No one is perfect and there is no such thing as a perfect jumpring. To see exactly what I'm talking about you can click on the photos to make them full screen and better see the details up close.
Jumprings are generally made by coiling wire on a mandrel and then slitting the coil. The problem with this method is you lose a little material with the cut, the width of the saw blade, which means when the rings are closed tight they will no longer be exactly round. Also depending on the blade and exact process there can be burs, sharp edges or angled ends instead of flat. Machine cut are even worse than saw cut though as they have pinched ends that will never butt properly. I have learned this the hard way in my years of making chainmaille. I have become very particular about the rings I order.
I also have a tendency to spend hours working the rings before I begin assembling them into anything. I like to make sure they are flat and as close to perfectly round as I can get them, that the ends butt tight and proper, that they line up side to side and top to bottom. Call me crazy but do aim for perfection. I am not saying I always achieve it but at least I try.
I have seen some cheap and sloppy chainmaille for sale, whenever I see low price chainmaille I can't help but wonder are they using cheap poor quality rings or are they just sloppy because they rush and don't care?
Maybe it's both, maybe they don't know any better, maybe they just don't care. I just wonder how long something like that will last, as every misaligned, sloppy closure is an opening for snagging and stretching. Plus it can't be comfortable for your jewelry to scratch you all the time or get caught in your hair. :-(
My chainmaille is not cheap because I use quality rings and I work hard to make it as smooth, snag and scratch resistant and comfortable to wear as possible. I don't sell $8 or $10 bracelets I can't sell my work that cheap I spend too many hours working on them to undervalue them that much. Again I am not claiming to be perfect, I am not saying my chainmaille will never snag, I'm saying if you look closely quality is often visible.
I'm thinking about expanding into more social media but I'm wondering if it's really worth it. I know it takes time to be active on multiple platforms and it takes time to build up a following on each one. Ideally I'd like to have lots of followers everywhere liking and buying my stuff, recommending it to others, but I'd rather be making stuff than advertising.
I already spend quite a bit of time keeping up this blog and the Facebook page while regularly working on the actual Etsy shop, editing listings, adding listings, etc.
Some days I just want to make make stuff. :-/
I don't use Twitter, I mean like at all, I don't have an account I've never looked at it, I don't follow anyone. I am actually pretty clueless about Twitter and how it works, I know there are tons of people who do use it, I know it's pretty much everywhere you look everyone's talking about it.
When I use EtsyRank there is a page just for social media reports, where aside from Facebook and LinkedIn it recommends and analyzes Twitter, Pintrest, and Instagram. Now I know my Facebook page is not the most popular and is under trafficked. I don't have an account on any of the other sites so it's been basically a blank page with a row of red X's.
However, I noticed yesterday that someone tweeted one of my listings of a wire tree sculpture. I was a bit shocked but happy to see it and even happier that 2 others "re-tweeted" it. :-o The original "tweet-er" also posted it in her worldpress blog.
The Hippie Corner
I'm not the greatest at social media so it's nice having a bit of a boost by random strangers. o:-)
I am starting to get frustrated again. I know my SEO good, I have all "A" graded listings now. I have promoted listings on too. Last month I only had 327 views resulting in 37 favorites, I had 3 orders but there were all a result of custom orders from a show not really etsy-web based. This month after all that SEO work and turning on promoted listings I have 564 views (and there is still a week left) but so far only 32 favorites and no sales. :-(
I've been doing a lot of reading about etsy's search changes, crazy theories about shop black outs, rotations, bucket sorting. I have no control over how etsy sorts, manages, or presents search results and it's so frustrating. I blog, I facebook, I try to stay active and regularly list new items all things that should help lead to sales but I don't seem to be getting anywhere.
I am splitting categories on the the new wire tree listings putting some as art and some as home decor to try to get more exposure. I have even posted in the "promo" section of the forums even though there is a general consensus that no one actually shops from there and it's just all sellers continually drive-by posting their own stuff.
I get views and I get favorites and for weeks I was happy about it thinking it would lead to sales but now I'm really wondering if it ever will. :-/
https://www.etsy.com/shop/RainbowMaille
I have been contemplating new chainmaille patterns I would like to learn but I have been absorbed with the wire tree sculptures lately.
When I go to the craft store I always find new beads and accents that I think would look cool on a tree. I have quite the growing pile of stuff but I think I have to stop for a while. I have added a full dozen wire trees to the RainbowMaille shop but I have only sold one this month from the regular listings. :-/
I keep making more, trying to make different color combinations to have a variety available so people can have their favorite color or find one to match their decor.
I have at least one of every size listed except the large 12" which I am working on now. I have been reluctant to list the larger ones because I am still waiting on USPS to delivery my order of shipping boxes.
From time to time I have this problem, I make something and really really really want to keep it. Sometimes I do decided to keep things just because I really love the way they turn out, but with custom orders I don't have that option. This is one of those times I really love this custom order. I loved the idea when it was requested and I am incredibly proud of how it turned out. This thing is stunning if I do say so myself, if it were not a custom order I would definitely be keeping it for myself.
In case you are not a huge Harry Potter nerd like me and my customer, this is in fact Hogwarts school crest turned into a wire sculpture tree. This thing is pure art, with the colors of all four houses including their icon animals, it even has the center H for the school itself. It is simply amazing, I am positive my customer will love it and probably feel much as I do when it comes time for her to gift it to the person she is buying it for.
I can and have done custom orders for both chainmaille jewelry and the wire wall art. I have no problems doing custom orders but from what I have been reading in the forums it seems there is a chance that it's not helping my shop ranking or search. I have always know that Etsy's search is "weighted" giving an advantage to shops that have "aged" and have a good record of sales and positive reviews. When I was new last year I couldn't be found anywhere in search, I have worked hard on my listings tags, keywords, titles, descriptions to improve my position but now I'm wondering if it simply was an "age" factor that help more than all my hours spend tweaking and re-writing. Once I got a couple of sales I moved up, one of my sales was to an online friend and she left a 5 star review and I moved up.
Now my concern is I have seen others talking about how selling the same listing over and over along with favorites and clicks increase it's relevance in search. So my custom listings and one of a kind things that become "sold out" aren't really helping because when something becomes sold out instead of renewed and relisted you lose the clicks/views and favorites. Making new listings rank lower than renewed reused listings? This seems weird and a bit unfair and I'm not sure what to do about it. I suppose I can try renewing the custom tree listing for the next custom tree but I'd have to change the photo and description to reflect the new one and I'm not sure if that would change the photo in the review from last time to the same new photo making the "custom" look like a generic reproduction instead of showing the two different.
I have no problems using the same listings for most of the chainmaille as it's easy to reproduce the same item in the same colors, but with the wire trees no two are really alike, even when I tried to make 2 alike the didn't really turn out the same. :-/ So I think I may be stuck just letting them go "sold out" since I can't really reproduce them exactly.
OK so I went ahead and did it. I've been thinking about it for over a month and after selling most of the first round while on vacation I decided I was going to add the wire tree sculptures to the things I sell on Etsy. However, when I came home I only had mine hanging around the house so in order to add them to the sale listings I had to make more. I didn't want to open a new section in the shop until I had several of them done, in case they started selling right away I didn't want to add one or two and end up with an empty page.
I had been hoping for a full dozen and having all sizes available but I settled for 7 and only 3" inch and 5" inch. I got some decent photos, they are not the greatest but with the wires being so thin and shiny they are not easy to photograph, actually harder than the chainmaille. ~LOL~ I still have a few more things to try as far as photo tricks for the next round but in the meantime I got them posted. I shot against 3 different backgrounds and it's not like one is superior the background color influences the tree coloring but at the same time clear beads are virtually invisible on a white background but stand out great against the black. So I think I'm going to use the black and the white and create "collages" for side by side. That uses 3 of the available 5 slots in a listing and it gives a good idea of the fact that where you hang it can effect the look.
Afterall, they are wall art so depending on the paint color of the wall you hang it on it's going to look different. I also like the occasional over-flashed photo as sometimes it catches fine detail that otherwise blends. The purple background did not work for the majority.
I guess the photos I used aren't too bad because they are getting views and one of them sold in a matter of hours. I think that I would be selling more of them now if I had more available, more colors, more sizes. That's what I'm working on now, I've made 3 more in 6" and 8" so once I make some 10" and 12" I'll have at least 1 of each size.
