CheapTweet Blog

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Today’s interview is with Vera Battemarco (@getglam). Vera Battemarco was born in Brazil and grew up two blocks from the beach, so the sun, the ocean, the sand and the big open sky have always been a source of inspiration for her. She has been designing and teaching others how to make jewelry since the 1980s.  Currently, she sells both her own designs as well as re-purposed vintage pieces. You can find Vera’s jewelry in her Ruby Lane store and in her Etsy shop, and get to know Vera better through her website, her blog and on Facebook.

Tell us a little about your background.

My academic background is in Architecture and the Arts, but jewelry has always been my passion.

In the early 80s I moved to New York City and immediately felt as if I had found a new home. I worked for Lisandro Sarasola and designed jewelry for his fashion shows. He was then as famous as Carlos Falchi for his beautiful and truly inspired purses and accessories.  Once Lisandro branched out into clothing, I became his Showroom Manager. We sold over $1M of his high end ready to wear that year, a first for his label. Our clients included stores such as Bergdorf, Saks and Neiman Marcus to name a few.  It was a wonderfully fun and exciting time.

As I had a child to raise and did not want him to grow up confined to an apartment we moved to Philadelphia where I continued to work on jewelry and sell to the local boutiques. I also taught basic jewelry making. The classes were small but always packed. It was very rewarding to be able to share my knowledge which is almost entirely self taught.

Upon our return to New York City, the option to bring my business to a new level presented itself. Participating in several different wholesale shows including the JA Show, Accessories and Fame opened new doors. Met wonderful store owners and buyers including the Buyer for the Philadelphia Art Museum, who commissioned pieces, first for the Salvador Dali exhibit and more recently for the Frida Kahlo one.

We are now in a rural area near the Pocono Mountains. The unending year round beauty that surrounds me, although very different from the beaches in Rio, is nonetheless my home and the inspirational source of my new collections.  It also allowed me to revive my passion for vintage jewelry and components.  It seems that the vintage jewelry collection on my site continues to grow and expand. As most of my designs are one of a kind and cannot be reproduced I have rekindled the re-purposing of antique and vintage jewelry and findings.  Many times I will re-purpose a piece of jewelry that cannot be repaired and give it new life incorporated in a new design of my own.  The response to these is tremendous and they sell almost immediately.

How did you get started making jewelry?

My mother always had a wonderful appreciation of hand made things. She is the best seamstress I have ever known. I would always tag along to all the different classes she would take and she took as many as she could. We attended classes from knitting to oil painting. There was always something new to learn. A friend of hers taught her jewelry making and to keep me occupied she handed me pliers, beads and wire and I haven’t stopped since!  When I was 14 we walked into an accessories boutique in Rio. The owner happened to be there and admired my necklace, asking where I got it. I responded that I had made it.  She asked what else I had designed and could I bring it in for her to see. That second meeting resulted in an order for 144 necklaces which sold out in two weeks!  I knew then I had found my calling!

In addition to making and selling jewelry, what are some of the other ventures you’re involved in?

Currently I am an active member of JewelryRing and JewelryCollect, both are groups dedicated to research of Vintage Jewelry, Costume and Fine.

Tell us a little bit about your artwork.  What sorts of pieces do you specialize in and where do you get your inspiration?

Re-purposing feels so right to me now. I have done it in the past but because I now carry Vintage Jewelry on my site, I have great new sources and resources. It’s also a very strong trend in my opinion as we as a society have finally woken up to the fact we can’t just keep using up the planet as we have. With repurposing there is no waste, what would have been deemed useless some years back becomes the foundation for something totally new and unique.  I know I am not alone as the response to the collection has been tremendous.

How do you market or promote your work?

Always have professional business cards with you is the number one rule. I have my website which is optimized for search engines and acts as the HQ for online operations. I participate in forums, have two blogs (one is geared for collectors and the public at large, the other to designers and crafty people like me), Twitter, Facebook, exchanging links.  We also do art shows and even the better flea markets like GreenFlea, on Sundays at Columbus Avenue and 76th Street on the Upper West Side in Manhattan.  I started my current business there 11 years ago and many of my first clients have become wonderful friends.  Love seeing them!

How do you use Twitter to help with your artwork and your business?

Whenever a new item or design is added to the site it is tweeted, whenever we have a special promotion, I post it on CheapTweet.  Informational blog posts are also tweeted and I started a Twibe.

Do you have any tips or advice for someone just getting started selling her/his own work?

You have to be passionate about what you do, really passionate. Believe in yourself and your work. Be smart, focused and be persistent. And learn, learn, learn. As my mom always says, knowledge does not take up any space!

At CheapTweet, we love to talk to people who run their own businesses and sell things they make. If you’re interested in being interviewed for our blog, please send us an email!

A recent ReadWriteWeb article about Twitter traffic revealed that Twitter only sends a small amount of traffic to online retailers. According to Hitwise data from the UK, about 5% of Twitter’s downstream traffic goes to retailers. A lot of that is due to the fact that retailers are just starting to figure out how to best utilize Twitter, a generally social (and not commercial) channel, to drive traffic to their e-commerce sites.

So, what’s a retailer to do? Is Twitter worth the time? And if it is, how should you use it? At CheapTweet, we certainly believe Twitter is worth most online retailers’ time, provided it’s used effectively. Here are a few Twitter tips for retailers.

Your Profile

• Always include a link to your store. Give your followers something to click on!
• Write a brief bio. Be sure to describe what you sell or do so new followers will know what to expect.  Don’t leave this area blank, no matter how self-explanatory your Twitter name might be.
• Include a picture or logo. Many people will not follow Twitter accounts with no picture. Include something visual for people to remember.
• Take advantage of the background. You can upload an image to the background of your Twitter profile. Consider something with your company’s colors or include an logo, photo or more text to describe your store.

Your Tweets

• Call your followers to action. Encourage your followers to do something. Be descriptive and active in your tweet language.
• Tweet diversely. Yes, you want to post links to your store, your blog, or your website, but include tweets about other stuff, as well. Post links to other interesting articles or sites, post some tweets without links, reply to others – just mix it up. Most people don’t want to follow a boring or spammy feed.
• Use keywords. Make sure your tweets include keywords that will help you be found in search. Not only do people use Twitter search to find other Twitterers, but tweets are also indexed by other sites (like CheapTweet, which is indexed by Google), so keyword-rich tweets will help people find your profile, both on Twitter and off.
• Be succinct and retweetable. Just because you have 140 characters doesn’t mean you should use all of them. Try to keep your tweets to around 120 characters so your followers have room to easily retweet you.
• Include unique links. Don’t just tweet the same link over and over. Use a URL shortening service like bit.ly to shorten unique links for each new tweet. This is especially important if you’re tweeting about different products or pages.

Promotions and Interaction

• Provide special Twitter-only offers. Your followers are a dedicated group of customers; reward them with special offers. Tweet coupon codes, limited-time deals, contests and giveaways.
• Tweet about promotions a few times. Twitter is a fast-moving medium. Don’t expect that your followers will see a tweet the first time you post it. Don’t post it three times right in a row, though; post it at different times over a few hours or days to be sure different groups of followers will see it.
• Engage followers. Think about unique and interactive promotions you can do on Twitter. Be engaged with your followers – ask questions, start conversations, answer inquiries.
• Post links to sales and news. Make sure you tweet about any sales or discounts your store is running, even if they’re not Twitter-only specials. And let your followers know what’s going on with your store and your company.
• Monitor your brand. Set up an RSS feed of the Twitter search for your company and product names. This way, you can keep track of what people are saying about it and respond quickly (and helpfully).
• Experiment! The best part of Twitter is that we’re all still figuring out how to best use it. Don’t be afraid to try new promotions and ideas, see what works and use that knowledge for next time.

Just like other channels, using Twitter effectively means providing relevant and interesting content and participating in the conversation. If you have other tips for retailers on Twitter, we’d love to hear them in the comments!

Here’s a very helpful CheapTweet how-to for retailers from @SusanDickenson of Home Accents Today.

If you’ve ever wondered why you can’t find yourself in Twitter search, this explanation from Twitter might help.

Check out our latest seller interview. This week we talked with Jenifer Bryan (also known as @lucybluestudio), an artist and designer in Austin, TX.

As always, Mashable comes up with a useful list of social media resources. This one is about five ways Twitter can save you money.

And, in case you missed it, we’re extremely excited to announce the launch of CheapTweet Stores with @Overstock, @DealTaker and @VRdeals!

We find thousands of deals a day and post them all to CheapTweet. But we only tweet about a few deals every day from the CheapTweet Twitter account.  Sometimes it can be time-consuming to browse through the 500,000 deals on CheapTweet.com (though I highly recommend our new smarter, faster search) or find what you’re looking for in our Twitter stream. And sometimes you want to receive certain deals in real-time. This is why you might like an RSS feed of our deals.

What is RSS?

If you’re not familiar with RSS, it’s an automatically-generated feed of a website’s content. You can subscribe to and read this feed in any number of feed readers and personalized home pages, like iGoogle, My Yahoo!, Bloglines, Google Reader and lots more.  RSS feeds allow you to read all the latest updates from your favorite websites in one place.

How do I get an RSS feed for CheapTweet deals?

You can subscribe to an RSS feed of any CheapTweet deals you like.  Most people tend to like RSS feeds of the following:

• Every deal we pull in from Twitter
  
• Only the deals that become Cheapest Tweets
• All the deals in a specific category
• Any deals corresponding to any search term

Basically, just go to the page you want an RSS feed of. From there it’s easy to find the RSS feed. Most web browsers will find it automatically. For example, if you’re using Firefox and a page you’re on has an RSS feed, Firefox will recognize it automatically and let you know by displaying the orange RSS icon in your browser’s address bar. To subscribe, just click that button and follow the instructions.

Our next interview is with Jenifer Bryan (@lucybluestudio). Jenifer is an artist and designer from Austin, Texas who loves the idea of making wearable and portable pieces of art. She sells her artwork on Etsy. You can also check out her blog and find her on Twitter.

How did you get started making jewelry and other kinds of artwork?

I’ve always been a maker. My grandmother and I would spend the summers making dolls, sewing props for games and drawing on every piece of scrap paper in the house. My dad got me interested in dollhouses and bought me my first package of polymer clay. My interest in miniatures eventually morphed into jewelry making. Throw in a couple of degrees in graphic design and photography and a love of travel and you have a mishmash of experiences that had to find an outlet. I think design school gave me the hand skills I needed to be comfortable making things I felt would stand up to everyday wear and tear, so in 2006 I finally started up Lucy Blue Studio.

Tell us a little bit about your artwork.  What sorts of pieces do you specialize in?

I specialize in belt buckles but also make rings, pendants, business card cases and cuff links. Basically, I create images, either through my photography or digital illustration/collage, and use jewelry blanks as the frames for my artwork. While I have a lot of art on my walls, I prefer my art to be functional, to be able to go places, to be out in the world.

Where do you get your inspiration?

Like most artists, my inspiration comes from everything around me. I am an avid reader and sometimes the way an author words something brings a particularly vivid image to mind or evokes a certain emotion that I feel is worth capturing. I am also very inspired by my dreams and find that my subconscious is much better at processing everything that has happened that day.

How do you market or promote your work?

I try to blog on a semi-regular basis. I also have a ball on Twitter. I relist and post new work and try to wear my pieces where ever I go. I have also recently hired someone to help me focus my efforts and market my work more effectively on a local level. Sometimes I think I am too much of a fluttery artist type and need help with the practical business aspects.

How do you use Twitter to help with your artwork and your business?

I use Twitter to share any specials I am running and announce new designs. I also use it to connect to other artists and just stay connected to the creative community. Twitter has been a great tool to find out about new artists, techniques and venues to show work.

Do you have any tips or advice for someone just getting started selling her/his own work?

My advice is to just be yourself. People can sense when your work exists for the sole purpose of making money. So I advocate making things that are true to you and keep you smiling. Being genuine goes a long way. It is also very important to be a part of a community. The more people you know and are involved with, the bigger impact you can have with word of mouth. Be original and exciting and people will want to help you and tell their friends about you. Also, be professional. Keep deadlines, have exceptional customer service, stand behind your work. Pay attention to details. If you make jewelry, keep the back side as clean and finished as the front. People do look.

At CheapTweet, we love to talk to people who run their own businesses or sell things they make. If you’re interested in being interviewed for our blog, please send us an email!  And check out our other seller interviews.

Today we’re pleased to announce that we’ve partnered with some of the biggest brands on the web including Overstock.com, VacationRentals.com and DealTaker.com to launch a new feature called CheapTweet Stores. So what are CheapTweet Stores? They’re the world’s first online stores devoted to items being sold on Twitter. Each of our launch partners now has their own store on CheapTweet where we showcase their best Twitter deals. So what does that mean for you?

• Never miss a great deal. Twitter moves in real-time. That means if you follow a brand, you’ll probably miss some of their great money-saving deals. We make it easy to keep up and keep saving money. Not only can you get all their latest deals in one right place but you can grab an RSS feed and stay up to date. You can even search directly within their deals. Why not check out Dealtaker’s store, get their RSS feed and search for that last minute Father’s Day deal?
• Get special offers and enter contests. Each CheapTweet Store has a sidebar filled with constantly changing special offers directly from the store owner. Right now you can win a celebrity weekend from VacationRentals or get your own family bailout to the tune of $10,000 by Overstock.
• Find out what people are saying. We all want to stay informed about the stores we buy from and see what other people think. Each store has a Mentions tab that shows you everything being said on Twitter about them. See what people are saying about DealTaker right now.
• Get all the deals from a brand in one place. Did you know that Overstock.com shares deals from @overstock and @OAuctions on Twitter? Or that DealTaker has lots of content coordinators sharing the great stuff they find on their site? A CheapTweet store brings all the great offers from different Twitter accounts run by a brand into a single searchable stream.

Over the coming weeks we’ll be adding new stores and new features so stay tuned!

Interested in getting a CheapTweet Store for your brand?
We’ve got plenty of information for brand owners on our site. We’d love to have you, so go ahead and request a store from us and we’ll get you set up. It’s quick and easy to get started.

A recap of the interesting stories and articles we tweeted about in the past week.

First, a bit about what’s new with CheapTweet. Better search, deals in your city, new blog features and more!

Here are some very handy tips from @wisebread on how to keep summer electric bills low.

We discussed a somewhat controversial Slate article about how Etsy might be peddling “a false feminist fantasy”

@SavvyAuntie will be live-tweeting for TNT  during their new show Saving Grace. There’s a good writeup of her sponsored tweeting on Mashable.

We’re trying to learn a bit more about our followers. If you haven’t done it yet, would you mind answering a few brief questions?  It’ll take 30 seconds.

At CheapTweet, we want to make sure we’re tweeting about deals our followers find relevant and interesting. So, in order to get to know you a little better, we wrote up a short survey.

Would you mind answering a few quick questions? It’ll take 30 seconds, I promise.

This survey is completely anonymous and all questions are optional. And we’re not going to sell this info to anyone; we just want to make sure we’re being useful.

Thank you for your help!

For this week’s faves and saves, we’re highlighting some very good deals on very cool home decor.

Art prints in a variety of sizes are 20% off from @jenbee

Handmade ceramics and pottery for 15% off from @barbdunshee

Vinyl wall art decals for 15% off from @ChuckEByrdDecal

Unframed original art with free shipping from @SJAfana

Vintage home decor on sale from @harlowmonroe