Last year, I started selling hand made items online as a way of making a little extra money. Given how high quality my items were, I figured that I would be able to instantly make money from them, but I was barely getting any customers. I thought that maybe I was pricing my items too high, so I tried lowering them for a temporary sale, but that didn’t work either. I had to go back to the drawing board and find something that would bring me more customers. After searching for ways to improve, I learned about consultative selling.

I delved more into the information that I found and developed a new strategy that would help me get more sales by focusing on the wants and needs of the customers. I came up with new advertisements, expanded my sales from one website to several to net as many customers as possible, and looked at what customers were saying about other items that were similar to mine to see what I could do to gain their attention. It was a lot of work to adjust everything, but it was worth the effort, because it was going to pay off eventually.

After altering my strategy, the customers began coming in. Even people who had browsed past my offerings without giving them a simple thought before were now interested in what I was selling. The sales were going so well that I was getting to the point where I couldn’t keep up with the amount of orders that were coming in, and I had to temporarily list some items as out of stock. I probably should have anticipated this and ordered more supplies to make my items before this happened, but at least now I’ll know to prepare of a rush in orders in the future.

I’ll have to remember to send a special gift to the worker from the company that did my HVAC repair in NYC. During the Christmas holiday, he fixed my heater right before I was going to have a holiday gathering with my family. I didn’t think that he would be able to come because of the holiday rush, but he did, and he did it not too long after I called the company. The problem with the heater was a small one that didn’t take much work to fix, but I didn’t know that, and I wouldn’t have known where to find it.

The holiday gathering itself was quite a wild one. One of my relatives had a bit too much eggnog to drink, and started making a fool out of himself. He danced a little too hard to the holiday music, started making all kinds of crazy jokes, and eventually he passed out on the couch with an empty bowl on his head. I guess I should be glad that he didn’t throw up all of that eggnog that he drank. It would not have been a treat to clean that up. One of my other relatives was able to drive him home safely.

During the gathering, one of my relatives noticed that it was so warm, and I told them about my recent heater repair. They asked me if I could give them the name of the repair company that I used, because their heater was having some problems. I gave them the information, and even told them the name of the worker who helped me and to ask for him personally because of the good work that he did for my heater. I imagine the company probably didn’t need my help getting new customers, but it helps to spread the good word.

The bird problem at my business is finally gone thanks to the bird wire installation that was done. I had a massive problem with a lot of birds sitting on the windows, leaving droppings on the side of the building, and sometimes on my customers heads. It was the weirdest thing that I’ve seen happen to my business, and I couldn’t just sit back and let the birds have their way. I had to get rid of them as soon as possible or I would lose all of my customers. I looked online for a local company that would be able to get rid of the birds quickly and found one.

The company told me that they would be able to solve my bird problem any time I wanted them to come out to the business. I didn’t want to have them working while my business was operating during normal business hours, so I schedules for them to come early in the morning on the weekend, because on the weekends we open later than normal. They quickly got to work to install the wiring. Once the wire was in place, the birds couldn’t rest on the side of the window.

Maybe it’s just me, but I swear that the number of customers that I’ve been getting has increased since I had the bird wiring installed. The revenue for my business has increased, and the business looks more packed than ever. I could have been making a lot more money this year if I had the wiring installed sooner, but I guess that’s a lesson for me to learn for next time. Never bother putting something off that can be done immediately. Hopefully the birds can find somewhere else to land that allows them to do their business while not ruining someone else’s business.

During the year, I’ve been making upgrades to my home. I pick a part of the home that I think needs to be changed, and then set a budget around it. My latest project was adding glass doors to the showers. The showers are standard bathroom showers that also function as a bathtub, but they used a shower curtain before I had the glass doors installed. Despite being big on making improvements to my home, I’m not willing to do them myself, unless it’s something minor. I used a company that supplies glass shower doors in NJ to have the installation done.

Since my latest project resulted in work being done in the bathrooms, I’ve been thinking about continuing with more bathroom projects. There is currently wallpaper in the bathrooms, and I think that they would look much better with a fresh coat of paint. Technically I could just paint over the wallpaper, but I don’t think that would really look right in the bathrooms. The wallpaper is rather old, since it came with the house. By adding a coat of paint, I’m not only making the bathrooms look good, I’m also preparing them for the future. I’ll probably get tired of the paint color and will eventually want to change it. I can easily put a new coat of paint down with a different color any time I want.

I’ve also been thinking about getting new faucets for the bathrooms. The faucets that are in the bathrooms now work perfectly fine, but they just look so old. I would rather have something more modern, like one of those faucets that can be turned on without even touching it. These faucets have special motion sensors in them that will detect hand movement and turn on the water. I bet doing the electrical wiring for those is difficult.