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Rufus En Fuego posted:Have you looked into utilizing a bookkeeper? They're cheaper than an accountant and very much suited to dealing with small businesses. I'm the bookkeeper for seven businesses, including my own, and I'm not a CPA. Maybe check it out after this tax season's over and everything's established...bookkeepers are awesome for upkeep! Yeah I've thought about it. I have a friend that is awesome but she charges $60/hour or more. I'm not sure that I'm making enough money to justify that expense.
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Mar 22, 2013 20:50
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Railing Kill posted:I also have a question about the Etsy Goon Squad. There used to be a thread for them but I just looked around in CC and DIY and couldn't find it. I'd be interested in getting in on that if someone can direct me to THE COLLECTIVE. I'm in charge of the internet-y side of things for my wife's shop, so I'm just trying to build followers, views, and all that. We're a week into this and I'm (reasonably) using Facebook, Twitter, and Etsy itelf, and I've only just begun experimenting with Pintrest (which frankly scares me). If any Goon Squad folks have had any luck with building up their shop, I'd love to hear stories. Are you referring to the sales/advertising thread? We usually only do that around the holiday season, so the threads are probably buried in the archives by now. We do have an Etsy team you can join, but it's not exactly the most active team.
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Mar 23, 2013 12:07
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Mizufusion posted:Are you referring to the sales/advertising thread? We usually only do that around the holiday season, so the threads are probably buried in the archives by now. We do have an Etsy team you can join, but it's not exactly the most active team. Ah, I guess that's what I was thinking of. Thanks for the clarification.
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Mar 23, 2013 13:24
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I finally got around to adding some new stuff. All earrings for now and there will be some necklaces up soon to. https://www.etsy.com/shop/lealoos GOONYGOON for 20% off. Pretty bummed I didn't get around to changing my international shipping prices right away because I ended up losing quite a bit on a sale a couple weeks ago 
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Mar 23, 2013 21:06
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Funhilde posted:Yeah I've thought about it. I have a friend that is awesome but she charges $60/hour or more. I'm not sure that I'm making enough money to justify that expense. Maybe if you ask your friend some sort of questions like how does she prefer people keep track of their information regarding income/expenses...maybe she will discount it if she knows all the data is in a way she prefers working with.
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Mar 24, 2013 01:45
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Anyone else ever get a religious pamphlet with a completely non-related order? I did a trade for a pair of gloves, convo'd the seller back and forth (my first trade and I wanted to make sure I was doing things right) and didn't give any indication of religious preference, or that I was religious at all. Nor did she. Yet when I opened the package there was a nice little booklet about how I'm a sinner and should accept Christ or something, I didn't really read it. Not that I'm super offended, I just found it very odd and presumptuous. She was nice though, so I won't be making a big deal out of it.
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Mar 25, 2013 23:10
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I finally bit the bullet and made a big-girl shop for my prints. I was worried at first that the prices were just way too high but then I put some cheaper stuff in too. I'm not sure what to do next though. https://www.etsy.com/shop/InklingForDesign More than likely over summer I'm going to focus on making small, simple cards as well.
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Mar 26, 2013 00:15
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Wormy posted:Anyone else ever get a religious pamphlet with a completely non-related order? I did a trade for a pair of gloves, convo'd the seller back and forth (my first trade and I wanted to make sure I was doing things right) and didn't give any indication of religious preference, or that I was religious at all. Nor did she. Yet when I opened the package there was a nice little booklet about how I'm a sinner and should accept Christ or something, I didn't really read it. Nope. I wouldn't particularly care for such a thing. I include stickers that say FÜN in my orders occasionally. Esp. to goon sales. They are just something I like to give away.
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Mar 26, 2013 01:49
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I also created a coupon so the code SOMETHINGAWFUL gets you 15% off purchases from my store over $10 or more.
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Mar 26, 2013 11:30
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Welp, it's been a busy month for me. I finally figured out how to make a el-wire t-shirt panel that's light, durable, and pretty easy to throw together considering what I was trying before.  https://www.etsy.com/shop/luxoperon?section_id=13325779   https://www.etsy.com/shop/luxoperon?section_id=13325781 The best part is that customs are not at all hard to tackle. The worst part is I have no idea if my current prices are reasonable. People slap a wire on a dress and give it, like, a $100 pricetag, which just seems crazy to me. I can still turn a profit selling some of these for $30.
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Mar 26, 2013 19:56
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Rocketfish those are awesome! They'd be great for DragonCon or any dimly lit venue. So cool! I am toying with the idea of opening an Etsy shop, so I'm glad this thread exists. If I can prove to myself that I can make enough product to fill a store, then I will take the plunge. For now I will content myself by thinking up a store name. What are some of the best names you've seen during your browsing?
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Mar 27, 2013 02:46
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Rocketfish posted:Welp, it's been a busy month for me. I finally figured out how to make a el-wire t-shirt panel that's light, durable, and pretty easy to throw together considering what I was trying before. I would charge at least $40. My reasons are this: People will charge upwards of $25-30 for something as simple as a goddamned screen-printed shirt. This is definitely getting into 'loving overpriced' territory but as a person who's done tons of silkscreening this is kind of understandable especially for small run multi-color printing done at home. You need to be able to have sales that don't cut into your expenses. 10% is a great sale but 25% is amazing. And there's your $30 snazzy electro-luminescent wire t-shirt that you just sold a ton of and are still making a good profit.
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Mar 27, 2013 03:45
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Fayez Butts posted:I would charge at least $40. My reasons are this: Yeah $30 seems low for a product like you are offering. As long as the quality of the work is good you can expect to sell them at a higher price point. Also you may consider adding "Burning Man" to your keywords.
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Mar 27, 2013 03:55
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Thanks for the compliments everybody! I think once I sell the originals and relist, I'll bump each price up by ten bucks.four lean hounds posted:Rocketfish those are awesome! They'd be great for DragonCon or any dimly lit venue. So cool! I think the best shop names are simple a kitschy enough to sound like a brand. I'd avoid incorporating your name or trying to sound "cute". Think of an idiom that applies to what specific art you want to sell and run with it. My store name is a little obtuse and requires some explanation, which I'll admit makes it a pretty crappy store name, but I've already established myself locally. It helps that I can shorten it to "Lux" if I really need to. Also, just to get the ball rolling on some sales, the coupon code "GLOWGOON" will get you guys 25% off a purchase of $50 or more.
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Mar 27, 2013 04:12
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I've been neglecting my poor Etsy store! My last sale was on the 4th and I think the last NEW thing I added was in January. Granted, I've been making a lot of stuff, but I'm sort of hoarding it all for an upcoming convention. I'm not sure why, because if I sell it now I'm still making the money, and I can always remake it for the con?
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Mar 27, 2013 04:22
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I got my first sale two days ago and sent out their print today! I've sold stuff on etsy before and have sold things in general before but man does this ever feel good! I love making things for people. I'm curious how people get traffic to their shop though?
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Mar 28, 2013 19:27
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Amaya posted:I got my first sale two days ago and sent out their print today! I've sold stuff on etsy before and have sold things in general before but man does this ever feel good! I love making things for people. I'm curious how people get traffic to their shop though? I do a few things: -Post new items every day or two, if possible. We recently ran out of new stuff to post and traffic has not been the same since.  The brains of the operation (i.e. my wife) has some time to dedicate to finishing a few projects this weekend, so we'll be in better shape soon.-Facebook. I made a Facebook page and both my wife and I invited some of the folks on our personal friend lists. Business pages are a fairly unobtrusive way for folks to see your page, since once they "like" the page, your new posts there just show up on their feed like anything else (as you probably know). It would bug me as a viewer, and make me uncomfortable as an admin, if it were any more aggressive than that. I'm just always conscious of "is this bugging people?" I'll post to the Facebook page a few times a week, or at least when there's a new listing. I recently had success putting a call for "likes" out in exchange for coupon codes and other deals. If you can keep that ball rolling, you can pile up "likes" that will see you new items when you post them. More importantly, once you get a good number of "likes," Facebook starts giving you data about each of them: who liked the page, what else do they like, how did they find it, what did they do once there, and so on. It's pretty deep and I'm finding it more and more useful as we get more "likes." -Twitter. I'm somewhat new to twitter and I mostly use it to network with people in game design, and book and game publishing, which is my thing. I experimented with posting a couple things from my wife's Etsy there and I had great success getting page and listing views. I have about 100 followers on Twitter, and I'm not sure if that's a lot or a little for who I am (i.e. not a celebrity or industry leader), but it's worked well so far. Like with Facebook, if you get into the habit of sharing new listings on Twitter whenever you post them, it spikes views very reliably. A new listing without a Twitter link would get a few views, but the same listing after a Twitter link would get dozens of views. I'm pretty comfortable using it to promote the Etsy page since that's what Twitter is for, IMO. (Well, that and following Jose Conseco and the Iron Sheik's batshit insane ramblings). I've been considering starting a new Twitter account for my wife's shop exclusively, as I could find more specific followers. Building a lot of followers is kind of a pain in the rear end, which is why I haven't done it yet. It may just be a matter of time, though. -Pintrest? Pinterest honestly scares the crap out of me. I've been trying to figure it out for just a couple of days in my spare time. My wife put me on internet marketing duty, so I'm giving it a shot. She browses Pintrest casually and all I can ever think is, "holy crap, there's too much poo poo on the screen." Despite my information overload, it seems like it's made for pairing up with Etsy. I'm still figuring out how to make boards and how to get those out there for others to see. I can't offer any advice on it though, but I'd be interested to hear if anyone else uses it and some tips. We've established a routine: post something new every day or two, shar eit on Facebook, share it on Twitter, pinit on Pintrest. Every few days I'll post some content, questions, or whatever to the Facebook page, just to keep the views churning. I have at least 30 minutes set aside each day for this and for checking Etsy itself, but on days when I have more free time I'm looking for good ideas for all this social networking stuff.
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Mar 29, 2013 12:49
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Some helpful tips really are to have a product that appeals to a broad range of audience (children, adults, men, women, hipsters, moms, geeks, etc etc). Make sure it's something reasonably priced, and that shipping costs are reasonable too, since no one wants to pay $20 shipping on a $5 item. For marketing, you need to show how the item your selling is a solution to a problem. You should try to create or fulfill a niche market. 100,000 people sell jewelry on Etsy, what makes yours different? If you can't figure out why yours is different then anyone elses, your going to have a very hard time standing out from everyone else. As far as social marketing goes (blogging, twitter, pinterest, etc), if you can't get people in your shop to begin with, how do you think you will get them to visit your facebook page, twitter, blog etc? They are all great tools for if you already have a shop established and you want to reach out to your customers, but really not necessary at all. I rarely do social marketing or advertising at all and I do about $2000 in sales a month now. This is simply because my product is affordable, appeals to the masses, is cheap to ship, and provides a solution to a problem.
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Mar 29, 2013 16:09
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Rathina posted:Some helpful tips really are to have a product that appeals to a broad range of audience (children, adults, men, women, hipsters, moms, geeks, etc etc). Make sure it's something reasonably priced, and that shipping costs are reasonable too, since no one wants to pay $20 shipping on a $5 item. That's really good advice. Thanks! I'm curious how you or others get traffic to your shop. I know the different avenues that Etsy has to direct traffic to a shop, but it seemed like using social media was a good way to jolt traffic. With Etsy being so huge, I just don't know how a customer would even find the shop at all without some more ways to show them the way. (i.e. facebook, etc.) This is a good discussion to have at the moment for my wife's shop, since she's only just gotten started. She's still testing what people seem to be interested in, which is definitely a process.
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Mar 29, 2013 17:58
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Railing Kill posted:That's really good advice. Thanks! Far and away the biggest traffic generator is Etsy. People are already there looking for something to blow money on. I get direct traffic, and people linking through twitter or whatever, but Etsy referrals from Search is my single largest traffic generator. My shop sells hand drums and iphone amplifiers, so it might not be a direct correlation, but it's a point of reference.
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Mar 29, 2013 18:04
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Etsy is my hugest source of traffic, so yeah search relevancy does play a huge role. I know my business increased a lot when I started tagging my light switch covers with things like "home decor" "nursery decor" "Girls Bedroom" etc...so think a little outside the box when coming up for search terms. No one goes around searching "light Switch Cover"....well actually now they do, but 3-4 years ago they didn't. I'd get *maybe* one person a day in to my shop searching that..now it's like 10 a day. For example, here is my top searched keywords for the last week: light switch cover 64 nursery decor 27 elephant nursery 17 elephant nursery decor 16 elephant 14 owl decor 10 Not Provided 09 nursery switchplate 8 childrens light switch covers 8 elephant light switch cover 7 To be relevant for one word search terms, such as Elephant, your item needs to have a lot of prior sales. Even then recency is still factored into it. So the light switch cover that comes up for searching elephant, I think I've sold about 100 of them, and even then it only stays ranked under that for 2-3 days, then it falls back down in the rankings due to recency. That's on Etsy. For Google...this is kind of what I show up as for the last week. These are often longer more specific search terms: teal damask light switch cover 3 designer elephant light switch cover 2 green apple kitchen decor 2 horror switch cover 2 baseball nursery decor 1 cow light switch covers 1 red with white polka dot room decor 1 contemporary light switch covers 1 noah's ark switch plate cover 1 I actually don't get much activity from Google...I'm not really sure why it is I don't, since I've read through every seo thing under the sun for Google...they just don't like me I guess.
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Mar 29, 2013 22:14
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I would like to second the keyword advice. Use whatever you think will drive business to your store. My friend came over and helped take some pictures of my ties for me. Still have more options that I need to get photos of but It is always nice to have fresh stuff. https://www.etsy.com/shop/SewSmooth?section_id=10965002 Here are some of my Favorites     Use Goony Goon for %10 off!
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Mar 31, 2013 00:50
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Funhilde posted:Use Goony Goon for %10 off! Have you considered making mens ties?
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Mar 31, 2013 14:34
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Ropes4u posted:Have you considered making mens ties? I made a cute matching tie for a special order and a couple wool tartan ties for a friend's wedding. Ties out of the cotton I use for men is possible but most ties are made from silk which is much pricier. There is a guy I've met locally that makes bow ties so I could ask him about where he sources his fabric .
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Mar 31, 2013 16:26
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Funhilde posted:I made a cute matching tie for a special order and a couple wool tartan ties for a friend's wedding. Ties out of the cotton I use for men is possible but most ties are made from silk which is much pricier. There is a guy I've met locally that makes bow ties so I could ask him about where he sources his fabric . Cotton ties are currently a thing, will MSG you on etsy.
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Mar 31, 2013 17:23
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Thank you guys so much for the advice. I'm kind of fumbling right now because I love making art, I love making art for other people, and I love the freedom that etsy gives me to not have to go in to an 8 hour shift hating myself the entire time. Unfortunately, the 'maybe you'll sell something today, maybe you won't' aspect of it kinda sucks for me now. Funhilde posted:I would like to second the keyword advice. Use whatever you think will drive business to your store. This might be nit picky of me, but in some of your photos you can see the tape used to hold the paper into a cylinder. It's not noticeable enough for someone to go UGH THAT LOOKS BAD, but in the future I'd turn the tube around a little so you can't see it if possible. Makes it look nicer, I think. Your ties are awesome though! I wish I had a cat to clothe with them... do you make bird sized? hahah
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Mar 31, 2013 23:34
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Amaya posted:This might be nit picky of me, but in some of your photos you can see the tape used to hold the paper into a cylinder. It's not noticeable enough for someone to go UGH THAT LOOKS BAD, but in the future I'd turn the tube around a little so you can't see it if possible. Makes it look nicer, I think. Your ties are awesome though! I wish I had a cat to clothe with them... do you make bird sized? hahah Yeah my friend was taking the pictures for me while I was actually working on fulfilling some orders and she just didn't seem to pay much attention to where the collar was on the tube or if you could see the tape. I really just wanted to get everything up on the site. I actually wish I had a better solution for displaying the ties. It isn't really possible to take pictures of the cat wearing them. I don't have photoshop skills to erase those tape lines but I did try to blur them a bit in iPhoto. Next time I'll be taking the pictures myself. As for bird ties...I did do one for my Secret Santa. 
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Apr 1, 2013 01:33
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Funhilde posted:I actually wish I had a better solution for displaying the ties. http://www.amazon.com/Melissa-Doug-Sushi-Siamese-Cat/dp/B004PBLJ0A
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Apr 1, 2013 02:39
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Yeah. I started to make a blank looking cat but it turned out janky. May give it another go soonish.
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Apr 1, 2013 02:42
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Railing Kill posted:My wife just reopened her shop and is doing something similar. We have 30 or so listings drafted and ready to go, but we want to keep the shop coming up on the maine page regularly. I'm still getting used to how Etsy features things on the main page, so it's an adventure. I'm handling all this internet crap while she works on the actual items, so I'm trying to learn as much as possible about Etsy and marketing through social media. Hey - sorry for the delay. Great shop. Looks like you're off to a good start. Pictures could be a bit brighter in spots. You could definitely be a bit more descriptive in your listing too. Looks a bit bulky as block of test. Don't be afraid to space things out. You should also redirect traffic to yourself - "These earrings would go great with this clutch" and then link. It helps people get familiar with your shop and encourages lots of clicking. I go for 100 items because it generally helps with your items being seen, but there is no magic number of items. I just find lots of items to be helpful. ---- On my side of things - my shop is doing well. Selling items at least once or twice a week. Some big ticket items have sold (i.e.: tissue box toppers). So feel free to check out my shop: http://tails32x.etsy.com I have hit well over the 100 items, which feels great Also, I figured this is the perfect place to pimp out my giveaway which ends April 30th. http://retrostationstore.blogspot.com/2013/04/mario-star-giveaway.html
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Apr 1, 2013 23:23
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Funhilde posted:As for bird ties...I did do one for my Secret Santa.
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Apr 1, 2013 23:42
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Opera Bitch posted:I have two green cheek conures myself and I'd love to have ties for them. Well I guess I'll have to come up with a price.  Could you possibly measure their necks and PM/ etsy message me with that info. I just guessed the last time around.
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Apr 2, 2013 00:02
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GRINK HELCH posted:Hey - sorry for the delay. Great shop. Looks like you're off to a good start. Pictures could be a bit brighter in spots. You could definitely be a bit more descriptive in your listing too. Looks a bit bulky as block of test. Don't be afraid to space things out. You should also redirect traffic to yourself - "These earrings would go great with this clutch" and then link. It helps people get familiar with your shop and encourages lots of clicking. Thanks for the tips! Luckily I have more free time this week to dedicate to the shop, so I'll be tweaking the shop with a lot of the suggestions form this thread. I've been having consistent but unimpressive traffic through Etsy, but that is probably due to the number of listings and how they're written. I'm going to add links to the listings, spice them up a bit, rework the tags, and add some more listings. We want to get some more pictures up but we're looking for folks to model the clothing-type items before we get those up. In the meantime, I'm going to try to get some more pictures tomorrow if the sun cooperates with giving me decent light.
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Apr 2, 2013 00:25
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It's time for some new stuff! Some local sports team themed owls: https://www.etsy.com/listing/127895031/pocket-felt-owl-gold-black-and-white?ref=shop_home_active https://www.etsy.com/listing/127893511/pocket-felt-owl-blue-red-and-yellow-ku?ref=v1_other_1 Batman and Robin owls are available again: https://www.etsy.com/listing/112514476/pocket-felt-super-hero-owls-batman-and?ref=shop_home_active And just to mix things up, Nyan Cat cross stitched hand towel: https://www.etsy.com/listing/128269853/nyan-cat-cross-stitch-rainbow-hand-towel Goons15 gets you 15% off.
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Apr 3, 2013 02:53
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Love the hand towel!
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Apr 3, 2013 02:59
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So I took the advice here to heart and edited the front end and back end of all of my wife's listings. I used the search tags quite a bit better, I think, and I'm starting to see more traffic through Etsy searches now. I was puzzled as to how Etsy could account for so much traffic before, but linking listings to each other and refining those tags seems to be doing the trick. I'm looking into joining some teams now. Have people had success with those? Do they help drive in page views?
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Apr 3, 2013 19:28
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I haven't been on Etsy long, but it seems like the teams aren't really all that active and are mostly just people self-promoting. I was hoping they'd be more of a place to get advice on Etsy and business in general, but I'm not seeing much of that. Sure, you'll get views...but that doesn't necessarily translate into sales. Or maybe it's just me and no one wants my products.
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Apr 3, 2013 21:55
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Well, I got a take down notice...I don't feel it's deserved but there's nothing to do about it. I was crafting with Gears of War action figure accessories and Epic Games issued a complaint. I guess they assumed I was creating the items rather than repurposing them. It sucks that Etsy just throws you under the bus as soon as they get a complaint rather than investigating it in any way. Strangely they only filed the complaint over a few of the listings that they could have instead of all of them.
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Apr 4, 2013 00:26
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Wormy posted:I haven't been on Etsy long, but it seems like the teams aren't really all that active and are mostly just people self-promoting. I was hoping they'd be more of a place to get advice on Etsy and business in general, but I'm not seeing much of that. Just took a look see at your shop. I would suggest taking brighter pictures and use the same background for all of your products and use the closed lid version of your product on all of the listings. The open jars are good to see but don't visually hook me as much as the lids. I would also include "Essential oils", "Skin lotion","Gluten free", "preservative free", "Moisturizer" ,"paraben free" in your keywords. The more eye-catching you can be the better for people to click on your product. I don't really do anything with Teams but I have started to be better about utilizing "Favorites". I'm thinking of doing a couple of treasuries in the near future just for fun.
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Apr 4, 2013 00:40
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Funhilde posted:Just took a look see at your shop. I would suggest taking brighter pictures and use the same background for all of your products and use the closed lid version of your product on all of the listings. The open jars are good to see but don't visually hook me as much as the lids. I would also include "Essential oils", "Skin lotion","Gluten free", "preservative free", "Moisturizer" ,"paraben free" in your keywords. The more eye-catching you can be the better for people to click on your product. Thanks, I had actually been wondering what the best approach to pictures for my products would be. I figured people would want to see the thing itself, but I do work hard on the labels and most of them come out really good. The lighting in here is awful, so I only have a limited time of day to use natural light (looking into light boxes and such to combat that). Unfortunately, as I mentioned a few posts back, I work full time during the day and can't put nearly as much time into my shop as I would like. But I'm working on a schedule I can stick with to get the most out of my time.
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Apr 4, 2013 00:50
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