Confessions of a Dram-Art Queen

Ok, so as some of you may know, I’m far more needle and thread than keyboard and mouse. Unfortunately, its becoming more and more apparent that I need both these skills if I’m ever going to be able to make a proper go at selling on-line. Its not like I haven’t sold anything since I started, quiet the contrary actually. I just haven’t been seeing the level or results I thought I would (I had a pretty realistic expectation of how hard it was going to be), especially now I’m four months into it. 

In the past week however, I decided something needed to be done, and have put considerable time and effort into re-working my Etsy Shop and giving my Facebook page a total overhaul. Now, even if I do say so myself, they’ve actually become things I don’t dread linking to, especially the Facebook page. My heart used to sink when an distant relative went ‘Oh you sell one the internet. Do you have Facebook?’

Now I can say proudly, ‘Why yes, I do’

Having put off doing it for so long, I think I’d built it up in my head to be some huge scary task that was going to take hours and hours. It wasn’t that bad, it was boring and repetitive, and Facebook’s page system has a habit of breaking and forcing you away from the computer before you put your fist through the screen. It looks like this now though http://www.facebook.com/Kirstiekrafts . Improved photo’s clear listings and several links to my Etsy shop, which I’ll get onto talking about next. I also shamelessly promoted it on both my wall and my local ‘For Sale, Free or Wanted’ page. Well my items are for sale after all.

Etsy, well, I thought it would be a simpler fix, just a case of sorting Tags and up-dating some of the photo’s after all. Nope, the photo’s themselves were easy enough to update, and sorting certain items info was fine. Now we come to the tags, and its fair to say I’m not exactly sure how and why the work the way they do.

For some reason Etsy doesn’t take what you’ve named the item into account in search listings, and unless you’ve tagged it using it’s name as well, there’s not a scooby of a chance buyers will find it. I don’t understand this. So basically when writing tags, you have to include the name of the item and what it is, which would be fine, except you only get 13 tags. Fortunately, my items are generally named things along the lines of ‘Phone case, green and blue’. That only takes three tags.

Name your items short things people, and never include filler words in the tags. Actually naming them long things is fine, as long as your to the point with the tags. I’ve been trying to think of an example, but all I can think of right now is using a painting of a beach, which is both irrelevant to me and you. 

Anyway, here’s a link to the Etsy shop, http://www.etsy.com/shop/KirstieKrafts

Stay classy people, I’m off to have breakfast

Oh and remember you can find me on twitter https://twitter.com/#!/KirstieKrafts