Deciding on a name for your craft business ought to be one of the easiest things to do! It can be, however, surprisingly difficult. The name that you choose will be at the heart of your business identity and is a major part of your branding.

Here are some tips for picking a name for your craft business:

Business Name  = Name of Website, Blog, Email etc

When deciding on a name for your craft business remember that you ideally want the same name for your website, blog, email etc. This will help to reinforce your brand identity and help your customers to find you on what ever venue you are using to sell your work.

Even if you don't sell online, you may want to in the future or may at least want a portfolio website. Pick a name that will be suitable as a domain name. Check to see if the domain name is available and register it. This only costs a few dollars a year and means that no one else can take the name.

Say What You Do

It can be a good idea for your business name to say what it is that you do. This helps to reinforce the connection between the brand and the product. For instance, Jane Doe Ceramic Arts, links the artist's name with the product. This is also good for search engines and SEO. The main drawback to this approach, however, is that if you plan to branch out sometime in the future, your business name may end up being irrelevant.

Easy to Remember

Make sure that your craft business name is easy to remember - and if you have a website, that the address is also easy to remember. Unusual spellings or odd punctuation can make it difficult for people to find you.

While getting the name wrong isn't necessarily the end of the world, it can be costly having to get new stationary produced and most importantly, getting loyal customers used to the new name.

For more information about starting your craft business see the articles in the Getting Started category.

The Everything Regulation website is a good place for UK craft businesses to look for important regulations and information relating to their business. The website has information from Trading Standards offices from around the UK.

Information packs are available online covering different aspects of a business. Useful information about regulations includes:

•  Length - info about the regulations for selling items by the length
• Products containing nickel - useful for jewellery sellers
• Weight - info about selling items by weight, for instance soap or yarn
• Selling toys - information about the regulations for making and selling toys

Advertising your products is an important part of running a successful craft business - and it is particularly important when selling your products online, as you need to reach out to find potential customers. Whether you sell your crafts online via your own website or through a large handmade marketplace such as Etsy,  Artfile, 1000Markets etc, attracting potential customers to your store is crucial for success.

Advertising can also, however, be a significant expense. The key to making advertising work for you is to ensure that advertising is an investment that will help grow your business and not simple a cost. Advertising should give you a return on your investment.

Tips for a Successful Advertising Campaign

While ensuring that you get a return on your advertising spend - however small - may sound like a good goal, it can sometimes be difficult to achieve.

Here are some tips for successfully advertising your online craft business:

What are your goals? - Identifying your goals before you start is important for success. People advertise their craft business for different reasons, including introducing people to your products, informing them of new lines or special offers, raising the profile of your business and more. Determining what you want to achieve should be the first step in your plan.

Who do you want to target? - Deciding who you want to advertise your handmade products to is also crucial to the success of an advertising campaign. If you are looking to bring customers to your store with the goal that they buy from you, then you need to attract people who are ready to buy. If on the other hand, your goal is simply to raise awareness of your products with a view to people buying at a later time, then your target audience may well be different. When you have decided who you want to target then you can start to really focus on places to advertise. It may be useful to think a little out of the box when looking for places to advertise. A lot of craft business people advertise on each other's websites and blogs. While this will reach an audience appreciative of handmade items, and of course is ideal for craft supplies stores, will it reach an audience that is looking to part with its hard earned cash? Would a shopping blog or fashion blog be a better alternative...?

Quality vs Quantity - Not all advertising is equal! Very low cost advertising, for instance some of the free or just a few cents ad slots available via micro advertising sites such as Project Wonderful can be excellent value for money and offer a great way to get a wide breadth of coverage at low cost. However the alternative of perhaps going for a single higher cost advert on a more expensive platform may produce better results.

Cost - It is essential to set a budget. There are lots of interesting seemingly low cost ways to advertise your products, however the costs can still add up over the course of a month. Setting a budget early on will help you to control how much you spend.

Measure results – In order to assess the success of your advertising campaign it is important to measure results. The results should be measured against your goals. If your goals have been to raise awareness of your website, then an increase in traffic will be a sign of success even if this has resulted in no sales. If your goal has been to increase sales, then naturally the success of the campaign will need to take this into account. It is useful to keep detailed records of different advertising campaigns as over time this can help to give you an insight into fine tuning your goals. If you know, for instance, what your average cost per click works out at, then you can quickly see whether an advertisement slot is representing good or bad value for money.

Sadly there is no advertising magic formula that will guarantee success! A successful advertising campaign may take a mix of factors and what will work great for one person may not work for another. These are just a few tips for making the most of your advertising spend and really making it work for you. For more ideas and information about advertising your handmade items see our Advertise Your Business pages.

There is a really useful Social Media comparison chart available at The Next Web here - Social Media Cheat Sheet.  This easy to read sheet shows the pros and cons of different social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.  While the chart looks difficult to read on the screen, press the pdf at the bottom of the page for a larger version!

This is a general overview, and what works for crafts may be different to other markets, however it is certainly useful to look at the different social media options.

While April Fools Day may come once a year, the advent of the Internet and digital age means that the results can be long felt! There are several cases of April Fools jokes that were played online, and now remain online for all to see. So, beware of making April Fools jokes online, they could well be found and read at a latter date and the significance of when they were published may not be apparent.

If you do make an online April Fools joke make sure that you go back and edit it with a punch line after the event. 

A new ecommerce option is opening up for artists and craftspeople.

Wicked Plum (wickedplum.com) is a shopping cart system that users can add to their own sites. This makes it a closer model to Big Cartel or Zen Cart than to Etsy or Artfire (it is not a handmade market place). The benefits of this are that shop owners can build their own individual stores with their own rules, ethos and style. The downside of this type of ecommerce option is that store owners do not benefit from being part of a larger handmade marketplace.

The people behind Wicked Plum are experienced crafters who have experienced first hand the challenges of some ecommerce options. They have decided to build on their experience to create an ecommerce solution specifically geared towards micro businesses.

Wicked Plum has the aim of making ecommerce simple and straight forward so that artists and craftspeople can concentrate on the making and selling of their products, rather than worrying about the back end of the ecommerce side of their business. Wicked Plum will offer a range of design templates, for instance, the store owners can pick from.

Wicked Plum, currently in private beta testing, is offering a special deal to the next group of beta testers that join. More information can be found on the pricing page of the Wicked Plum website.

­Many people who make and sell handmade cards and other paper items like to incorporate rubber stamped designs in their work. Before selling handmade craft projects that use rubber stamps it is important to check out the terms and conditions of the rubber stamp designer. This is often referred to as an Angel Policy.

How Does an Angel Policy Concern a Craft Business?

An Angel Policy clearly states whether items that are made using a company's products can be used to make items for sale. Therefore an Angel Policy may state that rubber stamps cannot be used to make items for sale or it may specify certain restrictions. These restrictions may include saying how many items can be made, stating where the items can be sold and specifying that copyright information needs to be included. Most Angel Policies will state that the items need to be hand stamped by the person selling the item and not mechanically reproduced or used as part of a production process­.

Finding Out More

­Each rubber stamp company will have details of their Angel Policy available. These are often shown on their website. More information about Angel Policies can be found here - About Angel Policies and a list of rubber stamp company Angel Policies can be found here - Rubber Stamp Company Angel Policies.­

Do you have a comment about this? Do you use rubber stamps in your creative process? If so, do you have any tips to share?

Craft Count is a recently launched website from the Etsy by Numbers blog, which will be of interest to sellers on Etsy or people thinking about selling on Etsy. Using the number of units sold over the complete lifetime of the store, Craft Count lists the top selling Etsy stores. The site tracks the top 100 sellers with over 1000 sales in each category.

This information can be viewed in three ways:

• Summary - as a summary of top selling Etsy stores overall, within handmade, supplies and vintage.
• Country - top selling Etsy stores broken down by country.
• Category - top selling Etsy stores broken down by Etsy category.

Interesting Insight

This provides an interesting insight into the volume of items that have been sold and the top sellers of all time on Etsy - however it is important to note that this is number of transactions and not value of transactions. It is also important to note that the total figures presented are over the lifetime of a store. Therefore there may be more recently launched stores with fast selling lines that do not show in these lists.

The information presented in Craft Count can be used in a number of ways. It is an easy way to get a snapshot of successful Etsy sellers and their top selling lines. Some useful tips can be obtained by looking at successful sellers and seeing how they present their work, what their store policies are, how they write descriptions etc.

Craft Count Beta

Craft Count is a brand new service and just launched. It is currently in beta. Information can be found on the Craft Count information page about how Etsy sellers can go about changing their information, for instance changing the category that they are listed in. Sellers can also ask for their stores to be excluded from the figures.

What research tools do you use for business. Do you use tools such as Craft Count or do you have other methods for researching the market?