Holiday Doldrums - And Looking to New Year

My tracking software I use to show unique hits per day on the website, showed a high traffic peak in Early December, and then it tapered off for the rest of the month. Since I had planned to have 100+ new boards ready in time for the Holidays (and I didn't), I figured I would just settle in and wait for the next Holiday Season. January rolled in and order for Templates picked up quite a bit. So...right now I offer 19 different style of templates with plans for 10 more styles of templates. Templates have proven to be an interesting little side business. Obviously, a lot less time and effort goes into making a template than a board. Whereas I spend 2-4 hours on a given board, I typically spend 15 minutes (or less) to drill a template and about 15 minutes cleaning, packaging and shipping the template. But, given the strong sales of templates, it's pretty clear people enjoy making their own cribbage boards. Sales seemed to peak in Mid January when I shipped 10 templates in one week. I think offering a discount on shipping of multiple templates help encourage people to buy more than one template.

Looking into the new year, I should be able to finish all the items that are in my work queue at the moment. As always, I think the boards I'm working on now and better than boards I've done in the past - which is the way it should be. I'm trying to come up with a new and clever way to sell more boards - maybe offer a free cribbage template, if you buy a cribbage board. :-> Etsy is definitely a Holiday Place for shopping. I won't expect sales from it until next Holiday Season. I still don't know if I will ever figure out the magic formula for pricing my boards.