COMPANY NAME: Funky Finds
WEBSITE: http://www.funkyfinds.us
TOOL YOU CAN NOT LIVE WITHOUT: Must have my computer (and internet
access) to post about all my funky finds!
FINISH THE SENTENCE: When I am not discovering funky finds I am spending time with my fiance (and webmaster) Joe and our dogs, Abby & Bradley.
The tag line for Funky Finds is that things were once funky lost and now they are funky found. What sparked your love of independent artists, crafters & designers and made you want to start blogging about them?
I was raised in a creative environment and have always enjoyed creating things. I have also enjoyed sharing my “finds” with friends & family. A couple of years ago a friend of mine said she enjoyed all the links I sent her daily & she suggested I start a website to share with the masses. I decided to start a blog because it was the easiest & most cost-efficient way I had access to at the time. That was in March of 2006 & Funky Finds has continued to grow and gain readership. In November of 2007, I began offering affordable paid advertising spots. I have received lots of wonderful feedback regarding advertisers’ response, as well as to the script we are running on Funky Ad Space (http://funkyfinds.us/funkyadspace.html). It is wonderful getting to know all the crafters, designers & artists I discover & spread the word about.
How do you find all these crafters and artists? Do you scour Etsy and blogs, do people write in with tips, you always feature such fun things inquiring minds want to know how you discover all these treasures.
I subscribe to over 300 blogs via Bloglines that are typically full of lots of links about various creative types around the world. I tend to follow link after link from various sites & discover lots of cool stuff along the way. I also encourage people to submit links to me via email which I receive quite often. In addition, I do check the Etsy homepage, as well as Flickr craft, art & design groups often.
I know that you know a lot about various crafters and love writing about them, but what about Jessica. Are you crafty or artsy?
I am a professional graphic designer & have worked at an advertising company for six years. Joe & I also have a graphics company called Right On Graphics (http://orbispages.com/rog) But, I am also crafty.
My favorite hobby is scrapbooking. It’s possible that I may be more interested in purchasing all the cool papers & supplies, but I still get SOME scrapbooking done! I also enjoy embroidery & have begun learning to sew.
You guys just launched a companion site to Funky Finds this week called Funky Town. Tell us all about it.
Funky Town (http://funkyfinds.us/funkytown) is an interactive site that allows members to post content, such as events, specials, images, comments and more. It is another tool for independent business owners to use in order to better promote their work, as well as network with their peers. In less than a week, Funky Town has had a great reception from users that have already begun posting information related to their businesses. We always welcome feedback from users if there’s something they feel should be added or modified.
As a busy crafter with blogs to write and read, tweets to Twitter, jewelry to make, pictures to upload into Flickr pools and more why should crafters add Funky Town to the list? How will funky town help a crafty business?
I have already seen that content posted on Funky Town is immediately indexed by Google & other search engines because of the script we built the site with, Drupal 6.2. This will help businesses when consumers search for various products, events & more. And it’s significant in the same way Funky Finds is in that I have a large readership that appreciates unique handmade goods & prefers to buy online versus large retail chains. My main objective is to spread the word about independent business owners who are working hard to make a living doing what they love most & all of my websites work together to achieve that.
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