Amethyst and Pearl Earrings

My Etsy’s Worth

For those of you readers who have recently opened an Etsy shop, what has your shop meant to you so far? Excitement, adventure, income, fame, fortune … frustration, effort, disappointment, anxiety? Maybe all of the above!

I know from comments in the Etsy forums that some folks are worried about views: How many potential buyers have viewed items in my shop? How many times, when, etc.

Others worry about various aspects of their shop’s overall appearance and information. Are my photos good enough? Are my descriptions enticing? Are my shipping policies adequate? Is my personal profile interesting? Does my banner look good? Is my avatar attractive?

Others yet spend time and concern with statistics, using programs to determine when people visit their shop, from where, and how often.

Many of us put time and effort into promotional activities of various sorts: posting in Facebook Fan Pages, using Twitter to tweet about new Etsy listings, writing blogs or featuring other sellers in your blog or being featured, participating in forum discussions, making or being in treasuries, and submitting items to social networking sites.

Naturally, all of us pay attention to sales. In my case, I’ve been making jewelry for twenty years, selling at regional art fairs. Last spring, I made the “big transition” (see my prior Handmade Spark article for the details!) from shows to online. I set up my Etsy shop on April 30, 2009.

So far, I’ve had 17 sales. There are a LOT of beaded jewelry sellers on Etsy, and it isn’t enough to design and create the jewelry, list it on Etsy, and then wait for buyers to find my shop. So I keep on keeping on … I promote the shop as time allows. I add new items and renew others. I take new photos. As of today, I remain optimistic and have listed more than 300 unique items in my shop and made efforts to improve my photos, tags, descriptions, etc.

But here’s the scoop: even though I’d love to reach more buyers and spread the joy with my creations and add some income from the Etsy experiment, I figure that I’ve already gotten my Etsy’s worth! What do I mean? Well …

Computer Confidence: For one thing, I’ve gotten some computer confidence I didn’t have before I started on Etsy. Let’s face it: not everyone alive today was born with a computer in the household. When I was born in 1945, there was radio, but not yet television. Long ago I told me stepson that we didn’t have TV when I was his age, and he asked if we were too poor. I told him, “We weren’t rich, for sure, but it was really because it hadn’t been invented yet.” His eyes opened wide in amazement as he said, “No TV! What did you do with yourselves?”

On the other hand, I’m not a complete computer novice either: academic work on a educational system connected to a mainframe in the seventies, early PCs in the eighties, word processing on a Mac in the nineties, and an Internet browser in more recent times. And, for the past six years, I’ve done my freelance editing in Microsoft Word (on an eight-year-old Dell at home) and sent off my work using e-mail.

And yet … I was reluctant to set up an Etsy shop because I thought my computer skills weren’t good enough. For years, literally, friends had been encouraging me to make my jewelry available online through E-bay. I’d even had Etsy suggestions. I kept hoping to find somebody who wanted to run an online version of the business for me. No luck.

Finally, last spring I decided to bite the bullet, so to speak. Wow! What a surprise to find out what a straightforward and easy interface the Etsy folks had provided for creating and maintaining a shop! I just followed the instructions … But what other computer challenges were to come as a result?

Etsy ushered in my real introduction to digital photography. The year before I started the shop, my mom gave me my first digital camera so I could take snapshots of family stuff to send her on e-mail. That was the sum total of my experience with digital cameras at that time. Thanks to Etsy, I now know I need a new camera with a better macro for jewelry close-ups. I know how to load pictures onto my computer from the camera and how to upload them to Etsy. I started a flickr account with photos of my bead studio. I learned how to use piknik to crop and expand my earlier smaller photos. I now upload photos to my blog and for the articles I write for Handmade Spark (except this one … all text ).

Yes, I also needed to learn how to use blogger to write a blog. I needed a Google account. I set up a Facebook page for the first time ever and a Facebook Fan Page. I learned how to get the “My Etsy” tab on the Fan Page to work right and how to get my “Etsy Mini” on my blog page! I learned how to use WordPress (kind of) to write these articles. I set up a Twitter account and started tweeting regularly; I put items up on Kaboodle and IndieSpotting. I learned how to read the forums, write convos, use PayPal, pay my Etsy bill, renew items, rearrange my shop by color at one point (hah!), and leave feedback for buyers!

The Joy of Writing: Although I’ve always liked writing and done a lot of different kinds of writing in my life and in my long teaching/editing career, there was always a limit on the freedom of the experience in a way: grades or evaluations, deadlines, payments, expectations, pressures, etc. I started writing Susan’s Blog as a way to promote my Etsy shop. Soon I started adding posts about my six cats, my flower gardening, my favorite reads in literary fiction, my family activities, my thoughts about this and that. And I love it! It’s so free. I can write about what I like, when I like. If somebody enjoys what I’ve shared, that’s great. If not, it’s okay too. It’s like putting a message in a bottle and sending it out into the ocean at sunset!

When Tim Adam started Handmade Spark and put up the notice about writers, I was thrilled. It’s been such fun writing these articles and sharing my craft experiences with all of you. Now I have focused Susan’s Blog more on other topics, with just a short post to direct my readers there to Handmade Spark if they are interested in Etsy and craft-related matters. I love getting comments (even though I was surprised to have “sparked” some controversy with one of my articles) and knowing that others are interested and finding something useful in what I can share.

Friendship and Community: I had been doing e-mail correspondence with friends for a number of years before I started with Etsy. But I hadn’t really experienced the online community concept. That was so great. Reading the forums from time to time and occasionally participating brought me closer to a whole community of people who love making things with their imagination, their skills, and their artistic senses. I met so many kind and helpful Etsians! Several people asked me to answer some questions as part of a feature on their blogs, even though I was a total “newbie” and didn’t even have a blog myself at the time!

I also had a chance to connect with some artists in my own locality. And, best of all, I made a wonderful new friend. Eleanore Brown (Etsy shop: Ebrown2503) makes fabulous fiber beads and is a librarian at my home library. The story goes like this: she bought a pair of earrings from me at an outdoor craft show just after I’d started the Etsy shop. Checking out my books one Saturday, I recognized my work on her ears and happened to mention my brand-new Etsy shop and how lacking in confidence I was about the whole endeavor. Well, there I was, face-to-face with an experienced Etsian as well as a warm and generous person. Since then, Eleanore has become a friend and a terrific source of support.

The Delight of Transactions: I’ve always enjoyed selling my work face-to-face. At the craft shows, I liked kibbitzing with the customers, telling people the story behind a certain bead, explaining how my husband built the display boards, talking about my cats, etc. And I was especially tickled by customers returning in subsequent years, people choosing my jewelry to give as a gift, buyers recounting compliments they’d received, and other really nice and personal aspects of retailing.

My main goal hasn’t really been to make a lot of money—but to do what I enjoy, to share it with others, and to pay for new beads! It turns out that, even if the total number of sales has been limited so far, my Etsy shop sales transactions have been a delight in their own way as well. A few of the sales were to friends and former craft show customers I knew already. One sale was to an old acquaintance I’d lost touch with, who found my shop by accident. And a couple of sales have been to total strangers far from my home region.

We all know so well what a kick it is to check your e-mail and find an Etsy Transaction Notification message!

So, as you can see, I have certainly gotten my Etsy’s worth in this first, short year online. I hope you enjoyed my story and will take a moment to have a look at my shop (http://www.beadedjewelrybysusan.etsy.com) and let me know what you think. Thanks!