New Years in July

For studio jewelers in Italy August represents the end of the jewelry making year. Metals, stones and findings dealers close for the entire month. Some have advised us that they will not reopen until the second week of September. The newspapers do not even quote the prices of precious metals on the financial page.

We dust down our bench and take in the scraps and filings for refining. There is a last rush to finish any outstanding work for clients and consign. Then all precious objects and materials are gathered up and put away and the vault is closed.

So the end of July is a time of summing up and analyzing how the work year went and the time to make resolutions for the coming year.

This past year I spent more time at the computer working on self and site than making jewelry. I have become much more computer and internet fluent but all of this activity has not translated into dollar signs. Hence my first resolution is to set up more selling venues, both in physical galleries and in on line shopping sites.

One of my past years projects was to list my site in directories. This has had positive results as far as referrals to my site but the visits have had a high bounce rate. And it does take time to research for and about the directories and write up a statement that fits their format.

Referral visits with a low bounce rate and that viewed more pages and spent more time on my sites were from my blogs, my flickr and other pages where my profile and photos of my work are present. I think that the logic is that the visitor sees my photos and reads some information about me and the techniques used to make my jewelry and they click the links to my sites because they want to see more and, maybe, want to know how much this type of jewelry costs.

This reasoning brings me to my second resolution, which is, to enrich my blog and flickr presentations and to regularly participate in a few select forums and related internet galleries.

My third and last work resolution is to renovate my personal web site.

So, Happy New Year! We will see each other in September when the next jewelry making year begins.