#9 - My Daily Routine

I realized this week that I have finally gotten into a routine with my Etsy store.

The day starts when I get to my day job in the morning. Log in to work e-mail, log in to Etsy. Check work e-mail and do anything that needs to get done immediately. But as soon as there's a delay (and by "delay" I mean saving a document and waiting the 2 seconds for Word to save), I'm back at Etsy to click into my store and check my views.

Once I feel I've gotten some "real" work done, I'm back to my Etsy store. I'll usually check the forums to see what people are talking about, maybe add a few comments to the threads.

Then I'll log in to Twitter. I'll twitter about something that I did the night before or a random thought. Since I still only have two items in my store, I limit myself to tweeting about them twice a week max. And that's two store-related tweets per week, not two for each item. I've noticed that there are a lot of people I've started to follow who constantly tweet about new items in their store, items that they're working on, or items they've seen on Etsy that caught their attention. However, since I am at work, I try to limit how many links I click on (don't want to make IT too suspicious...if they aren't already). I'm not sure how many of my followers also have day jobs and limit (or IT blocks) their ability to click to certain website links.

Back to my "real" work now...I try to make sure that I do at least a full half hour of work between breaks to my Etsy shop. However, that in no way means that my Etsy breaks are only a half hour...sometimes they're relatively short if none of the top forum topics relate to me, other times they're about an hour.

I'll usually tweet again during my lunch break, and that's when I am also most active in the Etsy forums. It's a struggle to pull myself away from Etsy after lunch, but I try to get myself away and do some work until 3:00. Once 3:00 hits, though, it's hard for me to continue focusing. And this was true even before Etsy...3:00 is just when I checkout. Probably related to that being the time I'd get home from school from kindergarten through senior year of high school

Before leaving work at 4:30 or 5:00, it's time for one last tweet. Then, I head home to craft, design, twitter, and post in the forums some more. For the next few days, I'm hoping the focus is more on the crafting and designing part, though...

#8 - tweet, tweet, tweet

So, I finally did it...I joined twitter. It's filling that the hole that AIM left me...

When I had been on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), I had some great away messages. Granted being in college and trying to find ways to procrastinate definitely lent itself to some creative away messages. And, the more often the message changed, the more likely I was writing a big paper.

But, then I left AIM. Partially on a dare that I couldn't quit, partially because it had only become a procrastination tool and I rarely talked to my friends online anymore. The thing I couldn't get over was leaving random away messages sharing something about myself. Anonymously.

So, I gave in to twitter. I can post updates as often as I like about whatever I like. See a funny clip? Post it. Have a random thought that I just feel needs to be shared? Done. And, of course, advertise a new item recently added to my shop every now and then. Not too often, though.

If you want to follow me: www.twitter.com/ecaecho. I'd love to see you out there!