When I introduced my hand-written Letters From Santa a few weeks back, failed to I discuss the reason for the price increase.  When I had them at $2.00 each, I lost about $30 altogether after about 20 letters.  I hadn't taken into account all the costs involved.  So I raised the price to $6, which covers all the supplies and gives me a couple of bucks for my hour or two of work.  Still pretty cheap, but at least now I get paid.

        As many of you know, I recently joined up with Google AdSense, which puts my ads on the right-hand side of the Google search page.  Each ad costs an average of 30 cents when clicked.  I decided to create an ad for my Santa letters.  A few days after submitting this ad campaign, I got orders for ten letters within a few days.  Wow.  I knew the ads were working.

        But as quickly as they came, they stopped.  I thought maybe I had used up my daily allocations, and went to my account to increase my daily allowance.  Turns out that I got almost 600 clicks on that ad, which ended up costing me a whopping $180.00!  Okay, let's see.  Ten letters at six bucks each equals $60.00.  Minus two or three dollars per letter for supplies and postage.  So for this $30-40 I earned, I paid out $180. 

        Needless to say, the ad came down immediately.  I still sell the letters and occasionally have someone find me through eBay, but the Google ad thing ended up being a catastrophic financial disaster!

 

Anyone who has ordered chip beads recently will notice something new--LABELS on the little bags!  After getting a few stones consistently mixed up, I decided it would be prudent to start putting labels on them.  (Plus, this makes it easier for other members of the household to help fill orders.)  I hope to eventually get labels on the non-chip beads as well, though since those are more varied in size and shape, it is easier to tell them apart.  In the meantime, enjoy knowing EXACTLY what is in your bags!