Photo courtesy of Etsy

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published this interview with Rob Kalin, founder and CEO of Etsy. Unlike other fluff pieces on the rising popularity of handmade, this interview focused on the business of the online marketplace and why it is successful.
According to the interview, Etsy has raised approximately $31.6 million from [...]

With the popularity of Twitter and Facebook over the past few years, there’s plenty of chatter on how social marketing can help your business. For example, Tina’s post outlining the differences to keep in mind when marketing your business on Facebook and/or Twitter.

Photo from Keep Calm Shop Etsy

Recently Twitter has seen an influx [...]

In my “other life” I’m a graphic designer, and that often means I get asked questions about printing, and especially with this crowd, printing sustainably. Whether you’re getting business cards or postcards or something else altogether, a visit to the print shop or an online printing website can be baffling. And even moreso when you’re trying to make the right decisions for both yourself and the Earth.

Here’s a quick primer on what some of the printing terms mean in terms of sustainability…

The new curated online marketplace Makers Market is now up and running. Still in an early Beta version, the marketplace presented by MAKE and boing boing features worldwide makers and lists them by the categories Tech, Science, Arts + Crafts, Home + Life, Wearables, Music and Services.
Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching, 2009 Summit of Awesome [...]

For many it is difficult to find the time to further your business knowledge to aide your crafty inspirations. If you’re like me, your free time fluctuates week to week making it almost impossible to commit to a concrete schedule. Or maybe your surrounding area doesn’t offer classes that interest you. You might even [...]

I recently wrote the introduction to a really helpful How-To Guide by the folks over at Mailchimp and I wanted to share it with you. My goal was and is to talk you into thinking about email marketing in a new way. MailChimp, is not only free for lists with up to 500 subscribers, its [...]

When I’m representing other people’s work, whether online through cosa verde, or in person—helping a friend sell at a fair, or running an event like our giveaway at Crafty Bastards—I find that I work harder than when I’m representing my own crafts. I find that the fact that I’m accountable to someone else—I might make [...]

Talk Shop is the series where we interview independent store owners from across the country, to get their inside take on running an independent business that supports the handmade community.

With yarn shops few and far between in the Washington, DC area, knitters, crocheters and spinners can now rejoice in the brand new yarn shop, Fibre [...]