Where to start? What a nice week, lots of orders, lots of lovely emails. What a difference a couple of weeks make. I worked out recently that next year will be my 30th anniversary, I will have been running my business for a whole 30 years! I realise that many of you reading this weren't born when I started, I have had several people mention recently that they bought bugs from me as a child and now they are buying them for their own children. I think this is really lovely but I have been seriously looking at other options lately. I need to improve my sales to work ratio if I am to keep going. Nobody can sustain working long hours for so little money, however much I love the bugs (and my customers). I feel I am at last on the right track. The newsletter has certainly been well received, I've had lots of positive feedback. The half price postage offer has gone down well but I would tweak it a little next time. I really should have set the minimum spend a little higher for this offer as I have had a great deal of small orders, which take up time and result in little profit once I have subsidised the postage. I have put a lot of effort into learning about the functions on my website and I am pretty pleased with myself! The 'extra special short term offers' are a real hit and I will keep accessing my prices and keep going with these. I have a lot of customers who log in each day to check on my site and I am very happy for these people to 'grab a bargain' when they see it. Last Sunday my long suffering husband helped me set up the long awaited "Tarantula Gallery". This idea was very popular on my old website but I have never managed to set it up on this site. The USP (I got this from The Apprentice - unique selling point) is that the photo and description are of the actual spider that is for sale. In time I hope to add several photos of each spider and I will certainly be adding more spiders to the gallery. What I am so pleased about is that I actually entered the spiders myself. Hubby kept trying to take over but I persevered and got there in the end. I do realise how frustrated my poor hubby was but I need to be able to do these things myself. If I put it on his never ending list of things to do, it generally takes him months to get around to it and the whole idea is that the gallery needs to be current. Once a spider has sold it is obviously taken off of the site. There is no point in keeping the photo and description because each spider is different and has to be set up individually. I will see how things go, if the gallery doesn't result in more sales then I won't bother! It could be that another of my bright ideas hits the dust but hopefully not. It would be good to extend the gallery to other bugs as well. The first of my Katydid Bush crickets have just matured and they look absolutely stunning. They have beautiful bright green wings. I really hope to breed them but I don't have a great track record with Bush crickets. I generally find the eggs either get too dry or too damp but I will certainly try and get it right this time.
I am off to a reptile show this weekend. Hopefully I will get in this time, last year we queued for two hours in the car park and then got turned away because the hall was full to capacity. I am assured that things will be better organised this year. I understand there were lots of bugs and spiders as well as gorgeous reptiles last year. Hopefully I will pick up some great new stock but I must be careful not to get carried away as I will be busy with my son's wedding next week. He will be marrying his lovely bride on Friday (one week today) so time with the bugs will be limited and sorry but there will be no blog next Friday. The wedding is not local so we will be travelling up the day before. I hope to still do some posting on Thursday morning but please get your orders in as quickly as possible. I will post out as many orders as I can but some may need to be held over until the following week.
Our daughter returns from the Isle of Wight this evening. It sounds like she has had a great time, the BBC were filming at the camp site and have been following her and her friends around for the week. Goodness knows what will be on the telly! I had a call this week from a TV talent show. They wondered if I had an interesting act to do with the bugs. I instantly said "no thanks" but I have put forward my daughter. Sadly I can't think of any talent that she has beyond 'talking incessantly' (I can't imagine where she gets that from). I think my two year old (almost 3, going on 10) great niece/goddaughter would be brilliant singing along with a really giant Hissing cockroach but sadly she isn't so keen. The singing bit is ok, she likes Katy Perry songs but she hates my bugs! (I blame her mum and dad).
Lastly my comping (entering competitions) is going well. I have had lots of small wins recently, butter dish, apron, theatre tickets, digital photo frame and then yesterday I got a call telling me that I have won £1,000! A good week all round.
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