New Sizes Coming Soon and Treasuries

Recently a potential customer contacted us to ask if we offered larger sizes of our bath salts. I answered that yes we did offer them in larger sizes - this particular person wanted to know if we could do 16 or 32 oz sizes. I said sure.

We procured a box of 12 canning jars in 32 oz (quart) size, as well as a box of 12 canning jars in 16 oz (pint) size. We plan to make a few batches of our current scents in these sizes - although I have to say that one bucket of salt will only make 7 of the 12 pint jars or 3.5 of the 12 quart jars before we need to buy more salt. :P Those jars a bit more expensive as you can imagine because we use a lot more salt than we would if we were just doing 4 or 8 oz jars. :)

Plus we've been featured in several treasuries over the weekend - at least three that we are aware of.

Easy Like Sunday Morning features our Sugar Cookie Bath Salts
Berry Fusion features our Wild Berry-Vanilla Sugar Scrub
Sneaky Treasury Challenge 11/12/11 features our Buttercream Cupcake Bath Salts

We've also had several of our items added to people's favorites, as well as a couple of "shop favorites" so far. I think the search ads may finally be working as far as getting views to our shops, but I'll have to stop them until we either get some sales or I get some extra revenue coming in somewhere to be able to pay for those ads. Even $5 a week adds up fast! :)

We also have a few possible new items coming soon, so stay tuned for those! :)

eBay May Drive Me Insane

One of the places I chose to attempt to sell our products is eBay. I've used eBay to sell other things, mostly some of my jewelry that I was having a hard time selling anyways. So I went ahead and used the eBay account I have for my jewelry business for this business because I didn't feel like dealing with two different eBay accounts.

Now the first thing that is driving me insane is the fact that at some point, eBay got a bee in their bonnet and set limits on my account. I am only permitted to sell 10 items per month or $500 worth of items, whichever comes first. I'm not sure how eBay expects me to make a successful business via eBay when I can only sell 10 items per month - but according to them, my customer service did not meet their standards. I'm not sure how that is, because I have nothing but positive feedback as both a seller and a buyer, but whatever. So until they decide my customer service meets their standards, the limits remain and there is nothing I can do about them except hope that someone will buy from me so I can prove myself and get those stupid limits raised.

The next thing that is driving me insane is this idiotic limitation they have on my PayPal account. eBay owns PayPal, so of course, they can do whatever they want with your PayPal account if they choose to and they do. You have to "prove yourself" on eBay before they will stop messing with your PayPal account.

Basically the limitation works like this - Jack buys a jar of bath salts from me on eBay. He pays me via PayPal. When I log into PayPal, I see that Jack paid me, but the money is "pending." I have to purchase shipping (conveniently I must print the label through eBay or else I can't use the money Jack paid me for shipping), ship the item, mark it shipped, and wait until delivery has been confirmed before I am allowed to have my money. Even then, it will take three days for PayPal to fully release the funds into my account once delivery is confirmed.

I understand this is to "protect the buyer" from eBay sellers who do not have a good reputation - those sellers who will take your money but never send you the item. However, if I can prove that I sent the item out via Delivery Confirmation and it never reaches the intended recipient, that is not my fault and I should not be punished for it. Alas, eBay doesn't see it that way, so if the item doesn't get to Jack, even if it is not my fault, then I have to give Jack's money back. This puts me as taking a loss because I am out both my product & the money paid to me for the product & shipping.

This is why I am making it a point, if I do sell anything via eBay, that delivery confirmation will be added to every single package. This way I have proof that yes, the package did go out in the mail, and yes the package was delivered to the customer. Because without that delivery confirmation - what would stop a person from buying something, claiming it was never delivered, and then getting their money back? Nothing.

eBay isn't my favorite way to sell and I'm not having much luck with it, but I'll give it a go for a while longer. You never know, business may pick up soon! :)

Remakes

So we have discovered that the metal tins we are using to store our bath salts are not doing a very good job of keeping them nice. Seriously - the salts have lost their color and scent both - the salts literally smell like the metal tins. 

We have two variables that we think might have had a hand in this - the first variable, of course, was the metal tin, as the salts now smell like the metal tins! The other variable we have thought of was the Grape Seed Oil we used in the salts. We are making the salts without the Grape Seed Oil for the time being and we have started packing the salts into glass Ball jars - adorable/pretty quilted "jelly jars" that look amazing with the salts in them!

We are going to see how the salts keep their color/scent with the glass jars & no Grape Seed Oil. We did make a batch of Lavender salts for a custom order that had the Grape Seed Oil in them, so we will ask the friend who ordered them a couple of weeks if the salts have lost color or scent. If they have, it is the Grape Seed Oil that is the culprit, as her salts were packed in a glass jar. 

A quick search for Grape Seed Oil in bath salts has turned up a number of recipes using Grape Seed Oil, so I have a hard time believing that the discoloration/loss of scent is due to the oil. I am more inclined to believe that it is the metal tins - as all the recipes including Grape Seed Oil have said to put the salts into a glass or PET container. 

Oh well, this is going to be trial and error - all we have to do is remake the salts, put them in the glass containers (the lids are metal, but have a lining on them because they are canning lids), and see how that fairs.

In other news a few new scents to add to the shop soon include:

Baby Powder

Lavender

Lavender Vanilla

Lemon Cupcake

Lemon Sugar Cookie (as soon as the fragrance oil arrives for this one)

Peppermint Sugar Cookie (as soon as the fragrance oil arrives for this one)

Peppermint Vanilla

Pumpkin Spice Cupcake

Sugar Cookie (as soon as the fragrance oil arrives for this one)

The Baby Powder comes in either pink (although it's a bit more red than I wanted LOL) or blue - and can even be made in baggies for Baby Shower favors! :) 

The available scents/colors page has been updated as well, so be sure to check that out! :)

More Advertising

Most people will probably find this interesting, but I have actually done more to advertise Candlelight Boutique than I have for Eternal Stardust Designs. Sure, I used an AdWords credit to make an AdWords account for Eternal Stardust Baby, but I have never used any other means of advertising for ESD. However, I have used an AdWords credit to advertise Candlelight Boutique and I have done two weeks worth of Search Ads on Etsy. I think the problem with Etsy's search ads is more related to my not being willing to try more than $5 per week as a budget than anything. Then again, with my not having a steady day job to help pay for advertising, I'd rather play it safe for the time being. According to Google I still have about $47 of my credit remaining, but it says I can't use it because my campaign is limited by the budget. I am not yet sure if I am going to try and add more money to AdWords or not. It really depends on whether or not I am able to get more freelance work and whether or not the Holiday season brings me some sales. :P In other news, I have completed a custom order for 100 facial scrubbies. I am simply awaiting the customer's approval before I set up the listing for them. :) I also completed a request for 80 samples of bath salts. I chose a new scent - Lemon Cupcake - to send samples of. Now all the samples are bagged and labeled, I just have to get the address and mail them off. :) All in all, between advertising and working, I've been busy!

Labels

FDA labeling requirements have my head spinning. Apparently I have to give more than just the “common” name for certain ingredients, I have to also give the scientific name. For example, I use grape seed oil in my bath salts and sugar scrubs. I can’t just put grape seed oil, I have to put Vitis Vinifera (Grape) Seed Oil in the ingredients list. :/

Now I am completely confused, as the colorants and fragrance oils I have do not have anything to indicate what they are – I’ve just been putting color and fragrance on the ingredients list because that’s what they are. I have no idea what I am going to do if anyone ever comes to me and says that I have to tell what kind of color (Red 40, Blue 5, etc) because I literally can’t. The companies I get my colorants from don’t list what they are other than red, blue, yellow, orange, green, purple, peach, lilac, turquoise, wine, and gold. None of my fragrance oils, not even the ones from Bramble Berry say what is in them, just that they are fragrance oil.

Hopefully I will get all this down. I think I have a pretty good handle on it right now – if it is a wax, butter, or oil, I need to tell what it is in both common and scientific language. (I’d love to know why though – most people don’t know the scientific names for things and don’t care!)

More Products Available

We now have 18 listings in our Etsy shop! :) I added the following listings today:

Peppermint Bath Salts

Cucumber Melon Bath Salts

Red Rose & Thyme Bath Salts

Vanilla Bath Salts

Pastel Rainbow Facial Scrubbies

Summer Flecks Facial Scrubbies

All in all a rather productive listing day for us. :)  I also started a Google AdWords campaign (gotta love getting free AdWords credits from hosting companies and domain registrars) for Candlelight Boutique as well as Etsy Search Ads. 

The Search Ads I only allowed one week at $5.00 total for the week to see what kind of statistics we got from the ads. I've  heard some bad things about the results for the search ads, mainly that views and favorites went up but sales did not. So far we've only gotten 9 views in 24 hours, no favorites or sales from those views. A friend of ours did a search for bath salts and found that the ads tend to repeat certain shops/products and that she went through the entire search results for bath salts and never once found an ad for our shop. :( She did however find an ad for one of our sugar scrubs? LOL

I realize that the people who keep coming up over and over in the search ads probably paid a higher amount for more impressions.You only get 5,000 impressions for $5.00. If I had paid $10.00 I'd have gotten 10,000 impressions and if I'd paid $25.00 I'd have gotten 25,000 impressions. Basically you pay $1.00 for every 1,000 ad impressions you receive through the system. I'm not really thinking so far that it is anything more than a money waster for Etsy shop owners because I'm just not seeing the love. 1,487 impressions with only 9 views, no favorites, and no sales? I'm pretty glad I set the ads to stop after one week. :P

Products Available!

We have actually opened our shop a little over a week ahead of schedule! We weren't originally going to be open for business until 11/1/2011, but since we created a few products already we decided to go ahead and get them listed.

So far we have four bath salts, four sugar scrubs, 2 different wash cloths (one of them has 3 available), and 2 different sets of facial scrubbies (3 sets of one, 2 of the other).

Here are some photos of the products currently available in our shop:

Apple Pie alá Mode Bath Salts

Apple Pie alá Mode Sugar Scrub

Country Stripes Facial Scrubbies

Patriotic Wash Cloth

Pearberry Mint Bath Salts

Pearberry Mint Sugar Scrub

Sweet Pea Cucumber Melon Bath Salts

Sweet Pea Cucumber Melon Sugar Scrub

Strawberry Wash Cloth

Violet Veil Facial Scrubbies

Wild Berry Vanilla Bath Salts

Wild Berry Vanilla Sugar Scrub

We've also made Vanilla Bath Salts, Peppermint Bath Salts, Cucumber Melon Bath Salts, and Red Rose & Thyme Bath Salts. We're also awaiting the shipment of 2lbs of Shea Butter for making whipped body butter.  We've already had a request for a lemon scented body butter, so lemon scented fragrance oil is our next purchase. :)

If you have any scent ideas, please let us know! :)