Happy New Year. . .new listings

Well it's now 2019 and as a new year begins I find myself re-editing and updating a ton of listings. 😏  

I have learned over the years that seasonal tags can be highly effective to improve views and sales but that means that they need to be changed ya' know "seasonally".  As the holiday season expired I have begun changing over my holidays and tags from "Christmas" to Valentine's and Mother's day.  I am simultaneously adjusting my shipping prices because in a couple of weeks the postal rates will go up as they do annually.  😖  

I am also updating some of my listings with new photos, as some of my listings have really old original photos taken on non-standard backgrounds and I'm trying to get them all on white or black and eliminate the wood grain.  I have shot hundreds of photos in the last week and spent hours and hours editing, cropping, and adjusting them.  I have re-made the Japanese Lace Bubbles bracelets that had sold out and even made the gold on gold version and renewed the listing with all new photos.  😇  I shot photos with the rosettes necklace, bracelet, and earrings in a set and made a new listing in sets.  I also edited up some of the rosette photos into a new Valentine's sale banner. 

I made a new bracelet with a variation of the Japanese Lace pattern and I LOVE it, so much that I am still debating on if I'm going to list it or not.  There is a part of me that really wants to keep it. 

It's totally gorgeous and

 It does fit me perfectly, after all 😉

Although it took so many rings that I am practically out of the small 4 mm size and had to order more.  I did a quick count and there are nearly 500 rings in this bracelet, so if I decide to list it for sale it will not be cheap. 😉 

I'm a winner !!

No seriously, I was one of the winners in Etsy's Holiday Free Shipping drawing.  I was totally shocked by the email stating I had won, mainly because I only set up "free shipping" for orders over a set $amount and had very few orders qualify for free shipping. 😏  

In spite of the limit and the few qualifying orders some how I won. 😲  That's the astonished face 😲 as I never "win" anything. ~LOL~

I did not win the $25,000 top prize but I am not complaining about the $250 I did win, that will supply advertising budget for the next year. 😊

Etsy 2018 Year in Review . . .

Ok so Etsy did a "year in review" thing for my shop. 😊 It's a bit like the Facebook "your year on facebook" memories thing. Etsy's version is not a video though it's a really long scrolling page with some cute graphics and shop statistics and other stuff. 

These are just a few screen shots of my "year in review" there was a lot of other stuff in there like total $$$ sales, some info on other things my buyers searched for and bought, general shopping trends, info and articles on new shop tools, SEO, links to see the TV commercials, etc.

Thanks Etsy

Happy Holidays . . .

Wow, holy cow hard to believe it's been a month since I posted on this blog. 😮  I have been a bit busy though, as the shopping season kicked in around Thanksgiving and just slowed down for me on Tuesday.  😏  This is the best, busiest holiday season I've had yet on Etsy.  

I had multiple custom orders and even though a couple of the initial contacts did not go all the way through and complete an order I have had enough sales to feel really good about it.  My husband actually got to hear multiple cha-chings the other day and congratulated and complimented me on the success. 😇  

In the 3+ years I've been working on this, and trust me it has not been easy, there have been many months with no sales at all.  I have worked and worked on completing my shop, improving my listings, re-doing photos, brainstorming tags, re-writing titles and descriptions.  It has been never-ending work on my part, I work on my shop every day in one way or another.  I write this now because I just saw a post in the forums by a person who opened a shop and got pissed off because it was not instantly indexed and complaining did not result in instant action so they quit in 5 days. 😕😞  Seriously, 5 flipping days and they quit, I waited 5 fracking months for my first sale, I don't know if my shop was indexed the first week or not because I didn't know anything about the site or their search indexing. ~LOL~   

Online sales is not easy and there is no such thing as instant, indexing is not instant, payment processing is not instant, delivery is not instant.  I don't know what's wrong with people these days that they think it's ok to act so entitled, spoiled, bratty, it's ridiculous to expect such things and even worse for grown ass adults to have public tantrums and throw their toys when they don't get the instant gratification they seem to expect.  It's like buyers complaining, writing negative reviews, and threatening to open cases because their order was not delivered the day after they placed the order. 😡  

Some days I am just floored by the unrealistic expectations and over-entitlement that seems to run rampant in the forums, but most days I just thank God that my buyers have all been decent people who have not treated me that way.  😇  Heaven's blessings to all this holiday season.

HappyMerryChristmaHanuKwanzakah

Anyone want to open a new Etsy shop?

Etsy does have a referral program, so if someone you know already has a shop they could give you a link like this one https://etsy.me/2KltzJ0 

And if you use a link like that to sign up and open a new shop you get to start with 40 free listings. 😇  Not a bad way to start a shop really as most don't start with that many listings so it could cover the initial round of listing and even a round of renewals and since listings are good for 4 months that a nice long free test period. 😉

Of course, then one learns how hard it is to get really good photographs, and SEO and all the other complicated things. 

Etsy forums. . .

I really do find it astonishing reading the forums just how many sellers have no clue about anything. 

Seriously, there are so many posts by people who don't understand the fees, people who can't do math, people who have never bothered to read the Seller Handbook, the House Rules, the Terms of Service, etc.  

Some days I read these things and wonder how these people manage to turn on a computer, let alone get online and login. 

Pinterest and Etsy . . .

I don't normally try to write tutorial style advice stuff but in this case I'll give it a go.  😉

Last year there were a lot of complaints about etsy-pins not linking directly back to the listings in the pin but instead linking to an almost "market" page with competing listings at the top of the page.

Many sellers were really upset at the notion of competitors listings showing above the item that had been pinned, there was some advice from an admin to edit the links after pinning but that's extra work/steps and a bit of a pain in the you know what.  😒  

I'm not sure why but very few of my pins ever had that problem, I did double check and edit a few but then I just changed how I pinned and started only using the official "Social Media" tool under the marketing tab. 😌

My Pinterest is officially a "business" account so maybe that is part of it, not sure.  Recently, Pinterest has changed many things and now allows you to "Claim" things other than a stand alone website. I had previously tried to " Claim your website " but was never able to because that function was made for stand alone .coms and there was no way to add the code to the header or whatever for an etsy shop.  

However, now Pinterest allows you to "claim other accounts" including Etsy shops, instagrams, and youtubes.  Since "claiming" my etsy shop my pins from etsy (social media tool) look different and include my shop info, listing description, price, proper link, etc.  Perhaps those still having link issues have not claimed their shops, or are not sharing from the social media tool or do not have "business" accounts on Pinterest.  Honestly, I'm not sure which thing makes the difference and makes mine always work right while other's still have problems.  😉