Summer vacations

Summer is finally here and boy did it come quickly this year! We know that with school getting out and the summer vacation plans scheduled, you may be out of town for a certain amount of time. If you are headed out and not able to fill your orders, please post the dates you will be gone on your store page.
We will look there before notifying you of orders as well as it will be great for customers to know their orders may be delayed until you're back from vacation (or any other event that may take you away from your business).
If you have any questions, just let us know!

We hope that each of you have a fantastic summer!!!

In the meantime, remember to take full advantage of our Business Scholarship Contest (see previous post). It's going to be AWESOME earning money for your business. It's easy to participate!!

Contact us with any questions, comments or concerns or just plain nice kind words.

Daisy Craft Business Scholarship Contest

What is the scholarship? The Daisy Craft Business Scholarship was developed with the intent to do two things:

1. Help shops achieve success by increasing sales

and developing marketing strategies.

2. Offering a reward for those efforts.

How do you qualify for the scholarship contest? You must have an active shop (either hand-made or merchant) on Daisy Craft for the next six months. It does not matter which level of store you operate. Each shop owner who follows the rules for the scholarship will be qualified. The winners are chosen by the amount of points they have, not by the level of store they operate.

How do you enter the contest? You must notify us by e-mailing us at promo@daisycraft.com and let us know that you want to participate. We will send you a confirmation e-mail and then we will begin tracking your points from that date. You can join the contest at any point—but, the sooner, the better!

Deadline for the contest: We are running this scholarship contest for the next six months and will announce the two winners on our Web site on Nov. 7, 2009 when we have our One-Year Anniversary Celebration.

Rules & Guidelines for the contest: Each guideline will have an assigned point value. As you meet each guideline, we will add the assigned points to your shop. For example, if you list the minimum 10 items a month, you will receive 200 points per month you achieve this goal.

1. Maintain an active Daisy Craft account throughout the contest. Active accounts are defined by those that regularly list items. We define regularly listing items as posting or re-posting at least 10 items a month. (Please note, the ten items can be either new items or re-listed items… it just needs to be at least 10 a month). This will help keep your items fresh and if you have the recently listed items feature, it’ll keep your products on the Home page regularly which is vital to increasing sales. 200 points each month this goal is met.

2. Qualified sales of your products (meaning, don’t buy your own). Each time an item of yours is sold, you will receive 50 points. The two shops that have the most sales by Nov. 1, 2009 will receive 1000 bonus points.

3. Provide excellent customer service for your customers! If we receive any negative feedback from buyers, we will deduct 50 points from your shop’s total. Of course, we will work closely with you and the customers to make sure they are legitimate problems so that you’re not docked points because someone was having a bad day or that their mailman was sick for a week and your package was delayed. (It is 50 points per legitimate complaint)

Bonus Points:

Maintain an organized store page that includes all the important information that your customers should and would like to know. For example, “About Us,” “Returns/Shipping/Exchange policies,” Product Listings, Button and so on. –50 points

Purchasing marketing tools: 15 points per item

Purchasing marketing products: 30 points/Bronze, 40 points/Silver and 50 points/Gold

Upgrade your existing store:

Handmade: Standard & Premium: 100 points

Merchant: Bronze: 50 points Silver: 100 points Gold: 150 points

Provide a craft tutorial: 200 points Tutorials must have detailed instructions as well as photos showing the process. Look on the Craft Tips page for examples. They can be 5 minute projects or 2 hour projects… just as long as the tutorial is good quality.

Provide proof of your own marketing efforts: Various points available.

Example, if you post a You Tube video and talk about or link to your Daisy Craft shop—send us the link and we’ll check it out. We will reward your great efforts accordingly! Be creative—after all, that’s what crafters are all about!

Referrals: If you refer someone to Daisy Craft and they open a store, you will receive points according to the level of store they open. They must let us know when they open their new store, they must let us know your Daisy Craft shop name and that you referred them to receive the credit.

Both the new store and the referring store will receive the points as listed below:

Handmade referrals~

Free store: 10 points Standard Store: 100 points Premium Store: 100 points

Merchant referrals~

Bronze store: 50 points Silver store: 100 points Gold: 150 points

What is the scholarship prize? The scholarship prize will start off at $100 dollars per store. We say start off, because as you grow your stores on Daisy Craft and as we grow—we will increase the prize amount. There are no limits on how high the final prize amount will be. It will be up to the growth of the site—which is based on the growth of your stores.

We are starting our contest in the Spring so that we can help you cultivate and plant the seeds of your online business and we’ll help you continue to grow it over the next several months and harvest the rewards this fall.

How will the winner be determined? We will have two winners. We will keep a tally of your points and the shops with the highest points will be selected. If there are multiple shops that have the same score, Daisy Craft team members will look at the quality of products, store pages, marketing techniques and customer satisfaction to make the final determination of the two winners.

Why should I participate in the business scholarship contest? This contest is a total win-win for every participant! If you decide to participate, you are telling yourself you are serious about increasing your store’s success. Even though you may not win, your sales and online branding of your business will surely increase during this process, which is the ultimate goal!