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Help Needed ! Advice from Etsy sellers - 8/1/2011 2:09:10 PM

ChatteParfaitt

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I'm seriously considering selling handmade jewelry on Etsy.

Are any of you successful Etsy sellers?

What advice can you give me to make my Etsy shop a success?

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RE: Help Needed ! Advice from Etsy sellers - 8/1/2011 3:20:39 PM

SylvereApLeanan

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Ooh, I'm in the same boat. I'm thinking of selling handmade candles and soaps. I look forward to the responses. I have a friend who makes a nice second income from selling her items there. I know she promotes herself quite a bit using Twitter, Facebook and her blog. I'll have to pick her brain and report back.

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RE: Help Needed ! Advice from Etsy sellers - 8/1/2011 3:31:37 PM

ChatteParfaitt

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Thanks, I'd appreciate any tips you (or anyone else) can come up with.

I know Etsy is very competitive, there are over 2 millions jewelry items for sale.So aggressive viral marketing techniques geared for Etsy is the kind of thing I am looking for.

Plus anything else of value. Like is it possible to do a search and see what others are selling? I have tons of questions, actually.

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RE: Help Needed ! Advice from Etsy sellers - 8/1/2011 9:29:11 PM

siamsa24

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I have shopped off Etsy a few times, but only from people I know are legitametly selling homemade items.

There's a HUGE number of sellers who are buying items in bulk and then passing them off as handmade and charging much more then the original price. It's sad, because it was a great site, I used to sell off there, Joy Revisions, I used to sell my children's clothes that I made from adult clothes. I don't do it any more because of time restraints, not because of anything Etsy did.

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RE: Help Needed ! Advice from Etsy sellers - 8/2/2011 8:00:28 AM

angelikaJ

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There is also Artfire.

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RE: Help Needed ! Advice from Etsy sellers - 8/2/2011 8:11:35 AM

LillyBoPeep

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in my experience, you might get more traffic from artfire -- especially since it will place items in google search -- but you'll get more activity from etsy. (that's just my experience so... take it or leave it.) i was selling dance costume things i was making; a slightly less competitive market because there are fewer of them than "general jewelry" makers, but still, competitive. you have to promote your store basically everywhere you go because the listing traffic is so high there, something you list one second will be on the 10th page by the next second. =p
and yes, sometimes you are competing against people who really aren't doing actual hand-made stuff. etsy tries to be super-diligent about that, but some people still slip through.
also, hilariously enough, there's a really bad tendency (at least that i've noticed) for people to copy other people's designs and sell them as their own.

all-in-all, though, i like etsy, and i made a pretty good amount of money. i basically wanted to thin out my costume supply reserves, and it worked well for me. but to really be successful at it you have to think of it as your full-time job. promoting it, networking, spamming your friends on facebook, anywhere you can get your name in, etc etc.

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RE: Help Needed ! Advice from Etsy sellers - 8/2/2011 8:47:03 AM

Missokyst

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I had never heard of artfire thanks for the tip. I noticed that their products are not as pricey as those on Etsy which attracted me as a buyer. But since I make both jewelry and dolls I thought about joining Artfire and when I went to the join page I got this:

There is a problem with this website's security certificate.

The security certificate presented by this website was issued for a different website's address.

Security certificate problems may indicate an attempt to fool you or intercept any data you send to the server.
We recommend that you close this webpage and do not continue to this website.
Click here to close this webpage.
Continue to this website (not recommended).
More information

If you arrived at this page by clicking a link, check the website address in the address bar to be sure that it is the address you were expecting.
When going to a website with an address such as https://example.com, try adding the 'www' to the address, https://www.example.com.
If you choose to ignore this error and continue, do not enter private information into the website.

For more information, see "Certificate Errors" in Internet Explorer Help.

Did you have issues joining?

Freaky... the third time I hit join I got to the page without issues.

< Message edited by Missokyst -- 8/2/2011 8:51:15 AM >

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RE: Help Needed ! Advice from Etsy sellers - 8/2/2011 11:55:31 AM

ChatteParfaitt

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Missokyst

I had never heard of artfire thanks for the tip. I noticed that their products are not as pricey as those on Etsy which attracted me as a buyer. But since I make both jewelry and dolls I thought about joining Artfire and when I went to the join page I got this:

There is a problem with this website's security certificate.

The security certificate presented by this website was issued for a different website's address.

Security certificate problems may indicate an attempt to fool you or intercept any data you send to the server.
We recommend that you close this webpage and do not continue to this website.
Click here to close this webpage.
Continue to this website (not recommended).
More information

If you arrived at this page by clicking a link, check the website address in the address bar to be sure that it is the address you were expecting.
When going to a website with an address such as https://example.com, try adding the 'www' to the address, https://www.example.com.
If you choose to ignore this error and continue, do not enter private information into the website.

For more information, see "Certificate Errors" in Internet Explorer Help.

Did you have issues joining?

Freaky... the third time I hit join I got to the page without issues.

That's disturbing.

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RE: Help Needed ! Advice from Etsy sellers - 8/2/2011 2:05:21 PM

zephyroftheNorth

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My sister is and she's phenomenally successful. Go for it!

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RE: Help Needed ! Advice from Etsy sellers - 8/2/2011 3:25:50 PM

flcouple2009

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quote:

ORIGINAL: ChatteParfaitt

quote:

ORIGINAL: Missokyst

I had never heard of artfire thanks for the tip. I noticed that their products are not as pricey as those on Etsy which attracted me as a buyer. But since I make both jewelry and dolls I thought about joining Artfire and when I went to the join page I got this:

There is a problem with this website's security certificate.

The security certificate presented by this website was issued for a different website's address.

Security certificate problems may indicate an attempt to fool you or intercept any data you send to the server.
We recommend that you close this webpage and do not continue to this website.
Click here to close this webpage.
Continue to this website (not recommended).
More information

If you arrived at this page by clicking a link, check the website address in the address bar to be sure that it is the address you were expecting.
When going to a website with an address such as https://example.com, try adding the 'www' to the address, https://www.example.com.
If you choose to ignore this error and continue, do not enter private information into the website.

For more information, see "Certificate Errors" in Internet Explorer Help.

Did you have issues joining?

Freaky... the third time I hit join I got to the page without issues.

That's disturbing.

That happens sometimes if your security settings are set on high and the site is using a certificate from the hosting company rather than having jumped through the hoops and expense of having their own.

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RE: Help Needed ! Advice from Etsy sellers - 8/3/2011 9:25:25 PM

SylvereApLeanan

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I checked with my friend who sells on Etsy. Her recommendations are to have a wide variety of items and update your store often. Her experience is that items priced $20 or less sell best. As far as self-promotion goes, she suggests working mentions of your work into other things. In her words, "it's a part of what you do but not ALL you do." For example, she uses Twitter and her LiveJournal to help promote her Etsy store, but she always blogs and Tweets about other things going on in her life that are unrelated to her store. She says this approach will help keep your work in people's minds without spamming. She's had almost 800 sales on Etsy, so that method is working pretty well for her.

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RE: Help Needed ! Advice from Etsy sellers - 8/4/2011 1:25:14 AM

LadyConstanze

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quote:

ORIGINAL: SylvereApLeanan

I checked with my friend who sells on Etsy. Her recommendations are to have a wide variety of items and update your store often. Her experience is that items priced $20 or less sell best. As far as self-promotion goes, she suggests working mentions of your work into other things. In her words, "it's a part of what you do but not ALL you do." For example, she uses Twitter and her LiveJournal to help promote her Etsy store, but she always blogs and Tweets about other things going on in her life that are unrelated to her store. She says this approach will help keep your work in people's minds without spamming. She's had almost 800 sales on Etsy, so that method is working pretty well for her.

That's pretty much the same for anything you promote on social media, if you only try to sell people get fed up, give them something that might interest them, repost interesting links, etc.

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RE: Help Needed ! Advice from Etsy sellers - 8/4/2011 10:31:23 AM

SylvereApLeanan

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Yeah, that's not really news to me. However, as we agreed during the other conversation re: marketing, not everyone knows how to make the best use of social media for business. Doesn't hurt to reiterate it.

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RE: Help Needed ! Advice from Etsy sellers - 8/4/2011 11:06:43 AM

LadyConstanze

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What I found works best is watching the best tweeters and learning how they do it, they hardly ever promote their products or companies, yet they just offer so much interesting stuff, that when they do recommend something, you take note. People who tend to tweet when they're having a cup of tea are a bit annoying and get dropped ASAP.

Btw FakeSarahPalin stopped tweeting, that was a hoot, stuff like "I won't let my family do Pilates. Any exercise named after Pontious Pilate *must* be a sin."

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