All the cool people know about Etsy.com
Written on 10:20 AM by Nice to meet you, I'm Chance :)
So in a nutshell, Etsy is a utopian site for crafters. You see Etsy is like the Ebay for those that handmake wares, such as pottery, jewellery, clothing, photography, painting etc, but it is soooooo much nicer then eBay in a zillion different ways.
The word craft has been a little bastardised over the years, when I hear craft, I think grannies and knitting, but alas Craft these days has reached a whole new awe inspiring calibre. This Etsy site we speak of is beautifully designed, and a pleasure to navigate, it's free to sign up both to buy or to sell and start your own store, it has a wonderful and encouraged community atmosphere, cleaver site features and all in all, is an addictive place to visit and linger.
I accidently stumbled over Etsy when looking for somewhere else to market and sell my KikiZeal Singlets (pictured below) I was selling them on Ebay, but the fees we're becoming absurd and the Ebay environment isn't much better then walking into a $2 store, it's cheap, tacky, induces devaluation of most products and time consuming when it comes to listing items in a way in which keeps you in a competitive level.
If you handmade anything, you no doubt have an appreciation for other handmade things, the time, love and craftsmanship that goes into its inception and evolution of creation. So for crafters alike to stumble upon Etsy is like the ray of sunshine beaming down in front of you lighting up a type of utopia that appeals to all levels of your senses in an angelic like way, where you can almost hear the choir like chord, "Haaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrr".
Getting Started on Etsy:
So as The Determined Entrepreneur, this was a huge mile stone and wonderful discovery, I quickly and easily got to work opening my shop, of which you enter your usual personal contact details, pick a shop name, mine is MindCargo, and bam, your done!
Listing your first item:
It's US.20 cents to list an item, and for that you get a listing that includes 5 pictures, limitless allowance for your description and a listing that is active for not 5 days or 7 days like some, not even 10 days, but 3 months! Yep that's about 90 days for US.20 cents! Plus, just like on Ebay the terms or words you use in your Heading are how searches find your items, except on Etsy you're not limited on Heading length and better yet, you get an additional 14 related tags to add to your listing, so that's another 14 opportunities for your item to appear in a search. Are you starting to see why Etsy is just so brilliant? It's obvious that Etsy is very keen to work with and support its sellers, of course it's to the benefit of both parties but Etsy seems to genuinely care about it's sellers appose to them just being numbers and fee generators.
Etsy perk #1:
Once you've spend your US.20 cents your listing then is out there for all to stumble across and one of the many nice features on Etsy is the "Recently Listed Items" scroller the appears at the bottom of the front page and rotates through all the just listed things and previews them, which is great free exposure! You have to pay at least $24 to get a text link on the front page of Ebay! Pish Posh to that! I take advantage of this feature by listing at peak traffic times, say 8pm New York time, or 8pm Australia time, I mix it up a bit, and always get a few clicks just from this scrolling feature alone.
Next your shop appearance:
On Ebay, if you're ohfey with HTML you can get quite creative with your listing, changing the background, adding graphics and playing with fonts; which while it can be a nice option, in most cases is abused by rather unsavvy design illiterate eBayer’s whom think a font big enough you can read from space in fluoro pink on a tiger print background is classy, where as Etsy has a nice solution to this level of customisation.
None. You can't change fonts, background or colours in your listing, and it's PERFECT. The Etsy site is so pleasantly designed that this simplistic continuity that is kept throughout the site and all shops further enhances its class, clean navigation and viewing pleasure. My eBay listings would viciously consume at minimum 30 minutes of my time per item listed, to design the listing template to suit my brand image, then upload each photo which had to be hosted offsite if you didn't want to be charged for extra photos and then you're right to upload once fees where calculated base on a sliding scale and extra features opted for. Ahhhh, cut the junk and follow the KISS method, Keep it Simple Stupid.
As a side note - KISS:
Here in Australia Pizza Hut was the long time biggest and most established leader in the pizza field for a good 15 years, you had a choice for everything toppings, bases, what size and what extras, until one day, Dominos came along KISS was their elixir, the offered about 6 or so pre determined flavours available in 1 size. That's it, they took choice away and whalla that was the recipe for success. The Pizza Huts began rapidly shutting shop as quickly as Domino's was opening them. So the moral, in many cases, KISS is the best method when it comes to business success.
So you now know about Etsy, you know how to sign up, list your item and get free advertising on the front page but what about marketing your shop to increase sales and considering your geographical location.
Etsy is America, I live somewhere else:
That's cool, Etsy is open for anyone world wide to share the craft love, just keep in mind all prices are listed in US$ which for say someone such as me living in Australia is great, because of the current AU$ I get 1.5x the value of my sold item, check the conversion rate for your location to the US$ at xe.com Be sure to do some research into postage rates for different locations around the world and charge accordingly. I highly encourage you to sell and inturn post worldwide, 98% of my sales are from
Getting paid:
Etsy does all sales through PayPal.com which if you don't already know is the easiest way of accepting payments worldwide including from Credit Cards. Sign up at PayPal.com now for your free account, for every transaction they take a %, just build that into your price structure.
You can choose to accept Bank Deposit, I do, but ONLY for buyers in the same country as me. PayPal can deposit your money into your nominated bank account whenever you like, you call the shots.
Etsy fees thankfully are quite modest and minimal, but at present are due monthly and can only be paid by Credit Card. (I opened an account at my bank for one of those Visa Debit Cards; I call them a pretend credit card. They are funded only by your own available account balance and perfect for this kind of use. Ask at your bank.) Hopefully this year 2009 Etsy will upgrade to allow Bills to be paid via PayPal. Oh and remember your Etsy bill is in US$ too.
Marketing your site:
There are a number of ways and I will revisit this topic in a devoted post soon, but to get the ball rolling, while your listing is valid for 3 months for that US.20 cents, as more people list more items your listing will slowly be bumped to the bottom of the search returns as most search results are based on "Recently Listed" so Etsy has a feature called "Renew" simply log into your shop, select Renew from the left column, pick as many items as you wish to renew and for US.20 cents each you can renew your items and restart the clock and return your items to the top of the search results.
I renew 6 listings a day, so US$1.20 p/day I put down as marketing budget and this definitely increases my daily and weekly sales. Keep in mind to relist at peak time as mentioned earlier, 8pm New York time and occasionally 8pm Australia time (or whatever country you live). Again you renewed listing will appear at the bottom of the scrolling "Recently Listed Items" gallery on the Etsy front page.
There are plenty more marketing tips, the next one is Majaba now called CraftCult.com which I will discuss another time.
So that's an introduction to Etsy.com!
Check it out today and get crafting and selling. It's a real pleasure to spend time doing something you love and even more enjoyable when you can be recognised for your work by selling it in such a delightful place.
Till tomorrow.
Dream Big - Chance :)
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