It’s been a busy couple of weeks, but yesterday afternoon I activated 8 listings on Etsy.
Ok, so there are 9 in total, but I’ve heard of many new shops being shut down almost as soon as they open and apparently it can happen even if you’ve followed all of Etsy’s terms and conditions. They say it’s to try and stop scammers, as they are less likely to contact Etsy to say “hey, what’s going on”, which is fair enough, but then some people are waiting days, sometimes weeks to hear back to have their shops reactivated; which must be very annoying if you’ve done a lot of promoting your store ready for the launch.
So, a few weeks ago I added one listing, and so far my store is still there.
I’ve started mainly with glasses cases, and think I’m getting pretty good at showing them off, though am sure there are still many improvements I can make. I’ve actually started to enjoy taking photos of my items, something I’ve always hated in the past. One thing that I found help’s a great deal, was purchasing a shutter release switch for my camera. This means no longer slightly nudging the tripod as I take my shot, and I can stand back so I’m not casting a shadow over my item.
Then it was on to making the actual listings.
I’m not the best when it comes to describing anything, let alone thinking about titles and keywords and tags (oh my), all of which can help potential customers find you.
To assist me I’ve started using erank, a popular Etsy Search Optimisation Tool (SEO)
You can use it for free but I am currently using the Pro option, free for 30 days. It can link it to your store, and then analyse each listing giving you lots of recommendations and useful tips to improve them.
There are others out there like Marmalead (which I will forever call marmalade), and Sale Samurai; where do they come up with these names.
I may look into these too to do a comparison.
It has been said “don’t start a 2nd store until your 1st is successful”. But I’m doing this to replace my main website for now. Also starting this from scratch has taught me a lot, and I’ve learnt things that I can now go and apply to my sticker store, and hopefully improve sales there.
I still have a lot of items to list, so many more photo sessions over the next few weeks. I’m trying to focus first on items that people may buy now, ie for the Summer holidays rather than Christmas.
I’ve not made anything new for a few weeks, but have been using a resin Penguin keyring I made in some of my photos, so will probably make a few of those to list. People may see it and think “oh that’s cute” and then see I sell them too. And I think I’m allowed to link to it on another listing – but will have to check on that.
So, still a lot of work to do, but I’m enjoying it and feeling rather motivated at the moment. Hopefully it won’t be too long until I get my 1st sale.
Penguin and the Bee 