If you're a regular to the cosa verde blog, you'll notice that things are looking a little different around here this morning. We've done a bit of spring (achem, summer) cleaning and restructured the blog into some lovely new columns, which you'll see over to your right. There they are...right there...wave hello!

(If your screen looks more wonky than pretty, please refresh the page to clear the cache and load all the changes.)

All of our previous posts have been reorganized into these broader, overarching columns, with the goal of dramatically improving navigation on the blog. Feeling crafty? Head over to "make it green". Need an eco-friendly fashion fix? Click "sustainable style". You get the picture. We'll also be devloping lots of new posts that fit into these areas of focus, which leads me to the second part of this post...

We're on the lookout for some guest columnists. We always welcome submissions for guest posts, but I'd really like to bring on a few people to write recurring posts on a theme. So, if you've got a topic you're passionate about (relating to crafting, the handmade, or living sustainably) and you would like to write one or two posts a month for us, please shoot me an email with your idea for a column, and let's chat. Bonus points if you want to write eco-crafting tutorials for us every month or two. And if you've got an idea for a single guest post, well, I'd love to talk to you about that too!

Email me at liz at cosaverde.com

(I should add that guest-columnist-ing is an unpaid deal—believe me, I wish we had the funds to pay you—but you'll get a fancypants contributor link and byline and all kinds of good stuff in return for your writing!)

The blog will be a bit lacking over then next few days while I recover from a summer flu, but stay tuned! We have some super-fun pics to share from MakerFaire that I'll post as soon as I can get my butt off the couch!

(photo: Rainy Day Clouds PCW recycled greeting card from Pocket Carnival)

A few weeks ago, we sent out a survey to our members, active and inactive, to ask what they'd like to see happen with cosa verde in the future. We got a ton of great responses, and we wanted to take some time to share the results and what we'll be working on in the months to come.

First of, a HUGE thank you to all of our members who participated in our survey. And a big congratulations to survey respondent #57, Elisa Shere Jewelry, for winning our random drawing for credit!

You guys are awesome. You are so sweet and supportive, and you have a ton of amazing ideas about what we can do to make cosa verde better. Overall, you left us feeling all warm and fuzzy about the job we've been doing, and how much you want to see cosa verde succeed. Thank you! And we want you to know that we've taken your comments to heart. This is a lot of information, but we're excited to be able to share what we're changing now and what we're working on for the future.

Your #1 concern: more traffic for less money

And we hear you! We're working night and day to get our traffic up. That includes more advertising (check out our ad on design is mine, for example,) carefully studying the returns that we get for every ad dollar, and more promotions and partnerships, especially over the next few months. We've also revised our pricing to give you more for your money. Because you deserve it. And we're not interested in taking your money... we want to earn it. Check out our new pricing plans.

As one of you observed, "I know this isn't a cash cow, more a labor of love. I hope you stick with it." We believe in cosa verde, and we ain't going nowhere. As far as the "cash" in "cash cow", we believe in transparency; here's a quick breakdown of our finances: in all of 2009, we were paid a total of $2598.30 in subscription fees. Of that, $329 went to plant trees, and $247.29 went to charities. The remaining $2022 (plus a few grand of our own cash) went into fees, hosting, maintaining and promoting the site. So, yeah, definitely not a cash cow. But that's just fine.

So what's next for cosa verde?
You guys have a ton of amazing ideas, and we've already started implementing them.

Things we've already done:

• We're adding more tools for you! Check out this page on how to make the most of your cosa verde subscription.
• We're expanding the blog to feature more content, including seller interviews. Email us to be added to the interview schedule!
• We've added a bar of random items to the bottom of the home page.
• We've made our badges easier to find, and we're working on adding personalized badges or mini shops for you to post to your blog.

Things we're working on:

• A way for YOU to curate the front page.
• An easy form in your profile where you can submit blog posts. In the meantime, we'll take posts by email. Contact us for specs. (If you mentioned you'd like to write something in the survey, we'll be reaching out to you!)
• An announcement space within your shop for special promotions, etc.
• A way to upgrade your shop mid-subscription.
• An easy way for shoppers to sign up for a (separate) mailing list, so we can keep them updated and promote your work.

Things we're looking into:

• Adding a way to "favorite" or bookmark items.
• Adding a "post to Facebook" feature, and a "Tweet this listing" feature.

Things we'd love to do, but we just can't:
We got about the same number of responses saying that you love that cosa verde isn't a selling platform as we got saying that you wish it was. We won't be adding a check out feature any time soon; we'd love to, but we're just too small to compete with the big players already out there. And staying small is important to us.

We also can't track which of your sales on Etsy (or other sites) come from cosa verde. We'd love to, but it isn't possible. We are not affiliated with Etsy, and their API can only give us so much info. We are working on a tutorial, though, on how you can use Google Analytics to get a better idea of which sales came from cv.

The nicest thing we've heard all week:
"cosa verde is a website I can be proud to be a part of"

Thanks again guys!
Hearts,
Liz + Jeff

Hey everybody! I've put off doing a New Year's post for far too long, and now we're getting so close to cosa verde's 1-year birthday that I was tempted to continue to put this off, but I'm resisting that urge because there's some exciting stuff going on over here that I want to share!

I know it's probably looked a bit like blog-lite over here recently, but that's because I've been working on some things behind the scenes... the biggest of which is that I am (finally!) leaving my full-time design job so I can devote more time to growing cv and nurturing Super Runaway, our fledgling design/web development business (more on that soon) into a full-time enterprise! Hooray!

In the coming weeks you'll see the blog ramping back up with some fun new columns. We've already had a taste of that with Karen's vegan posts starting back up, but I've got lots more planned, including more eye candy and more in-depth content, so stay tuned. I also want to get a series of artist interviews off the ground, so if you've got some stuff to say, let me know! We'll be updating cv in general in the coming weeks/months as well, so if there are any features you'd like to see added, please send your comments along! I'm hoping to have a survey up soon as well so y'all can tell us how we're doing.

It's been a great first year, and I have all of you to thank for that! You've proven that there's a place for cosa verde out there in the vast interweb, so now it's time to really put us on the map and grow grow grow! (Well, ok, we don't want to grow too much... we want to keep the showcase small. But let's keep that traffic growing!)

Thanks for a great year, guys! Here's hoping that 2010 is even better.

Love, Liz

Thanks to my friend Mary, who runs her own awesome PR company, which I will introduce you to in a later post, our local paper did a feature on cosa verde! They sent a reporter to our house and everything. I don't think my mom has ever been so proud. You can read the article here.

I haven't seen the actual paper yet, but from what I've heard, our respective parents collectively bought about a bajillion copies.

Hey cosa verde kids! Happy New Year! Hope you didn't stay up too late last decade, or drink too much of whatever it is that people drink on New Year's Eve, because who wants to have a hangover for a whole decade?

Speaking of the end of the year, we here at cosa verde were busily tallyin' up all them thar charity thingies. (Liz's words. She's helping me write this, as I'm new to this whole "blogging" thing.) In English: we were able to donate almost $800 to charity! Hooray!  Here's how:

As you may know, we donate 10% of the fees we collect from our sellers to the charities of their choosing. Here's a breakdown of what went where:

• ACCION International: $43.91
• Doctors Without Borders: $53.26
• The Hunger Project: $76.25
• Rainforest Alliance: $37.16
• World Wildlife Fund: $36.71

We also donated $1 to a wonderful charity, Trees for the Future, for each store that opened on cosa verde. They actually use that one measly dollar to plant ten trees. I don't know how they do it. I'm guessing magic.

So, from the 329 stores that opened since we launched in February (329! Crazy, right?), plus over $200 that we collected at Crafty Bastards (as a suggested donation for the awesome giveaway that we ran), we were able to donate $533. The coolest part about it, though? We adopted a village!

We received a kick-ass certificate (wth a gold seal!) from Trees for the Future, which details that the money will go towards planting 5,330 trees in the village of Talupula, India, an "area devastated by deforestation and global climate change." We're happy to have Talupula as part of the cosa verde family, and we wish them well!

So, once again, thanks to everyone that helped make this possible--thanks to all of our sellers, and thanks to the lovely people that donated at Crafy Bastards, thanks to the awesome people at all of the awesome charities (keep rocking, charities!), and thanks to you, dear reader!

We're taking cosa verde on the road! OK, not really. But Jeff and I are headed off for some much needed relaxation and (hopefully) adventure all the way on the other side of the world. We'll be in Thailand for the next three weeks on a belated honeymoon / general escape from reality.

But don't worry! cosa verde will be business as usual. I've loaded in a bunch of great blog posts for the next few weeks, and we'll still be reviewing applications and we'll be available by email. Just have patience with us...with the time difference and sporadic access to internet it may take us a few extra days to respond. We'll be back to normal operations at the end of the month, and boy do we have a treat in store for you for the holidays, so remember to check back in December for that!

(Image: recycled tile coaster from robotcandy)

I can't believe I forgot to share this until now, but check out our sweet 1/4-page ad in the Washington City Paper. It ran a few weeks ago, pre-Crafty Bastards, and I was able to snag a copy when we were down in DC. Yay for advertising!