Here's one of the pots I put up for sale on Etsy yesterday, along with a couple of other new ones. There are now 20 on the site and maybe more to come. Some disappeared after posting and it took a bit of digging to find out where Etsy put them. I think it's wise to not put all the work up at once so that your pieces show up on the first page whenever someone does a search for your category. Etsy charges $7 to be showcased, and I think that just spacing your listings will serve a similar purpose; but I need to do some more reading on this Etsy marketing tool.
My photos looked fine when I downloaded them from my camera,but looked fuzzy when uploaded to Etsy, so I need to re-take some of them. After reading some Etsy hints, I'm going to follow the recommendations and take multiple views of the pots.
The other thing I found is that shipping to places like Australia can be higher than the $30 price I put up, which I had seen on other potters Etsy sites. Someone on another clay group said a single pot cost her $56 to ship to Australia. After hearing that, I immediately went back to my Etsy site and removed all shipping location fees but US and Canada. All the pots I posted on Etsy are $75 and less, so I can't imagine someone wanting to spend $56 to receive a $30 mug Another bit of shipping information she share was that shipping a mug, using USPS priority mail with the free boxes was a bit over $8, which was cheaper than packing her own box.
What I'm finding is that even with great feedback on my work, I haven't sold a pot. That affirms my idea that people are more prone to buy a pot from you on line if they've already seen, held or purchased your work. Having a large mailing list or a national reputation is definitely a benefit.
Unfortunately, I've never put in the time to develop that kind of mailing list and at my age, I'm not going to attempt to become a marketing expert; but I will ask studio visitors in the future, to put their email addresses in the guest book.
One of the other things I absolutely need to do, and soon, is to revamp my web site which is in bad need of updating. Now that I have a Paypal sellers account I will be able to set up a shopping cart on my web site eventually. I loaded up my software yesterday and realized after some glitches that I need to relearn it. It may be easier at this point to just trash the old site and start from scratch.
Hi June, your banner and pots look good, I plan to list my pots one at a time once I take all the photos and type the descriptions.
ReplyDeleteI spent all day yesterday taking photos for my banner and then they didn't look that good. I made up a new banner in powerpoint using etsy help post and am now revamping my banner that way. someone I know revaped their website via blogger with free hosting, that's next on my list, time you can add pages to your blog right here for free, up to 10 pages.
Next I will sign up for a paypal business acct and start listing. One thing to consider is shipping to Hawaii and Alaska is much more expensive, so you might want to say continental USA for shipping.
The first sales are tough, but as you gain sales and feedback from those customers your sales will increase. My prediction is if you keep posting and listing pieces by this time next year you'll have a hard time keeping up. Last February we had 60 sales, now we have 847, hundreds over the last month.
ReplyDeleteRead the Etsy Sellers handbook, follow the advice and you will see the results.
That's encouraging Charles. I hope you're right. I've gotten great feedback on the pots but no sales. I'll keep posting and see what happens.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see you joining the Etsy family Linda. I have to retake photos tomorrow. I planned to do it today; but decided to do my food shopping and get a new table for my photo setup. The old table has a hump in the middle and some of my pots came out looking lopsided. :-(
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