Creating the Perfect BoHo bead is a matter of abstractly art, carefully crafted craft, and more than just a touch of Gorby Science.
Gorby Science says that a Perfect BoHo bead can be constructed, therefore it can. This is inflexible and unassailable logic of the highest sort, the kind you’d expect from the most Ivory of Ivory Towers.
Publish or Perish, they say, if you want to live the life of an academician. I publish TO perish — that’s the lot of the indy publisher these days or any other day.
Publishing is a matter of promotion, not sales. You won’t make money selling records, books, films or any other form of communication. These days, you publish to perish, meaning to get into the marketplace sight-unseen.
I’ll get more into the subject of marketing BoHo beads later on. Right now, I want to talk about …
Day-O! Daaaaaay-O! Daylight come, and me wan’ go home. Well, who doesn’t? I’d say more about that, but the subject never came up.
BoHo Beads. That was the subject, the target of this rumination in binary expression. BoHo Beads. Of course! That’s the solution! BoHo Beads. I have just one question, 99… What’s a BoHo Bead???
You’ve never heard of BoHo. I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s as big and as unruly as SteamPunk, but it hasn’t yet reached the mainstream the way SteamPunk has managed to achieve.
BoHo originally was short for “Bohemian Hobo”, someone who acted like a Bohemian and stayed on the road a lot, even riding the rails and living in a hobo jungle.
These days, BoHo merely means Bohemian — they can’t spell the whole word anymore and it doesn’t fit into a text message, so it was shortened — like everything else — to the next-nearest simple rhyming double word, “BoHo”.
What it REFERS to is much more complex.
You see, Hippies weren’t always Hippies. When I was young, they were Bohemians, meaning people who lived in Greenwich Village and were weird and unconnected to the mainstream reality.
Bohemians originally referred to people who emigrated to the United States from Bohemia, but it quickly degenerated, as all things do, and became a nickname for anyone who had dropped out of the daily grind, and it extended to eggheads and other highly skilled readers and communicators.
Then along came the Hobo, and they rode the rails through the thirties, right through the Great Depression into World War II, which solved everything and put them to work killing people overseas, where it belongs.
Hey, the next thing you know, they’re BEATNIKS — it’s the exact same crowd doing the same damn thing, but now they’re Beatniks, a sort of Russianized slang term meaning that they live 28 to a room and never take a bath.
I’ll bet you didn’t know that those same folks were around in the 18th century — they were then called “Naturalists”, which stems from the works of Emile Zola and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, from about 1750 until about 1850.
In the sixties, they were called “Hippies”, and now they’re called “Normal”. We have indeed become our parents, and our parents became our grandparents, and so it has gone for lo, these many years.
So what makes a BoHo Bead different?
Oh, I know what you’re asking — “Why is this BoHo Bead different from all other beads?”. That question echoes in my mind with the celebration of the Feast of Lights. The BoHo Bead is, indeed, different, and I’ll tell you what makes it different.
Calling it a BoHo Bead makes it different.
I made those things for years, never knew what they were called and, in my day, they weren’t called anything but beads.
Sometimes they were called “handmade beads” or “love beads”, although by the time YOU heard about the Hippie Movement and Love Beads, they were a strand of cheap plastic.
I had an up-and-down start this morning — my Mood Ring exploded.
Yeah, Mood Rings are definitely BoHo, and so are handpainted Levis and leather. I’ve been there all along — where were you???
So I’ve created an entire store-full of BoHo Beads and BoHo Leather Gear and BoHo Jeans and BoHo Fake Nails, and BoHo Wire Jewelry — necklaces and earrings and bracelets and hairclips, and BoHo Feather Hairpieces, and much, much more.
Lost Your Job?
Make your own work, and don’t depend on the goodwill and loyalty of others. Be your own boss, and you can start by making your own stuff and selling it, but don’t go the usual way.
Selling this stuff on eBay and Etsy is too much work for too little return. It’s better to sell through promotion than through advertising.
There are ways to reach buyers without using social media.
One important way is to connect a video to a blogger or newsperson or influencer, to make the video go viral.
Within the video, you’ll have all the sales tools you need to connect with an enormous number of potential buyers and to make the sale.
Of course, you have to know a lot of stuff to make that happen, but it can be done, even by you, and without a lot of money, which is why I like BoHo Beads as a starter business you can learn from and from which you can make a hefty living.
There’s at least one seller specifically of BoHo Beads and jewelry who makes more than $100,000 a year — FROM BEADS!!!
She has two other small businesses that each top $50,000 in sales per year, not bad for a small business operating 100% online, with no startup funding!
In the case of BoHo Beads, you can start by making them with stuff you find in your own attic, garage or storage unit.
If you don’t have yarns around the house, they are super-cheap at the dollar stores. You’ll need some double-stick Scotch tape, a pair of scissors, a glue-gun, a jeweler’s tweezers, a needle-nosed pliers, a flush-cutter, some ordinary .16 gauge copper wire from the hardware store, and some 10mm Czech hardwood beads.
I’d include some sort of packaging, which should cost no more than $1 a unit in general, no matter what you get, do, or design.
I always work backwards from my shipping container to my product — I decide what to make LAST, after figuring out all the angles for billing, handling, packing and shipping, all of which are now commonly offered free, although they’re not anywhere like free.
Where I’d make my money on BoHo Beads is by offering uniques to boutiques.
Another way to make money from BoHo Beads is to offer workshops and tools, yarns, straws, wooden beads and such as KITS!!!
Yes, sell them the kits and then show them how to make ’em, on ZOOM or with a youtube tutorial video. Nothing could be simpler, but nothing doesn’t pay.
Crime pays, but there’s a heavy tax on crime, unless you’re a President, in which case you only pay $750 a year in taxes.
BoHo Beads are a crafty way to get your head into the headspace of BoHo Beading, and I can help you with wholesale lots:
- YARNS — I will have yarns available, anything from fancy to plain, at a package price of $2 for ordinary fibers and $5 for special fibers such as yak yarn or our local alpaca.
- BEADS — Authentic Czech Hardwood Tip Beads in many different woods, light to dark, and many different designer colors.
- STRAWS — Are you kidding? You can get straws anywhere. I just put that in to see if you were paying attention, and you were.
I also sell completed BoHo Beads at anywhere from 25 cents a bead up to $50 for the outrageous ones that I’d rather not sell.
You can get some really great BoHo Beads, completed and ready-to-use in jewelry, for $5, and super-beads for $10 wholesale.
My ZOOM BoHo Bead Clinics and Workshops are limited to 1,000 participants, so you need to get your reservation in early. Get on the bandwagon to spiritual success. Log on and tune into our workspace — you’re more than welcome to attend, and bring a friend!
I know. It sounds like I’m about to break into a chorus of “Oklahoma!”, and on examination, it does seem to cry out for horns, strings and a chorus doing turn, turn, kick, turn.
I’m ready for your questions, and I’ll have a demo ready for you to see at the workshop this very morning, as is.
In fact, I’m on my way now to break something — my fast.
That’s what breakfast originally meant — to break your nightly fast. Speaking of nightly — heed no nightly noises, especially on Election Night.
Stay home. Stay Safe. Keep a blunt instrument handy.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby