Sunday, March 14, 2010

Marketing Your Handmade Jewelry

I had a notice from Statsy that an item of mine was featured on etsy front page this morning at 7:47 to 8:02am. This resulted in 34 new hearts and 3 sales.
This is interesting for a couple of reasons; 1- it is a lovely, earthy brown list curated by Tina of Chicki.etsy.com. Who seems to be a fellow fan of polymer clay and copper. Check out her Byzantine bracelet. I want it.
And 2 -I had been featured regularly on etsy's front page in 2009 at least once a month. Somebody on staff at etsy liked me.
Then after I mouthed off in the forums about how much I disliked that stupid gift guide button appearing in my own shop ( I would have been singing a different tune if I had been in any one of the 1,000's of gift guides hand picked by etsy admin.) I was never picked again. Coincidence? I do not think so. It was just too ironic that once a month around the same time I would show up on the front page picked from "etsy's categories" and then suddenly since last Oct. never again.
Does it matter? Oh, yes it does. 
If you are on etsy front page (and you have your stuff together) you will have a traffic increase of approximately 400 more visits to your shop. This is documented. I pay big money for that kind of traffic and I can't always keep it up because I have to pay for things like food and car repairs and medicine.  When you do not bring in traffic to your shop, you do not sell. Traffic can be brought in from a ton of different ways and I am not going to sit around pissing and moaning about not being an etsy favorite. I will continue to research and invest in different ways to create more content on line and market to my targeted niche. Or in more personable terms, hook up with my fellow sistas in jewelry.

Here are great sources I find help and support in;

So spend some time learning about how to let people know you are alive and reachable, I bet you see an increase in traffic and I know you will make some new friends. :)



5 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing, i will be sure to check out those links you suggested.

    I'm overhauling the general layout of my site this week but as you said the money needed to spend to draw traffic to my site is not one I can offered at the moment.

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  2. Thanks for sharing my treasury....glad it gave you a few sales!

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  3. Thanks for this information. It would be nice if people knew I am alive.

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  4. That's disgusting that they would penalize you for your honest opinion. The fact that they can't take criticism is just childish.

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  5. Marketing - such a challenge! I've been at this for a while and the last couple of years have kept me on my toes. The whole playing field has shifted and trying to stay current and relevant ... well, let's just say I'm working on it.

    Thanks for the links and the rant, interesting stuff.

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Thank you for taking the time to read and comment on my blog, it means a lot to me.
Shannon