First, I want to note that we here at Etsy are working on other more interesting and innovative ways for buyers to find the Etsy items they’ll love and purchase AND more interesting and innovative ways for sellers to promote their work on Etsy. Our amazing product and engineering teams are on the case! These guys will undoubtedly speed up this process: http://www.etsy.com/storque/etsy-news/handcrafting-etsy-6508/ Until then, I’d like to share some tips and start a conversation on getting views without having to spend a pretty penny renewing.Read more HERE
I recently received a convo from a seller who was renewing every single item in their shop every day. She was frustrated at the fees she was accruing every month (as she should be!) I immediately had a few ideas for her shop that she could implement instead of renewing. I thought I’d share them here.
1) Make sure you are using all 14 tags. Your item’s tags are directly related to search. If you aren’t using all 14 you are missing opportunities! (Helpful article: http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/guidelines-tips-tagging-on-etsy-281/
1a) And make sure those tags relate to your items style, very specific colors, textures, size and themes/motifs. (Helpful article: http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/seller-how-to-tag-o-rama-with-descriptive-keywords-5474/
1b) Don’t just copy and paste your tags from one listing to another. Varying your tags will get your work seen in many different searches.
1c) Make sure your tags are accurate! If you are tagging a necklace with “earrings” in the hopes of getting more views, I beg you to reconsider this tactic. Shoppers looking for earrings are going to pay no mind to your listing so you’ll only be wasting a tag!
1d) Team Tags don’t need to be added to every single item in your shop. Just use them on a couple of items. Same goes with your shop name. It’s smart to tag a few items in your shop with your business name – just in case someone searches your name in search but forgets to use the drop down menu to choose search sellers.
This post stems from a few posts I have seen where sellers are astounded at others being featured in thousands of treasuries. I was going to post IN a recent thread but I thought the advice deserved it’s own post.
Everyone here should NOT feel like small potatoes for only being in a few treasuries. We all start somewhere! There are unlimited treasuries now so the potential for how many treasuries you can end up in is infinity!
If you want to be in more treasuries some things that help are,
1. of course, great pictures. Set a mood with your photo, if you had a store front, how would you stage the front window? That is what you want to reflect in your shop pictures, of course with out being cluttered.
Someone who posted in the other thread is AmyArtz, her avatar is gorgeous, it makes me want to click, to find out, what is this cool looking cube textured pendant.
2. Of course a well made product and some cohesion in your shop. After a while people will know your shop for a great photographed version of a product.
I sell wire wrapped jewelry. As do A WHOLE LOT of other jewelry sellers on Etsy. I love what I make of course, am obsessed with making it and I do like to run it as a business for profit as well. That is why I am here on etsy selling it instead of piling it on my bed and rolling around in it a la The Proposal or whatever that movie was. My category is swamped. But guess what? I don’t let that get me down, I just try to do the best that I can do in my shop.
I take unique photos and people know my shop look and come to my shop for items to put in their treasuries. I know this, b/c they tell me so.
I also have a large variety of colors in my shop. From neutrals to bright yellows, etc.
I make what I love. I love owls, Etsy loves owls. I made an owl necklace b/c I LOVE owls. I love foxes, but I am not feeling a fox necklace, just not wanting to go there.
And for SURE I will never EVER make a mustache necklace. If I do, slap me like the passengers do the freak out lady in Airplane b/c I will have done lost my marbles.
If you feel like you want to express a trend, do it! If not, don’t! It is important that you do what you love and follow your instincts.
3. Network. Especially network with other people who love to make treasuries. At the heart of the treasury is people loving to curate lists. Be it through your favorites, a challenge through a team, etc. It is a challenging yet fun experience. It can fulfill your need for window shopping and artistic expression as well!
Network by joining a team, START a team! Twitter, Facebook. I have made so many FRIENDS through teams, such good friends, I could go stay with them overnight and sleep at their houses w/o worrying they would be a psycho killer even though I know them only through the internet.
4. Make treasuries and let everyone know you are in them! Pimp them out. That involves convoing people who you featured, tweeting your treasury lists and facebooking them.
Even if you only do one a week it will help.
5. Pay it back and forward. If you are featured in a newbie treasury, make one with newbies; if you are featured by another bow maker who loves your bows, make a treasury with that bow maker.
6. Use the Etsy Merchandising terms.
http://www.etsy.com/storque/search/title/merchandising/
Personally, I go through the articles and pick out “key words” and email them to myself and when I make a treasury, I skim the list and include the relevant tags in my treasury.
I am by NO means curating a ton of front pages even though I would like to. But those help me nonetheless.
I love being on the front page, but you know what feels even better? CURATING a front page. That is such a rush, awesome feeling.
Hey John, One of my biggest issues is communicating lead times for my products. I've ordered from you before and you have a pretty good explanation of how long your items will take before you ship. But I'm also use to Etsy and ok with waiting for handmade items. I've tried to make that explanation as clear as possible when a customer orders something that clearly states it has a lead time, but I still have customers who don't realize my handmade process really takes that ENTIRE time stated. Do you charge rush fees if a customer wants something sooner? How do you answer the 'when will my order ship' question when your customer seems agitated they will have to wait?johnwgolden says
It took me a while to get that turnaround statement refined to what it is now :) and plenty have people have had difficulty comprehending it and some still do.
Quick answers to your questions:
I do not charge a rush fee, not necessarily because I don't want to, but only because the levels of requests has not risen to a level that I need to. If I did charge, it would be as more of a deterrent.
I try to give the customer my best honest guess as to when I will get their order out, and then I try to stay on top of that order. More often than not, I cannot accurately estimate how long it will take to get to an order, so I just have to give myself enough time to force that order out when I said it would go. I am still a work in progress when it comes to this.
I think the buying public is used to getting purchases quickly, and that does work against sellers that have long production or turnaround times. Fortunately, most of my customers have been understanding.
I don't know the foolproof answer to getting my turnaround times to be seen and read, but I try to get them read by putting it in the product listing, my shop description and policies and up front in the message from seller in the Etsy e-mail to the buyer. I also conclude a bit of verbiage about how busier times can affect turnaround.
An extended bit about turnaround and making customers wait follows:)
Ideally, we could just say 10 calendar days and folks would be willing to wait that long. I started out on Etsy shipping within 2-3 business days, so that phrasing of "business days" always stayed in the estimate. One day, you are having lots of daily sales and shipping in 10-14 business days and you realize: That can be 21 calendar days!
I realized most of my time management problems and unhappy customers were coming from my long turnaround, so I worked for months to get it shorter. That has almost eliminated the need to ask folks for an inordinate amount of patience (in today's overnight express world).
Since there are so many aspects of our production process that we cannot shorten, I focused on what parts I could speed up. Now, I chose to do this as I was also adding my art blocks to my Etsy line, which added production time. So, for a while my efforts were not all that effective and it took longer for me to get the turnaround down than it should have. The upside to that was I got plenty of opportunity to deal with folks that were having to wait too long.
I make sure that no matter how long someone has waited, they know how sorry I am to make them wait and how much I appreciate their patience. i also let them know what I am doing to correct that problem and to prevent it from happening again. Then I just try to get back to work as soon as possible.
If you can't shorten your turnaround time, or can't immediately think of ways to do so, don't sweat it too much. If you concentrate on the aspects of your business that you can control, stuff like that tends to work itself out over time.
In a few months I'll be celebrating 4 years on Etsy! To mark the day, I thought I'd share some of my best-kept secrets from running Soap That Makes Scents (well, ok, they are not really secrets but rather segments of advice I have given out here in the forums or in convos as a member of the Sellers Assisting Sellers Team). An FAQ of sorts, and it's all here in one place for you--might be a long read but you can pick out the parts you find useful to reach your own level of success:Read more awesome tips from Karina about money, competition , and newsletters HERE in the Etsy forums.
~ Promoting ~
Probably the most common question I get asked is "how do you promote?"
My best tip is to figure out your target audience and promote directly to them.
Promoting to a wide audience is fine, but in the end you'll save yourself a lot of time, money and energy focusing your advertising strategies on those people who are more likely to purchase your products.
Think about the ideal person who would shop in your store---how old are they? What sort of websites/blogs would they most likely visit? What kind of magazines do you think they likely to read? What areas of the city would they live in? You can expand to other brainstorming questions but those few should give you a good start in figuring out the type of people who frequent your shop (as well as the type of people you want to direct your items to).
Once you've figured out your target audience, you can then take out ads on those same blogs, websites, magazines etc. Or concentrate on doing craftshows geared towards that "type" of audience.
~ When Selling, Think Like A Buyer ~
For instance...when trying to figure out how to tag your items, think of how YOU search for items when shopping. Do you search by color, or by certain keywords you find yourself using over and over? If so, use them in your tags as well. A great way of figuring out how to describe/tag your item is to ask friends and family. Let them take a look at what your selling (or give them a sample!) and ask what single words they would use to describe it to others. Pick out the most relevant and common ones and use those as tags if they fit, or incorporate some of their suggestions into your item descriptions.
Also---think about what promotional tactics work on YOU. Do you sign up for lots of newsletters? Maybe it's time you offered one of your own to your customers. Do you find yourself throwing away business cards, but keeping magnets and always reminding yourself "to check out that store" everytime you see it on the fridge? Invest in getting some promotional magnets made to give out with your orders or to people you meet. Things like that.
~ Organization Is Important ~
When I started out, I had supplies laying around everywhere--and I mean *everywhere*. My husband used to joke that at times he felt as though he lived in a warehouse. I realized that I was wasting a lot of time by having to go to one place for a box/envelope, one place for a pen, one place for a business card and soap sample, one place to collect the invoice, etc. Now I have a room dedicated to packaging, shipping, wrapping and labeling--Everything is stored in clear plastic bins, and out of reach from tiny hands. Recently we moved the computer in there as well just to make things even more easier. Keeping everything in one place can streamline the process from the time you receive an order, to the time it's shipped out.
~ Going Full Time~
(I took this part below from part of my QYDJ Storque interview so it may seem repetitive if you've read it)
Another common question I get is about how I made the transition from part-time soapmaker to full-time soapmaker. The easy answer would be "I just took the leap, and everything worked out fabulous!!" The more realistic answer is that it was a lot of planning ahead of time, tight budgeting to make my business self-sustainable and turn a profit, plenty of sacrifice (time, energy, luxuries), a bit of luck, and old-fashioned hard work.
If you don't have a Business Plan drawn up, I seriously urge you to get one. You can find lots of information and templates (as well as full examples) at www.sba.gov It truly is my opinion that no business can succeed fulltime without one. My husband and I sat down and wrote ours several years ago. A business plan covers not only your company's mission and planning out your target audience, but also your fiscal projection for several years ahead, all costs associated with running it from the beginning (ie. license cost, capital needed, utilities, supplies, advertising budget and a slew of other areas), HOW you plan on covering these costs, short and long-term goals, and will become your Business Manual of sorts. Plus, if you need to go to a bank for a loan to finance your business at any time, many will want to see your business plan (which should then also cover how you plan on paying your lender back).
As it stands now, Soap That Makes Scents pays for itself, with enough left over to pay our bills and rent, as well as groceries, etc. Etsy has been incredible in exposure and while they are the forefront and a large part of my business, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that craftshows, wholesale accounts, and private soap parties (and online soap parties!) make up a large portion of my income--although I wouldn't have gotten any of those accounts if it hadn't been for them finding me on Etsy.com
It's our goal for my husband to quit HIS day job in either 2011 or 2012 by the latest. He's already taken the first step by reducing his hours at work.
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Disco Fever . Gift Tags on Ring |
 Blue Sunset - ONE OF A KIND ... $35.00 |  Huge 20 x 16 paper print - F... $42.00 |  Turquoise/Teal Ruffled Silk ... $18.00 |
 Bronze And Sterling Silver O... $48.00 |  Dandelion Photograph, 8x10 F... $30.00 |  Vintage "ALL" Laun... $47.00 |
 You Can Do It Pablo Picasso... $10.00 |  Felted slippers Green Meadow $65.00 |  rustic fern- ceramic focal p... $14.00 |
 Magical Forest - labradorite... $25.00 |  Taj Earrings - Teal Green $16.00 |  Black Metal Staircase with T... $10.00 |
 retired fishing boat connama... $30.00 |  Eco-friendly Hemp Bag with S... $48.00 |  Little Dreams On The Wing 8... $25.00 |
