SmuTopia Featured on Affordable Treats!

Stop by and check out this post on Found Paper Co's Blog titled "Affordable Treats"! I'm thrilled to find a pair of SmuTopia earrings featured in the $5 and under section! Visit the original post to see the <$5, <$10, and <$20 picks, all of which are amazing! And stop by foundpaperco on Etsy to check out her fantastic vintage items!

Adventures in Advertising--Project Wonderful

As part of the never-ending process of promoting SmuTopia, I recently began advertising through Project Wonderful. I learned about this ad service in the Etsy forums and have seen Project Wonderful ad spaces on many of the handmade blogs I read, so it seemed like a great way to get started while utilizing the experience and advice of my peers in the handmade community.

If you would like to either post your ads on others' blogs, or display ads from others on your blog, take a moment to visit Project Wonderful's home page. From there you can register for an account to create ads, then place bids for ad space on sites where you would like to advertise. Once you have registered and made a deposit (I started with $5 and most spaces I have bid on cost only a few pennies a day), you can also submit an application to host ad space on your site or blog (it will take a few days before you get a response, but the process is simple--no harder than adding any other button or gadget to your blog.)

One hint while creating your ads--they must be smaller than 100kb. I had to re size all of my ads because they were too big. I could have saved myself a step if I had checked the file size before trying to upload :) Once you have completed and activated your ad, you can search for ad space using the bid search engine on Project Wonderful. If you're looking to spend as little as possible I suggest changing the search options under the "bidding" section to show only ad spaces with a minimum bid of $0 to $0 with current bids from $0 to $0.50.

Google Analytics--Part 2: Adding GA Code to your Blog

If you do not have a Google Analytics account, see Part 1 of this series to get started!

If you are already using GA for your Etsy shop and want to get the same information for your blog, follow these simple steps.

1. Log in to GA and look below the website profiles section for a link titled "Add Website Profile"

2. Click the Add Website Profile link and fill in your blog URL and select time zone. (for "website profile type" at the top use the default setting of "new domain"). Click the "finish" button at the bottom of the page.

3. You will now be on a page displaying the tracking code for your new profile. Highlight the entire tracking code and copy as you will need to paste this in a moment.

4. Open your blog in a new tab or window and log in. In the Layout section of your blog find the link allowing HTML edits (see screenshot below for link location in Google Blogger)

5. Click the Edit HTML link and scroll to the very bottom of the existing code. Look for the following section of code:

6. Place your cursor just before the section of code, and paste in the section of code you copied from GA when setting up your profile.

7. Don't forget to save!

8. You're done! The report for your blog will show up in GA within 24 hours.

Did you find this helpful? Have additional advice for newbies to GA? Please leave a comment!