Sitting here nursing a toothache feeling sorry for myself, to much pain to concentrate in my workshop making signet rings today and a thought crossed my mind

I just edited my CC profile adding the end of year sales to my SCCP sales to date below as i did my accounts till end of April as usual.

Do prospective new purchasers of SCCP or SCCB actually wonder how many of us have successfully sold items through our internet shops.

So starting the ball rolling here and baring in mind i am now semi retired and the only outlet i have for my products are my 2 SCCP shops, one of which is in my signature, and an odd Ebay listing here and there, and after all i sell one of those more difficult items on the internet it takes a huge amount of trust to spend hundreds of pounds on a bespoke item you can neither see or feel.

Personally last years turnover (not profit) of £11,000.00p seemed exceptionally good, both previous years had been around £8,000.00p

I don't think the value of sales is necessarily relevant, however i do think it important for new users of SCCB or SCCP to realise it really is important to know that what you put in, has a direct reflection on what you get back. I have been working constantly over the past 12 months on the newer of my 2 sites , the one in my signature and that is now bringing in 70% of my orders yet the other site is now i think 4 years old and soon to be re-directed as it would appear the learning curve has paid off, hence the newer one is better.

Anyone else want to throw in their experiences i am sure new users will be interested to hear and i dare say between us we can all answer a question or two so please ask away new users.

What is it that has made the difference do you think? Is it better product images, site layout, just that after 4 years your customer base has grown and people now know about you or something else?

After 18 months I still get very few sales but with dolls house miniatures it is a smallish market.

An online presence takes about 4 years to even be noticed, unless you have a wide network of friends. From what I have seen Google only likes sites that have been around for a year or two, and then only starts to really give you status in your link ranking. But get yourself out there. Best way is to advertise and use Facebook, Google + and Google places...

I think in my case my google search results always appeared with my original trading name of Handmade By Me, and the same people doing the same search over a number of months or years saw the name, assumed it was unchanged and as they did not like what they saw the first time, didn't bother to look a second time.

Big issue for me as gold prices forced me to change my pricing policy, the new site has a new name, Delorean, and those same people then went and looked at it not realising it was actually virtually identical products but a totally re designed website

Two sites are currently running side by side, chances are if you do a search for : 9ct gold signet rings : or 9ct signet rings : both my sites will appear and yet viewing both the only apparent similarity is the photographs. until you go to the contact or about me page where it is bltantly obvious both are the same person

Google took 4 weeks to rank Delorean, and by adding it to a few Ebay listings i got sales within 3 months, within 6 months it had overtaken my other site two sales to one.

Paul put a link to your shop in your signature , (a) it may help your ranking (b) gives CC forum members a chance to view it and maybe give you some helpful pointers, this after-all is why i started this thread.

There you go.

Just so there's no confusion, Paul bought the CC software for me and we've both just used his account rather than set up 2 separate ones, but it's me, his fiance Jennifer, who runs JS Miniatures and uses SSCP etc.