Door to Door Small Business "walk"

Okay, so yesterday was a different day for me.  Dropped the 3 yr old at school and since it was my "off" day from work, I had the baby with me.  Instead of doing the normal clean the house stuff, I loaded her up in the stroller and took a 2 hour walk through the neighborhood.

Now of course this was not a normal walk through the neighborhood. I also had with me...yup you guessed it...FLIERS for AZ Mom Gifts. I printed up some fliers and took them door to door.  First time for that.  It took a lot longer than I thought with pushing the stroller and water breaks for the baby (it is Arizona of course and was over 70 degrees before 10am).  Now if I had been smart I would have found the guy that was obviously going door to door placing business cards ahead of me.  I though several times that it would be worth giving him 20 bucks to hand out my fliers while he was doing his. But then my suspicious nature thought that he might just pocket the money and toss the fliers...hmm.

Well after about 45 mins baby girl fell asleep so I kept going. I saw some really nice yards and some really cute ideas for front yard/entrance way improvements.  Then I ran across some really obnoxious and loud landscapers and turned back towards home.  Baby girl woke up about a block from the house so we just kept going until we reached the house.  Two hours and I think I only placed fliers on about 60 or 70 houses. I would take me a few weeks if I spent time every day to even finish this neighborhood.  Might need a new idea.

Advertising for gifts, home decor and more

Well I am still getting the idea of blogging down as well as other social media. I have to say starting your own small business is not easy or cheap.  I was driving home listening to my 3 yr old talk about the sun setting and at the same time trying to keep a train of thought on how to promote my business. Conclusion: I think I will take a try at placing fliers on people's houses in the immediate neighborhood.  I am expecting that to be time consuming, but it will be a good chance to fight with the double stroller with the girls in that while I go up to doors... Now the tricky part, what time of day are people not at home so that I won't bother them... Or better yet, have people be home and show off the baby and catalogs at the same time... Will have to think about that.  Of course the fliers will have to be rather easy to print from our cute home printer that likes to do a paper jam every 1st page; that should be fun to fight with.  Oh well, if it was easy then everyone would be doing it. Any more ideas???

To new ventures

They say if have not failed at something then you have not suceeded either.. I keep hearing that you have to keep after something in order for it to work even after you feel it is not progressing. I wonder how long that is that you wait and keep trying until you deam it a failure...

Well another weekend has gone by. So far no luck with the media forms of advertising. There are some really neat Valentine's day items for sale on my website, but no one is looking there as of yet. Guess I will shoot for Mother's Day to be a hit.

I think I will have to be cautious of "buying" my own items too much. February has some really neat vases on sale and I am tempted to get some.  If anything it will be good to have for home parties and small business gatherings. 

First Time Blog

Okay, so this is fun so far. Still not too sure what all a blog is or why anyone would care to read my posting. Guess I will consider it a type of diary for my daughters, not that they are old enough yet to read.

Reason for starting this is to help me with my new small business. People keep asking me how I got into sales of gifts and such. That is not a simple answer.  In general I was looking for a way to help cover the bills. I work full time and so does my husband, but we don't make enough to cover the normal bills along with the extra medical junk we dealt with in 2010.  My personal story goes back a couple of years as what I consider the begining of this whole financial mess.  I guess that would be a story for another time.  So back to the topic at hand, my new venture.  I still don't quite have a grasp on how it all got started, but here I am a month later and I have my own website of http://www.azmomgifts.com/, I have a bunch of catalogs, I have a blog and I have lots of great ideas.  Now I just have to get those ideas out there.  So far I have to admit, even if this is a bust, the candles I sell smell so wonderful and burn so well that I guess there is an upside to the money I have invested into this...I get my own candles to keep if I can't sell the stock of them I have... :)

Somehow my 40 hr job gets in the way of all I want to do with my Gifts business..go figure.  I also need to figure out the google checkout system to get it on my website. Fun.  Oh yah, I am behind a day in my daily Bible readings.  Need to catch up on that too.  Well so much to do and it is already 2230. Should have gone to bed an hour ago.
Well if anyone does read this. Thanks for listening to my rambells.  Sorry if I have not used appropiate blog speak.  Not sure what that would be anyway.  God bless.