Over at the Handmadeology blog, I’m doing a series on niche markets – those of us who have a really unique product, and potentially a limited audience. This week’s article is about unusual marketing ideas – things we’ve done – or attempted – because we can’t afford to do anything else. I’m hoping that this week I will get a lot of comments and some new ideas to try, and then I’ll be able to share them in the next blog post.

This series that I am doing has a secondary purpose – am I really doing all I should to market my business? It seems to me, when I wrote the post, that all the really cool ideas came when I had no money for advertising, and way before social media kicked in big time. So I’m thinking about what I can do that’s new and different…..

Writing for Handmadeology is one thing. I answered a blog post with an idea, something I don’t normally do, and voila – three weeks later I have a regular column that hopefully will send visitors – and sales – my way.

Tophatter, the new auction site, is interesting – I have sold a few pieces of fabric, but it is frustrating trying to get items scheduled. It’s fun to be in an auction, it doesn’t cost you anything except some time to list and be available for the auction. Stand-by is frustrating…in order to get out of stand-by, someone has to put a bid on your item. Which means, on the one hand, it’s definitely sold, but on the other, you wait around for the actual auction. Kudos to Tophatter for having a text alert when an item you are watching is about to come up for auction. I’m afraid I’m going to find out that to get some good scheduling times, you will need to pay. I don’t know that this is the case; I need to check it out this week.

Other than those two things, I don’t feel like I have done anything new for marketing. I have items on my list, but it will be a while till I get to them, and….they just don’t seem exciting enough to draw in people.

But then I remind myself of one of the key areas in algebra: exponential growth.

You start out very slowly, and you slowly build, until you reach the point where things take off with a life of their own. The month of May seemed like I had reached that point, but things have slowed down again. I feel like I need to jump-start the momentum again, and I’m not sure what new tricks to pull out of the hat. So…..

….this brings me to the title of this post – what have YOU done for marketing, especially if it’s unusual? Leave me a comment, let me know what you’re doing.  I’ll share all ideas, and hopefully jump-start myself again.