I Need to Get My Arse In Gear....

Last Update: April 24, 2012

Some of you may have noticed that I was MIA yesterday. Well, yesterday was not one of my better days, especially since the JOB had me literally sick to my stomach. Luckily doing a bit better today, but now I find myself in what seems like crunch time, to get one of my pet toy site profitable in only 2 months time.

Why only 2 months you may ask? Well, that is were the sickness comes in. To those of you who don't know, I currently work FT as an IT Consultant at a large Pharmaceutical company in the area. Luckily the job allows me to work from home, but on the last go round, my teams contract was only renewed for 6 mos, so that puts my current end date at June 30th.

While everyone loves our work, and is happy with the job we are doing, I found out yesterday that said Pharmaceutical company wants the company that currently owns the contract for our work to continue to keep working on the task, but they are unwilling to shell out any additional funds, pretty much expecting the owner of the contract to find room in "their" budget to cover the salaries of all the contractors working on the job, instead of it being a shell game of sorts of company A paying company B who pays company C (the one I work for) with B and C making a little bit of profit.

In addition to this, a large amount of layoffs are to occur within the technology group of the Pharmaceutical company on June 1st. These are not contractor jobs mind you, they are FT employee jobs of the Pharmaceutical company itself. This pretty much means they are going to be letting a huge portion of the SME (subject matter experts) go as a cost savings.

What I don't understand is how can you expect critical work to get done when you get rid of half of your support base, not to mention the fact that you are not willing to pay any additional money yet still expect all the work to get done? This in turn places me in a difficult position. For the first time I have serious concerns about not having a job come July 1st. Everyone is hoping that this company will see the light and realize they need to pay in order to get the work done, but I am honestly not sure.

Now is the point were I need to ask for help/feedback. I have the bare bones of my Jennies Pet Corner website in place and I need some feedback, primarily on the look/feel and content of the home page.

http://jenniespetcorner.com/

Am I on the right path as far as what I have explained in my home page, or does it need a re-work? Right Now its is targeting 2 keywords, Crochet Kitty Jingle Ball and Crochet Puppy Dog Ball.

I welcome any feedback you can provide as I need to get to work, and fast. I am looking to make at least $100 a week, if not more from this site, but I know some of it will be limited by how quickly I can make the toys.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

*** UPDATE ***

I also had an idea of adding a shop page to my site with a form of a plugin that would point back to my Etsy shop. The Etsy Showcase For Facebook App does pretty much what I would like, but the only problem is there doesn't seem to be a similar one for Wordpress. That would give me the chance to have someone look at the most recent items I have for sale, and if they clicked on an item it would bring them to Etsy.  There are plenty of mini widgets out there, I currently have one on my site, but not really sure if thats the path I want to follow.

Any suggestions on that would help as well :-)

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kyle Premium Plus
For me, I would like to see your images link to your Etsy page as well...I think that would get a lot of click throughs and lead a lot more people's eyes to seeing your Etsy page. I think that you have a good product (as apparent by the reviews) and now it is just a matter of getting more eyes on your product and perhaps utilizing your existing product knowledge to diversify your product offering.

I also see another wonderful opportunity here within WA actually. There are many people that use Etsy here at WA and MANY people outside of WA that use Etsy. What if you offered some training in here (via tutorial or video) and then pointed people to check out your training on "topic_a_of_Etsy" and to sign-up for a free trial. This is going to be another very effective techniques going forward for affiliates and something that you could run in parallel with your existing offering.
smokeywins Premium
I completely forgot about linking those 2 images. I had links on the feedback but forgot about the kitty toy pics. That has been fixed :-)

Thanks for the idea about the Etsy training. I know you had mentioned it before, but I haven't taken action on it yet, mostly because I don't feel I have enough knowledge just yet to help others sell successfully on Etsy as I haven't accomplished that yet myself, at least not without spending my own money. Will add it to the list to brainstorm :-)
kyle Premium Plus
Success is not always money....just remember that. Many people could use help with their stores in a variety of ways, take your Facebook plugin for example....take building a site geared for etsy campaigns. You know a lot more than I think you realize!
suem Premium
I love your hand made toys but if you are relying on these for a real income and the amount you can earn depends on how many you can make then I think I would agree with Deezdz, you probably need to increase your product range. Perhaps you could recommend some other pet related products - things that you would personally endorse - good luck!
smokeywins Premium
Thanks for your feedback. This site is in reality the first of many that i plan to work on. I guess I can say its my guinea pig of sorts, to try and see if I can successfully put my understanding of the process to work. I do own a 2nd Etsy shop, Jennies Home Made Goods ( http://www.etsy.com/shop/jennieshomemadegoods ) which I plan to add a few other items to when I have a chance, but I figured I'd start with the pet toys as they have proven to be more popular than the inventory in my other shop. I do also have a few other pet toy ideas, just haven't made them yet.
Deezdz Premium
How awful Jennifer...that would make me sick to my stomach.

Your Milo is a sweetie! I noticed you didn't have anything under your Blog which might be helpful. Are you getting traffic? If it were me, I think I might add some more toys/product and focus on driving more traffic to the site.

I really hope everything turn out ok.
smokeywins Premium
Thanks for the feedback. Adding content to the blog was the next step. Just wanted to make sure the content on my site was good before moving on to the next step.
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