You guys ready to go? All right so we're going to be talking today about expanding your product line and this is something that I have gotten questions about over and over and over again because while it's probably easy to come up with some ideas it's often really feels scattered right who really feels kind of scattered in their new product creation I'm seeing lots of yes is in our audience so we want to kind of deal with that what I want to do is give you this really cohesive system so that when you feel stuck in your business you can come back to this strategy again and again and again and say all right I'm a little stuck it's time to launch something new I'm gonna go back to this system and I'm just going to run through it over and over and over again so before we actually dive into that system I want to talk about why you need to create new products on a regular basis why this is so important so I want to ask you guys are you putting too much energy into marketing and trying to sel...

l existing products and not enough energy into designing and launching new ones? So this really interesting thing happened you guys look here we mentioned this a couple of times that we have this fantastic facebook group called make a living selling what you make it developed here from my community and creative live and someone mentioned in the group you know what? I'm not going to design any new products next year I'm just going to focus on trying to market and sell what I had and I was like hold up that's a red flag for me something is not right there so I actually wanted to sit down and measure what was the impact of releasing new products on my sales growth on I wanted to look specifically at the growth in my online store because over the last couple of years that's where I've been really strategic about growing it's also where I've been really strategic about consistently launching new product so when I ran my numbers here is what I learned in twenty fifteen, thirty nine percent of my online revenue so a little under half of all of my sales for that year came from products I had launched in that year so new collections that had been launched in two thousand fifteen and in twenty fifteen I more than doubled my online sales from twenty fourteen and of those new sales of that growth sale new products accounted for about seventy five percent of my growth so that more than double piece almost all of those came from selling new products and it's actually even more striking in twenty fourteen one twenty fourteen about the same percentage about forty percent of my online revenue came from products launched that year but the sounds of new products accounted for one hundred fifteen percent of my growth from the year previous, so while new products technically account for less than fifty percent of my total sales forty percent that was still pretty significant, right? They count for a little less than fifty percent of my total sales, almost all of my growth almost all of my sales growth came from new products and there's a really simple reason for this new products make it easier to sell to your existing audience so it's, you've probably heard people say this before, right? It's, easier to sell to someone who was bought from you before then to try to acquire a new customer. And so when you're not releasing new products, you're not giving your existing customers a reason to buy from you again and again. But when you consistently release new products, you can actually grow by engaging your existing audience, and not only that, but every time you develop and release a new collection, it also creates momentum and energy in your business, which naturally draws in new customers. So it's a two for you sell to your existing audience and you bring in new customers now to make the most impact you need to release these new products. In a strategic way, so how many people do what I call dripping products into the market place? Tiffany, is that in your head? You make one saying you put it in your online store, you make one thing, you put it in your online store, we are not talking about that today, we're talking about something very different. So for those of you tuned into my boot camp here in creative lives called make a living, selling what you make, I introduced this idea of the test market event, and the idea is that you basically turn bringing your products into this really exciting launch instead of dripping products into the market place you're going to launch them in a big way. This course is actually the precursor to the idea of the test market event, so we talked about what to do to take them to market. But now we're actually look at how you create those collections in the first place and that's really, why we developed this system so as I mentioned in order to grow your business, you need to develop new products on a consistent basis and that's one of the questions that I get is how often should I release new products? How often do you guys design new collections? Sounds like we're not that we don't that's why we're here right right okay so you know when I first started my business I always felt like a good rule of thumb was twice a year I do a lot of wholesale trade show season usually happens twice a year that's a good a good benchmark but now I've realized especially in the online world moore is even better so I would say usually somewhere in the realm of like every twelve weeks which is every three to four months so now we're looking at four releases a year they don't have to be huge but you need to at least think about small product releases small new collection launches multiple times a year to praying that energy into your business now I know what some of you are thinking but what if I don't have the time to release new products that often meghan I'm super busy I can't think about that all the time that's what we're going to do today this class is going to teach you a systematic approach to consistently creating new product so that you're not sitting there staring at a blank piece of paper being like crap megan told me I should release the collection I haven't done it in a while what the heck am I supposed to d'oh because that takes too much of your time right we want to get in there developed great collections and get out so that's, what we're going to do and the cost is going to do this system so that you can make launching new products something that happens on a more regular basis. So I want to talk about who this classes for, so I've designed this class to work for a number of different people, you might be a maker or crafter, and you're gonna hear me say the word product a lot. And so if your maker crafter product designer, this definitely applies to you really at any stage of your business, but if you're an artist or a photographer, anyone who makes what you consider fine art, this will absolutely still work for you. So if you don't like the word product, if that doesn't work in your business, when I say product is their art, your new art collection that's fine, too all right, so really, no matter the stage of your business, whether you're a beginner, you've been around for a while and you just need to inject some energy. This is going to be from you. So in this class you are going to learn a repeatable system that you can use to design new products and create cohesive collection's over and over and over again so you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you're designing and not just new products, but better products so that every time you're releasing a collection, you're making incremental improvements from the last time. So that you're creating things that your customers are even more excited about. And mohr driven to buy and off really a lot of time, willing to pay more for right. So for those of you who are feeling very resistant to increasing your prices of your current products, designing new products is a great way to overcome that, because you could launch them in any new price point.

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Megan Auman

Megan Auman is a designer, metalsmith, educator, and entrepreneur who has built a multi-faceted business around her passion for great design and sustainable business. Her eponymous jewelry line is sold in stores across the US and online. Her designs have been featured in Design Sponge, Better Homes and Gardens, Cooking Light, and more. In 2009, Megan founded Designing an MBA to help designers and makers develop their business skills. Since then, she has created a number of successful e-courses, including Marketing for Makers, Wholesale Academy, and Do/Teach. She is a frequent speaker on pricing, wholesale, and business thinking for creatives.

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Ratings and Reviews

I Must Draw

Megan is a brilliant instructor and each of her classes is packed with information to take your business forward. This class has practical steps to help you identify gaps in your product line. Through her own experience of developing product lines she helps you to understand how to stay consistent and cohesive. This is a great class, highly recommend.

Francesca Balagtas

This class was absolutely fantastic. Even though I've had my etsy shop for a while, it has always been something on the side for me while I was attending school full-time. Now that I have the time to really focus and commit to my business I can finally take the steps I need to build up my business and make some real revenue. Because of this class I now know those exact steps to push my shop with full speed ahead. Megan is fully engaging as well, which made the class easy and fun to follow along. Great class, Megan!

Danielle Celeste

Megan Auman is such an amazing artist, craftsman, strategist, and communicator. Everyone trying to make a living selling what they make needs to see this. I think this was my favorite class in the series. Getting such incredibly thoughtful, thought-provoking and concise information from an academically-trained fine artist and teacher was UH-MAZE MAZE!

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Why You Need to Create New Products on a Regular Basis

Why You Need to Create New Products on a Regular Basis

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1. Why You Need to Create New Products on a Regular Basis

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