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My wife has been crafting stuff: paintings, bags, clothing, ceramics, jewelry, and other artsy and functional doo-dads. She has a stock now and she wants to jump into Etsy. Any tips as to what to do or not do when setting up the shop and writing individual listings? I can post the shop once it's up and running. She has
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Feb 25, 2013 19:09
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 13:43 |
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GRINK HELCH posted:Been reopened for about a month - doing okay. Had a good couple days of sales 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. Is there some benefit to having 100 items listed, or is that just a goal you want to meet? We just got the shop opened last week so I'd like feedback if anyone is willing to check it out: https://www.etsy.com/shop/RecycledAesthetics?ref=si_shop Like I said, it's a work in progress and I've only just begun to use some of the features available on Etsy.
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Mar 16, 2013 17:03
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Just got the first sale after opening a week ago!  Folks were discussing shipping costs above and that has me worried. I'm shipping mostly small stuff so domestic rates aren't too bad, but I'm curious what experiences people have had shipping from the States to, say, Canada. The USPS rate calculator I'm looking at is telling me a package that costs $4 domestic will cost $10-$20 to Canada. Does this sound about right, or am I missing some options here that can save me some shipping costs? That first sale was calculated just right for domestic shipping, but I'm worried about getting burned by international orders down the road. Then again, I'm worried about crazy shipping scaring people away. 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. Again, if anyone has feedback on the shop, I'd love to hear that too. We just got it open a week ago, so its very much a work in progress. The shop is linked above, but here it is again just for the sake of ease: https://www.etsy.com/shop/RecycledAesthetics
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Mar 22, 2013 17:46
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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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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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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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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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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 took the advice of the Etsy veterans here to heart and started making connections within Etsy itself. I started an Etsy ad campaign (at minimum cost, mostly to experiment with it) and it got my wife's page a bunch of views. Before that, the shop and its items were getting about 6 views a day. Now we get closer to 15, and that's even with no new content posted to the shop in the last month since my wife has been busy finishing up her BA. That didn't translate into more sales, though, until the other day. The shop sold a few things in the first few months over on my wife's Etsy shop, before the ad campaign, but the other day things went bonkers. One person bought seven items in one order, and then we got another order within two days. It's probably natural, word-of-mouth traffic from the buyer, but it makes me wonder if there's some kind of boost in searches for shops that sell stuff. There's a part of it that makes sense: it would be one way for Etsy to emphasize active shops in search results over ones that are potentially inactive. In any case: my wife made about $30 in the first three months and about $80 in the last three days. 
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May 21, 2013 14:30
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Here's a bit of a different request: my wife has a small wooden chest that she's looking to decorate and sell on Etsy (or elsewhere). She wants to woodburn and stain it, but she's just not sure exactly what to do with it. It's 15" long, 7 1/2" deep, and 6 1/2" tall. The wood is about 3/4" thick, so it's a sturdy box. She handmade it in the first place. Here's a few pics:   My wife has tried to emphasize "upcycled" materials with her Etsy shop, and this chest is mostly upcycled wood. She just doesn't know what to do with the design. She's drat good with painting, drawing, and 2D design in general, but she's just... drawing a blank I guess. Any ideas for this chest, goony or otherwise?
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May 23, 2013 17:32
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I'm helping my wife manage her Etsy business after a while off from it. She got a new, better day job a while back and hasn't had a ton of time for crafting in a while, but she wants to get back into it. It'll be baby steps for a little while as she finds time to get some crafting done, but I'd be curious to hear people's stories about time management for Etsy. Are any folks in the thread working full time alongside their Etsy business? Is that even possible? On a management side of things, I like some of the changes Etsy made in the last year since I've been active there. I'd be willing to have feedback about the shop, since it's a work in progress and I'm still experimenting with some options and choices. https://etsy.com/shop/recycledaesthetics I also have one minor question: is there a way to set up an on-demand listing, like for art prints, that has no quantity? I have one listing that shows up as a per-order print, but the way Etsy sets up the listings asks for a quantity, regardless of listing it as "made to order." This is essentially an on-demand printing, so there's theoretically no max quantity. Is there a way to get around that? I just entered a large quantity (not insanely large, but 20 or so), and I'm planning on having to keep updating the quantity if and when people buy enough of them. It just seems a bit goofy and I don't really mind it, but it also seems like there's a simple solution I'm not seeing.
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Jan 11, 2015 00:32
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 13:43 |
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Keska posted:Yeah, and it sucks. I never feel like I can put enough time into my sewing to really get the business off the ground. Yeah. My wife's problem is that her day job is rough on time: 40+ hours per week. That is good for our bank account, but bad for her soul. It wouldn't be as bad if she were not a frame shop manager, but as it is she has to go to work instead of painting/crafting, only to meet local artists having their work framed and making a living on their art. 
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Jan 11, 2015 13:43
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