What is Etsy? and The Mystery of the Etsy Front Page Solved! (I Think...)

Candy Jar Handspun Yarn

For any craftspeople who haven't heard of Etsy.com - and for those of you who have but might be shocked to discover more about this crafts and vintage behemoth - it is a website/web platform that allows craftspeople and vintage dealers to sell their items online within their own little shop.  A pre-made shop is provided - all you need to do is fill in the products and photos - and Etsy does all the accounting for you and offers promotional advice and opportunities.  From its beginnings in June 2005, Etsy has become the largest online crafts retailer in the world.  It has grown and continues to grow like a weed:  in April 2012 it boasted 15 million users, up from 3.8 million in 2009.  Over half a billion US dollars in sales were racked up in 2011, up 71% over 2010.  The amount of items sold on Etsy in March 2012 (62.8 million US dollars) was 41.5% more than March 2011.  As of spring 2012, Etsy got $40 million in venture capital funds which will keep it stable and in business for years to come, says CEO Chad Dickerson.  Sources:  http://www.etsy.com/blog/news/2012/notes-from-chad-funding-etsys-future/
http://www.cnbc.com/id/47231808/Etsy_Scandals_Highlight_Thin_Line_Between_Handmade_And_Factory_Made


Now onto the mystery of Etsy's Front Page. It's the screen that appears when you type in www.etsy.com.  It always shows a grouping of assorted items tied together by a theme, such as the color orange, or tribal design, and it changes every few hours throughout the day.  


Getting on the Etsy front page is like winning the lottery - you'll get a zillion people zooming into your Etsy shop - so it's an amazing form of advertising and it's free of charge!  But it is, literally, like winning the lottery.  According to Handmadeology.com:  "Each day, Etsy selects and features about 300 Etsy products on its front page out of the 9+ million handmade, vintage, and supply items on Etsy.  If this was a simple lottery - your odds would be 1 in 30,000 of making the front page daily!"  http://www.handmadeology.com/want-the-truth-about-making-etsy%E2%80%99s-front-page/


One of my yarns made it onto the front page once, almost two years ago, and appeared between 6 and 8am on a Sunday morning, Eastern Standard Time (bear in mind that most Etsy customers are in the US, and this timing would be the middle of the night for Americans in the Midwest and the West Coast) and I had hundreds of visitors browsing my shop during that 2 hour period.  Imagine if it had been during a more reasonable time of the day?


But I've never been on the front page since, and lately I wondered why.


Of course, the lottery odds come into play, and there are certainly more people selling on Etsy now than two years ago.  For example, according to Etsy's own monthly "Weather Report," 687,430 new people signed up to Etsy in April 2012 alone - not all as sellers, but even if half signed up as buyers and half as sellers, that would still be over 300,000 new sellers in a single month!  And each seller is listing up multiple items for sale.  So there's a lot more competition for the front page than two years ago.  http://www.etsy.com/blog/news/2012/etsy-statistics-april-2012-weather-report/


Also, I've noticed that over the past year the front page has become very homogenous, as if Etsy decided to give the site a very specific style, akin to magazines that have their signature cover look - whether it's Vogue or National Geographic, you can spot the magazine almost immediately on the rack because it will always look a certain way, no matter what the content is that month.  I've noticed that at some point in the recent past and with very few exceptions, all of the items on the Etsy front page are now photographed with white backgrounds so that the products seem to float in space, or sit against a white background atop a single prop.  (The exceptions to this are photographs or posters.)  The front page is sourced from Etsy Treasuries, which are collections of items put together by Etsy members.  Anyone can make a Treasury; in fact, picking a catchy theme and creating Treasuries is a fun thing to do on the site.  Etsy staff are constantly choosing Treasuries for the front page.  But it looks like they only pick the Treasuries full of items with white backgrounds.


So there's a thought:  when photographing your item for your Etsy shop, use that tried and true professional photographer's technique of the white box, or a white roll of paper as background, and daylight bulbs.  But as for me, I'm a bit of a knee jerk non-conformist so I'm just going to keep photographing my yarns as the mood takes me.  As well, I have always liked Etsy's indie, outside-the-box vibe, so I'm hoping this corporate branding technique goes away one day and the front page returns to its old inventive, surprising, and charming self.


Cheers!

London in May

I haven't been able to spin much lately due to a very busy schedule but I have certainly been out and about quite a bit, so here is another post that has nothing to do with my blog theme but shows some lovely places here in London during a very bedraggled month of May.  First of all, I came upon what the English call a "bluebell wood" while walking with friends in Kew Garden:

A bluebell wood is simply a wooded area carpeted with bluebells.  This is the time of year for bluebells and the National Trust (www.nationaltrust.org.uk) has a special section on its website each spring to let you know where you can find bluebell woods on their properties.

On another day, I went on a Secret London walking tour with the impeccable, incredible London Walks (www.walks.co.uk) and discovered some wonderful places.  This is a very old pub, Ye Olde Mitre, squeezed into a little alleyway:

And in its eccentric window:

The pub is of note because for quite awhile it was considered to be in Cambridgeshire rather than London.  This was due to the fact of its address:  Ely Court.  From Tudor times, this was where the palace of the Bishop of Ely stood  - rich English bishops had palaces in London - and so this land, being the property of the Diocese of Ely in Cambridgeshire, was legally part of Cambridgeshire, sort of like how an embassy is considered to be the actual territory of its country rather than the land of the country it is located within.  Until the last century, Ye Olde Mitre had to get its pub licence from Cambridgeshire, and the City of London had no jurisdiction over it!

We were also taken into a little square with curious street names:

I love English place names and London street and tube station names.  While walking in my neighborhood I've come across Milk Street and Bread Street, Threadneedle Street, Cheapside and Eastcheap, Crutched Friars, Seething Lane, Great Swan Alley, and (the very grim-sounding) Undershaft.  (Imagine if your address was something like 1 Undershaft, London - it sounds so Edgar Allan Poe-ish).  I live near a street called St Mary Axe (the street got its name from a medieval church formerly located there next to a tavern with the sign of an axe), and also a street named Houndsditch (because in medieval times the street bordered the eastern side of the city wall, and this was where residents threw their dead dogs into a ditch outside the wall).  My favourite London Underground station name is Pudding Mill Lane, but I'm also partial to Bushey, East and West Ham, Barking, Mudchute, and Crystal Palace.

We were taken to the house of Dr. Samuel Johnson, famous for his dictionary:

The house was built in 1700.  It caught fire during World War Two but was saved by Londoners who risked their lives to preserve it, out of respect for the great man.

And here is St. Bride's church, "the cathedral of Fleet Street" because it is located near the old journalistic hub:

This church was built by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London - Sir Chris also built St Paul's Cathedral - but this is actually the seventh St Bride's on this site, the earliest dating back to Saxon times around the sixth century.  Wren designed it to look like a wedding cake, don't you think?  (But "Bride" is actually a short form of the name "Bridgit").  Incidentally, St Bride's church is next to the St Bride Foundation, a social and educational charity established in Victorian times to teach the printing trade to the underprivileged in the hope of bettering their circumstances.  The Foundation still offers courses in letterpress printing.

So there's a bit of a London walk for you, and sorry about the dull photos but the weather all through April (and halfway into May now) has been nothing but rain or the threat of it.

Cheers!

News Flash! Truckers Picking Up Knitting and Quilting!

Just discovered this wonderful article in the Wall Street Journal about long haul truckers who quilt and knit in their trucks during downtime:

Idle Pastime: In Off Hours, Truckers Pick Up Stitching
With Less To Haul, Drivers Try New Hobbies: Quilting In The Cab
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704896104575139990857438962.html

Fave quotes:

"The fact that you can take strands of thread and basically make something out of it, that's awesome I think.  It's pretty cool stuff, man."

"In the truck stops, it's usually a bunch of guys watching football.  If I sat down with my knitting, I think there would be some funny remarks."

"Oh, there's just many a time you're going down the road at O-dark-thirty in the morning and you just start thinking about a particular pattern."

Enjoy!

Domestic Design Test

Guess What?

I was at the Science Museum today, down in the basement where the household appliances are kept.  Many of these basement exhibits are quite old; for instance, there is an automatic door dating from 1933, and when it was installed in the Museum that year, most people had never seen an automatic door before, so it was the star exhibit!  There is also an early version of a sensor, and one of the first cash machines - it looks quite similar to what we use today except that the bank card had hole punches in it instead of a magnetic strip, and the machine dispensed a fixed amount of cash and kept your card.  The bank would then mail the card back to you to use again!  The year: 1971.  My favourite item was the one pictured above.  Can you guess what it is?  (To be fair, the photo is missing a vital part of the appliance.)

I don't have any theme music to play while you puzzle it out, but I'll put in a photo of the milkshake we got at the Museum's Shake Bar as a pause-and-think break........

Strawberry Milkshake with Hundreds & Thousands

..........Ok, here's the answer:

A foot-powered vacuum cleaner!  The text says:  "Most early vacuum cleaners were human powered since few houses had electricity at the time.  The suction is provided by two bellows pumped by foot.  Notice the glass viewing chamber at the side.  When vacuum cleaners were a novelty, people liked to be able to see the dirt being sucked in."

By the way, this post has nothing to do with my blog theme - just a bit of fun!

Ben Franklin's London House and the Cost of Postage

Fairy Dots Handspun

Last week I visited Benjamin Franklin's London residence.  He lived in a house on a street between Trafalgar Square and the River Thames for a total of 16 years and the house is still standing amidst a block full of its contemporaries.  Ben Franklin was one of those rare people born with endless amounts of intelligence, creativity, good nature, and get-up-and-go spirit.  It's impossible to go into detail about everything Franklin got up to in his long life, but the fantabulous New York City illustrator Maira Kalman did a very funky summing up of his life in her New York Times blog:

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/can-do/?emc=eta1

And Melvyn Bragg did a truly fascinating BBC4 program on Franklin, with scholars from the universities of Cambridge, Glasgow, and Sheffield, which is available as a free podcast:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/iot  (Look on the righthand side of the page for a list of the In Our Time podcasts and click on "Franklin")

And if you didn't feel like clicking, here's my summing up of Franklin:

Born in Boston in 1706, he ran away from home as a teenager and became a self made man, making his fortune as a printer by writing and publishing the bestselling Poor Richard's Almanack - it was published for over 25 years and sold up to 10.000 copies a year.  His interest in science led him to invent a diverse array of items:  bifocals, the lightning rod, the urinary catheter, a phonetic alphabet, and the glass armonica (an instrument for which Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, and Strauss, among many others, composed music).  He could play the violin, harp, and guitar.  He was the first chess player known by name in America.  He was the first to chart the Gulf Stream.  He devised anti-counterfeiting techniques for currency and was a big advocate for the use of paper money.  He was the first US Postmaster General and in that capacity he reformed the US Postal Service.  He founded a volunteer firefighting company and the first hospital in America.  He was an Ambassador and a Justice of the Peace.  He received honorary degrees from Yale, Harvard, Oxford, and St Andrews universities.  He advocated religious and racial tolerance, and was the president of the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society.

He was probably second only to Shakespeare in coming up with memorable quotes:  "A penny saved is two pence dear" (Better said today as, "A penny saved is a penny earned.")  "Honesty is the best policy."  "Time is money."  "If you would be loved, love, and be loveable."  "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."  "Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards."  "Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today."  "Tell me and I forget.  Teach me and I remember.  Involve me and I learn."

He is said to be the most famous American president who was never actually president, but he is arguably responsible for having created that famous American cultural concept:  The American Dream.  Franklin wrote often about the idea that any person, with hard work and a positive attitude, could obtain their dream.  He wrote "The US Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it.  You have to catch up with it yourself."  But he also had a sort of Buddhist inclination regarding happiness, quite firmly believing that happiness and success are not to be found in material objects or external admiration.  He stood for the "less is more" lifestyle, both materially and philosophically.

Anyways... why am I writing about Ben Franklin?

Well, the postage rates jumped here in the UK.  This increase has an effect on my business, as I believe the cost of postage has an effect on whether or not people decide to buy my yarn; after all, if the yarn costs $25 and then they discover they'll have to pay an extra $4 to have it sent... well, that's a tipping point.  But then I don't want to start losing money.  What to do?  The week in which postage rates rose was the week in which I visited Ben Franklin's house.  (Minor note:  it wasn't actually his house - he was a boarder there.  Back in the 1700s as now, London was an expensive place to buy a home.  Franklin rented rooms in a wealthy widow's home, and this was commonplace.)  What would Ben have recommended me to do?  A former postmaster, a man who wrote so much about thrift, would have told me that perhaps I could be a bit thrifty.   I decided that rather than raise my postal rates, I would save money regarding my postal materials.  Thrifty Mr Franklin wouldn't have purchased those mailing bags from the post office shop - he would have made his own using household items that would otherwise go to waste.  I have all sorts of plastic sacks and paper bags that I could convert into good quality mailing wrappers!  And it's eco-friendly to reuse them!  Thank you, Ben Franklin!

To Wholesale Or Not To Wholesale? My Experiences On That Question...

Wood, Wool, and Flax Handspun

What's the difference between selling directly to customers and selling through a store?  From my experience, just two things:  money and time.

Money:
I make a lot less money if I sell yarn at wholesale prices to stores.  It can't be helped.  If I were to sell yarn to a store at the same price as I sell it in my Etsy shop, the store owner must double my price to give it a retail price and therefore it would be selling at double the price in the store than what I myself sell it for in my Etsy shop.  This is not only unfair to the customers who purchase the yarn from the store owner rather than directly from me, but it also makes the yarn in the store a ridiculously high price.  However, if I sell yarn to the store owner at half the price that I myself sell it for - so that its retail shop price matches what I sell it for in my Etsy shop - I am not covering my production costs since the prices in my Etsy shop are based on the cost of the fibers and my time spent making the yarn.

Time:
As a counterweight to the Money factor, selling through a store saves me some time.  I make the yarn and drop it off at the store; I return one day and collect money.  That's it!  When I sell yarn myself through my Etsy shop, I have to make the yarn, photograph it, list it up onto Etsy.com, be available to answer any questions, process the transactions through PayPal, pack up the yarn for mailing, and make trips to and from the post office.

Conclusions:
Handmade items sort of split into two categories.  Some can be produced relatively quickly because they can be made in batches (like buttons) or they have research and development time but after that are ready to go without fuss (like a pattern or a song).  Others have to be made painstakingly through a process that can't be shortened, like handspun yarn or leather goods or paintings.  The former are the handmade items more suited to wholesale, I think.

I have had to separate wholesale yarns from my Etsy shop yarns.  In order to make enough yarn to sell at wholesale prices to a store, I need to make yarns that can be spun quickly, such as yarns that are made from a single fiber (because blending fibers takes time and measurement) and from fibers that spin up quickly (for example, wool fleece spun to a bulky or chunky weight can be created at light speed compared to spinning flax or hemp).  In contrast, the Etsy shop yarns can be more complex because I can price them at rates that cover my costs and time, and describe them thoroughly so customers know exactly what they are buying in terms of quality and workmanship - something that is more difficult to communicate via yarn sitting on a store's shelf.  So in the end I have two product lines.

My Etsy shop has been gaining customers at a slow but steady rate, and right now I'm selling about as much as I can spin.  Bear in mind that my spinning is a part time thing, something that I fit into the cracks of my days as I'm in a busy section of my life, so I can't increase production as sales increase.  If my wholesale yarns were an integral part of my business, this inability to pedal out more and more yarns would be a big problem.

So I think it all depends on what exactly the handmade item is - how labor intensive it is to create, and what price it can attain.  (For example, unique handmade dolls are labor intensive but they are able to be sold at a rather high price since there are doll collectors out there who view them as works of art.)  And how much time you have to devote to your craft business - part time or full time?

Lastly, I think it might be a good idea for me to make something besides yarn.  I've always loved the idea of dyes, maybe because I'm trained as a herbalist, so I'm thinking I might try making some unique dyed yarns or hand dyed fibers that spinners can spin up.  All I need is more time...

Cheers!

Another Bad Experience With Etsy Search Ads

Whipped Cream Handspun

Last year, when Etsy.com first started up its new search engine and "Search Ads," I plunked down $5 for a week of ads and had ZERO results.  Nothing. Nada. Zip.  (See my blog index for a post about it.)

Time has passed.  I plunked down another $5 for another week of ads.  Zero.  Nothing. Nada. Zip.

What's more interesting is that I ran the ads during the time I started my Clearance Sale.  The ads ran for half a week before the sale began.  I actually forgot I had scheduled them because there was no noticeable upsurge in people "hearting" my items or my Etsy shop. ("Hearting" meaning marking my item or shop as a favorite).   Then I started my Clearance Sale (see the post before this one), and BANG! Big uptick in shop and item hearting!

I don't bother to look at the statistics that Etsy provides me at the bottom of my Shop Stats page regarding Search Ads impressions and views and all that because it's much more relevant if people either heart my shop or items, or if a sale results from the search ad.  The search ads had no effect on hearting or sales.

So my question is:  what's going on with the Search Ads?  I'm thinking they are quite similar to Google Ads.  Maybe Etsy hired someone from Google to create a similar advertising system for them?  Etsy Search Ads are not only ineffective for me - they are completely and totally ineffective!  Why?  I think it's because they are not specific enough to someone's search.  For example, if someone were to search Etsy.com for "purple fairy yarn" and the Etsy search ads put a photo of purple Wensleydale handspun in front of them, it's not really relevant.  Sure, it's purple yarn, but it's not fairy yarn.  They might click on the ad simply because they wonder what Wensleydale is, but the bottom line is that they are not trying to find Wensleydale yarn; they are trying to find fairy yarn.  If anybody uses Google's email, Gmail, you'll notice that the Google ads in the margin are based on words in your email, and most of the time they are not relevant or out of context.  My friend sent me an email about how cold it still was where she lives, and how she was not going to bring her spring/summer clothing out of storage yet, and the Google ads surrounding the email were about renting space in wholesale warehouse cold storage facilities!

So that's my last post about Etsy Search Ads unless they make some big changes!

Cheers!

The Pros & Cons of a Clearance Sale

Red White and Blue Flax Handspun

I've learned some valuable lessons from the clearance sale I'm currently having in my Etsy shop.

I have a lot of yarns sitting around from my early days of spinning, plus lots of remnants from skeins that were sold.  (I prefer to sell in set amounts, such as 100 grams, 150 grams, etc.)  They were piling up!  At first I thought I'd do some craft market days as the weather is warming up, but market selling takes a fair bit of work and time so I kept procrastinating.  Then I got the idea of making a Clearance Sale section in my Etsy shop.  I spent a Sunday afternoon measuring, pricing, photographing, and listing them up.  I didn't think many people would notice.  Well, within 7 days I had sold them all, and all of them to brand new customers!

I priced them at bargain rates because they were either skeins I had made while still a relative beginner (substandard quality, in my eyes) or they were remnants of little yardage, but I priced them with the goal of making back the cost of the fibres and the postage.  I offered free shipping on the sale items so that people could order easily, knowing exactly what they were paying while they were shopping; I'm not good at calculating discounts and such, and I often abandon my purchase if I get a heart attack when the shipping fees get added in at the end!

The great thing about the Clearance Sale is that it turned out to be free excellent advertising.  It didn't cost me anything but a bit of time commitment (as does any promotional activity) and it introduced my shop to lots of new people.  I think they found me because many people type "handspun sale" or "clearance" into the Etsy search box.  (Handspun is expensive, after all!  Best to get a deal when you can!)  And now I have more space in my tiny spinning corner at home, having cleared everything out so quickly.

After 7 days of the Clearance Sale, I'm now listing the last of my sale skeins onto Etsy this weekend.  If the past predicts the future, they'll all be gone in 7 days!

Blog Options: Styles, Costs, etc.

Yak, Merino, & Bluefaced Leicester

I've just changed the look of my blog:  I flipped it from Hillbilly Farmhouse Style to this Modern Yet Vintage look.  I use Google's Blogger for my blog.  I chose it because it seemed to be the easiest one to learn.  I'm no computer geek, that's for sure.  Everything I've done on a computer for my business - setting up a website, creating a blog, setting up an Etsy shop - I've had to learn from scratch, painstakingly.

In my experience, I found five paths to blogging:  Typepad, Wordpress, Blogger, various freebie blogs, and IWeb.  I'll talk about them from my favourite on down.

First:  My favourite is Typepad.com.  It's got the kind of coolness that Apple has over other computers, but it has the pricey-ness to match:  Typepad blogs are not free, starting at $8.95/month, but they are the creme de la creme, beautifully laid out, gorgeously produced.  Oooh, I'm so tempted to spring for a Typepad blog!  I tell myself that it's only the price of a couple of caffe lattes at a Starbucks, a small luxury really, and I don't go to nightclubs or buy jewelry or makeup so surely I can pay $8.95 a month for a Typepad blog...  It even sounds better in British Pounds, just £5.50 a month to sit with such beauty...  But then I stop myself with the realization that it's not a necessity and anyways I probably wouldn't be able to figure out how to work with a Typepad blog.  Well, maybe you might find me at a different blog address one day...

By the way:  It's worth reading their page about why Typepad is so good, as it gives you tips to watch out for regarding other blog sites:  http://www.typepad.com/features/the-right-choice/

Second:  Lots of people use WordPress.com blogs and I really like their style:  clean, clear, fresh, professional.  Wordpress straddles the fence between pricey Typepad and totally free Blogger because it offers lots of free, very attractive blog templates and a decent amount of storage space but there are lots of premium features with a cost.  For instance, you have to pay $30 to keep your blog free of ads. You can purchase a nicer looking template for $48 or $60 or $100.  Wordpress is much more complicated to work with than Blogger.  I've noticed that you can buy How to Use Wordpress books, leading me to believe that it is indeed a complicated animal.  I tried to do Wordpress once upon a time, and gave up.  I just don't have the time to invest in learning the ropes.  Wordpress offers loads of options compared to Blogger, so if you're handy with a computer you'd be better off with Wordpress for sure.

Third:  But if you're like me, blundering about electronically, you might be happier with Blogger.  Blogger is free, simple to get started, and you're looking at it right now.  It's part of the Google family.  There's not a lot of choice regarding templates although you can customize every one of them if you put a bit of muscle into it, and they've put up a new range of Dynamic styles that give Wordpress a run for their money.  (Well, not really, as Blogger is free ;-)  Just like Google's email service, if you need something basic that looks okay and is easy to learn to use and totally free, well then, Blogger is it.

Fourth:  There are a lot of free blogs out there.  I've noticed that many free blog sites don't let you have a look under the hood before you sign up.  That's my clue to stay clear, just like I would at a used car lot.  It also seems that many web hosting companies offer free blogs to lure you towards their hosting service.

Here's a listing by Mashable.com - an independent online news site covering digital culture, social media, and technology - of 40+ free blogs:  http://mashable.com/2007/08/06/free-blog-hosts/  These include blogs with themes incorporated into them, such as blogs specifically for travel, or videoblogs.  

Fifth: And this is kind of a minor one, but I include it just in case.  When I made my website, I used IWeb, a website software in my MacBook.  I love IWeb and was able to make a website so easily.  (The hard part was signing up to a web hosting company to get my site onto the internet, but that's another story - see my post tagged "Supergreen webhosting").  There's a Blog feature on IWeb templates so that your blog can be part of your website.  However, I went with a separate Blogger blog because it had features I didn't see in my IWeb template.

There are great upsides to having a blog associated with your little business.  Many customers found my yarns because they ran across my blog.  On the downside, I use up a fair bit of time writing in my blog when I should be spinning more yarn.  Oh well, yin yang, six of one, half a dozen of another!

Cheers!

More Photography Ideas

Crazy Curls Handspun

I still haven't had the time (well, sometimes I had the time but then I didn't have the energy!) to make a "white box" in an attempt to create better photographs of my yarns.  HOWEVER, I  have happened upon some great articles about taking great photos without spending money on photo equipment.  If you recall from my previous posts, I'm not the technical type, I don't want to spend money, and I have no plans to use anything but my IPhone camera.  Hope these help!

From Handmadeology, "The Do's and Don'ts of Photography For Etsy Sellers":

http://www.handmadeology.com/the-dos-and-donts-of-product-photography-for-etsy-sellers/

From Digital Photography School, "How To Make An Inexpensive Light Tent," which is full of step-by-step, illustrated instructions and great examples:

http://www.digital-photography-school.com/how-to-make-a-inexpensive-light-tent

From About.com, "How to Photograph Crafts For Online Selling and Blogging" which has links at the bottom of the article for more photo articles and how to photograph specific crafts, such as photographing miniatures:

http://photography.about.com/od/photographybyoccasion/tp/How-To-Photograph-Crafts-For-Online-Selling-And-Blogging.htm

And from CraftBlogUK, an article chock full of tips and ideas, including examples of photographs that editors/curators are looking for:

http://www.ukcraftblog.com/2011/10/craft-photography-tips.html

Cheers!

Craft Market Advice

Kid Mohair and Silk Handspun

Spring has almost sprung here in London, and I've been thinking of doing markets again.  (From my previous posts, you'll see I'm ying/yang about markets.)  I've been digging up craft market experiences to help me make up my mind (it's a commitment to sign up for these things) and I found some very helpful and amusing advice and anecdotes about market selling.


From the Etsy.com forums, I discovered this very interesting and helpful collection of people's experiences:


http://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/business-topics/discuss/9361510/page/1


The advice includes:
1.  Bring something work-related to do at your booth.  If you make knitted items, then knit.  If you carve rocks, polish them.  Etc.  I spin yarn and I've found that when I spin, more people come over than if I'm sitting on a chair smiling and staring at people.
2.  Make your booth appealing (sounds obvious, but really put some muscle into it!) and keep it "full and fluffy."
3. The most unlikely person can be a good customer.
4.  Have something for sale in every price range.  Someone may not be able to buy one of your "main" items but would like to be able to take home a little something if they really like your stuff.
5.  Choose a market/craft show that is the right "fit" for your product.  In my opinion, this is really important.  As one person put it:  "Even though the items I take to shows are geared towards little girls, I didn't do well at a consignment show because people were looking for a bargain. They didn't want my $8 flowers that were handmade by me when they could have $3 flowers that were machine made in another country."

6.  Have all items clearly priced.  I think this is also a BIG one. Many people are too shy to ask, or fear being drawn into a sales pitch if they ask, and they would make the purchase if the price was right for them.  

From the Etsy team "British Sellers on Etsy" come these interesting opinions on a forum post titled 'Craft Fairs vs Internet Sales:  http://www.etsy.com/teams/6966/british-sellers-on-etsy/discuss/6775306/  I really liked this one because they don't pull any punches and get quite specific about sales and costs and so on.  They also mention the unpredictability of British weather, which is a huge factor when choosing to do an outside show, even in the summertime. 

And from Handmadeology.com, a wonderful article stuffed with links to all kinds of craft show advice from loads of different sources:  http://www.handmadeology.com/successful-craft-fair-tips/

One thing I wanted to post up here was a forum on Etsy about people's worst ever craft market experiences.  It was a gem!  There was one poor soul who set up her tented booth on a windy day and a gust picked up her tent and blew it up onto the roof of a nearby school!  But I just can't trace it...

I haven't completed my photography postings yet - still working on it - coming soon...

Cheers!

Daylight Bulb Photography

The Fairy Garden By Day Handspun in stocking stitch

This is a follow up post to my previous post about trying to take better photographs.  As mentioned, I live in London where the weather is inconsistent year round and the winter months are short and dark, making it difficult to take natural light photos of my yarns for listing up on Etsy.  I thought that if I bought a "daylight" bulb (also known as a "craft" bulb) it would be simple to take photos with realistic colours at any time - just put the yarn under the light and snap away!  But in fact it's not so easy...

First, I have to say that some of my yarns are not a problem to photograph; I've discovered it depends on the colours they contain.  My linen yarns, which are a neutral beige or light brown, are never difficult and this holds true for any of the yarns that contain medium level colours.  However, any yarns with colours in the darker part of the spectrum can be almost impossible!   Scarlet red yarn is really tricky.  No matter where I placed it in the room - direct light, indirect, quiet lighting, shielded - the yarn looked like it was glowing!  I also have a chocolate brown yarn made from camel hair which I can only photograph as either a much lighter brown than reality, or as its true colour which then causes detail and texture to be lost. Both yarns had to be listed up for sale with "so sorry"s about the poor photographs and attempts to describe their actual colours with mere words.  Lately I've been trying to photograph a black yarn with tan accents and have had poor luck as well.

And that's what my photography has been - a matter of luck, since I hadn't bothered to learn even basic photography before launching myself on an web business.  My experience so far has been that web businesses rely heavily on their photographs so I would have done better to have taken a short photography course on still life before creating my website and Etsy shop.  Live and learn.  I'm starting now :-)

Away in the back of a cupboard I found a crafting lamp with a small daylight bulb so I've been experimenting with it.  I have a multicoloured yarn (The Fairy Garden By Day) which contains lots of pastel and soft colours, all of a medium tone.  Here is a photo I've taken of it in natural daylight:

Taken in natural daylight

And here is a photo I took at night, using a daylight bulb:

Taken at night, in darkness, using a daylight bulb

They are pretty close in colour, don't you think? The daylight bulb photo shows the strands of yarn with a bit of a glowing aura, but generally the photo taken at night (and I had to turn off all the regular light bulbs in the room, otherwise there would be an orangey tint to the photo) is as accurate as the photo taken in natural daylight.  It's my first attempt with the daylight bulb, but it's not too far off the mark.

So now I turned my efforts to a very difficult yarn to photograph:  Licorice Whip - pure chunky black merino with a thin tan plying strand as an accent.  Here is a photo taken in natural daylight:

Licorice Whip Handspun in daylight

The black melts in with itself, and the tan plying yarn appears lighter than its actual color.  Then I tried putting the yarn under the daylight bulb, on a rainy day, in my kitchen.  (On rainy days I have to turn on the light in the kitchen to see clearly, so the daylight is quite poor but there is light.)  This is what I got:

Licorice Whip Handspun photographed with a daylight bulb in poor quality daylight

The black merino is more clearly defined but you can see the glow of the bulb and the tan plying yarn is still not its proper color.  I tried moving the daylight bulb further away to create a more diffuse light:

Licorice Whip Handspun with daylight bulb moved at a distance away

but that totally doesn't do the trick! So today I did a bit more research and learned that it's fundamentally important to make sure that the "daylight" is spread out evenly over the item to be photographed.  The glow I was getting was due to the bulb's light being unevenly spread across the yarn.  It  may take two daylight bulbs to spread enough light around that black yarn to provide enough detail and true color.  Or I may need a sort of "light tent" to spread the light evenly.  This would mean I'd need to place the yarn on a white surface with three white walls and a little white ceiling around it, which I could easily construct with a cardboard box and white paper.  I'll try again and post more later.

In the meantime, I found a very informative and clearly written and illustrated website page about lighting for crafted items:  http://www.hollyknott.com/stq/lighting.htm  Thank you, Holly Knott, and your crafting is gorgeous too!

Cheers!

Photography: Your Best Friend

Brighton Beach

I've read it a million times on Etsy: great photographs are the most important thing for an online shop - and I have to add that this has really proved to be true in the year and a half since I began selling online.  There are certain yarns for which I have some fantastic photos; the stars lined up on the day I took their picture, and I ended up with photos that turned out eyecatching and yet realistic.  These yarns sell better than the rest!

Now, these wonderful, once in a blue moon photographs are a total FLUKE. I have no training in photography.  I use my IPhone to take the pictures.  I never use a flash as it makes the colours unrealistic.  I work like an old 1940's movie director, first taking distance shots of the entire skein, then medium shots, and then close ups; lots and lots and lots of photos because, as mentioned, I actually have no idea of what I'm doing!  I move the yarn all around the room, relying on the daylight to be just right and somehow luckily catch the yarn in a pretty way.  Then I plug my IPhone into my computer and they are automatically loaded into the computer's photo software, IPhoto.  I look through them, deleting and deleting until I get down to 5 pictures - 1 shot of the entire skein, 2 medium shots, and 2 close ups - because Etsy allows for a maximum of 5 photos per item.

This is a silly way to go about photography.  Here in London, the daylight varies considerably.  It's now wintertime so my photos have been lacklustre lately as the light tends to be dull most days, and on rainy days I can't take a single decent photo.  I really need to put some time and energy into some proper photographic techniques.  My IPhone has a good camera, so no need to improve on that, and the interface between my camera and my computer (the cheapest Apple laptop you can get, the MacBook) and my computer and Etsy (or any other websites that require photos, like Blogger here) is easy as pie, couldn't ask for anything more.  So I think I can narrow down my photography studies to simply learning to work with lighting.  I'm going to get myself a "daylight bulb," also known as a "craft bulb."  They are no more expensive than regular light bulbs but emit light that mimics daylight and they are supposedly perfectly fine for shooting non-moving objects.  I'll give it a go and write a future blog post...

I also want to mention that there are some very cool options for IPhone cameras.  The one I have is called the Hipstamatic.  It's an IPhone "app" that allows you to photograph using a variety of filters and you end up with very eye-catching (but not terribly realistic) pictures.  The photo of Brighton Beach above is one example, and below is another:

Brighton's Victorian clock

Here's the link to Hipstamatic if you're interested:  http://community.hipstamatic.com/albums/3

Cheers!

The Pop-Up Shop

Leadenhall Market, a Victorian market in the City of London

Two springs ago, I sold my yarns in a market stall every Sunday.  Eventually I decided to stop doing the market scene for two reasons: it took up a lot of time and it was so financially unpredictable.    

It's possible to sell sporadically.  Some organisations here in London set up monthly or seasonal craft sales in church halls, such as Selvedge.org, ofcabbagesandkings.co.uk and East London Craft Guerilla.  

Then there's the pop-up shop.  The pop up started from a small but clever idea:  approach the owner of an empty storefront and ask to use the space for free while it's vacant. The up-side for the property owner is that the space looks more attractive for rental when it's in use, as opposed to shuttered and vacant, and they can ask the pop-up shop to vacate instantly once the space is leased.  The up-side for the pop-up shop is, of course, free rent on a retail space!  The concept became so popular that it's not so easy to get free rent anymore.  But definitely cheaper rent than a conventionally leased space.  In fact, there's now a real estate agency here in the UK that specializes in high end pop-up properties:  www.popupspace.com  

Here in Whitechapel, an artsyfartsy part of London, there used to be pop-up shops popping up like daisies, but not so much anymore as developers have moved in to put up luxury apartment buildings.  (People want to be cool and live where the artists and musicians are, which then prices the artists and musicians out of the neighborhood!)  But certainly the pop-up shop is a very viable concept for people living in areas where the real estate is not overheated.  I mention it as grist for the mill, a seed for planting, a possibility in the future...

Cheers!

One Pitfall of Working at Home, Plus One Solution!

Early Spring Handspun Yarn

One of the pitfalls of working at home is my tendency to keep working, and working, and working!  And my occupation, spinning yarn, means I can easily spend days in a sitting position - not good!

I've found a solution, a bit unconventional, but it's working for me.   I've found a yoga teacher who has uploaded classes onto YouTube via two separate YouTube channels.  Her name is Esther Ekhart and judging by her accent I'd say she is Dutch.  I've done yoga off and on since childhood and have toyed with the idea of becoming a yoga teacher.  I find that Ms Ekhart has a very clear and easy style of teaching and her videos are of excellent production quality.  Searching YouTube for "Yogatic" will bring you to a treasure trove of short videos suitable for beginners; searching for "Ekhart Yoga" will get you to more videos by the same teacher which are longer and more challenging. [I've just discovered that this is the most watched of all YouTube yoga programs, with Ms Ekhart having 50,000 subscribers at this point!]

So whenever I've put in an hour or two of spinning, I get up from my wheel, roll out my yoga mat, and do a 10 or 20 minute yoga class.  It's free, it doesn't require factoring in travel time, and it makes a huge difference in my fitness and energy levels - and more energy is a bonus to my business, because when I'm tired I tend to nod off while spinning yarn!  To me, one of the huge benefits of being able to work from home is having the ability to manage my health and fitness, to be able to choose what I eat during the day rather than be restricted to what can be packed in a bag or bought from a cafeteria or fast food place, and to be able to exercise daily without having to take a big chunk out of my day.

I think of yoga like swimming.  It's a good all round exercise, it can be gentle or aerobic, and it doesn't stress my body in ways like jogging on pavement or bicycling in traffic exhaust.  It can be done at any age or fitness level (mythbuster:  you don't have to be flexible or strong to do yoga!) and thousands of years of safe use prove its worthiness.

Cheers!

Hackles

Fibre on hackles

I did my tax return last night, squeaking in under the wire of the midnight deadline like Bond dismantling a nuclear device.  Indeed, tax returns (or "self assessments" as they seem to be called here in the UK) are as mysterious to me as those colored wires in fake 1960s nuclear devices.  But I made it through the gauntlet of arcane financial jargon and emerged unscathed at the end. (I don't owe Her Majesty's Inland Revenue anything!)

But I did come out of it with one thought:  should I buy new equipment for the business or not?  My little business makes a little bit of money so when it comes to buying a drum carder or a new spinning wheel, it's not a little decision.  Recently I had a spell of temporary insanity and suddenly got hackles! - no, not a disease, but a piece of equipment for fiber blending.  I went into a trance, went onto the Wingham Woolwork website, and pressed the button that purchased hackles, without a single thought as to cost or need or anything remotely logical/practical/fiscally sensible.

A few days later, reveling in my piles of fiber and hackles, I realized that my subconscious pot had been boiling on the backburner for awhile and had simply turned off my conscious mind, taken control of my body, and ordered this item that I actually did need.  I have been spinning for 5 years with the same carders and same wheel.  The fibers get blended in different combinations, the yarns can be thick or thin, or thick & thin, but nothing much has changed.  Craft, to me, is a combination of honed skill and artistic sensibility.  I had stagnated, and my fiscally conservative conscious mind was, in effect, telling me, "You don't need to evolve creatively... keep your wallet shut..."  And my sub-conscious mind said, "Oh, don't be a fool!  Give me that wallet!"

So the photo above shows a tool made of two rows of fairly sharp metal spikes connected to a wooden base.  I lash fibers onto the spikes.  Then I take a "diz," which is nothing more than a sink washer, and pull the fibers through the diz hole to create a length of mildly blended fibers:

The hackles allow me to create a fiber blend that keeps the integrity of the fibers; in other words, I can add curly locks of Wensleydale fleece and the curly locks will stay curly.  The fiber blends in blocks of colors rather than running together like paint.  This results in yarn that has much more texture and personality.  I've stepped into a new dimension!

So as to apportioning funds for business equipment, as Her Majesty's Inland Revenue would dryly phrase it,  I think Yes.  It's a way of growing your business.  Just don't get like those old photography buffs with their camera cases of different sized lenses and bags of filters and tripods.

Cheers!

Christmas & New Year!

VanDusen Botanical Gardens Christmas light spectacle

I went back home for a month during the Christmas season - home being Vancouver, Canada.  The photo above was taken in the city’s VanDusen Botanical Gardens, where parts of the Garden are lit from top to bottom with Christmas lights each December!

Stanley Park, Vancouver’s equivalent to NYC’s Central Park, also has an annual Christmas lights spectacular which is created by the city’s firemen and all proceeds go to the hospital’s burn unit.  The lights are put up around the route of the Park’s miniature train:

The Stanley Park Miniature Railway train at Christmas

The Stanley Park miniature train crosses a trestle bridge over a frozen pond

I was away for one month, and then add another week of coping with jet lag due to the 8 hour time difference between Vancouver and London; a week after my return, I’m only now able to sit down and type out a blogpost without nodding off!

I couldn’t take my spinning wheel along, as it’s not a portable wheel, but truly I wouldn’t have had a spare moment to make any yarn during my busy visit.  But I did manage to find the time to seek out some of Vancouver’s crafting scene.  The crafts I saw were of a high standard, remarkable in their diversity, and very influenced by the Pacific west coast environment, as you can see from Circle Craft's website:  http://www.circlecraft.net/  Circle Craft is located amongst other crafty shops in the Net Loft Building on Vancouver’s Granville Island (see: http://www.granvilleisland.com/directory-location/directory-location/net-loft), and Granville Island is also home to The Silk Weaving Studio where you can watch weavers at work on big floor looms:  http://www.silkweavingstudio.com/index.html.  I also travelled an hour and a half north of Vancouver to the ski resort village of Whistler and saw the gorgeous traditional handiwork of the native people in their Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre:  http://www.slcc.ca/

Okay, another blog post that is off message, but I hope you enjoyed it!

Happy New Year!

Holiday Embezzlement, Contemplation, and Inspiration

I’ve been embezzling from my own shop but in a Robin Hood sort of way, you know, stealing with good intentions.  I stole yarn in order to knit scarves as Christmas presents, such as the photo here of a scarf made from my Blue Jeans on the Beach yarn which uses recycled denim scraps left over from blue jeans manufacturing.  I’m also working on a thick, cream-coloured scarf made of Bluefaced Leicester (a super soft English fleece of incredible quality) and I’m spinning some extra yarn to make the fringe:  silky, shiny white Tencel (a biodegradeable wood fibre) blended with Bluefaced Leicester.

And while I spin and knit, I think about the person for whom I’m making the scarf.  My 8mm wooden needles click and clack, slowly but steadily adding an inch at a time to a 36 inch scarf, and I think about all the great experiences I’ve had with that person, the funny bits, and the things they have taught me.  By the time the scarf is made, I’m filled with gratitude at knowing such a wonderful person.  I’m making a gift for them, but by the time I’ve finished it I feel like the luckiest gal in the world.  I think this must be the true spirit of a Christmas present!

Also, when I’m creating something as a gift, I find that for some reason I tend to become very experimental and loose with my work, and so discover unexpected techniques or designs.  I finish the gift feeling super inspired about new yarns to create.

“My first copies of Treasure Island and Huckleberry Finn still have some blue spruce needles scattered in the pages.  They smell of Christmas still.” - Charlton Heston

“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better through the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.” - Laura Ingalls Wilder

“I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.” - Harlan Miller

“Tinsel is really snakes’ mirrors.” - Stephen Wright

Christmas Prep List

Christmas Flax Handspun

It’s almost the 1st of December.  Just by looking at me, in my daily uniform of black jeans and a tshirt, you wouldn’t guess I’m actually a Christmas fanatic.  I love Christmas so much that I like to stretch it out as much as I can, so I just treat the entire month of December as “Christmas.” I look forward to filling December with a steady drip of holiday activities and crafts.  I start with hauling the artificial tree in from the balcony (it looks so real that it spends the rest of the year masquerading as a real tree), then all the decorations go up, ITunes and jango.com Christmas music starts playing, then I start on the Christmas cards and homemade presents, next comes the shortbread and sugar cookie baking and decorating, and… well… I could just go on and on, but you know what I’m talking about!

I’m not sure how I came to be this way but like everything else in life it’s probably due to a combination of circumstances, like the fact that my mother didn’t believe in putting up a Christmas tree until Christmas Eve (although I managed to nag her into putting it up a bit earlier than that, thank goodness), that for part of my childhood I lived next door to Amish-like neighbors (they weren’t Amish, but they were an old fashioned super religious Germanic family with Little House on the Prairie home decor, personal styling, and pastimes) who let me come over after school and join them in their traditional baking, and an annual diet of 1960’s and 70’s television Christmas specials such as the Andy Williams show (with special guests the Osmond Brothers), a Charlie Brown Christmas, those wonderful puppet animations of Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer (Burl Ives voicing a banjo-strumming snowman), Santa Claus is Coming to Town (narrated by Fred Astaire), and, of course, How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

See? I’m waxing all Christmassy, boring you with the details, and none of this is relevant to this blog post’s theme of a Christmas Prep List.  But while I’m at it, let me just add a few tidbits about other Christmases I’ve experienced over the years.  When I lived in Sydney, Australia, I used to get so depressed that Christmas occurred in the middle of an Australasian summer, so hot that the decorations on shops would bleach and curl in the blazing sun.  No turkey dinner there - people would go to the beach and throw shrimps on the barbie (okay - just to clear up this well known turn of phrase - Australians don’t call barbeques “barbies” and they don’t call shrimps “shrimps” - they call them “prawns.”  In the three years I lived in Australia, I never once heard that phrase uttered.)  But I’ve lived in Manhattan where I could walk up the road and come upon Rockefeller Center with its gigantic Christmas tree and classic ice rink, including all the wildly decorated shop windows of Fifth Avenue and the Citicorp Center Christmas model train display. (A sure sign of the deep recession we’ve been having is the fact that the creators of this magical wonderland haven’t been able to get a sponsor to fund the display for the past two years, but you can see photos of past years at the creators’ website:  http://www.dunhamstudios.com/cititour.htm).  And I lived in Montreal, where the temperature hovers around −30 to −35 degrees Celsius through the winter, unless there’s a blizzard, when the temperature goes down to −45 with up to 60 kph winds.  What’s that like?  Antarctic, literally.  But so, so beautiful to be in a blizzard at Christmastime with the city streets deserted and piling up with snow.  As soon as the blizzard started, I’d wrap myself up warmly and head outside to walk for hours; like Henry David Thoreau, I appointed myself “Inspector of Snowstorms.”  In case you’re wondering how you walk around in −45C, you put on wool tights,  long thermal underwear, thick pants lined with flannel, a long sleeved tshirt, two sweaters, a winter jacket (the Canadian kind), gloves, mittens over the gloves, a thick woollen hat pulled low over your eyebrows, and two scarves - one around your neck and shoulders and the other around your face.  Before stepping outside, you breathe for a bit into your scarf to build up some warm air because the air outside will be so cold that your lungs will automatically cough it out, so you need to be breathing through the scarf while outside.  And don’t cry with happiness as you stroll through the beauty of the snowy landscape because your tears with freeze your eyes shut at that temperature! (And when spring grew near and the temperature went up to −10, everyone would run outside in shorts!  "Wow, it’s −10!")

Enough already.  I wanted to write a post about the fact that, while I am so prepared and raring to go about Christmas, I wasn’t so well prepared about my yarn business.  I’ve spent most of November spinning madly, trying to keep up with orders. (I’m not complaining, just saying…)  And if I’d been more thoughtful, I would have had lots more Christmas yarn spun up, and so be able to sell more.  So I’m formulating a Chrismas Prep List in order to not get caught out again next year.  It won’t be something I dust off next October - starting in January, I’ll get working on it.  Here’s a rough draft of my Christmas Prep List:

1.  Design Christmas yarns in January and make them all through the year so that there will be a stockpile available to sell during the holiday season.  (As well as my Etsy shop, I also sell yarns in two shops in London).

2.  Create a “Christmas Projects” section of my Etsy shop and keep these yarns listed up throughout the year for any craftspeople who want to get a jump on their holiday projects.

3.  Start doing my bookkeeping in a software program.  I think I’ll use Quicken because I’ve tried it in the past and it was quite user friendly.  (I’m no computer ace).  That way I’ll be faster and better organized with my bookkeeping during the busy Christmas season.  Assuming my sales are better next year than this, I’m not going to shave time off my enjoyment of the Christmas season to spend extra time doing bookkeeping.

4.  Get signed up for some Christmas market selling.  Here in London there are some one day or single weekend markets for the holiday season that I’d like to be a part of next year.  I’ve decided not to sell regularly at markets (see my previous posts about that) but I do enjoy markets.  I figure I’ll put my Etsy shop “on vacation” for the day that I’m at the market, so that I don’t sell anything simultaneously at the market and on Etsy.  (Other Etsy sellers recommend that if you have an internet connection at the market, you can just de-activate items from your Etsy shop as you sell them at the market.)

That’s it so far - not a huge checklist, but it’s a start.  Also, I’ve decided not to keep my Etsy shop open throughout Christmas.  For one thing, I’ll still be selling my yarns at the shops that carry them here in London; and for another, the post office will be a madhouse both for sending items and for the speed of their delivery.  So I’m going to put the online shop “on vacation” soon in order to avoid taking the chance of having customers’ orders arrive late or get lost in the mail, and all the frustration that might occur as a result.  My Christmas season is one of the most wonderful times of my life, and I want to keep it that way!

Cheers!

My Experience With Etsy Search Ads

Tropical Cocktail Handspun Yarn

About 2 posts ago, I wrote about choosing to advertise.  One of my choices was to try a week of Etsy Search Ads for my Etsy.com shop, LondonHandspun.  I signed up for the minimum amount available:  7 days of ads at a maximum of $5.00 cost.  Etsy Search Ads are simply paying for your product to appear at the top of someone’s search results if they search using any of the keywords you specify (Etsy calls them ‘tags’).  So, for instance, if one of the keywords I choose is “handspun,” anyone searching for something on Etsy using “handspun” will most likely see one of my yarns at the top of their search results.

You can change your keyword choices throughout the time period of the ad.  For the first half of my 7 days, I chose general keywords such as “yarn” and “wool.”  For the second half, I changed the keywords to quite specific terms such as “flax,” “nettles,” and “handspun yarn.”

Tweaking the keywords didn’t make any difference - the ads were still a waste of money.  During the 7 days that they were running, there was no upturn in either sales or views for my Etsy shop.  In fact, my shop had the same amount of views as usual, leading me to wonder if the ads were actually running!  But according to my Etsy Shop Stats, I spent US$4.61 over the 7 day period, resulting in 4,423 “impressions” which caused 56 clicks into my shop.  During that 7 day period I sold only one skein of yarn, less than usual.  There was no difference in clicks between the half week of general keywords and the half week of specific keywords.

As a cost comparison, I have a tiny ad in the Ravelry.com Marketplace which costs US$5.00 PER MONTH.  (Ravelry is a website for knitters, crocheters, spinners, any yarn lovers actually, offering free patterns, yarn swaps, and online groups for people - and it’s fantastic!)

I’ve read a number of postings by Etsy sellers about their poor experience with the new Search Ads.  I’m curious to see if these Etsy Search Ads will still exist in a half year from now; Etsy announced them with great fanfare but I have a feeling they are not living up to all the hoopla.  If anyone advertises on Etsy Search Ads and finds them to be beneficial, please leave a comment as to how/why/when ;-)

Cheers!

My Approach to Custom or Special Orders

Scrappy Dappy Recycled Yarn

I’m a member of the Etsy Fiber Arts Street Team, although I’ve never known why “Street” is in the name!  It’s a group for any Etsy seller working with fibers to share their work, ask questions, etc.  Last week, a member asked for advice regarding a custom order she had accepted: the customer requested some fibers to be dyed in a specific colour combination, paid in advance, and later thought the crafter had taken too long to supply the fiber and so asked for the order to be cancelled and the money to be refunded.

The crafter didn’t want to refund the money.  She felt she had good reasons why the order took awhile, (they had not agreed on a strict time frame), and although she hadn’t yet completed the order, she had gone to the trouble of getting the supplies to make it.  Added to that, she didn’t have any money in her PayPal account to provide a refund.  She offered the customer extra product instead.  The customer got angry and accused her of theft.

Members of the Etsy team offered their advice, and all agreed that the customer should have her refund.  After all, you can’t make everyone happy every time, so why not try to mend fences rather than keep the pot boiling?  I used to work in a bookstore in New York that had very clear and strict policies regarding returns and refunds, and yet many times the manager would bend the rules and allow a refund.  Why?  Because rather than have an angry customer stomp out of the bookstore and tell 20 friends never to set foot in your store, you’d have a mollified customer tell 20 friends that he had had a problem with your store that was resolved to his satisfaction.

The situation reminded me of how I wrassled with the idea of custom orders.  Initially, I was not going to accept any special orders because I could only see complications on that horizon.  However, I had some requests by some very nice people and didn’t want to say no to them.  So I decided on an approach that I think irons out any possible difficulties:

I agree to give it a whirl and tell the customer exactly how long it will take me to complete.  If I’m not sure how long it will take, I give myself twice as long as I estimate and if they agree to this timeframe, I begin and make sure I do not take longer than stated. When it’s done, I send them the clearest photos I can possibly take, from all angles and with plenty of zoom shots.  If what I’ve come up with was not what they were hoping for, they are under no obligation whatsoever to buy it, and the yarn will simply become another item for sale in my shop.  If they do like what they see, they pay for it and I send it out.  If they open that parcel and what they hold in their hands isn’t what they expected, they are very welcome to return the yarn for a full refund and it will then go into my shop for general sale.  I feel that in this way, there is no downside for either side.  So far, everything’s been fine :-)

Cheers!

Deciding Where to Advertise

I decided to do some advertising because two opportunities crossed my path.  They are polar opposite opportunities.

The first is the new form of promotion on Etsy called Search Ads.  Basically, you pay $5 for a week’s worth of keyword search promotion.  So you choose some keywords (which Etsy calls “tags”) and if anyone searches using those words on Etsy, your products will appear at the beginning of their search results.  You can tweak this in various ways, but that’s the gist of it.  It’s really simple to sign up for; if you click on Search Ads, Etsy will have all your “tags” lined up for you, ready to go, and all you have to do is choose how much you want to pay ($5 or more) and press YES - if you’re not fussy about the tags, you can be signed up in 5 seconds!  I’m impulsive, so I did.  (Impulsiveness Checker:  Are you a nibbler or a gobbler?  Is it better to ask permission or forgiveness?)

Etsy allows you to view the effectiveness of your Search Ads at any time.  Just go to the Shop Stats page and scroll down to the bottom - there you’ll see a breakdown of how many views and “favorites” have occurred as a result.  This is a nice feature, because I can tell how much my shop is benefitting from them as opposed to any other promotion/ad I may have going at the same time in a different format such as a magazine or blog ad.  (More about that later.)

My Search Ads have been running for almost 2 full days now and I haven’t noticed any difference.  According to Etsy, yesterday my products had 702 “impressions” (the number of times one of my yarns was displayed at the top of someone’s search results) resulting in 8 views and no sales.  This took up $0.71 of my $5.00 Search Ad budget.  I’ve read about other people’s experiences with Search Ads in Etsy forums and no one was pleased with their results.  Luckily, giving them a try is not expensive and,  well, the Search Ads are going to run for the rest of the week so I’ll see how it goes.

The second advertising opportunity came via a blog I follow.  There’s a group of crafters called East London Craft Guerrilla, and they mentioned on their blog that they have started to offer ads for a very reasonable amount - approximately £5 per month if you buy a block of ads for 6 or 12 months.  East London is my neighborhood.  They were very helpful and efficient via email so I had my little ad on their blog within a day of applying.  It’s the polar opposite of the Etsy Search Ads because the Etsy ads cast a wide net in contrast to the Craft Guerilla ad which will appear to people reading their blog, thus reaching a very narrow, defined group.  Also, there’s a HUGE difference in the prices! Doing the math, the blog ad costs £35 for 6 months (further discount available if I extend it to 12 months), which works out to US$56.  Etsy search ads cost about $5.00 for 1 week, making them $20/month, and then x6 makes them US$120 for 6 months.  Yikes!

I’ll sum up with a little anecdote, something else that happened to cross my path this week.  I discovered, on Etsy, a shop called Hespa.  It’s owned by a botanist in Iceland who spends her spare time collecting wild plants which she uses to dye yarn spun from Icelandic sheep fleece.  When you buy this yarn, you also receive a pattern so you can knit your own traditional Viking shawl!  Well, being a herbalist and a spinner and a newly minted knitter, that was right up my alley so as a very special treat to myself I bought the skeins of yarn dyed in 3 different shades using lichen (just like the Vikings used to do).  I was so thrilled to receive my parcel from Iceland; the yarn has the prettiest scent as a result of the lichen, it’s soft and springy and gorgeously colored, and the pattern is easy (thank goodness) yet pretty.  But best of all, in my opinion, is the fact that I get to create a traditional item - I will have a garment exactly like the Vikings made when I’m done!  (Although perhaps I should be knitting with fish or whale bones for knitting needles?)

I emailed a friend to tell him of this wonderfully unique knitting purchase, and he replied: “You know, exclusivity is the key to business.”  He’s right.  No one else is selling such a product as this.  (And, indeed, very few people could if they wanted to.)  But I would add that perhaps there must be two keys.  Word of mouth will eventually guide people to Hespa, but some sort of well-placed advertising would be a key to getting these knitting kits in front of the people who would be so glad to discover them, like myself.  In this case, I think advertising in a specific type of blog, or on Ravelry (a knitting website), or in a certain type of publication such as a guild journal, would work well.  Following on from this logic, I doubt if I’ll be renewing my Etsy Search Ads because my handspun yarn is sort of like Hespa’s Viking shawl kits, on the eccentric and unique side of products, and perhaps best suited to advertising towards a specific type of crafter.

If you’d like to check out these great sites, click on:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/Hespa

and http://eastlondoncraftguerrilla.blogspot.com/

Cheers!