Black Friday Giveaway!
Reversible Burlap JUNK Bag!
Sign up Below to win!
Winner will be announced on Cyber Monday on our Shopping Page
A Christmas Marketplace!
We've taken Handmade Holiday to a new level this year! Our holiday shoppes include vintage, handmade and uniquely chic Christmas items for gifts or home decor or just for fun. Lots of boutiques to explore!
Each link takes you directly to their holiday area.
June Giveaway
Our wonderful friend at Amelie Jo American Baby Boutique has donated this months giveaway item! Other specials that Amelie Jo has: Enter the code “NEW” at checkout & you'll receive 25% off! Also, on her blog http://ameliejo.blogspot.com you can enter for a chance to win Lil’ Pudgy Big Blocks.
Just leave a comment on this post to be added to the drawing. Winner will be selected by Random Blessing Generator on the last Saturday of the month.
If you would like to donate a giveaway item, we'd love to hear from you. We can be reached at fridayfleamarket@gmail.com
Just leave a comment on this post to be added to the drawing. Winner will be selected by Random Blessing Generator on the last Saturday of the month.
If you would like to donate a giveaway item, we'd love to hear from you. We can be reached at fridayfleamarket@gmail.com
Winner...
And the winner is ~ Aimee!
Thanks for playing along ladies. Sorry it took me so long to get the winner posted. I'll try and put together another giveaway for the month of June so watch our Shopping Page for news of a great new freebie!
Flea Market Giveaway
Let's Have a Giveaway!
Just leave a comment on this post and you could win our polka dot hot pads - just in time for grill season!! The winner will be chosen by random blessing generator on May 1st!
P.S. Check out the May Basket of Goodies we have for you too - Click Here
Scavenger Hunt!
We're having a scavenger hunt! Be the first to identify the owners of the photos below and you will win our Cupcake Valentine kitchen towels. Here's how it works... I've taken a piece of a banner from 5 of our regular sellers. If you can identify them, leave a comment and tell me, 1 through 5, whose banners these photos belong to. The first one to get all 5 correct (in order) wins! Contest begins 1/16/09 at 6:00 a.m. Central Time... 
Read All About It!
Hey the FFM has a new monthly newsletter! And a Members-Only Swap! Go Check it Out...Handmade Valentine Seller Group
For those of you who can't wait to start making romantic valentines, you can sign up to be part of the Handmade Valentine sellers group. Believe me, in two weeks you'll be glad! You do not need to be part of the FFM to sign up and it's free! Bloggers Sharing Sales Tips
Sharing Sales Secrets?? In some markets it might be unheard of! Ghastly! But not at the Friday Flea Market!! One persons success helps bring success to all. And with the event of our new website and the new format for sign-up, etc. it seemed like it might be a good time to poll each other for helpful tips. What can we (the sellers) do to drive traffic to our sites, to advertise our sites, to sell more? What kinds of things sell the best? Do you have some ideas to share? We would love to hear them. Let's learn from each other and help each other succeed! Please leave your helpful ideas in the comment section!!Here's a few things that I've noticed working for others:
1) Change the profile on your blog. Add a cute picture that stands out and add a little advertisement after your display name (ie: Friday Flea Market-100+ sellers). Everytime you leave a comment on some else's blog, you leave a little advertisement for your site!
2) Visit other blogs & leave comments. Most all bloggers return the visits! But don't only visit on Thursday night in an attempt to drive people to your FFM. Be genuine & friendly. It comes back around in such amazing ways. Maybe designate Monday & Thursday for visits (or whatever days/nights work for you).
3) Have a mix of different types of items and add additional things often. Have you ever noticed that the most successful brick & mortar stores are the ones that not only have great items but they change their displays often?! Like walking into a whole different store each time you visit. It makes you want to poke around a little longer, make sure you haven't missed something.
4) Find someone that you admire. Maybe they have great photos, maybe they seem to sell lots, maybe they have a way with words. Watch what they do and ASK them how they do it. They'll likely be flattered!
Well, gals, what's working for you? Please share your thoughts...
Announcement!
As you know, I've been working on our website. After months of shuffling between various file sharing sites, I decided to purchase a domain name, a website template and have everything hosted all in one place. I've put it off for months because I didn't want to incur any expenses unless it was absolutely necessary. But I feel the time has come to take the plunge.
As you might imagine, logging in and out of all those various free pages to make changes was taking quite a chunk of time. And now that we are at nearly 100 sellers, it's becoming increasingly time consuming so from the administrative aspect I felt it was necessary to consolidate everything.
As we've grown, it has been my objective to have a professional looking site to help promote all of our businesses. I sure appreciate your patience as I have tried one thing after another. It's been interesting trying to work with all the free sites as each of them operates differently and each has different limitations. It was wonderful to have the free graphics from Shabby Jen but her freebies are only available for blogs, not actual websites. So you get a little bit of the picture as to why things have changed a few times while we have been growing so rapidly. But now we finally have a permanent, consolidated and beautiful site at http://www.fridayfleamarket.net/
I hope you'll go over and take a look at all the changes. It's really amazing! Big thanks to Pink Parasol for the red polka dot, 3 column template at a very reasonable rate! I know several of you do graphic design work so please don't be offended that I didn't come to you. Each of you has such incredible talent and I wouldn't want any to feel that I choose one over the other. So I choose someone that I've worked with before and is not affiliated with the FFM.
Before you run off to play at our new site =} I have to address the dreaded issue of finances. It's not my objective to make a profit from our FFM site - I want you to know that right off the top. I've absorbed all the costs myself for as long as I possibly could. You fabulous gals don't know this but I've had to hire someone for a couple hours a week to help out with some of the things involved in being the admin of our FFM site. As a homeschool mom with my own website to run, I just don't have the time to do all the things that I wish I could. There's also the monthly fee that pappashop charges for hosting our site, the purchase of the template, etc.
The horrid bottom line is that I now have to charge a small fee to sign up for the FFM. I've broken down the costs and if we remain with this many sellers, everyone would only need to pay about $2 per month. While I hate to charge anything, we sure couldn't rent storefront space (with all the advertising we get) for $2 a month! I hope that you all understand and will continue to be part of the FFM. It pains me to do this but I want to grow our businesses as best they can and I really feel that a few growing pains are worth the growth! So beginning December 1st, if you want to remain on the FFM site, you'll need to purchase your spot. I have offered both a 6 month spot for $12 and a 12 month spot for $18. I will contiue to search out the best possible advertising for us, promote your sites and handle any FFM site maintenance, answering your questions and provide help where ever I can.
Please stop over to OUR site, take a look around and secure your spot for the holiday shopping season! ((hugs)) to each of you!!
Blessings... polly
Blessings... polly
Growing Vintage
If you're just peeking for the first time in a while, be sure to scroll down and read about our new .NET site! I'm working on our site to keep the shopping flow efficient. There's bound to be more changes over the next few months as we are growing rapidly. We have 11 new sellers this week! Did you know that we're at about 85 sellers total now?!Also, I wanted to take a minute to let you know that we are now cross-promoting with Vintage Indie (like we have been with Make Mine Pink). I want to encourage you to add their widget & link to your site if you're able (you get can get it from the left sidebar). Vintage Indie hasn't requested that we add their link to each and every one of our sites but I'm a firm believer that lovely given will be lovely received. I know that each of us have gotten quite a lot of traffic to our websites because of the gals at Make Mine Pink, and I'm sure that we'll see an increase in traffic now that Vintage Indie is promoting us. We are so grateful to have the opportunity to be in the company of these great people! And I'm proud to be part of Friday Flea Market with all of you!
Oops
I forgot to log out- If you got a comment on your post from the FFM, it was me (countingyourblessings). Sorry about that. Be sure to come over HERE and check out the 500th postChanges Blowing Through...again
This week you'll likely notice some changes when you go to our Shopping Page. The reason is because we are now the proud owners of a .NET site!! Try it out... go to http://www.fridayfleamarket.net/Unfortunately, the free banner from Shabby Jen is not authorized for use on websites (only blogs) so I had to make up a new temporary banner. I'm going to try to get us a pretty template of some sort with one cohesive banner for all our pages so please be patient as it's being worked on.
I've added an automatic re-direct from the keepandshare page to our permanent shopping page. You'll notice that I've added a couple of slots for advertising on the sidebar. This is just to help cover some of the costs of maintaining the website.
Say, did you notice that we almost at 80 sellers?!! Isn't that amazing? We may have to divide up into categories or something soon (any ideas?). In an effort to keep things fresh, remember to update with new items at least once every month. I have a temporary tech guy helping to visit the sites and make note of any bloggers that have not updated for more than a month. You may get a little generic message from me - just know that we're peeking in =) If you have added new items sometime in the last month, you don't need to be concerned. If, however, you just aren't able to do the FFM for a while, let me know and I'll take you off the list until it fits better with your schedule.
Thanks for all your help and participation!!
Customizable Postcards
Thanks to Shabby Boutique we have some beautiful new postcards that you can customize with your business name! 100 postcards for $14 - HERE.
Link Trouble?
Hi gals. I wanted to let you know that I've been having some trouble with googlesites so our shopping page is now at: http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/view.php?u=798234
The link change will not affect the majority of you but some of our new sellers may have the googlesite link. If you signed up more than a month ago, your link is fine (it'll still link to our FFM keepandshare main page). If you signed up in the last few weeks and your widget takes you to the googlesite, please change it to the link above and everything should return to being hunkydorry.
Sorry for the confusion! For some reason our googlesite comes up as being suspended for violating Google terms of service. I've written to them requesting more information but haven't heard anything back as yet. It may just be a glitch in their system as it's somewhat new. Since everything is now redirected, I'm not too concerned but of course if there's a violation of any kind I want to fix it. Even if we don't use that site in the future, we want to have the domain for the purpose of having priority in the google search engines.
Have a great sale tomorrow! Blessings...
Free Templates
Cutest Blog is offering Free Blog Templates! Loads and loads to choose from - shabby, retro, prim, western, flourishes, seasonal, holidays & more!! And they're super easy to install! What a great way to spruce up your blog shop.
Ground Cover
Ok so they're frivolous, but we NEED comfy shoes for our Fall junking jaunts, right?! Barn sales, flea markets, cinnamon & cider sales... We have lots of ground to cover! Aw geeez, they're just so darn cute I just couldn't resist - and they're authentic Keds brand so they'll hold up to all the treasure hunting!
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