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Looking for a spring event? The historic city of St. Augustine Florida is the home of a wonderful Seafood Festival. This year the event will be held on March 25th and 26th. Both vendors and visitors should check out this exciting Festival. Not only is it a great event, but it supports the charitable work of the Lions Club International.

This event has it all, food festival, crafts show, music, entertainment, and rides, no wonder it draws over 20,000 visitors in just one weekend. 

The Festival will offer a number of children’s, adult, and family events and activities, including axe throwing, face-painting, music, clowns, magic, character meet-and-greets, an interactive fire engine exhibition, arts and crafts, and balloon fun.

There are spots for 100 juried arts and crafts vendors to display their wares at this beautiful park location. There is a February deadline for both craft and food vendors.

Musicians can apply until the schedule is full. Visitors expect to hear Jazz, Latin, Country, Folk, Classic Rock, Motown, and Contemporary, so whatever your style this is an event for you.

This week brings the return of the New York State Sheep and Wool festival to Rhinebeck, New York. Held at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds on October 15 and 16th, this is the premier fiber event in the Northeast. Over 30,000 people are expected to attend this year. 

Billed as a family event, this Art Festival has something for everyone. Everything from live animals like sheep, goats, and rabbits to the fiber and products made from all these beautiful animals. You can buy raw fleece, roving, handspun yarn, and garments like socks and sweaters made by hand. You can buy the table looms or craft project supplies you always wanted.

The 2022 holiday shopping season is early here in the United States. Already, back-to-school is off the shelf, and holiday-themed items are everywhere in retail stores. It's time to get your stuff together and make the most of the holiday selling season. There are a lot of steps that you need to take to prepare for this important time of year. For many artisans, it is their main selling season! 

The steps include:

• booking your events, lodging, and travel
• getting your inventory in order
• marketing the events
• ordering packaging
• display booth management

Displaying your work well is critical to drawing people into your craft show booth. If potential customers don’t walk into your booth, you can’t make a sale. Many artists lose sight of this and rely on their work alone to do the heavy lifting. The last few shows I attended had some great examples of this.

Visiting the Celtic Classic in Bethlehem, PA recently, two booths stood out for their marketing efforts. One for presentation and the other for graphics.

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.

Nothing says fall in North Carolina like pumpkins, apples, and foliage. It's such a unique period of the year that many people all around the state and beyond like to celebrate. And what better way to say hello to the new season than by attending an outdoor festival? Well, if you happen to reside in North Carolina or are just around it in time for fall, you're going to like hearing what we're going to say next. It doesn't matter if you're looking for apple cider, pumpkin butter, or just a plate of otherworldly barbecue; there are lots of events to explore around the Tar Heel State that provide all of these options and more. With that said, we bring you the list of the best fall festivals to visit in North Carolina.

#1 Yadkin Valley Pumpkin Festival

The first festival we will talk about is the famous Yadkin Valley Pumpkin Festival. Held in a charming little town named Elkin, located approximately an hour from Winston Salem and Charlotte, this event draws thousands of visitors to Elkin's main street.

If you’re a part-time artist or crafter that wants to expand your side hustle into a full-scale business venture, look no further! Though there’s nothing wrong with leaving your craft as a passion and not monetizing it, there are certainly ways to get your work out in the world on a larger scale. Here are some of our best tips for getting exposure and scaling your business.

Find the Right Digital Space to Sell

Depending on your art medium or creative venture, the platform online that you sell your products on may be different. You should explore the use of a digital marketplace when putting your art out in the world! Whether you use FestivalNet's online platform or a larger-scale marketplace like Etsy or Redbubble to sell, you’ll want to compare what portion each site will take out of your sales.

Sell more of your work by talking about what matters most to your customer.

When I first started the art festival guide I had a somewhat clear organization and, once I decided on the main points to cover, I kept to my outline more or less faithfully. During the course of art festivals, I would think of bits and pieces and almost all of them fit neatly into my chapters...almost. Another phenomenon that occurs in art festivals is that some of us get a lot of visits from artists that want to entertain the idea of embarking upon the art festival adventure.

As you plan your digital promotion strategy, one thing to think about is whether contextual content can help connect audiences closer to your music. You can use your own social channels to create a content universe — articles, videos, social posts, and other interactive elements — to drive an emotional connection between your songwriting and your listeners.

Here are a few tips for crafting compelling stories to accompany and provide context for your music, online or otherwise.

As a food truck owner, you embrace the challenge of driving from town to town and setting up shop for the day. Your unique type of business gives you the opportunity to increase your market and gain new customers along the way.

Because you have the ability to interact and serve a diverse group of people, it's best you make sure your marketing plan is on point. In case it needs some work, or if you want more ideas, we put together four food truck marketing tips that are easy to implement.

Attracting one new, deeply committed fan is worth far, far more than attracting 100 mildly interested visitors to your website.

The problem is, if you do what most articles tell you to do, you're mostly doing the wrong things or, at best, you're simply doing what everyone else is doing: you're optimizing for hundreds of mildly interested people instead of a few deeply committed people.

Is your art business about to pass away? Here are some reasons why your sales may be dying.

Marketing, or rather lack of it, is why many musicians don’t get where they could have otherwise been, and why they struggle to make sales, get gigs, and generally move their music career forward in any meaningful way. The good news, however, is if you’re willing to put in the work, it’s possible to learn how to market your music. But, before learning specific tactics, it’s important you get a good idea of what music marketing is and isn’t.

Inspiration is all around us. It is easy to believe that when everything we see and everyone we meet seems to trigger some new and exciting creative idea, so that, as dedicated crafters, we can scarcely wait to hurry back to our homes, studios or workshops to make a start on our latest project. However, sometimes the ideas just don't seem to flow quite so easily. Or perhaps they just feel a little too much like the ideas that everyone else seems to have and you wish you could come up with something new and different.

Upgrading kitchen equipment can be a tough task for food vendors who haven't planned ahead. But, without good equipment your business suffers! So, start planning now and use these tips so that the upgrade won't be so costly.

First, set a budget: Create a budget and a separate bank account which you use only for upgrading kitchen equipment. The budget will tell you how much to set aside every week. While you may not have 100 percent of the money you need when it is time to upgrade, you'll have a big chunk of it.

Calling all Artists & Food Vendors!  There is still a chance to get in on the opening event for the tourist season in the Keys. A Keys tradition always on the first Saturday after Thanksgiving (Small Market Saturday), The Island Art Festival is the premier event for the Christmas shopping season!

Many people from south Florida take advantage of what is a 4-day weekend to come to the Keys & explore! As a very artisan community, folks are always looking for special items to take home. Even though the crowds are big this year, they will be limiting the amount of booths to 100, with less than 10% of them being for food. This will give a huge advantage to all Artists and vendors. This art fair is always a favorite. 

It’s a beautiful day for a special event. The sun is out, and the high is predicted to be 85ºF. Organizers have taken everything into account for a fun and safe experience. Upon entry, ticketing staff encourages people to wear sunscreen and a hat and to visit the hydration stations regularly. The medical tent is centrally located, well-marked, and well-staffed. Security and volunteers are trained in recognizing signs of heat distress in attendees. Everything is going great…until the music starts and people rush the stage.

With the density of the crowd, eventually, people start showing signs of hyperthermia. The symptoms are sudden; once people start succumbing to them, they are hard to identify and extract from the crowd. And unless treated quickly, symptoms can potentially be fatal.

Sickness and fatalities at an event can also result in fines, lawsuits, and/or permanent shutdown of future fairs and festivals. Any experienced organizer will tell you it is nearly impossible to prep for the individual medical needs of thousands of people. However, using a strategically placed Outdoor Cooling Mist System that lowers the temperature of the crowd can help mitigate some of the liabilities and potentially enhance the production and stage environment.

Becoming a city-certified festival food vendor is enough to turn anyone off the idea of eating giant turkey legs.

"Has anyone ever eaten something and shortly after you feel a gurgling in your stomach?" Daria Kulczycky asks her Summer Festival Food Vendor Sanitation Seminar one afternoon last week at Harold Washington College. The stern, middle-aged woman in a blue turtleneck is attempting to stir some gastrointestinal empathy in her students-myself included.

We will soon join the ranks of 2,200 vendors certified annually by the city to serve fried dough and meats on a stick to the masses at music festivals, neighborhood street fetes, farmers' markets and church fund-raisers. The workshop quickly feels like an episode of MTV's Scared Straight for summer food vendors.