Featured Blogger: Lisa Lam

This week's featured blogger, Lisa Lam, has run her own online business U-Handbag for the last six years,  and a busy blog in parallel called the U-Handblog. She describes U-Handbag as "an online bag making supplies shop for bag making fanatics (and fanatics to be!)" The blog is where Lisa can promote her products, give customers an insight to who she is, provide tutorials and showcase the bag making skills of others.

Lisa considers her blog to be a more informal, more casual place than her online shop, which is more geared towards e-commerce, but having said that, both main site and blog are presented and written in a really friendly style. It's on the blog that we learn Lisa has recently had a baby, for example (congratulations!), and it's a forum for conversation with likeminded handbag-making fans.

Lisa's blog is a rich resource of information and
she has a number of free patterns for download, like this one.

Typepad is Lisa's blog platform of choice. Although it's not free, Typepad hosting starts at $8.95 a month, which Lisa considers to be a bargain, given the functionality and support it offers.

And her number one tip? "If you have a craft business a blog is essential" -  Lisa describes her own blog as "invaluable" to her business and the perfect platform to introduce current projects she's working on, talk about the craft process and engage with her customers.

As well as having authored The Bag Making Bible - a detailed guide to making your own bags, Lisa has a new book hot off the press, called A Bag for All Reasons  - here's a sneak preview on Lisa's blog!