Want to make your blog the best marketing tool for your jewelry business?  This is “How to Sell More Jewelry Directly from Your Blog” by Rena Klingenberg. Excellent tips from her right here:

Your blog is an excellent tool for selling your jewelry online. In fact, many jewelry artists sell their work exclusively from their blogs.

You can stir up your readers’ interest in your work by blogging about how your jewelry is created, what’s unique about a particular piece or component, what the piece signifies to you, what happened while you were creating it, etc.

Basically, give the piece of jewelry a history and an interesting story. Let the tale unfold over a few blog posts.

Stories sell jewelry. And stories told in episodes gain more readers with each new episode.

Use your blog to build up anticipation for each new piece of jewelry or new design you’re working on. Build suspense and desire – and then unveil the piece. Launch it with a bit of fanfare. Invite readers to comment.

You can put a discreet “buy now” button right there in your blog, directly beneath the photo of the newly unveiled piece of jewelry. Many artists are able to sell each new piece they make, directly from their blog, with these techniques.

Remember that your jewelry blog visitors don’t just want information; they want to be entertained. And the better you entertain them, the more they’ll bring other people to your blog – and to your jewelry.

It’s sort of the modern version of being a traveling artist in Medieval days – you gather an interested crowd by spinning stories and entertaining your audience as you make jewelry.

When the jewelry is finished and its story has been told, there’s always a well-entertained customer eager to buy it. And the rest of the crowd spreads the word to tell their friends and family about the entertaining jewelry artist.

Repeat this process indefinitely. And once you really develop a following and people see how fast your new stuff disappears, your new pieces will go even faster.

People will pay for things they love, regardless of the price. Your job is to help them fall in love with it, and feel the urgency to buy it before someone else does.

Occasionally post blog entries to tell stories about other things that your audience would laugh about or care deeply about. But make it into a personal conversation with them, putting your own words and heart into it.

This kind of story can be triggered by something you saw in the news, or in another blog or forum. For example, if you’re making mothers’ bracelets and your market is moms, you might share an emotional story you read about saving childhood memories.

Make your readers laugh, make them cry, make them feel.

Emotions are powerful, and if you can make your audience feel something, they’ll come back for more – and share it with their friends.

*Discover more ways you can sell your jewelry directly from your blog, in Rena Klingenberg’s ebook “Social Networking: Sell Your Jewelry Online the New Way”.

I bought this beautiful Royal Copenhagen porcelain plate from a flea market at Clark’s Quay almost 10 years ago. On it, the artist’s impression reads “Mors Dag, 1972″.
So I thought Mors Dag is the name of the artist who painted the plate in 1972.

I was just wondering how much it is worth today as a collectible item. So I started searching the internet for information.  I had a good laugh when I found out that Mors Dag is not a person.  Haha, “Mors Dag” is “Mother’s Day” in Danish and Swedish.

In Singapore, we celebrate Mother’s Day on the 2nd Sunday of May as in Denmark, US and Japan.  Sweden honors all mothers on the 4th Sunday of May as in UK. 

~ Happy Mother’s Day! ~

My WinZip has expired!  

The headache turned out to be a blessing.  It helped me to unearth a treasure, IZArc! 

I thought WinZip is the ultimate until I started a desperate search for an alternative. The point is that I hardly use WinZip.  Is it not worth buying a copy when I seldom make use of it?  Both evaluation copy of WinZip on my desktop and laptop expired and failed me at the most critical moment. It was frustrating. It was holding up a simple step like trying to unzip a plugin for my blog.

I googled for similar problems faced by many people and the opinions on program features that they liked most about their archive software.  It identified popular archive software 7zip, Winrar, Power Achcive, Tugzip, Universal Extractor, Win Ace, WinZip and IZArc.

For the first time, I discovered that IZArc is a favorite choice from popular reviews and there is no need to look further. I tried IZArc and find it extremely user friendly. I’m so excited to share with you.

Wikipedia search defines  IZArc (pronounced like “easy-arc”) as a file archiver developed by Bulgarian programmer Ivan Zahariev.  The program is freeware which is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee.

Some Features extracted from IZArc :

IZArc is integrated in Windows so you can perform all archiving operations by using right-click menus in Windows Explorer.  

If you have broken archives IZArc can help you to repair them with ease.  

IZArc is 100% virus free and it doesn’t contain any spyware or adware.

IZArc is the most complete archive utility available today.

IZArc has also built-in multilanguage support.

It is a long list of features at IZArc .
Check it out. You will love this!

Lunar New Year Celebrations in Chinatown, Singapore, is a regular annual affair. 
On our calendar, 2 days are marked as public holidays for the celebrations.  
6th Feb 2008 was the Eve of the First Day of celebrations, a day when all Chinese try to get home for a reunion dinner with their families.  Unofficially, the festivities would continue for another 2 weeks with a lot of visiting and feasting.  

Firecrackers were banned in Singapore since 1972. Last night was a special occasion. Fireworks and firecrackers were lighted to make a boisterous welcome for the year of the Rat. Confetti canons were fired onto the thousands that gathered to watch the special event and performance by local TV artistes.  Those who stayed home watched the event and countdown together live on TV. 

Here’s wishing you a Happy and Properous Chinese New Year! Gong Xi Fa Cai.
More pictures on Travel Page.

When do I need to change my Router? Which router works best for me? My router is still in good working condition. It is good to stick to the principle of “don’t change if it ain’t broken”. But I don’t think my wireless equipment is running efficiently. Whenever I run into problems with the connection, my last resort is to reinstall the software. Now, I end up with Connection 7. Just wished that there is a compatible, more up-to-date piece of equipment with user friendly features to tell me what is wrong and show me how clean up the mess.

Unnecessary upgrade is really a waste of good money. But I do get enticed by “trade-in” offers for used cisco equipment. Perhaps I should invest in a better model and get my home networking system revamped once and for all.

Have you read about the pen guy who has a Mercedes Pens Art Car? He glued over 6,000 pens on his car.  Incredible feat!  Among things that he had created are his hard hat and mailbox decorated with pens.  Google for the pen guy from California,  Costas Schuler and his projects and you will find his amazing hobby of sticking pens all over.  He gets a lot of support and pen donations for his hobby and held talks and event appearances for gluing pens on car.  

In two weeks’ time, my daughter will be leaving for Sweden.  Now, preparation for the trip is hotting up.  I did a lot of shopping together with her, getting enough warm clothing for her to brave the cold winter that may extend till March this year.  Earlier we saw some travelpro luggage on the net and considered getting a suitable bag for her long traveling schedule.

However, we managed to borrow some items from her cousins, and that included a large luggage bag to pack all her stuff.  The luggage seem to be bursting at the seams, and we are just trying to figure out how to squeeze everything inside!    

The place to shop for lightings is at Balestier Road, that is, if you live in Singapore long enough, you will be familiar with the scene at this specialty row.  These shops import lightings from all over the world.  The cheaper models probably come from Taiwan and other sources from the nearby Asian Pacific region.

But interior designers order direct from the US, UK and Europe by the container loads for major development projects.  The lightings selected for “showflats” are quite impressive.  I have seen some like those from Hinkley Lighting.

Wishing you “A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year”! 
Happy Holidays.

I was just doing some research on the history of Mizuno golf and was very surprised to discover the rich history in the making of the golf club.  Very good video clips are available on Youtube showing the making of golf clubs and the high quality controls at the Mizuno factories. 

Mizuno made history.  The first Japanese-made golf clubs were put on sale was in 1933.  Mizuno first started selling sporting goods 100 years back in history. Wow!