your logo/ name of your business stand out, list your links to the other pages in a bolder type/font but smaller than your logo, also place your contact info on a seperate link/page as well list your name, town, state and a phone number where they can reach you if they have questions or if they want to make an appointment.

3)Combine the 2 photo pages and just have 1 photo page and call it customer quilts or quilt gallary (it will make your photo page fuller and make people think you are established already).

4)I would redo your pricing...most long armers charge by the square inch and show how to figure this out to determine your fee (L X W X your fee per sq inch/this will very with the type of quilting you provide..edge to edge, custom, heirloom etc..)

5)If you plan on taking in quilts through the mail copy and paste some of the pantos, borders,block designs etc... on your site this way the customer will be able to see what you have to offer since they won't be able to meet you face to face when dropping off a quilt and being able to look through your patterns when they visit. Also have an order form that they can print off your site and fill out when they mail you their quilt.

6)And the last suggestion is don't use your long arm web site as a web site for your other business. Think of it as 1 business 1 website. This way the potential customer knows that they are on the right website.

Take a look at some of the other long armers web sites, it's

a great way to see what the other person is doing and then make a list of your likes and dislikes of how they have theirs laid out. Incorperate the likes into your site and make it your own. Then using your computer design a brochure with key info off your website, pricing, types of services, contact info, website address etc.. with your logo on the front in color.

Keep some brochures with you at all times in your purse just in case you get the oppurtunity to hand one out and keep a few dozen in your car in case you get a chance to drop some off in a quilt shop/fabric shop.

I hope this helps

Joann

[annlittle1]

I'm so glad this thread has popped up again. I'm at that discouraged stage, too. But this thread has reminded me of some other things that I can do. I need to advertise in our guild newsletter. There were advertisements for three Longarmers this month. But there are over 400 members in this guild so it seems to me that there is plenty of business. I also need to put an ad in a national quilting magazine. I said I was going to do that when I opened my business last June, but I haven't done it yet.

I need to review my brochure and see if I can't make it more professional looking. Also need to review my website which my husband is supposed to maintain for me and be sure that it is actually working for me.

Thanks for reminding me of all the things that I can be doing to increase business. Thanks, also, for all of the ideas of things that I hadn't thought of before.

Phyllis Hughes

Oklahoma City

Liberty

[GERRY]

Judy L: :cool:

I thought your web site was great, (now I know what a blog is). Is that really all it costs to get and keep a web site, I definetly, need me one of those.. I'll get my sister-inlaw to help.

Thanks for the info ! !

[chickenscratch]

Joann, Thanks for the suggestions. I will go in and make some changes. I am so slow at HTML. I will work on it some this weekend. It looks like that is going to be my primary way to get quilts. I do have a question for you; perhaps you know the answer. How do I get my website to show up on search engines like yahoo, google, etc? I did the free listing thing that each search engine had listed, back in June, but my site doesn't show up on any search engines. That would definitely help. Thanks, Teresa

[Susanri]

I just think the market is over saturated and now most quilters now have frames for there dsm machines so they don't have to send them out anymore.

susan

[mrsbishwit]

Teresa;

A couple of years ago I had a health & fitness website (since then I have shut it down) It was a website that had exercise tips and low fat low carb recipes on it. Anyway we put it on the search engines as well. A couple of years ago if you did a search for health and fitness or low fat recipe sites it was in the first top 10 search results that showed up. I didn't pay any $ to get my site on the first pages of the searches. The way it works is "survival of the most hits", meaning the more hits & or more mentions of your website/ URL on the web will get you the better veiwing spots on the search engines.

The way I use to advertise that website was to join as many health & fitness chat/forums on the web that I could and would post daily and refer my website to the groups in my posts and put my link on all of their link pages. Eventually word of mouth took over and other people started mentioning my site in their posts and started adding my link to other link pages and sites that I was not a member of.

You have to promote yourself/ business website daily in order to plant the seed in the market you want to reach out to...in this case with long arm quilting goes you have to go where the quilters/ sewers go. Sign up to as many of the sewing/ quilting/ quilt swap chat rooms & forums that you can find on the web. Post and reply to the other posts, let the other members get to know you , offer advise when you know the answers to. List your URL to your site every time you post and mention every now and again what you do (when new people join the group and intros are made introduce yourself and mention your website and provide your link). This is the best way to get FREE advertising on the web. Make sure you make it clear that you do accept mail orders as well as local business and also let them know that you insure their quilts when you ship them back to them.

As for as the local advertising goes like it was said in the past post you have to pound the pavement yourself on a regular basis to get and keep your business out and in front of the competition. Business cards are ok it offers quick and basic info for your business. But brochures ( I use the tri-fold ones, the blank card stock I get from Staples and then print them off myself using my own computer and printer).

My customers tell me that they like the brochures better because there is more info on them than on the business cards. I put my logo in color on the front of it, it is large enough to fill the whole front of the brochure. Since it is a tri fold there is 6 sections that you can print info on, front and back of the card stock. On one of the sections I have a detailed list of my quilt services and prices. In another section I list my additional services, on another section I list any of my promotions that I offer through out the year, on one of the sections I put a bio of myself and business, then on the last section I have my contact info (Business name city, town, phone #, website info). My brochures are in only 1 quilt shop (which I have had to restock every 3-4 weeks with 50 brochures at a time). The owner of the quilt shop has told me that the business cards other long armers have dropped off don't go as fast as my brochures. People like as much info as possible when they are considering a professional quilter and brochures are the way to go in my opinion to get them the info in a hurry. Also visit the quilt shop/shops on a regular basis and never enter a quilt shop without samples of your work and your brochures. Join quilt classes and do the same thing if someone ask talk, hand them your card/ brochure and answer their questions show them your work.. and most important of all be confident when you talk about your business and your abilities as a professional quilter.

You are a sales person that is trying to sell a product and yourself...confidence goes a long way not only in your ability to get new customers but in your quilting as well. It takes a lot of hard work establishing a new business to the point that it will bring in the $ that you hope for to make it profitable. And it requires that you continue to work hard at promoting it if you hope for it to continue to grow. But it will be worth all of the hard work.

Joann

[mrsbishwit]

I disagree with the market being too saturated. The frames for the DSM are still too primative for large quilts. And most people still are frustrated by the limitations of them for what they end up costing them. I believe that with the steady growing interest with quilting out there in the world that there will always be a need for long armers since the average quilter can't justify spending large amounts of $ on a long arm/ short arm or even have the room for them.

It all comes down to how you market yourself amongst the competion. Now a days you can't rely on just 1 form of advetising or on word of mouth alone.

Joann

[Mary Beth]

Doesn't it seem like there are a lot of longarm machines out there now? I know when I attended the show where I purchased my machine, most people were turned off by the price and the room it took to house the machine. However, there seem to be more and more sales reps and more and more machine quilters. I have even had a customer drop off a top and call me the next day to say that she attended a quilt show where machines were on demo and bought one. Then she wanted her top back, of course. It made me sad, and I wanted to do the old tug of war with her top, but I was a grown up about it and let her have it back:D. This lady bought one for her own use, not for business. But that is one less customer for me.

[quiltaholi_518]

I too have a website, spend $75 a year, and barter quilting for the design and maintenance. Doesn't get any better than that.

I don't think a quilter would make a decision to use a quilter solely on the website, but it has pushed many over the edge to my side of the fence if ya know what I mean. They can see pictures of quilting, learn more about me, get prices (I even have a little calculator for them to plug in their dimensions, and price of the style of quilting they want) and they really love it.

Don't let FIND-A-QUILTER substitie for a website! I was on it for 6 months and did not get one call! I believe quilters choose on 3 criteria, in my area anyway.

1. Geography. They don't like to ship and the price of gas is too high to warrant 2 trips far away to drop off and pick up.

2 Skill and reputation. They need to see your name or hear it often for them to connect and feel comfortable.

3. Value (note I don't say price) If they percieve they are gettign their money's worth, it can be pricey. But as long as they feel they are getting a good value, the price doesn't matter. I have my machine right where all can see it, we pick out threads and a design together, and like I said before I trim as a courtesy (if they approve) You would be surprised how many think that is so wonderful. Take 5 minutes.

[andriko]

All of the forsaid hints and tipps are great.

For the website: It is realy not hard. If you can write with MS Word, than you can do a website. Word lets you safe a page for webpublishing. So it it not necessary to know HTML.

To be found/listed in search engines you need to use keywords like quilt-quilting-sewing-topper-piecer---- in the Metatag of the website.

In my eyes it is important to have a C.I. - Corporate Identity.

Meaning that everything (businesscard - flyer - invoice - ad - website - ??) have the same eyecatcher (your logo) at the same place with the same color of your company with the same distances in relation to everything else. So, when someone sees your logo automatically your business and who/what it stands for comes to the readers mind.

Think of big companies. You all recongnize immediatelly UPS and what it stand for.

And choose a color what can be easily seen and recognized. I myself got stuck to a kind of orange.

And I digitized my logo to be able to embroider it on my T-shirts.

You can use your car to drive an ad. Quite cheep.

I also took that step to choose a simple name for my business (quilten.ch) and got my website with that name as well as my mobilphone number. The last said is not very common here, but I will get it known to all piecers. It is easier to remember a name than number....

And yes- it attracts people when I say I go dancing with Millie. (With whom???? Where????)

I have not started my business yet because I feel I have not enough PPPP and experience to see upcoming difficulties with bad pieced tops, thread assortment, batting eg. But I arranged everything of the marketing aspect so when I want to start I can start.

Dont get discouraged - it will take time. Use the down time to find new ideas where else you can get your word spread out or team up with a similar branch (glas fusing?)

[nemorn]

Mary Beth I sent you a u2. So email me and I will send you the link to the guys who host mine and then you can shop around if you like. They host my stepdad and he makes and sells knives (he is a masterbladesmith) so his business is sort of like ours since he does custom service work. So if you want to peak at his website you can as well. He did it all on his own and he is 60....so I figure if he can fumble through it so can we! LOL He about choked when I told him how much people want to set up a webpage for $$

[Mary Beth]

Okay, I can't remember where we were discussing this, but Judy, I said that I didn't think I could afford a web site and you said that I can't afford NOT to have a web site....well....I have a web site:o (is that a scared face?)!! It's not really "out there" in cyber space yet, but I have paid for it, we are waiting for domain whatever - I am so technical I went with Starlogic, I think that is who you said you use. I thought it would be smart to have my verbiage typed up and ready to go, and I am still not. But this is another step in the process of being a full time quilter - wow. I'll keep you posted:cool:

[JudyL]

Mary Beth: Good for you! The web page seems a little daunting at first and I still don't know a lot about doing it and mine is very basic but it gets the job done. The more you mess around with it, the easier it all gets.

Good luck!

[Mary Beth]

Okay, I did it. My web site is complete. It has a couple of issue that need to be resolved, but for the most part it is okay. My address is www.enchantedquilting.com for any of you who would care to look. I know that graphics can be a problem for people with dial-up so I am hoping it is not too slow. To any of you have dial up, please let me know.

Thanks for the encouragement, I sure hope this works.

Mary Beth

[The Crafty Unicorn]

Mary, Great site. Did you do all that yourself or is it a template? I like the clip-art. I have slow dial-up and the pages loaded quickly. (Thanks for not having all those "dancing things" all over the pages. They are distracting and take forever to load. IMHO)

You might want to check the links on the tee-shirt page and the photo gallery page. None of the pictures loaded and the navagation links didn't want to work.

Keep up the good work, you have inspired me to go work on my own neglected little web site...

Leslie

[Mary Beth]

Leslie,

Thank you for responding. My brother pulled the site up today and had a terrible time. I am trying to get my step son and his techno friends over here to help with the kinks. Yes, I did the whole thing myself. I used Publisher, because I like to use that program and it is easy to understand. It was really easier than I thought it would be, there is just so much information to include. I would get one page complete and think of another topic that needed to be covered. This forum helps because I could come here, click on someone's web address and see what info they had included in their sites. There are still some things I would like to include and some changes I need to make and some tweaking to do. But it is started . Now I can be a cheerleader like Judy...you can do it;)

Have fun,

Mary Beth

[Guest Linda S]

It has been almost 2 years since I started my quilting business. At first, I admit, I wasn't really looking for many customers. I wanted to be more confident in my abilities before I really got going. Last fall, I went to Houston, and took a longarm class from our Sherry Rogers-Harrison. In that class, we saw a demo of a wholecloth sampler, just to demonstrate different feathers and background fillers. I came home, drew out my own sampler, and quilted it. That little sampler has landed me two quilts for Marsha McCloskey (which are now published in Fat Eighths and Friends) and when I showed it at Guild show and tell, I had a line waiting for a half hour to look at it. I have so many quilts to do now, I have no idea when I'll finish them all. You MUST make time to do something of your own that you will have as a sample to show others. Then you have to get the word out. Judy is so right about the website too. I put my business cards in the local shops, and then folks take that card home and check out my website before they call me. I know this, because they always say - I'd like that background filler like the quilt on your website, or I'd like those big circles. Fear not -- within a few months, you'll be saying, "what am I going to do with all these quilts!"

Here's my sampler:

Linda

[Mary Beth]

Linda, what a "sampler"! I am very impressed. I have had my machine for 2 years and I am not where you are by a long shot. Now that I am working only part time I hope to be able to devote more time to getting something done to show and tell.

Thanks for sharing and thanks for the info.

Mary Beth