Caffiene is my god

So I'm taking a quick, jittery break from studying. By the way, if anyone wants to know about marginal propensity to consume or save, real GDP, aggregate demand or supply and/or disposable income, ask me, since I now understand it enough to feel relatively confident about my midterm tomorrow. Does anyone else love caffiene this much? Seriously. Best invention ever. Anyway so I'm officially scheduling in time to work for OmgLia since I'm not getting much done updating at 3am every night... from now on, Friday is OmgLia day. I will wake up early and report to work at the library, and work diligently until I am all caught up! Mostly for my benefit, but also for all those who are curious what tasks go into running a DIY shop from a dorm room, here is my To Do List for the next few Fridays:

1. Update Etsy/website with finished pictures (finished means cropped, resized, background whited out, and any contrast or color adjustments.)

a) Alice in Wonderland Line (preview to the left)
b) New stud earrings
c) Necklaces, earrings and clearance updates (need to move old items to clearance!)
d) Add new photoshoot pics to existing items


2. Advertising

• a) Set advertising budget, contact collected potential advertisers to purchase slots


• b) Write advertising code and page for OmgLia to bring in more advertising revenue


• c) Make new advertisement banner, whore it everywhere

3. Accounting

• a) finish updating 2009/2008 balance sheet using paypal, propay and income statement


• b) Add any values from receipts including post office fees, credit card purchases, etc


• c) Collect data from net income or loss per month


• d) all kinds of data analysis! (this part is only fun if you are a huge excel nerd, which I am!!)

4. Newsletter

• a) Depending on budget, purchase newsletter production company like Vertical Response


• b) Develop template for regular newsletters


• c) Set up a schedule for sending newsletters (Currently it's something like whenever I feel like it, which is not often enough to bring back many customers!)


• d) Create newsletters with original content, coupon codes, pictures, etc that people will actually read, not send to spam box, and perhaps even click on once in a while!

5. Blog

• a) Brainstorm blog posts based on polling various readers about what they want to read about. Create blog posts. Post regularly!


• b) Research ways to get more traffic to my blog (keywords?)


• c) Figure out how the hell to move this blog over to http://blog.omglia.com/ >.<

6. Etc

• a) using new site banner, design new bag toppers, etsy banner, link banners, and business cards.


• b) order more business cards


• c) Depending on budget, purchase Flickr account and upload as much as possible to it.


• d) take pictures of any leftover inventory to upload to site


• d) make more stuff (funny, you'd think this would be a more important one, but honestly with all the rest of the stuff I have to do, creating inventory is really NOT as prioritized as one would assume. They should tell you these things BEFORE you start your own DIY business!)

Anyway. So that's that. Now I shall return to studying. PS, note for all college students reading this: IF YOU HAVE NOT BEEN TO YOUR UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, VISIT IT ASAP. I've only recently made studying at the library a habit of mine, and I've noticed SUCH a change in productivity from when I tried to study (unsuccesfully) in my dorm room. Also, the resources of the IU library are absolutely staggering: everything from paid subscriptions to any online article I could ever want to read, to one-handed keyboards in case I break my arm, to printers capable of creating life-size posters, to ... well, books. They even have a cafe downstairs with SUSHI, and 5 floors of studying lounges. AWESOME. I'm making a library kit with all the neccessaries to take with me every day when I stop by here for HOURS. Ok. seriously, back to studying. And also my favorite picture of me from this weekend's photoshoot!

Craft Fair in 1.5 Weeks!

So, I'm back from my nice little mini-vacay in time to realize that my first ever craft fair is next-next Saturday! Yikes! I know that you all want to hear the mushy details about my visit home but I hope that this picture of 2 turtles we saw at the Zoo on Sunday will suffice for now (infer what you will. By thw way, if I ever have a turtle, I'm naming it Skipperdee like in Eloise.)
Anyway, because the craft fair is so soon, I'm working my butt off starting today. I've been making stuff nonstop since 10pm (it's 3:30 now! Class in the morning! Woohoo.) I made 10 keychains (they're fun! Why haven't I made more before this?) and 5 necklaces. So that's a decent $100 minimum if they sell. I also sold a bunch of stuff today for some odd reason (3 pairs of earrings and 2 supply lots) so that's more stuff to send out and less to sell at the fair. Oh well, at least I came home to TONS OF BUTTONS for my wholesale order (still need more though, poo.)
Anyway, here's a list of things (mostly for my benefit, skim if you must)to do before my fair:
1. Finish felt sign, sew letters onto sheet.
2. Finish label cards, attach logo onto cardboard backings.
3. Steal more bags from the campus center (ssh, I already paid 50k for them.)
4.Create a giant excel file of all the items I am bringing to the fair
5. Work on getting omglia.com functional (possibly before next fair)
6. Sew the half-made wallets, and make more!
7. Sew some tops!! Lots of them!!
8. More necklaces! and earrings!
9. Big batch of button stud earrings: assemble and decorate
10. Get propay account set up
11. Set up tent outside to test it out, check for weights
12. Put all the stuff from my Things to Bring to a Craft Fair post in a box, ready to go.
13. Possibly start work on portfolio
14. Take a giant 2hr round trip (ugh) visit to the mall for more buttons, more keychain pulls and flickr prints at target (which are apparently free) for portfolio
Phew. Hey, is anyone else NOT looking forward to finals which are conveniently RIGHT after my fair? Relaxing ... what's that?