Etsy Decoded

I ran across this article today and thought it would be helpful to people selling or thinking of selling on Etsy. http://outright.com/blog/decoded-analyzing-etsy-success-tips/ 

Update on Quick Books

Ok, I know I previously posted that Quick Books is amazing. I was wrong. The more I tried to use the program the more difficult it became. Luckily, Intuit does offer a 60 day money back guarentee, so I wasn't out a whopping $250!  Since my cancellation of QB I have found a free cloudbased system to use, Outright. Outright is great for tracking your expenses and income. It links directly to your accounts and monitors for new activity.  The only down side is there is no inventory management, but for free I can't complain.

Virtual Craft Show

For a while I tossed around a question. How can people from all over the world possibly make it to all the craft shows? They can't. And if they can't how will they see my items? My desire to reach a larger customer base lead me to the idea of creating a virtual craft show. I posted my idea on my FB page and artisans seemed to love it. So today I created HGAccent's Virtual Craft Show! The show is designed so that all artisans can post their unique products for free. My hope is that people will spread the word about the show which will lead to great success for all.

 

Please take a moment to view the show. www.facebook.com/HGAccentsVirtualCraftShow

 

Feedback would be greatly appreciated

Inventory

I have found that when you own a craft business it is almost impossible to track inventory. Recently, I bought Quick Books Pro 2011.  This product is great! Although it takes some getting use to, the robust software allows you to track inventory levels and expenses. In addition, you can create a wide variety of reports to help you accurately gage the health of your business.

Give Aways

Giving away from products, coupons, or gift certificates is a great way to attract new customers to your store. Decide what you want to give away and the parameters surrounding it. Then go to random.org; this site will automatically pick a selection, eliminating bias. Example: Homegrown Accents is giving away a $25.00 gift certificate for free when we hit 500 Likes on Facebook. www.facebook.com/homegrownaccents

Etsy

I have had items posted on Etsy for about a year and a half, unfortunately, I haven't made a single sale. Last week I decided to really focus on Etsy; which left me with the question, "where do I start?" As I looked through sites I noticed some people were extremely successful and some were in my boat, no success. I chose a few sites that were extremely successful and started a convo with them via Etsy. I asked for tips on how to improve my sales on Etsy. To my surprise, people were more than willing to share tips to improve sales. Among these tips there were three that many people repeated: pictures, key words and circles. Apparently, shoppers are often turned away from buying products if they are displayed with a black background. Who knew? Turns out people want to see more natural looking pictures and pictures from all angels. Which I could not accomplish with the static black background picture I have been using. Second, my key words. I'll admit I struggle to find key words that will bring people to my Etsy shop. My sudeo mentors advised me that I should be using all tags and more descriptive terms versus my broad generic ones. Finally, get your name out there. One of the best ways of doing so it to get added to circles. While it can be time consuming to add people to your circle, in most cases people will add you back, instantly increasing your visibility; and as well all know visibility=sales:)

 

While there is a lot to do to implement these changes I have started out slow, increasing my circles, went from 2 to 135 in a couple of days. In addition, I have increased my FB exposure by asking people that add me to their circle to "like" me on FaceBook. (Having other companies "like" you on FB works out well for both companies. While their new products appear on your page, your appear on theirs which can easily double your exposure!). This week I am going to tackle my second step, changing my pictures. I will let you know how it goes. :)

Preparing for the Holidays

It seems like this year has flown by, and all of the sudden the holidays are here. HGA is going to be in the Summerville, SC Holly Days festival this year. I can't wait. I am ramping up on new items and weeding out items I don't think will do so hot. It is a strange business though, crafting that it is. What one person finds to be unique another can find to be ugly. I often have to remind myself that even if I don't like it, someone else may.  I am thinking of other crafts that I can sell as well. The problem is time. I must admit with a month away,  it would be a little late in the game to start trying to put new crafts in my line up.