Saturday, November 12, 2022

The Live Sale is Coming!

      I have not held a live sale in quite a while! I think the last one was actually my last Black Friday sale. But in March I was teaching and just did not have the time or space in my brain to think about a live sale, or to make the stuff needed to make it worth anyone coming to it. When the school year ended I thought I would have more time and space in my head. Maybe August would work? Nope. It turns out I was super burnt out and didn't do a whole lot of doll work in the summer. There are times when I am really inspired and there are times when I am exhausted. This year has been a time of exhaustion. 
     But for sure, I am holding a live sale on Black Friday this year. For anyone that doesn't know what that is, it is the day after the US Thanksgiving. Though I know half the planet has some sort of Black Friday thing, not sure if they are all on the same day or not (and yes, 50%-60% of the countries in the world "celebrate" some sort of Black Friday according to Google). But moving on... Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving and this year is November 25th. I am going with a semi-live format again (I'll explain that below) starting at 3:00 pm ET. 
     I have mentioned my live sale a few times in the past several months, but didn't really pinpoint any details. So here we go. I am holding a semi-live sale on Friday, November 25, 2022 at 3:00 pm (eastern time) on my Facebook STUDIO page. Not my personal page. What do I mean by semi-live? It means that starting at 3:00pm I will have photos of items I have for sale going up on my studio page. Once the photos are live you can claim the items. To do that, all you do is comment with the claim code, which will be on the photo (you can check out photos from last year on the studio page if you are not sure what I mean). For the first 5 minutes that a photo is posted you may only claim one item from that particular group. If after 5 minutes items in that group (that photo) are still available, you may claim a second. This keeps it a bit more fair and allows everyone the chance to get something they are looking for. I will be publishing all of the photos (without claim codes) of each of the groups, in a blog post, when I am ready for that (meaning, when I am done making stuff). I will also publish a schedule of events with exact times that the different groups will go live. In this way, you do not need to have the fastest internet. If a thing is going live at 3:05, that is 3:05 (or the equivalent time in your time zone) for everyone. The way to get things is refresh quickly and often when it is about the time your wanted items come up. 
      OK, so I said how the claims work, but I didn't explain what semi-live means. Well, it means I will go live where you get to watch me talk to myself and read things off the screen, likely sing the alphabet as I make claim bags for people and sort stuff, and where there may potentially be trivia questions that you can answer. You do not have to watch the actual live portion to claim anything. You can just claim it on the photo when the thing comes up. The way you will know that you got it is I will love (heart) your comment. Which I will also say on the live who got what. After the sale I need everyone who claimed an item or items to message me on my STUDIO page, not my personal page, with their email address and the country they live in. Even if you are positive I have this information. That way I have an easy to follow list, in one place, and I know which shipping to apply to everyone when I do invoices. Nice and easy. I also really need everyone to pay through the invoice, that way it saves me a TON of time when I am doing shipping labels. Clicking "print label" is a lot easier than going into another program and typing in someone's information, or even copying it and so on. 
     Since I feel like I have slacked on telling people about my sale just a bit, I have decided it would be a good idea to advertise heavily in the next couple of weeks. Which means that I made 16 unique (different picture) Instagram ads, which will cross post to my Facebook studio page. Apparently there is a way to schedule your Instagram posts, but really, I have no desire to try to figure that out, since that apparently has to be done through Facebook, and makes no sense to me. At all. So I went old-school and I put a ton of reminders in my phone. So now I get reminded every day (it was at 6:00 pm, and I just changed them all to 3:00 pm) to post an ad on Instagram. Yes, doing it this way means I need to take about 30 seconds out of my day, every day, to copy the info from the ad from the day before and post a new photo. I can handle that. And I don't have to try to learn yet another new thing. 
     So that is about it, you have the basic idea for what a semi-live sale is, when it will be (date and time) and where you need to be to see the stuff or see the live, or both. In case you missed any of it, Friday November 25, 2022 at 3:00 pm eastern time on my Facebook studio page. Oh! One other fun thing before I end this post; I have a tone of miniatures, all kinds, and I decided I am going to have lots and lots of mystery packages! There will be two sizes this year! I am going to have the mystery boxes AND mystery envelopes. The envelopes will likely be (but not definitely) food items and drinks (I have so many!) and the mystery boxes will be a variety of mostly new items I have never offered for sale or in past boxes. Plus a few extra small things (like food and so on) that I have had available for years. I don't have an exact plan for how many of each type I will have yet, but I do have A LOT of miniatures and I do like blind bags/boxes!
 

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