A few of my 'real life' friends have joined Etsy in the last few months, and one asked me for promotion tips. I shared with her the following:
Encircle and Etsy Love
-Use the ever-loving hell out of your 'circles'. The more circles you're in,
the more your name and shop and product are on the 'activity' page.
Same goes for just general 'etsy lovin' - hearting items and faving
shops.
Know your roots
-Search Etsy for
local items and spread the love so that they (the local sellers) know you exist. Give
specials to local customers and offer
local pick up instead of shipping for those who are close enough.
-Attend craft fairs and farmers markets.
-Promote at the mall with free samples, and give everyone a business card. (This was specific for my friend, who sells cookies, but would work for people with similar goods)
More items means more sales
- You probably hate hearing it as much as I do.
Yeah, it's really time-consuming to make, photograph, list and promote
everything by yourself, but the more you have the more 'serious' you
look. I am not a good example of this.
Drown yourself in social networking
Use twitter and FB, share the love there like you would on Etsy.
Geeky Computer Nonsense
-Tagging and SEO are really important. If you think you've got your tags
right, try searching for your own items with keywords that pertain to your shop. If you're on the first page, you did it right.
If you're not , google some tips on Etsy tagging and SEO for Etsy to
improve your ranking in Etsy search and other search engines.
-use Adwords, Analytics and Craftopolis.
-'crawl' your page on all the search engines you can- this makes it more
visible in search engines. Yahoo is the only search engine that charges
to add your site to it's directory.
-Blog.
I know you asked specifically for promotional tips, but I shared with you everything I do/know/ or think I should do/know.
Here's my most important nugget of advice, and I can feel your eyes rolling all the way from here but really hear me out:
Don't feel like you have to be perfect and don't obsess over not making
sales fast enough. You have to really nurture an Etsy shop to get it off
the ground, and sometimes even with countless hours of self-motivated
hard work (the hardest kind of hard work, you know) you may have
virtually nothing to show for it at the end of the day. There is no
failing here, there is only learning.
Cheers,
Kacie.
Etsy Tips from around the web:
How arists and crafters can make more money
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