Dual Language / Dos Idiomas

From now on I will be posting in both English and Spanish. The translations are courtesy of Google translate.

The reason for this is that there appears to be considerably less information on the internet regarding marcasite jewellery in the Spanish language and given the number of Spanish speaking internet users it seems sensible to post in both languages.

De ahora en adelante voy a publicar en Inglés y Español. Las traducciones son cortesía de Google Translate .

La razón de esto es que no aparece información a ser considerablemente menor en el Internet en relación con la joyería marcasita en el idioma español y dado el número de usuarios de Internet de habla española parece razonable puesto en ambos idiomas.

Moving

English;

Due to my wifes arthritis we are having to move abroad as she cannot cope with the weather here in the UK. We will be based in Thailand from around the middle of this month.

Our retail website - www.qtsilver.com - will continue to operate under new management.

I am afraid that our wholesale website has had to close, but hopefully we will be able to restart operations from Thailand, once we are settled.


Español

Debido a la artritis mis esposas que tienen que trasladarse al extranjero ya que no puede hacer frente con el clima aquí en el Reino Unido. Estaremos con sede en Tailandia desde a mediados de este mes.

Nuestro sitio web al por menor - www.qtsilver.com - continuará operando bajo una nueva administración.

Me temo que nuestro sitio web al por mayor ha tenido que cerrar, pero espero que será capaz de reiniciar las operaciones de Tailandia, una vez que se liquidan.

Wholesale Marcasite

I have just opened a wholesale marcasite site, which aims to serve the UK small retailer/reseller market.

Lines will be limited initially but will be built up in time.

Anyone who is interested should check out the website at;

www.wholesalemarcasite.co.uk

Email Marketing (3)

My figures for my first email;

Sent	Bounces		Opt-outs	Opens	Clicks
1058	8.2%		1.1%	31.2%	47.5%

I checked on industry averages and these are not too bad.

I was not expecting fantastic figures as I have rather neglected my mailing list, so probably it includes a fair few out of date email addresses.

If anybody is thinking of trying email marketing with Constant Contact please message me first at info@qtsilver.com . Why? Because they have a "refer a friend" scheme - the new user (you) gets $30 in credits and I get $30 in credits - so pretty much a win-win situation. As a small business now really is the time to make sure that you get value from every £/$ so such offers are certainly worth trying to take advantage of.

Email Marketing contd.

Signed up with Constant Contact, having had a play with their email creation facilities, and sent out my first Email. I put on offer a bracelet that hasn't sold too well (I know why as the photos we have taken just don't do the piece justice). Was actually quite exciting when we got our first order in, which was within 20 minutes of the email being sent!

So far I am very happy with the results as I have had far more traffic today than usual (50%++). Still quite a lot of unopened mail but I think my figures will improve as many users have used work rather than personal addresses so may not see my message until Monday.


I will publish my figures on here in the next couple of days in terms of - bounce rate, open %, click through % etc. Probably just talking to myself here but, who knows, maybe some other small business owners can pick up some tips, even if it is learning from my mistakes.

Email Marketing

I about to start an email marketing campaign where those signing up to my website www.qtsilver.com get regular special offers on my jewellery - which I should say is already incredibly competitively priced (but I would say that wouldn't I).

I have certainly been slow to try this approach and my base of people who have signed up to my site is now sitting at over 1000! I think it is one of the problems of having a small business, you never seem to have the time to research new approaches or ways to do things and even when you have an idea it can constantly be put on the "back burner" as there always seems to be something pressing that needs to be done.

Well now I am about to take the plunge and will sign up with a firm called Constant Contact . I had looked around for a suitable company and they seemed like the best bet to me. They have a trial period of 60 days (for less than 100 contacts) which I am currently in, although because of the number of contacts I have I can't do much more than experiment with the email creation and send out some emails as testers to friends and family. From my experience so far I have decided to sign with them and give it a go. The emails are pretty easy to create from templates provided and the customer support appears excellent.

Anyway I will be completing sign up in the next couple of days and send out my first "Special Offer" and see how it goes. I will record my experiences on here as it may prove useful information to other small scale sellers who are thinking of doing something similar.

Pomanders

A pomander, from French pomme d'ambre, i.e. apple of amber, is a ball made of perfumes, such as ambergris (whence the name), musk, or civet. The pomander was worn or carried in a vase, also known by the same name, as a protection against infection in times of pestilence or merely as a useful article to mollify bad smells. The globular cases which contained the pomanders were hung from a neck-chain or belt, or attached to the girdle, and were usually perforated and made of gold or silver. Sometimes they contained several partitions, in each of which was placed a different perfume. Pomanders were used in the late Middle Ages through the 17th century. - from Wikipedia

Although not that common today there are still some examples of pomanders around. Now people would usually place some cotton wool, or the like, scented with some essential oils inside the pomander.

Below are a few pics of an example of a pomander that I sometimes have in my stock at
qtsilver.com;






You will notice the solid design of the front of the piece, but the perforated back design to allow the perfume to filter from inside.

If you are interested in the look of the pomander please feel free to check out this piece on our website;

http://www.qtsilver.com/Marcasite-&-Silver-Pomander-/-Locket-with-Sapphire/1091.htm