Dear Vendors of Homesteaders Co-op,

I am reaching out to you with news of a milestone. Two days ago I posted our first monthly sales report for January 2019. You can read it here. I am including a highlight at the bottom of this post in case you don't have time to click through.

I want to congratulate us all on this first month of the year. While the numbers may not seem like a lot when you consider how many vendors we have, it is a great starting point, because we came from having zero sales to nearly $300 in January!

The great news is that we are growing fairly steadily at a sustainable pace. We are now 22 vendors strong in 8 countries. How big will we grow? I do not know, but I do know that at this stage in our growth, every vendor that comes on board makes a huge difference to our collective marketplace.

Every Voice Counts

At this point every voice matters in our success, because we are still new and we are still small. This is why I want to encourage you to continue regularly marketing your store and your products. Or if you have not started, now is a great time to start a routine or habit of it. Marketing ourselves is not always easy, but the effort can be rewarding, especially when we are doing it as a team. Consider this example I just came across.

"Before I ordered these plants, I did not hear of @mountainjewel. I was browsing the @homesteaderscoop website and I found the listing which intrigued me. After placing the order I looked at @mountainjewel's STEEM profile and I saw interesting content so I gave a follow." - @jeffjagoe

This is significant because @mountainjewel gained a customer through another vendor's marketing efforts. If I market my business I might reach someone that doesn't buy my products but may instead decide to buy your products. And vice versa, your marketing efforts might lead to a new customer for another vendor.

This is the power of our community marketplace, and this is exactly what inspired me to build Homesteaders Co-op. Thus, we have reached a huge milestone. And while we are only just getting started, we have come very far.

I have already seen many more examples of Homesteaders Co-op's ability to inspire connections on steem.

Going Beyond Steem

Since the beginning of the year we have had the ability to accept USD, in addition to STEEM and SBD. This was the first step to opening our doors to customers outside of steem. It turns out this was also significant in accepting more orders from within our steem community.

But now we have been operating with three currencies for over a month. For those vendors that are accepting USD / Paypal, I feel that it is time that we start sharing our Homesteaders Co-op stores with our friends and family outside of steem. And in our social networks outside of steem.

After all your Homesteaders Co-op does not charge commissions or listing fees. This is a great reason to share your store with your family, friends and customers outside of steem. Because unlike other marketplaces you keep all of your earnings here. I am so proud of what we have to show and share.

If your friends, family, colleagues, peers have feedback about our marketplace, constructive criticism, questions - please share with us so we can hear the feedback!

Building in a Bear Market

In our crypto bear market it turns out that people are a lot less willing to spend their hard earned steem/sbd when it can buy much less, as converted to USD, than it did just over one year ago.

But I am pleasantly surprised that despite the bear market there are those customers that ARE willing to spend their steem and sbd on products that they receive value from, as proven in our sales number (see sales report).

And of course there are those that are willing to spend USD on products, regardless of what the crypto market is doing.

Our bear market presents a great opportunity for us to build a sustainable, humble foundation for our marketplace. If and when the next bull market comes, may we all prosper from our efforts and from our hard work. But whatever the market may be, we have opportunity to provide value and receive value.

The Team Effort

This is the first marketplace I have run and I am overjoyed to see that we have made this much progress together. I think that if we continue to build team spirit we will thrive together.

For those of you that have trouble marketing yourself or are unsure where to start, look to other vendors for examples of messages that are working. And I think we can look for opportunities to help our fellow vendors by putting them in front of people that might be interested in their products, whether it be in comments or discord, etc.

I actually don't like the word marketing because it can feel like a sales pitch. I think the best marketing comes from the heart, when we are proud to show our work and when we are proud to share our love for our craft. Good salesmen attempt to accomplish this by crafting every letter, but when it truly comes from the heart crafting a message is not necessary, we just need to get out of the way and let our heart speak for itself.

If you'd like help figuring out how to market your products please don't hesitate to ask me or others in our discord group. You're bound to get lots of good feedback!

Here are a few "marketing" examples I'd like to leave you with for inspiration:

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HOME SWEET HOME - MORE WOOD-BURNING FUN by @papa-pepper

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So Excited!!!! New Shop Open on Homesteaderscoop... by @Sunscape

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Handmade Heart Art: Violet Haze. Geisha Girls in my garden. Homesteaders Coop. by @allyinspirit

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Spiritual Mentorship by @wwf

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CATNIP - NEW ITEM FOR THE PEPPER FAMILY HOMESTEAD STORE by @papa-pepper

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New Homestead Product! St John's Wort/Hypericum Oil at Homesteader's Coop! by @mountainjewel

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Excerpt from our January 2019 Sales Report:

$275.75 total sales

Breakdown by currency

Currency	Total	%
STEEM	$138.16	50.1%
SBD	$5.98	2.17%
USD	$131.61	47.73%
Total	$275.75	100%

Wishing you all the best,

@sagescrub

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We Have Free Instant Steem Accounts to Share!

We have free steem invites for anyone in the #homesteading, #gardening, @ghscollective, @naturalmedicine, @tribesteemup, @ecotrain, @earthtribe communities that have any friends or family members that are interested in joining steem and joining our communities.

With our invites they won't need to wait 1-2 weeks or pay ~4 steem to get an account. If we have enough free SP at the time of sharing an invite it will come along with a small delegation so that they have some RC to start out with. Direct message @sagescrub in discord for an invite to share with your friend or family member.

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A Free Marketplace for Steem

We provide a FREE marketplace for you to transact in STEEM, SBD and USD. Our vendors are committed to sustainability, ethics and quality in their lives and work.

Unlike other marketplaces our vendors are not charged listing fees, subscription fees or transaction fees. This service is 100% free.

Support Your Alternative Economy:

1. Purchase handmade products with STEEM, SBD or USD at homesteaderscoop.com
2. Join the conversation in our Discord Group
3. Follow our Curation Trail on SteemAuto to automatically upvote our contributors and vendors
4. Delegate SP to @homesteaderscoop
5. Donate to our ongoing Fundition project

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Why Delegate to Homesteaders Co-op?

Your delegations will help us grow our community and reward our members for their ethical choices and actions.

In our modern world it is not always easy to choose to live sustainably. To do so often means forgoing income potential and the status quo. Our Steem Power is used to up-vote community contributors and vendors in thanks for their efforts.

10 SP | 25 SP | 50 SP | 75 SP | 100 SP | 200 SP | 500 SP | 750 SP | 1000 SP

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Who is Homesteaders Co-op?

Get to know our mission in our introduction post

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Want to Become a Vendor?

Learn more and apply here

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https://homesteaderscoop.com

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A Dollar A Day - Charitable giving project

Follow @adollaraday