Etsy

Well, Halloween is over, so my life has slowed down a bit.  Only a bit though. I spent plenty of time putting together 3 Doctor Who costumes for my boyfriend, one for myself, and whipping up accessories for a last minute "Leela" (4th doctor's companion), which was actually supposed to be a "dark angel" costume, but I just don't think I could pull that "dark angel" thing off. At least, not without dying my hair (I don't do wigs).  Either way, the angel costume was borrowed from a friend, and I didn't have enough time to think of something else, so I just went with Leela. I went to the dollar store and bought a fake warrior axe, and used the faux leather material I originally bought to make my 4th Doctor's hat (but I ran out of time and bought one from the Halloween store. Cheating, I know) to make a pouch to go around my waist... Had to make it a little more warrior-y. I also made wrist cuffs out of that. I'll post pictures once I can find some... I'm horrible with taking pictures at parties, so I have to raid my friends' pictures. I'm not even sure if I got a good one of each of the costumes.

Anyway, that was way off of my original thought. I also had my first 3 sales (in a row!) on Etsy this past week. I was SO nervous about shipping, and ended up spending WAAAY more than I should have on the first two packages (thanks a lot, UPS. I'll be going to the post office from now on), and still wondering if the last two people have recieved their packages yet (I haven't received any official feedback yet.... some people just forget I guess..), but I did receive a VERY sweet thank you message from the first order. I almost cried! Ha.

(by the way... in case my constant self promotion goes unseen.... here's my shop address: 
http://www.etsy.com/shop/springsatori )

I also discovered the shop stats feature! I have no idea how long this has been going on, but it is amazing. You can go to your shop stats page and track times and specific information on your views, favorited items, shop views, sales, and revenue, all on a very easy graph/display.  It also shows number of views, likes, ect. based on keywords used in searches, so you can see what kind of keywords work best as far as reaching your customer base goes. I'm NO good at things like this, so having this feature is AMAZING for me.

In addition to all of that, they also have a promotion feature. This allows you go to in and set a weekly budget for promoting your items. If you set the budget for $5, that will allow roughly 5,000 times for your item or shop to be displayed at the top of search results. They call this impressions. You are able to track how much you've spent at any point in time (example... I set my budget two nights ago for $5. I have currently spent
88 cents and have had 838 impressions. Now, I've only had 6 item views resulting from this, and no sales, but I suppose it's a work in progress.  This is much better than what they had running about a year or so ago, where you would pay $7 for a spot on the main page for whatever category you fell under, which only ran one day, and was an epic failure for me, and I never wanted to try it again... but we live and learn. Obviously Etsy did too, because they totally re-vamped the workings.
In addition to that, they also have analytical data in order to track the results of your ads. This is what I was referring to when I said I had 838 impressions, 6 views, and no orders. It also has a box for revenue, but obviously since I haven't sold anything from the promotion, that box says "0" right now.
You are also able to add or remove key words generated by etsy in reference to your promoted items. This will help narrow or broaden the range of search words used to direct customers to your page. So I guess my next step is to figure out what keywords are the bigger attractions and customize the keyword list based on that. Again, a work in progress, buy my mind is completely blown that this kind of analytical data is available to the average etsy seller. I say this because my brains focus on the tangible.... I do well with things I can touch, see, or physically interact with.  Numbers mean nothing to me. Well, they mean something, but they mean mostly confusion.  Just the difference between using the right or left side of your brain, I suppose.

Anyway, it's gloomy out, I'm barely awake right now, and feeling like I'm rambling, but I just wanted to talk about that little tidbit, because I'm thoroughly impressed! Way to go Etsy! Hopefully this will help us all reach the right customer base and boost sales.... I could certainly use it!

.....and once more for good measure: http://www.etsy.com/shop/springsatori