Apron Thrift Girl

Etsy Shoppe Share - How to Make a Treasury

Catherine Holm Enamel Pot

Have you ever created an Etsy Treasury?

A Etsy Treasury always includes 16 items from any Etsy store. It often includes themes such as a color theme or a subject theme. I've created two so far. The first one I chose items that reminded me of all things Waldorf. You can see it here. I called it "My Waldorf World."

After I created it, I emailed each person that I featured to let them know about the treasury. The sellers usually reply either personally through Etsy or below the treasury. It's a wonderful way to get to know other stores, to build community and to let them know about you.

My 2nd treasury was inspired by Echinacea Coneflowers. You can take a look here. I did add my item because it showed up during my search but I think in the future I won't include any of my items. I just felt a bit silly including myself.

Creating a treasury can build brand awareness. They can help other sellers get noticed. I share mine on Facebook and I stumble them. Etsy has a few options for sharing your Treasury after it's been created. Etsy's front page of their site includes a treasury which changes often. This means that one day your treasury could be there.

And it's just plain fun to choose 16 items of pure eye candy. If you have an Etsy account you can click here to build your own treasury.

This week feel free to share your Etsy shoppe or an Etsy Treasury that you have made. Do you have a favorite treasury that you've across? Have you been included in a treasury?

Esty Shoppe Share - How to Market Your Etsy Store

Mod Mid Century Modern Gummed Labels

I had a question last week about how to market an Etsy store. It's such a completely different venue than eBay, the ReSelling venue which most of us our used to. With eBay we know that there are millions of users world wide and we can often research something and find out how much someone paid for an item and when. We know immediately if something is hot or not when making a choice to sell it or not. With Etsy we are kind of taking a guess of what might sell or not and the pricing is all over the place.

I have read some complaints on-line that Etsy doesn't market itself enough. I'm personally not sure what to think of that. I do have sales every week sometimes a few sometimes less. The more I list the more I sell which seems to work in every venue that I sell at from auctions to books to Etsy.

Here are some of my ideas for marketing your Etsy store:

• Use the Facebook Etsy tab which lets all of your friends know what's in your store. Here's a link with how to do this. I have this enabled on my Flavorstitch and ATG Facebook pages.
• After you post an Etsy item, you can share it on Facebook. I would caution though not to share every single one with your friends, especially if you list a lot every day. I try to pick out a couple ones that I especially think my friends might find interesting. After listing an item, at the top of the page you will be asked if you'd like to share your item with your friends on Etsy. Click on that and a box will pop up with your item. You can even add some text.
• Print business cards with your Etsy shop on them. You might want to consider buying the .com with your store name and then do domain mapping or domain forwarding to your store. That way when people want to go to your store they can just type in mystore.com rather than etsy.com/shop/yourstore. You can hand cards out to people you meet, friends, mail them with orders and post them on bulletin boards.
• Buy an ad on a blog that is similar in style to your Etsy store. If you are selling Victorian inspired items find a Victorian style blog and see what their ad rates are. To have a sponsored ad on this blog I am currently charging $25 a month and I get around 42,000 pageviews a month. Some blogs ask for a 3 month payment, while others just a month at a time. Perhaps try it out for a month and see if you notice more sales. I'm going to consider doing this in the new year.
• Create Etsy Treasuries. If yours is picked for the front page of Etsy everyone will see your name and your choice items. Plus you can contact all the shops that you have chosen for your Treasury and let them know that their item has been chosen. This helps build community.
• Be a sponsor at a local event. I was a sponsor for a Studio Soiree that was centered around the amazing felt artist Monica Ashley. I gave every one that attended some swag that included some herbal tea and my business card. I also gave away four vintage glasses with owls on them for a raffle. My logo went on the website and my shop was mentioned at the Soiree.
• Have a Vintage open house where you have items from your store and unlisted inventory on display and for sale. Offer food & drinks, hand out business cards, post cards and really spread the word about your store. I think building up a local following is just as important as a national one since local shoppers might not have to pay for shipping.
• Attend a local Craft or Vintage sale and hand out cards were appropriate.
• Be a vendor at a local Craft or Vintage sale and have a booth with your business cards available. Have a display of items that are similar to what you have in your store.
• Sponsor an Etsy Shoppe Share post. Your banner would go at the top of this post with a short description of what you sell. Last week in total I had 6,215 views on the Etsy Shoppe Share post.
• Add your link to Etsy Shoppe Share and other blog that do something similar.
• Sponsor a giveaway on a blog featuring similar items from your shop.
• If you have a blog, do a shop updates every week or every two weeks. As a reader, I love seeing shop updates.

Do you have any tips or secrets about marketing your Etsy Shop?

Mod Blue & Gold Drinking Glasses

Etsy Shoppe Share - Communication with Buyers

Retro Flex Drinking Paper Straws

As a buyer, I love when a seller takes the time to communicate with me. Etsy in a way, makes it easy to do the entire buying/selling process without direct communication with each other. I try to take some extra steps to not only thank the buyer but share with them some details about their parcel and when it is shipped.

Ironically as I write this I remember that when I sold items through my ATG store and I would received the Paypal notice, I would take the time at that point to reply to let the buyer know that I received payment, thank them for the order and let them know the day their item will be shipped. I will start doing that with my next order at Flavorstitch.

When I have shipped an item I contact the buyer through Etsy and send them an email like this:

Hi,
Thanks so much for your order: Teak Dinner Tray
Your items has been shipped: Parcel Post
Your Delivery Confirmation Number is: 9101148008600359803888
It should arrive with you shortly. Thanks again,
Selena
Flavorstitch

This way the buyer can track the parcel, they will know what method was used to ship the item and they know the day it was shipped.

I have the above note saved in a post-it on one of my widgets for my Mac. It takes just a second to copy and paste it into the communication box at Etsy. I do all my shipping and postage purchasing from home using Endicia so I'm able to copy and paste that in as well. If you don't offer delivery confirmation, it's still great customer service to simply tell your buyer that their item has been shipped.

Mod Tiki Ceramic Toothpick Holder

Do you have any Etsy questions for next week's post? You can leave your question in the comments and I'll try to answer them in an upcoming Etsy Shoppe Share post.

Etsy Shoppe Share

Mod Owl Book Plates

I've been discovering a routine in my daily schedule to work on Etsy. Everyone will have their own schedule of course but I thought I would share with you how I fit Etsy into my day. I do Etsy in batches rather than all at one time. I break it up like this:

• Clean & Prepare items for sale (dishwasher, oil, wipe down, iron etc)
• Take Photos
• Edit Photos
• List Items

I keep my to-be-listed Etsy inventory currently in our bedroom in banker boxes along side one wall. I currently have 3 1/2 boxes full to list. When I bring items home from estate sales and thrift stores, I usually spend the time then to put them in the dishwasher, hand wash them, oil any wood items, iron linens or give them a general cleaning. Once they are ready I place them in the boxes.

I try every day to take photos when and where the light is best. I have a vintage table in my bedroom where nearly all the photos are taken. It's a corner room with heaps of natural light. After my morning of listing book inventory, shipping and writing blog posts I head to the room around 1pm to take photos. This can be anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour depending on how many items that I process.

My photo editing isn't done at a planned time but in pockets of free time. I try to work on one item at a time which can be up to 8 or so photos. I'll write another post on photography but I personally believe a great photo goes a long way on Etsy, especially if you hope to be picked for a Treasury. Here's a treasury that I made, my first!

My listing time has been at night when Dave takes the children to their bedrooms to read them a story. He mostly reads to Keiran but most nights Cerys sneaks in too. This is around 7:30 p.m. I try to list 1-3 items.

Again, this is how I am working Flavorstitch Etsy into my schedule at the moment. Others may do it all in one go. If you wish, quickly share how you handle your Etsy listings.

Spud-Spikes

Etsy Shoppe Share (button is on my To-Do-List)

If you have any Etsy questions, please leave them in the comments or click on the Contact button to ask me privately. I'll try to answer an Etsy question each week. Would you like to sponsor an Etsy Shoppe Share post? Email me and I'll send you the details. Each sponsor will be fully featured on the Friday post. At the moment with Etsy Shoppe Share just starting, Friday's post has had 6256 views so far.

Someone has asked me to include other shops such as Artfire. At this time I think I'm going to just stick with Etsy. I hope that is is favorable for most of you.

Etsy Shoppe Share

 Vera Neumann Napkin Set

Thank you for all of your suggestions last week for finding a name for sharing our Etsy stores with each other. I decided that I wanted to continue with the "share" part of the name so I went with Etsy Shoppe Share. Three of you suggested this; Monica, Amy and Jennifer Robin. I'll be contacting you for your addresses to send out your jeweler's loupes. Thank you!

I also thought I would answer an Etsy question each week to go with sharing our links. Also, in a similar style to ReSelling Tip Share. If you would like to sponsor a question, I will feature your store in the post with your banner, full links and a description of your store. I'll add more details next week.

Feel free to continue to ask any Etsy related questions. This weeks question is: How do I name my shop?

My suggestions for naming your shop or any business is first: Be Unique.

• If your name is unique you can buy the dot com and send people direction to your store using your name.
• Choose a name that is linked in with your blog if you are using your blog to direct traffic to your Etsy Store. For example ATG blog is named ATG on Etsy.
• Try to be original - think about whether you want to name a store that 15 other people have used across the country for different businesses.
• Try to name your business that reads clearly to the eyes and sounds lovely to your ears. I'm lousy with foreign languages and find that I fumble up French names dreadfully. I want to be able to pronounce your name correctly especially if I want to tell friends about it.
• Look at Etsy and write down all the store names that spark something in you. See if you can come up with names that create the same kind of spark in you.
• Ask friends what they think of the name. I spent 3 weeks writing to friends asking opinions about names before coming up with Flavorstitch. Cerys actually came up with Food Craft which got my mind on the idea of different craft names to go along with food. When I asked my friends about the Flavorstitch name they knew immediately that it was the right one. I have a couple pages in my notebook full of different names. My first one was Food Muse until I looked it up and realized that a hundred other people had the same name. Research, research and research.
• Decide your tone: silly, elegant, trendy, artsy, humorous etc..

Figgjo Flint - Danish Modern - Casserole

Etsy Shoppe Share (button will be made soon)

If you have any Etsy questions, leave them in the comments or click on the Contact button to ask me privately.