Crafty Kids

Children in Chat?! Well, no (Community features are just for adults), but we're happy to see some of the cool crafty work of young folks in shops supervised by their parents. Here are just two examples showing the talents of the 12 year olds of Chat regulars AllForJasmine and dreamweaver19.

Are there crafty kids in your family? Were you creating handmade things or precociously collecting vintage yourself? Tell us all about it, and share your links in the Comments!

Five Questions for ... TopazTurtle

We had a virtual sit-down with one of our international Chat regulars, Topaz Turtle, to ask her a quintet of questions about creativity, community, and business here on Etsy:

Q.  What are your inspirations? Do trends, themes and seasons (such as those outlined in the monthly Etsy Merchandising Desk blog posts) influence you at all?
A.  Any kind of stimulus can inspire a piece – a line from a song, the colour of scarf spied on a train trip, vegetables and fruits that are in season (my latest muse is the pomegranate so expect to see a lot of rich red ruby hues). I do read the Etsy Merchandising Desk blog posts and it does influence me at some level. There is a very broad range of themes and trends outlined in the blog and I often find a few or more listings that fit into the themes.

The seasonal trends outlined in the blog can be a bit difficult to fit into as the seasons are all the other way round in the southern hemisphere but there are still some happy coincidences.

Q.  Are there any arts or crafts you'd like to learn, or materials and techniques you'd like to try? What appeals to you about them?

A.  I strive to improve my skills with resin and polymer clay and I’m always finding new ways to work with these. My next goal is to earn enough money to buy myself a degasser which removes or reduces bubbles in resin.

A new material called Friendly Plastic caught my attention recently and I’m itching to incorporate these into my resin pieces too.

I also have been doing a lot more work with seed beads in peyote type stitch to create some very satisfying tubular beads. I’m looking forward to creating more of these.

Q.  What has been the most effective promotion strategy for you? The least effective?
A.  Most of my customers find my shop using Etsy Search, so having really good tags, product descriptions and product names is very important. I try to think of what terms people might use to find my items and make sure that they are incorporated into them.

I also find Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Etsy Forums and Chats to be a good way of generating interest in my shop.

I have tried a few advertisements but so far I haven’t had anyone tell me that they found my shop because they saw an ad somewhere. It’s doesn’t seem to be a very effective way of promoting my shop and I think I might be a bit more circumspect about this.

Q.  What have you learned about having an online business here on Etsy? Anything you wish you'd known earlier?
A.  I guess the biggest lesson I learned was that I can’t sit back and wait for customers. You have to get out there and promote.

The other lesson that I have just learned and wish I had known earlier was that your shop’s Google search results ranking is based on the ‘importance‘ of your shop page and you increase the importance of your shop page when other sites link to your page. So the more websites that you have linking back to your shop, the higher up in the search results you appear.

Q.  If you could choose anything sold on Etsy - price no object - what would it be?
A.  This is probably the most difficult question to answer as my most desired item keeps changing. I recently saw a wooden sun lounge chair on Etsy Finds that looked gorgeous. Trying to find the link to it but I deleted the email!

So if anyone still has that Etsy Finds email, let me know.

Ready for the Holidays?

Chat Team members and Chat regulars are ready for the busy sales months ahead, and all those shopping events and occasions lined up between now and the start of 2011.

The Etsy Success Holiday Boot Camp is underway to help supercharge everyone's efforts for the season, and it's packed with tips and homework to make this the best selling season ever.

What are you doing this year? New items? Different ways to promote? A seasonal twist to your photographs? Updating tags to help reach a holiday shopping audience?

Images from hdawnparratt, 2kutekards and staceyyacula, thanks!

Are You Reaching Collectors?

Collectors don't just accumulate old (or old-ish) stuff. There are collectors of newer ACEOs, pottery, photography and jewellery. And aren't those stashes of yarn and fabric, ties and handbags and sweaters all collections too?

What does it take to reach collectors? All the usual Etsy requirements are there of course: great photos, appropriate tags, titles and descriptions, being in the right category, and effective promotion. In addition, some facts may be especially important to potential buyers. Exact size (with all dimensions, shown in both metric and imperial), provenance, close-up photo of any maker's marks on the piece, as well as a record of any damage, however slight.

20 Questions Your Buyers Are Asking is a handy checklist to be sure you're making that buying decision easier for your potential buyers, whether or not they're collectors.

Meet Chat Regular jannio

One of our Chat regulars, the team that makes up jannio, visits the Etsy rooms from France, and their creative hats, scarves and bags are always a joy to see when they stop by.

Why do we chat?

A relatively new Etsy seller said in Chat the other day that she hadn't sold anything at all on the site until she started hanging out in the chat rooms. Are hoped-for sales what bring us to Chat? Are they what keep bringing us back?

Certainly, there's no guarantee that being a chatter will lead to sales, but it does happen. And surely regular chatters don't come in every day just to pimp their shops (although having others meet new shops is a nice fringe benefit). We all have a pretty good idea that flying in just to spam announcements and shop promos doesn't work anyway; it's more about being part of the community, or is it?

So, why do we chat? Specifically on Etsy, but also in other communities?

Image from a sculpture by redclaysculptress, thanks!

Five Questions for ... cdosehn

Anyone who visits Chat early in the morning (Eastern Time) will have met regular cdosehn, a friendly and welcoming presence in our talkative midst! This month is her four-year Etsyversary, and it seemed like a perfect opportunity to get her answers to a handful of questions:

Q.  How has Etsy changed in the four years you've been selling here? What's your favourite feature?
A.  I think the biggest change has being able to rearrange your shop!
Q.  What do you do for fun when you're not chatting or running your Etsy shop?
A.  I love to be out in the woods or fishing with my hubby. Being with my grown children is wonderful as well.
Q.  What tool or piece of crafting equipment would you like to have if money were no object?
A.  Oh I would love a bigger embroidery machine with more designs and space to embroider on. Or my own designing software.
Q.  Knowing what you do now, is there anything you would have done differently when you first opened your shop?
A.  The only thing I would have changed is taking better pictures of my items and posting more tags on my items.
Q.  What has been your most successful way to promote your Etsy shop? The least effective?

A.  The most successful way I have found to promote my items in my shop is going in the chats. Once there, always be friendly. I have met through Etsy some wonderful people that I can call my dear friends from all over the world.
The least effective I guess would be the forums in the promotion section - a lot of post and runs, and no one really looks in each others' shops. First thing besides saying Hello in the chats when I enter is go to everyone's shop and have a look around and post a item from their shop.

Do you trade?

This Storque Blog article about Trades through We Swap got me thinking about some of the more home-grown trades taking place right here on Etsy. Interest in trades is popular in the Chat rooms of course, and it would be great to hear from some of you who have first-hand experience trading with other Etsy sellers.

Please drop me a convo, or leave a Comment here to help put together a checklist or guide to successful trading. Or add a Comment to let other blog readers know you're interested in trades now, or for the upcoming holiday season!

Chatter FrawgzDezignz has offered a detailed view of Trades on Etsy, based on her own experiences:

• Communication is key, for both sides
• Read Feedback before you start
• Successful trades can lead to future sales
• Check Feedback Left for others too
• Some people are difficult to deal with
• You have a right to turn down any trade
• Wait to leave Feedback
• Package and ship well
• Be honest in all communication