(yeah, I went there with the title)
Question from the audience:
Oh. *ahem* >.> YOU MEAN MY ETSY SHOP, RIGHT. It isn’t called Nornoriel’s House of Elf Cock, after all.
In terms of my own business, I would like to expand it just a little bit more – incense, perfume oils (like BPAL only not), and possibly soap. I don’t, at this point, see myself expanding my Etsy shop much more than that as I have a finite amount of time, energy, focus and interest. For example, at one point I considered adding ritual tools to my shop, like making besoms and wands, but the amount of time it would make me to put stuff like that together would severely cut into time I spend on making things that I know actually sells, like jewelry and candles. (Not to mention I’d have to get yet more shipping supplies to try to ship stuff like that, and it would be a huge pain in the ass.)
In terms of goals for product, I would ideally like to add candles every week and a few pieces of jewelry every week. I find that I do better with sales the more new things I have available, so as of late I’ve been trying to knuckle down and get shit made (this is easier said than done considering I get on average 300-400 e-mails a day [and that is a conservative estimate]). Once I start making incense I will probably also add new incense every week or so.
I’ve gotten pretty good at keeping to a schedule for things like crafting, readings, etc, which has increased productivity, and with D’s help I’ve been able to figure out how to stay on top of cost of supplies and packing materials and seller fees v. a reasonable profit margin. (I also recently invested in a postal scale, which has more than paid for itself.) It has been a VERY steep learning curve with figuring out things like how much to charge and what is profitable or not, and I wish in hindsight that I’d let D help me from the beginning, but I am a Scottish Capricorn with Aries rising, translation being that sometimes I can only learn things the hard way. (I definitely learned my lesson though, which is Rule #1: D is Always Right about anything concerning my finances, because he is Mr. Money Man.)
In tandem with this, is the increased ability to buy magickal and devotional products and services online. No matter what I need, no matter how funky or obscure, the chances are very, very good that I can either find someplace online that sells it, or I know someone who knows someone who does. For example, a friend of mine makes Oil of Abramelin. When I was 16 and reading the Golden Dawn (yes, I was a geeky teenager) and trying my hand at CM stuff, do you know how motherfucking hard it was to find anyone who fucking sold Oil of Abramelin, or even knew what the fuck it was? (I once got into a conversation with an occult shop owner about the subject way back when, and she said she’d look in the back room and comes out and she’s like “I don’t have any, uh, Oil of Olay or whatever here.” That was literally what she said. Oil of Olay.)
(Oil of Olay: because when I hang out with demons, we give each other facials[1]. [You can take that a couple different ways. >.>])
So as the Internet has made it easier for people to satisfy the sort of curiosities I had like “does anybody still honor the old gods?”, I think it’s also made it easier for people to accept magic back into their lives, which in turn has made it easier for people like me to offer goods and services to the Pagan community – even just 10-15 years ago, I might not have had the success that I enjoy now as a Pagan shop owner. When I was 21-22, I actually wanted to have a brick-and-mortar Pagan shop, and talked about it with someone I was involved with at the time, but since that time I’ve seen a number of brick-and-mortar Pagan shops go under, whereas doing business online is a lot easier (for starters I don’t have to worry about renting a storefront or the logistics of how to have a store and not get robbed).
As an aside, I also have found that rather than being in competition with other Pagan vendors, even people who are making similar products, having variety and diversity in the market is a good thing. For example, my friend Beth and I both make candles for various deities, as well as Pagan-themed jewelry, but we’ve got very different styles and there’s something for everyone (and we also have a fair amount of customer overlap, people who buy from both of us, which is good; I myself buy things from Beth occasionally, and vice versa); having a diversity of people’s styles allows my own to stand out, as well as others’. I remember talking with an occult shop owner about 15 years ago who was in pretty bitter rivalry with another Pagan shop owner to the point where they’d mutually cursed each other to go under, and one shop owner was spying on the other to try to compete with products, and that is just so ridiculous I can’t even. Having other people “in the same game” hasn’t hurt my business at all – to the contrary. (This recent sale I had, where Beth and I had a deal where we would give customers who also shopped at the other person’s store a 15% coupon, I literally made more money in 24 hours than I usually make in a month of sales [and I have been doing pretty damn good business the last few months]. D told me it was going to get wild, and as usual, he is a master of understatement.) I also like having other people I can “talk shop” with about making things, and so on. (Artsy people need other artsy people.) But the Internet has made that easier, I think, in terms of networking as well as customers being able to look at products with just the click of a button, as opposed to having to drive five towns over to browse a shop’s selection.
Things are definitely easier these days, in some ways (while the Internet also has brought some challenges to the community, like the way GIFT impacts us), and I hope that 20 years from now, Pagan commerce will thrive even more, as I think it’s important for us to support our own.
[1]Seriously, D is a bit metrosexual, and we will do things like skin care together.
Question from the audience:
what would your dream business look like? Do you think that the market for magic based products/commerce has improved because the Internet gives us better access to it or because more people are ready to accept Magic back into their lives?Let me answer this a piece at a time:
- what would your dream business look like?
Oh. *ahem* >.> YOU MEAN MY ETSY SHOP, RIGHT. It isn’t called Nornoriel’s House of Elf Cock, after all.
In terms of my own business, I would like to expand it just a little bit more – incense, perfume oils (like BPAL only not), and possibly soap. I don’t, at this point, see myself expanding my Etsy shop much more than that as I have a finite amount of time, energy, focus and interest. For example, at one point I considered adding ritual tools to my shop, like making besoms and wands, but the amount of time it would make me to put stuff like that together would severely cut into time I spend on making things that I know actually sells, like jewelry and candles. (Not to mention I’d have to get yet more shipping supplies to try to ship stuff like that, and it would be a huge pain in the ass.)
In terms of goals for product, I would ideally like to add candles every week and a few pieces of jewelry every week. I find that I do better with sales the more new things I have available, so as of late I’ve been trying to knuckle down and get shit made (this is easier said than done considering I get on average 300-400 e-mails a day [and that is a conservative estimate]). Once I start making incense I will probably also add new incense every week or so.
I’ve gotten pretty good at keeping to a schedule for things like crafting, readings, etc, which has increased productivity, and with D’s help I’ve been able to figure out how to stay on top of cost of supplies and packing materials and seller fees v. a reasonable profit margin. (I also recently invested in a postal scale, which has more than paid for itself.) It has been a VERY steep learning curve with figuring out things like how much to charge and what is profitable or not, and I wish in hindsight that I’d let D help me from the beginning, but I am a Scottish Capricorn with Aries rising, translation being that sometimes I can only learn things the hard way. (I definitely learned my lesson though, which is Rule #1: D is Always Right about anything concerning my finances, because he is Mr. Money Man.)
- Do you think that the market for magic based products/commerce has improved because the Internet gives us better access to it or because more people are ready to accept Magic back into their lives?
In tandem with this, is the increased ability to buy magickal and devotional products and services online. No matter what I need, no matter how funky or obscure, the chances are very, very good that I can either find someplace online that sells it, or I know someone who knows someone who does. For example, a friend of mine makes Oil of Abramelin. When I was 16 and reading the Golden Dawn (yes, I was a geeky teenager) and trying my hand at CM stuff, do you know how motherfucking hard it was to find anyone who fucking sold Oil of Abramelin, or even knew what the fuck it was? (I once got into a conversation with an occult shop owner about the subject way back when, and she said she’d look in the back room and comes out and she’s like “I don’t have any, uh, Oil of Olay or whatever here.” That was literally what she said. Oil of Olay.)
(Oil of Olay: because when I hang out with demons, we give each other facials[1]. [You can take that a couple different ways. >.>])
So as the Internet has made it easier for people to satisfy the sort of curiosities I had like “does anybody still honor the old gods?”, I think it’s also made it easier for people to accept magic back into their lives, which in turn has made it easier for people like me to offer goods and services to the Pagan community – even just 10-15 years ago, I might not have had the success that I enjoy now as a Pagan shop owner. When I was 21-22, I actually wanted to have a brick-and-mortar Pagan shop, and talked about it with someone I was involved with at the time, but since that time I’ve seen a number of brick-and-mortar Pagan shops go under, whereas doing business online is a lot easier (for starters I don’t have to worry about renting a storefront or the logistics of how to have a store and not get robbed).
As an aside, I also have found that rather than being in competition with other Pagan vendors, even people who are making similar products, having variety and diversity in the market is a good thing. For example, my friend Beth and I both make candles for various deities, as well as Pagan-themed jewelry, but we’ve got very different styles and there’s something for everyone (and we also have a fair amount of customer overlap, people who buy from both of us, which is good; I myself buy things from Beth occasionally, and vice versa); having a diversity of people’s styles allows my own to stand out, as well as others’. I remember talking with an occult shop owner about 15 years ago who was in pretty bitter rivalry with another Pagan shop owner to the point where they’d mutually cursed each other to go under, and one shop owner was spying on the other to try to compete with products, and that is just so ridiculous I can’t even. Having other people “in the same game” hasn’t hurt my business at all – to the contrary. (This recent sale I had, where Beth and I had a deal where we would give customers who also shopped at the other person’s store a 15% coupon, I literally made more money in 24 hours than I usually make in a month of sales [and I have been doing pretty damn good business the last few months]. D told me it was going to get wild, and as usual, he is a master of understatement.) I also like having other people I can “talk shop” with about making things, and so on. (Artsy people need other artsy people.) But the Internet has made that easier, I think, in terms of networking as well as customers being able to look at products with just the click of a button, as opposed to having to drive five towns over to browse a shop’s selection.
Things are definitely easier these days, in some ways (while the Internet also has brought some challenges to the community, like the way GIFT impacts us), and I hope that 20 years from now, Pagan commerce will thrive even more, as I think it’s important for us to support our own.
[1]Seriously, D is a bit metrosexual, and we will do things like skin care together.
