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.
Ok so I had been working on my SEO and rankings for over a week, doing a few listings each day. I noticed a slight improvement in views, like I was actually get views daily. *LOL* So this weekend I spent hours and hours making sure I did all 65 listings and reworking them over and over until I hit "A" ranking on all of them and overall for the whole shop. It was a lot of work but when I had all A's I felt really good like I had accomplished something. o:-)
Yesterday I had over 40 views and 4 favorites in just one day, that's a frickin' record. Seriously I don't think I've had that much activity in a single day the whole year it's been open.
I hope it keeps up and I hope I get some sales from all that work. I have shipped a couple of custom orders and while I got an email form one of them saying he really loved what he ordered I really hope that eventually they will take the time to write me some nice reviews.
I have conquered Etsy SEO, at least I think I have have for now. :-/
I know SEO is an ever changing animal dancing on shifting sands but right now at least all my listings have A grades and my shop is typo free. ~woo-hoo~
Pardon my happy dance but I am thrilled to have accomplished such a huge task and glad to move on to other things.
I made an adorable tree yesterday so I am hopeful that I can get a few more finished quickly and add the new section to the shop.
OMG!?!? EtsyRank makes me want to cry, seriously it is a helpful tool I guess but I have worked so hard to use all 13 tags and re-do my titles and make sure all the right words are in my descriptions. I really thought I had made great progess but then EtsyRank upgraded and changed format and I checked again only to find I have an overall C rating, many of my tags are not scored well and my attempts to cover all the spellings of chainmaille (chain mail, chainmaill, chain maille, etc.) are counted as spelling errors. :-(
In the "external links" section it for some reason doesn't count the links from this blog or my Facebook page, but maybe that's because there is a separate section for "social" stuff. However, since I don't use Pintrest, Twitter, LinkedIn or other sites my sad little Facebook page and this underutilized blog don't fare well in comparison. :-(
So while I am planning to expand my listings and know that I need to re-shoot most of my photos I now know that I also need to re-do most of what I thought was done to improve things I apparently suck at. ~sigh~
I have decided that I am going to expand the line up in my shop and list the wire tree sculptures for sale. Everyone seems to like them so much and I really do enjoy making them so it makes sense. I am working on a couple of custom order chainmaille necklaces at the moment but I hope in a couple of weeks I'll be able to add new listings for the wall art.
This will mean a whole new "section" in the shop and a whole new set of tags and search terms to work on but I am hopeful that it will increase views and sales by reaching more people looking for something other than jewelry.
