I was looking around today and realized that I have a lot of irons in the fire, this being the reason that I haven’t posted any articles here in a while. This doesn’t mean that My Pixie Potions is not open for business. Oh no, far from that.

In fact we are open and have been busy working on a branch of the business. We are now actively seeking resellers. We are doing this through consignment stores and the like. We have found one thing out about this. Most places that do consignment or similar forms of business they have waiting lists. Sometimes these lists can be very long we found one that is a 3 year waiting list. How many of these small businesses are going to still be around as they sit on their duff waiting for their turn at bat?

My thoughts are, not many. Cause they are not waiting. These people who are ahead of us more than likely placed their names on the list and moved on to find another place that will sell their wares. I am like that too, in that I have placed our name in these waiting lists, and we didn’t just sit. If you sit you sink in business of any kind.

So do you just forget those places that have 3 year waiting lists? Of course not, you keep messaging the owner if you become well enough known then you might actually be placed quicker than thought. Keep stopping by and talking to the owner or whoever the gate keeper is. A little bribe of your product of even lunch is not out of the question, it is not even unfair. In fact in business sometimes it is expected and that is the needed grease that is used to get you through the door.

Time to put out a press release we did an extensive update on the admin part of our website and so had to take the site down and figured it would be easier if we just started from scratch. So… after 2 weeks of the site being down and getting our products relined out we have an announcement we believe is worthy of the presses and  help get the My Pixie Potions name out there.

What is a Press Release? Well I could use my term but lets go the all wise all knowing Wikipedia article on press releases.

A press release, news release, media release, press statement or video release is a written or recorded communication directed at members of the news media for the purpose of announcing something ostensibly newsworthy. Typically, they are mailed, faxed, or e-mailed to assignment editors at newspapers, magazines, radio stations, television stations, and/or television networks.

Or in other words it is a way to send the word out about your company, products, or events to people who might be interested in what has occurred and post a bit of free advertisement up with a link (hope hope) back to your site. It is a bit like fishing when you are using just a hook but, if you have 100 hooks in the water you just might snag something worthy to show off.

Choosing the right Press release site can be a huge challenge. Cause there are many out there some good, some not so good. You have to just find the balance of what are you willing to pay. Remember, you get what you pay for. So if you go down the free route you will see very limited amount of options.

These options range from just having an old fashioned slightly less appetizing plain Jane, run of the mill, press release. To you can pony up some dough and get a chance to personalize the press release and make it look a little more professional and appealing. For instance, inserting your logo and having hyperlinks in the release.

These options are all up to you and what your budget is. I am cheap and really don’t know what the full amount of good is except for what I have been told and what I have read. So, as you read this right now I have submitted a press release with just a free site.

Now I have looked a several of them and gathered what the main cosmetic differences are and what they allow but I really don’t know how effective each Press Release site is at spreading my ever so important news around. So, I will be doing some careful monitoring as to which one causes the most links generated. I will post a Press Release part to when I have my findings. Anyhow lets go on to what I found on the Free/Fremium sites

·         Free Press Release –This site has a graduated pay system free gives you the basic for those fresh out of the gate (i.e. My Pixie Potions)(FREE). To a Premium Press that give the release more exposure and very affordable ($1). Then you have the big ticket item which is still actually affordable, that gives the user many different options ($30). This one has my attention

·         The Open Press - The next site I looked at is this supposed to have a pretty good reach but due to the fact that they are plaged by spammers and have had to turn off the registration link made me turn my back. Will try them again with my next press release. Costs ($10) attribute to having stars by your release other than that I really do not know much about them other than they report having an average of 31million hits.

·         PRLog - Free distribution to Google News and other search engines. (Free).

·         Pr.com – These are the people that I settled on they allow you to settle upon three industries that fit your business.  Allow for you to upload a logo, and submit a Press Release all for free. Now they have other paid levels but I got the following

Enter $0 for the free level. The free level has distribution, at a lower level, to general search engines, in PR.com, some news websites and other 3rd party websites, and RSS feeds.

 (This is the site I chose)

You can find more on the Mashable site.

If I got such low deal on the site why did I choose this one because I really wasn’t seeing much difference in the different site except for those that only do google news and a few other sites.  Beside I had to pull the proverbial trigger sometime and so why not? Taking a chance is part of the adventure of business and since it is free I am not really loosing much. This is not the only weapon I have in my arsenal of marketing and PR. As neither should you. Take the time you would like and see what is out there I will be trying the dollar menu next time which actually will be in about a week so we will see a measurable difference then. The Social Media stratagem is one and I will go into that next.

So if you have news that you want the world to know press releases have been around for a long time and they are actually a tried and true way to get the news out. They have worked before they could just work for you.

It is always good to start off an adventure with the who, what, when, where, and whys. Followed by What

Who Are We

First introductions, I am Bryan and I am a fledgling business co-owner. My wife Jana is THE co-owner and My Pixie Potions is her baby, her brain child, and her pride and joy. Jana has wanted to have her own business for almost as long as we have been married. We actually tried a business once and it lasted about a year. We discovered the truth of Location, Location, Location.

Our First business was a snow cone stand and with our kids being friends with every other kid in a giant (actually very small) town here in Oklahoma. We jumped into this business with very little planning, very little research, other than we knew that kids like frozen snacks on hot summer days, and little business experience. Well, actually no business experience. We cobbled together enough funds and set off in the new experience of snow cone stand operators.

We found out, rather quickly, that the supply of kids though many still had to tap their parents for the money. As parents were not going to give the kids an infinite supply of money, the income stream was very weak. Foolish, I now know.

The high enthusiasm from the opening lasted about 1 year and realized that it takes a lot of time in opening a stand but it also takes a level dedication we were not prepared for. So, after another year and dismal sales we closed the stand and limped home licking our wounds.

WHAT was the spark?

This brings us up to last year. Jana had received some body products that she truly loved and enjoyed using. And as all good things, the jar of body scrubs ran out. She went to the store from where they were Purchased and found out that they do not carry the scrubs any more. In fact, they didn’t carry any scrubs at all.

A little Miffed and a lot put out she came home and brewed for some time and decided that she was going to find out how to make her own scrubs searching and reading she found several different tidbits of information and was ready to set out on trying to make it. Many flops and a few celebrations she had made her first coffee scrub. It wasn’t that complex, really it was easy and so she had her own personal supply.

Jana had fun making the body scrubs so much that she started over producing and was sharing with her friends and they liked it too. That is when the idea of taking another swing at the entrepreneurial world hit us.

So, why My Pixie Potions?

Jana was a fan of fairies and so it was logical that we base our fledgling idea on the body product and we were easily able to combine her touch of fairies and pixies to the name because the products were “magical” in helping with her dry rough spots on her hands and other places. So after many nights talking about it we had finally settled on My Pixie Potions!

What is involved?

After Jana and I had decided that going into business would be worth the old College try, we realized that we still didn’t know that much about business nor a lick of marketing. These two items were a big part to our first failure. So as people ignorant of business do we started researching and reading lots and lots of reading. In fact we are still reading. In the upcoming posts we will share with you what book we are reading and what are our views of these books what is learned how critical they are to our learning.

Who is involved? Who does the delegations?

Another change we made is we got an accountant because from the last business we found out that keeping books is a full time job might as well delegate that responsibility to someone who knows a thing or two about taxes.

Though we keep a set of books so we can have an instant view of incoming and outgoing money flow we also make sure that the bean counter has all information so we can have his input.

Jana and I have gone into this as a team but I am more comfortable in the geek/nerd world of the internet and computers. So my job is listed as but not limited to, being the IT manager and IT marketer, Product tester, Graphic designer, webmaster, financial analyzer and co-Cheerleader. While Jana is CEO, COO, chief been counter, and Product manager and co-cheerleader.

When do you plan to hit it big?

This is a hard one to predict. I want to start pulling a profit in the next 12 Months. Sooner is better but we are still learning so I really don’t know if this is a reasonable time frame. It looks to be but we will find out in a year.

Where is My Pixie Potions going?

The dreams and ideas are big as any fledgling entrepreneur can have. Yet we realize that the path is unknown and this is why we created this blog to talk about what decisions have been made and why we made them. Though we would like to see our product in boutique body care stores and solons all around the US, our sales are going to be reliant on how creative we become. So, we have to exercise a muscle we haven’t really had to use in a while.

We look forward to you coming by and learning about whom My Pixie Potions are and we hope to hear from you soon.