The more the merrier

[Spincus]

it was 46 degrees here this morning.


Lots of shop items
This will be a quick post. Due to circumstances, just being pretty busy, I have not been been renwing or listing new items much over the last week. But I have been watching my views with Heart o tron. Strangly, with no new listings, no active forum threads, and no listings in treasuries, my view count has been rising of late.

Now there could be other factors causing this rise, the recent changes in how searches are handled on Etsy comes to mind, my banner add at my sisters high trafic site (but i have a baseline already on that). I suspect Etsy new search is helping me out some.

When think about this something came to mind that I thought was worth sharing. Namely, the more items in your shop, the more tag words you will have out in the Etsy search ether, the more chances folks will come by and visit. And maybe when they visit for one item they will loook around at other items in your shop.


So an now obvious way to get more folks to your shop is to offer more diversity and more items, which means more tag words.

Thinking about it
If you sell art, you might look at the Etsy search categories and see if you can offer something that fits into a top level category other than art. In my case i offer jewelry and supplies. So I am hitting two major top level categories. I might add some vintage also, but not much. I have a few items that can be recycled from vintage. What other categories can I get into? Art?


Cya,
As I said, a quick one. :) I had my first over $100 in sales in one day online yesterday. I celebrated and took myself out to dinner. :) This is always a significant milestone in any business. It was also the first day that I got two sales in one day.

Today, I am taking that hard earned money, and buying my portable professional soft display case. When that shows up I get to hit the road and find some boutiques to carry more work.

I had a fantastic casting session yesterday. 60 pieces! lots of new masters, lots of new findings, lots of new accents. I have a ton of work ahead and will be able to develop bouque new items of art. :)

Welcome to Our Community, Cya

[artsfarm]

Congratulations on the milestone--a few, actually. You're on a roll here; show us the new stuff! :-)

I agree that carrying things that fall into more than one category will entice some (not all, but enough) people to browse further into a shop, I play with renewals by listing/renewing one type of item and seeing if that gets them over to similar items, or even different ones (by keeping an eye on views for items I didn't renew). It does work if it's a busy day in general.

But..as far as vintage being a 'pull', right now, the whole category is in jeopardy, as is supplies. The new search, by not having 'all items' as the default, which would force the user to use the drop-down list and see everything that Etsy offers (and which most other marketplaces use as a default), has caused vintage/supply sellers' sales and views to tank, at exactly the same time as the change started on the 5th.

There are several threads going on about this, and the general consensus seems to be "I'm sad" and "let's see if it recovers" which is nuts because they're spending money for something that doesn't work, and frankly, people can't afford to spend money on virtually nothing. So I'd suggest waiting to see if there are any modifications to the new setup before investing in anything in the vintage line.

(Also, if you make something out of vintage components, it still has to be in the 'handmade' category, which as it stands right now, is where you'd want it to be).

This is the main thread (so far) on what's happening:

http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5604442

This one contains more reports, plus some actual stats; people have gone from several sales per day to zero, literally overnight. One seller Bamabelle, had $500 in sales last week, and this week, nothing. It's not coincidence:
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5605127

[Spincus]

hmm, this is tough. my .02 is Etsy markets itself as all things handmade. One part of me says that vintage should be separate another says it does not matter and should be part. I am more worried about the commercial suppliers that try and represent there work as handmade when it is not.

As long as commercial suppliers are separate i do not see why vintage should be left out. But on the other hand, many vintage items are commercial originally. What a dilema.

[artsfarm]

It's not whether the site is called "All things handmade" or not, it's that they are collecting the exact same fees from everyone and have just eliminated the visibility. Vintage is at last check, 27% of their revenue, which is insane to just throw out. Putting "all items" as the default would cause buyers to see what is sold on the site-all of it--they're not going to buy something commercial (new or vintage) if they're in the market for handmade goods. It's kind of a no-brainer, but Admin seems to be using a high school mentallity with this. No one is saying to feature non-handmade items, but you can't hide them either. It's like paying prime rent for a storefront in a mall in a corner spot near an anchor store, and then being told you can only be open one hour per day. KWIM? :-)

The previous search changes corrected the category bleed which was the big problem with things getting all mixed up within the individual searches. That's fine; all the categories are more organized and that's probably why you're seeing more views, which is great. It's the reason they did it. But--it's not doing vintage and supply sellers any good to have a nice neat category if the category itself is invisible.

I just went into "vintage 1920s" to find something, and guess what? I ended up flagging 12 items in 10 pages that were blatantly NOT what they were tagged. Handmade, supplies and 1980s items calling themselves "1920s" just to get the views. Stupid, because it won't get the thing sold, but they are relentless. No one is going to take business from anyone else, and this seems to be a huge issue, especially in the forum. They just don't get it.

[artsfarm]

They should have done what they said they were going to do in the beginning, which is add 3 separate buttons to the front page-one (and the most prominent one) for handmade, and the other two for vintage and supplies. This would keep everything within its category, and the sub-categories would be within the main search for each section. Simple. Very simple.
RubyLane had that setup for years and has become a hugely successful site. The big mistake they made recently is like Etsy in reverse; they stopped promoting handmade stuff and still collect the same rents. Tons of handcrafters left there, and it stinks.
I'm not advocating one "side" or the other, just for fairness and common sense.

[D'arcy]

The idea of putting three buttons on the front page to separate the categories makes sense to me. At least it's there and visible.

I just joined Etsy before Xmas, and Vintage & Supplies were always there, as far as I knew, and I have no problem with it (other than I have become addicted to supplies, and now that I've seen the treasuries I'm sure Vintage is soon to follow).

Anyway, I think three MAIN categories on the front page would be great.