Transporting art safely to festivals and fairs is a big concern for artists and collectors alike. Whether you're a seasoned artist or a first-time exhibitor, taking precautions to protect your valuable pieces during transit is essential. Explore practical tips to help you safeguard your art from damage while ensuring it arrives at your destination in perfect condition.

Understanding the Importance of Proper Packing and Transporting Art Safely

When it comes to transporting art safely, the packing process plays a vital role. Selecting the right materials and techniques can distinguish between a successful exhibit and a damaged masterpiece.

If you still need a website, keep reading! We have connected with an incredible company called UENI that helps small businesses like yours create a website - extremely affordably and way too easy, with a money back guarantee! We have partnered with them to offer FestivalNet members a crazy deep discount. Get the website of your dreams built for you for just $149.... worth over $1500, with everything you need to succeed. No tech, design, or SEO skills needed.

As an artist or creator, it's essential to have a robust online presence in today's digital age. Social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, & Facebook provide an excellent way to connect with your fans, share your content, and build your audience. In this blog post, we'll explore strategies for using social media to advance your fan base and take your career to the next level.

Choosing the right payment gateways for your small business is crucial for seamless financial transactions and customer satisfaction. This guide explores the essential criteria to consider, including cost efficiency, security standards, and integration capabilities. It provides insights to ensure your payment gateway aligns perfectly with your business needs and enhances your operational workflow.

For mobile transactions at festivals and fairs, it's often necessary to rely on your cellular data, mobile hot spot, local wifi, or other means of connection. These are important things to consider when choosing your payment gateway.

Understanding Payment Gateways

Payment gateways are essential tools in the digital commerce space. They act as intermediaries that securely transmit critical information between websites or merchant interfaces and the banks processing the transactions. They also come in various forms:

In the ever-changing retail and e-commerce landscape, adapting your inventory and marketing for different seasons is essential for staying ahead, even at festivals and craft shows! Each season brings its unique set of demands. So, you need to understand how to adjust your inventory levels and marketing strategies accordingly, as it can significantly impact your bottom line. This guide provides practical tips and insights on optimizing your approach throughout the year, ensuring that you’re always ready to meet your customers' seasonal needs.

Efficient shipping is the backbone of successful e-commerce. Whether engaging in large-scale e-commerce or juggling festival stalls and online sales, smooth order fulfillment is crucial. Thankfully, as technology advances in strides, you don’t have to face this challenging front alone. E-commerce shipping solutions stand ready to help you by streamlining the shipping process and ensuring timely deliveries and happy customers. These solutions optimize every step, from managing inventory to choosing the right carriers. Therefore, understanding the significance of these solutions can revolutionize how goods move from your shop or studio to your customer's doorstep. So, let's explore them and unlock the potential for seamless operations and satisfied customers.

As a small business owner, you’re no stranger to opportunity...and you're no stranger to risk! Starting and running a small business requires no small amount of bravery.  No matter how fearless you are, there’s a limit to how much risk you can take on.  Small business insurance, while it may seem like an extra or even unnecessary cost, is a valuable shield against the real risks you take on!

E-commerce success can depend on many factors, but one aspect that is often overlooked is product photography. High-quality product photos can not only make your products more visually appealing, but they can also help potential customers understand and trust your brand. In this post, we'll go over some tips for product photography that can help you succeed in the world of e-commerce.

Happy New Year! Shopping in real life is still much more popular than shopping online. As of 2022, according to Statista, 14.5% of total retail sales were e-commerce, while the rest were from brick-and-mortar retail stores.  This should not deter you from tapping in to the online selling world.  Niche shops, hard to find crafts, and unique artwork often do very well online!

Whether you have an online shop in the FestivalNet marketplace or your own e-commerce site, here are a few good ideas! 

As more and more people turn to buying products online instead of in stores, eCommerce sites are booming with business and companies selling products online have gained a definitive edge. In order for your products to sell well, however, you have to do more than simply offer them online. Regardless of your industry, clients will have a sea of choices to wade through when making their online purchases. Excellent product descriptions will make your company's products stand out. These five tips will show you how to write product descriptions that will bring about the client conversion you want and grow your products' popularity and credibility.

Supplies Are What Make a Craft

Unless you are making something where you can use regular household items, or that doesn't need anything but the buyer to complete the sale, then supplies are going to be a major part of your crafts.

Finding a Supplier

Finding a supplier that isn't going to cost you an arm and a leg, and still has good quality might be a challenge at first. But it is better to pay more for good quality than it is to buy bargain materials and have your customers be disappointed when the overall quality of your craft is poor.

Social media marketing is a great way to get the word out about your craft business. Social media can also help to alert long-time followers and new prospects about your attendance at a festival or event. If you’re a craft business owner who has set up a craft or visual arts booth at an event, social media can help drive traffic to your booth so you can meet new potential customers and increase brand awareness. If you’d like to promote your visual arts and crafts booth on social media, here are five tips to help.

You have your vision and you're eager to make that first move in the world of PR. But before I jump into what you're here for, the nine critical things you should now about PR, we need to be sure that your ready to begin such a relationship with the media. It's not a matter of feeling ready, it's a matter of being ready.

Are you ready to give up on email marketing?

We hear you. If you’re like most of us, you probably feel like you’ve tried everything to no avail.

You’ve tried sending out emails every other day. Once a week. Once a month. You’ve tried crafting content that’s humorous, informative, and relatable. You’ve tried long messages and brief ones.

Be Business-Efficient
Sandy Hammer for Catersource

The key to freeing up more time is simply to get through your to-do list faster. Easier said than done, right? Stay with me, though, and we’ll look at some of the biggest efficiency hindrances, as well as best practices for overcoming them and finding more time in your day.

image via William Iven

Emails

Ah, the dreaded inbox. While necessary for communication with colleagues, clients, and prospects, it can easily become a black hole that sucks up hours of time. Soon enough, it’s time to go home and you’re wondering where the day went. Sound familiar? Well, it’s time to take your inbox back!

I like to look over all of my emails that I received overnight, first thing in the morning. At this time, I respond to emails to the best of my abilities and work to tackle the emails which have pending answers. I make it a point to answer my emails daily, but I also allow specific time periods for it. This allows me to fully focus on the task at hand throughout the workday.

John P. Weiss for faso.com

The majority of artists I know have day jobs. They set their alarms, brew their coffee, tighten their neckties, perfect their makeup, grab their computer bags and hit the morning commute.

Their days are filled with meetings, quotas, emails, phone calls, texts, travel, office politics, deadlines, promotions, acquisitions, shift work, and the many other quotidian rhythms of commerce and professional life.

Read more!

10 Prioritization Tips for Promoters

When in planning mode, event managers have a million and one things to worry about. Time management and prioritization are not just skills, they become a lifestyle. Even the most seasoned event planners can stand to add a few more things to their toolbox. Here are 10 prioritization tips to help you keep calm under pressure and execute on an incredible event.

1) Establish your overarching goal and vision

Before the planning even begins, clearly articulate why you're even having this event in the first place. Then set concrete goals that align with that vision. Doing so will make decisions down the road much easier because you'll be sure that they align with your overarching goal.

"It's easy to get distracted the thousands of details that come with event planning. But if you establish clear goals from the beginning, the rest of the planning becomes much easier."

-Rachel, Customer Success Manager at Bizzabo.

2) Outline the day

To keep focused on the overarching goals, it's important to make every day count. Make sure to start your day with a clear schedule of what needs get done and by what time. This daily ritual will help you stay focused on checking off the tasks that contribute to your main event goals.

3) Make deadlines, not to-do lists

The danger of to-do lists is that once the tasks start piling up, your list becomes endless and more difficult to prioritize. That's why it's essential to immediately set deadlines once tasks start coming in. Having a logical, chronological progression of objectives will help you better visualize the needs for your event.

"Everyone needs deadlines. Even beavers."
-Walt Disney

4) Know the difference between urgent vs important

It's easy for a task to feel important because of a creeping deadline, but make sure that the sense of urgency is not distorting the actual importance of the task. Certain tasks add immediate value and others just make you feel busy. The clearer the line is between urgent and important, the smoother your event planning will be.

"What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important."

-Dwight D. Eisenhower

5) Use tools that help you focus

Good prioritization isn't only about ranking your tasks. Sometimes it comes down to good old fashioned hard work and focus. To help you focus on one task at a time, there are a number of productivity tools available. For instance, Marinara Timer helps you stay focused for 25 minutes at a time, in what is known as the pomodoro technique. The app Self-Control creates a blacklist of websites that remain locked for a set period of time. Tools like these will definitely help you stay focused on the task at hand.

Read more here!

The Basics of Promoting

• Create a Contest: Offer your attendees a chance to win something by attending your event. You can easily start this competition online, and announce the winners with a ceremony at your event.
• Cross-Market: The more audiences you can reach, the better. Find someone that has an event or business that is related to yours, but not in direct competition, and cross-promote between the two organizations. This is a relationship you can both benefit from.

Read more!