Why you shouldn't advertise your business

So much uproar on Etsy right now with the roll out of the new search ads.

Should you buy one?  Should you not? Should you advertise your whole shop or a few items?  Or maybe someone else's items?  Is that even an option?  How would that help you?  Is Etsy just a giant spaghetti monster where one strand is Etsy, another facebook, another google and the last ratemypoo.com?

These questions really need no answer.  Cause the conclusion you all need is obvious.  Don't bother advertising.  

Yes folks, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.  Why?  Cause it's right.  And when you're right, why bother listening to anyone else's opinions or advice?  They're just wasting your time- you know since you're cushioned in the bubble wrap of rightness that is your opinion. 

But really advertising is a waste.  I once spent $5 to put my Etsy shop url in the program for an elementary school Christmas pageant.  I only got one visit and the person sent me a nasty convo about how my items were so inappropriate for children.  And that experience told me everything I need to know about marketing and advertising.  Don't do it.

Sure, you could spend tons of money and get a sale here or there.  Maybe even a good number of sales.  But I can pretty much state with certainty that you won't get as much joy out of those sales as if you spent your allotted advertising budget on a puppy or perhaps some Hello Kitty pasties.  And therefore the logical conclusion is nipple decorations are more effective for you than advertising.  

You may already be dismissing what I'm saying as hogwash.  Heck, you might've be chuckling to yourself thinking, "sure knot.  save your advertising dollars.  there will be less competition in the marketplace for me! muwahahaha!"

First, stop right there.  I'm the only one allowed to do an evil laugh on my blog. Check out my blog policies (which you can only see in the transaction email you receive after buying something in my shop).  

Second, see that?  I lied.  I said you could get my blog policies after you buy something from me.  That's not true.  They're sewn into the lining of every cozy I make so you can see it after you actually receive the cozy and leave me positive feedback.  Muwahahaha! (that's me doing the evil laugh.  Totally within the rules).  

Third, yeah, I lied again.  Why?  To prove a point. Which one?  That lying is better than advertising.  It's really the whole basis of advertising.  "hey, come buy this great thing at a great price!"  Shyeah right.  That may be true in some cases.  But in reality it's "hey, buy this great thing that's more expensive than the one just like it where the seller isn't spending any money on advertising!"

Conclusion?  Liars advertise and non advertisers prosper.  Try to find all those ads from shops that aren't advertising.  It's a new thing I'm going to refer to as "browsing".  Buy from them.  

Thursday poetry break

God's World

O World, I cannot hold thee close enough!
    Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
  Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour!  That gaunt crag
To crush!  To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
              But never knew I this;
              Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart, -- Lord, I do fear
Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me, -- let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Midnight in Paris

I celebrated my birthday over the weekend.  When you think about it, why do we celebrate our birthdays? Why are we happy to get older?  Is it to just to mark that we didn't get hit by a bus or have kidney failure since our last birthday?  I'm starting to think it's a played out tradition.  Oh great, pat ourselves on the back and ask for presents and cake just because we didn't eat meat laced with deadly E coli anytime since the same day last year.  Well done.  Celebrate everyone! Yeeeeee haaaaaa!

I suppose I am happy to get older.  I am officially at the age where people start dying, and not just in freak accidents.  There were so many chances for me to die before now, and I evaded them all.  And now I have to dodge death's stare for an additional 360-something days before I can break the tape of survival yet again.

To celebrate this year's win in my race with death, my husband had a day's worth of activities planned.  I love to hike.  I may seem far too smart and funny to enjoy spending time in nature, but I assure you it's all a facade.  I'm smart enough to know it's more fun to be alone in the woods than be in a pub with most of humanity.  However, the trail turned into the set of Arachnophobia the sequel (I can't remember if there already were a sequel.  If so, this was the third installment).  Webs were strung across the trail about every 25 feet.  This was clearly a poorly used path and I was clearly trying very hard to be bitten by something very scary and dare the calendar to stop flipping on its way to my next birthday.

So after only an hour or so we turned back and unknowingly stumbled upon a miniature golf course and arcade.  You know that place in the Karate Kid where he takes Elisabeth Shue on their date?  Like with the arcade and bumper boats and stuff?  

You're the best... around! 

It was just like that, except without teenagers.  All the teenagers must stay at home on their iphones, xboxes and whatever the hell else they use to have as little physical contact with other human beings as possible (come to think of it, that's not a bad idea).

Anywho, I played Ms. Pacman and thought about how quickly life goes by.  I also thought about how much cooler it is to live now when arcade games don't need coins, but rather you get a declining balance card to swipe through the machines.  Granted, the skee ball game was crappy as the balls are no longer wooden. I won't make a wooden ball joke.  I'm too old for that now.  But the plasticy rubbery things they had totally didn't work with my well practiced ball roll from yesteryear.  My time of skee ball champion is long passed.  I can't even pass it on as I doubt anyone much younger than I am even knows what skee ball is.  Do they have skee ball for the Wii?  If not, skee ball fans are screwed.

There was a moment where I was drinking a blue Icee and watching my husband play a video game- just like all those idiot girls in all those films. I was literally in 1985.  It was awesome. 

I won't go on to describe the whole day.  It's probably pretty boring sounding to the rest of you.  But I will add that we saw Midnight in Paris that evening.  It centers around a man who gets to travel back in time to an era he idealized- 1920s Paris.  It is so gorgeous it made me want to puke.  Alas he has to decide whether to live in present time or the past, and all that entails. 

Shall I stay with the gorgeous woman in the past or the gorgeous woman in the present?

I shall not spoil the film for you here.  I will simply add that while reminiscing about the 80s we have to remember- our hair was stupid. Our clothes were worse.  AIDS was the scariest thing ever and all the bad guys in films were still Soviets.  Now we barely wear any clothes.  Cancer of weirder and weirder body parts is the scariest thing ever, maybe only second to the bacteria we've created that's immune to antibiotics.  And all the bad guys in films are middle eastern terrorists.

Not much has changed when you think about it.   Oh yeah, except that I'm old as fuck.