It’s interesting to note how my moods change depending on how my shop is doing. Yesterday was the fourth day in a stretch where I had zero sales. None. I had a couple really good days around the 15th, and then it just dropped off and stopped. Occasionally I’ll have days like that, but it usually doesn’t go on for that long. Then the little voices start chattering in my head.
What if this is the end? What if my shop has reached it’s peak? Maybe someone stole my designs. What if it’s the recession? What if I never make more than $400.00 a month? I’ll never be able to quit my job. Maybe we are sliding into the next great depression. But other shopkeepers are still making sales, so it must be me. Maybe my designs are stupid, and nobody realized it until now. Maybe…
And on and on. But today when I woke up there was a sale of three mugs waiting for me. And later on a customer who had bought a 10 pack of buttons a few weeks ago came back and ordered five more buttons and a teddy bear. So, life is good today.
As long as I am making sales, I am motivated to design more and tweak my shops, study seo and work on my affiliate websites. But when the sales stop I lose my motivation. I might halfheartedly design something, and then I find myself looking around on icanhascheezeburger and other places. But I’ve realized that if I want to quit my job someday, I need to treat what I do as a job. That means plowing through and working even when I don’t want to. I can usually regain some of my motivation if I think forward to the Christmas season.
Putting in a lot of work now will pay off big time come December, and I have a lot of work to do before then. I was looking through some of my older sections last night and found many that are still unfinished. Sections where I have a few apparel items and never got around to putting my images on the buttons and stickers and mugs and all that good stuff. So I’m going to be digging out a lot of old graphics in the next few weeks and beefing up my store.
A Shopkeeper’s work is never done.
Tags: motivation
Yep I know how you feel… I had been going through a slow patch on zazzle since the beginning of the year but then last week someone ordered 100 postcards
I think we just have to keep “plodding on” …