My new website is up:)

[ChiliDog]

suhWEET! keep up the good things

[triggerman]

Most very excellent, sahib!!!

[57Belair]

very cool looking stuff josh. nice dog too

[schwede]

How do you get a website?

[jdustu]

Thanks guys!

Shwede.....I paid people to do mine

This is the place: http://www.fiveninetylabs.com/

-Josh

[MTBob]

Josh: Let me echo previous posts, very very nice website. I've been through the web design deal for my business and know the effort you took in developing yours. Good job! And, it's really impressive to see someone trying to expand their business.

Let me offer a few thoughts based on my experience with a website:
- it looks like you have at least two market segments, 1) small specialty items and 2) larger custom work. The first can be mass marketed, e.g. internet sales & shipped easily. The second, is likely more localized due to the customized nature of the work and perhaps shipping costs (thought that may not always be the case).
- The question is: how do you find your customers for each of those markets? The website has the potential to find customers, but the trick is in how the search engine sees your website. Be sure to take time with your web developer to optimize how a search engine sees your site.
- Consider using Ebay as a marketing tool. I've seen a number of companies that offer products for sale with the idea that they "sell" their company's services along with the product. Often the products are sold at a discount to attract buyers for their other products & services.
- Don't worry about those that have difficulty with Dial-up service. Frankly, that is becoming a smaller and smaller portion of internet users.

Here's what I'm going to do for you - and I hope others will do the same - I'm going to think about people I know that may be interested in your products and forward your website reference to them. Then, if you can maintain a satisfied customer list, you'll find that your website will pay off in huge dividends.

Bob

[jdustu]

Hey Bob,

Thanks for the very thoughtful post! I'd say you nailed a lot of my thoughts right on the head.

The big stuff is mostly for sale locally.....but if you've watched the news lately you know there isn't much money being spent in the Detroit area on "extras" This entire operation is fairly new to me, nearly everything I've made has been in the last year. If I were to build the site again right now, I'd put more of the focus on the bikes and smaller sculptures.....at the time I'd only made a dozen or so bikes and a couple of buckles, and that wine rack was my wife's 2008 christmas gift.

A couple things that have helped me out on the web-search front are that my flickr photo account and etsy store both show up on a lot of web searches. I went that way at the advice of my web guys as a tool to cut costs(as opposed to having my site host the pics and the store), but it's been a great way to get my "name" out there too.

I half-heartedly tried the ebay thing, and perhaps I'll try it again in the future. It just seems like it's easy to get lost and lumped in with a lot of the junk that is sold on there. I know there is a lot of quality and unique stuff available through ebay, but I'd lie if I said that it wasn't discouraging to see my stuff pop up next to a piece of metal art that was made to a blueprint's specs in a factory in taiwan.

I've also gotten mentioned in a few blogs in the last two months, and that's been cool! Hopefully a few more will pick up on it.

For the most part everything has developed pretty naturally. I made christmas gifts for my family last year, posted some pics on a local car website(www.motownmuscle.com), and got a ton of positive feedback. Then I made some money doing side jobs last spring and put that money into the website. Now I'm staying busy through my site, and especially through people like you who see my work/site and think it's cool and spread the word! I'm laid off right now, looking for my next "career" move, and doing this work is keeping me sane!

It's all kind of a work in progress. I like making art that is cool and unique, but I don't want to price it out of everyone's reach. At the same time, when everything I make is essentially one-off, it's difficult to price it in the same ballpark as guys who stick to a certain design or look or whatever, and make 10 or 50 or 100 or more of each item. Right now I think I'm pretty affordable, but I may have some choices to make regarding how I do things pretty soon.

Any way, I'm welding. And that's what I love doing more than anything

-Josh

P.S. And thanks to anyone who has checked out www.browndogwelding.com out and passed it on, I really do appreciate it!

[MTBob]

Josh:
I'm impressed with your approach, you are doing what a lot of folks could or should do when the traditional job market dries up.
You are probably right about Ebay, it's easy to get lost in the crowd. There is a local appliance retail store that used the "sell-one-cheap" as a way to become recognized. It works fairly well for them.
Another thought: how about contacting, say, local motorcycle shops or those that have websites and marketing your miniatures through them. If possible you might try specializing in Harley, BMW or Indian, etc. to gain a niche.
How about marketing the wine racks to companies that sell wine, locally or on the internet? I like your curved "S" shaped design, that should sell well. How about customizing the racks to a wine shop's specifications - number of bottles, added decorative designs, etc.? Perhaps consider private labeling the wine racks with the wine shop's name on them.
Keep us posted on how things are going.

[muskt]

I like the design, & content a lot.

Not intending to hijack the thread, but I saw a couple of questions about "How do you do that?" A really nice program that is pretty easy to use is the CoffeeCup HTML Editor. Cost is $49. Pretty good online documentation & help. I am a user & not affiliated with them. I have tried several different programs, & like this one best.

http://www.coffeecup.com/html-editor/

I'm done.

Jerry in Anchorage

http://www.akpilot.net

[mooseman63825]

hey Man Great looking site great load time on my um if you wanna call it highspeed connection great works props to you and your designers