That is the question of the day.......the week......the month! I have been thinking about opening up an Etsy shop for a while now......a long while. I have heard a lot of success stories but have also heard a lot of hopeful stories that have ended up with a bitter break-up from Etsy. Kind of clothes getting thrown out of a two-storey building onto the street type break-ups! A lot of people look at Etsy as their way into the online market, getting that dream scenario that means you wake up in the morning and check your email and voila one million orders!!! In some cases I think this is true (maybe not one million) but I know a lot of people find success using Etsy, but in most cases its used for networking. This is something I am still learning about and I'm sure will be learning about for the rest of my life.
I read a post today from
Mill Girl and her thoughts on why you should have an Etsy Shop. I have to say although her story is not one of mass sales and the Etsy Fairytale, I think her outlook on it is fantastic and has made me view it in a whole new way.
For Liz at
Mill Girl her story has been one of success through networking and finding a community to which she now belongs to. From her story I took that she views Etsy as an online gallery space from which she gets a few orders but more often will receive some great publicity and make some new friends along the way.
Etsy will help you promote your business if you put in the time and effort to help get yourself recognised. They have a featured artist section on the home page where staff at Etsy will select a shop based on originality and descriptions. Another thing I need to work on is the descriptions of my work, a name can actually sway a purchase, but that's for another time.
Also each day Etsy staff handpick what products will be featured on the home page. Which has instant 'clickability' for your store.
Well readers in case you have not guessed already I am adding an Etsy store to my to-do list. I have been looking into it for too long now and I dislike thinking about things and then never doing them. Also yesterday I was looking at the Etsy help page and was 90% sure I wanted to go ahead with it, when today I was talking to my brother who asked me "do you have an Etsy store yet?". I take my signs where I can get them and I feel that I am being told to give Etsy a go. So the eternal optimist that I am I will go forth and start with the view that I will be one of the lucky (one million customer shops) and hopefully avoid the bitter break-up. But if all I get from Etsy is some connections and a sense of community from the handmade industry then that's ok for me too.
Have a lovely day readers and if anyone has, or is thinking about setting up an Etsy shop then I would love to hear about your experience.
