Tricks of the Trade....an Etsy help guide

Ok, so now you have a few tricks of the trade, outlined in my previous posting....what's next? A few other items to consider are the following:


PRICING: Pricing your items is an artform in itself. Crochet items? jewelry? There are many different opinions on this subject, and I am constantly getting someone telling me I don't charge enough. I try to look at it like this: If I were shopping for a piece of jewelry...what would I be willing to pay for it? then I figure in my materials, and a small amount of my time, and come up with a price I can live with, both as a seller, and a human being...I do not want to feel like I have purposefully ripped someone off, that's just not a feeling I want to have on my conscience...do you? Your pricing needs to be fair, both to you, and your customers.

RENEW: Renewing items at key times of the day just may help you make a sale! Yes, it will cost you the .20 cent re-listing fee, BUT, look at it as an investment in your future. So you have just spent an additional .20 cents, what if your 20.00 item sells? Then you have just made......19.60 on your item. I think...I can live with that. Renewing items will also help google see you better when it crawls Etsy, because you are staying active in your shop, this is important for google searches....you need to stay active in your shops, this cannot be stressed enough, and not just a day or 2 a week, but every day, every week, no matter what. Even if you can only find 5 minutes a day to renew 1 item, pick a key time of day to do it, and get it done no matter what.

WHOLESALE: This is another consideration. I have had a couple of people convo me and want wholesale pricing. You can choose whatever percentage you want, and set your own limits on what they have to spend to get that percentage, BUT, my products are already marked extremely low, compared to others out there, so my response is simple. If they spend 500.00 or more in one purchase, I will give them a flat 25% off rate, and free shipping. BUT, they must spend the 500.00 on product, not including shipping. These folks chose not to do it, but thats ok with me, I am not willing to lose money on my products, just to make a sale. This is an area where I am personally sticky. Again, this is something a person needs to decide for themselves, and what they feel they can live with, there is no set system, and all the advice in the world cannot change what you yourself can live with.

TITLING: So now you have made a beautiful necklace from beads and stones, and silver or gold. Much I have read says your titles NEED to be descriptive, and including words like "sale" or "10%off", will not help your item to be seen. If you are having a sale in your shop, create a new section and name it "clearance" or "sale items", regardless of how many times you title something with the word "sale" in it, it's not gonna help your product get "found". Descriptive words...however...will....so....WHAT did you make your necklace out of? My listings are done pretty blunt, and to the point, for instance, "Lake Superior Agate Sterling Silver Pendant". A lot of folks will try to put every key word they can in their descriptions, this actually will hinder your listing, instead of helping it. Try to think of it like this: what do you want people to search for when they find your product? necklace? wire wrapped? stone? or the actual name of the stone? USE THAT as your main ingredient for a listing title, titling something with 10 different key words will actually make your listing show up as # 1,000,000,000 on the google listings...for EACH keyword...I would much rather be in the top ten, for 1 or 2 keywords. This one was difficult for me to figure out, and took me a few months to do it too!

DESCRIPTIONS:  Have you ever thought about how you would "connect" to your buyers? Especially since you never actually meet them face to face? Ok...this is the way I try to think about it....think about the last garage sale you had at your house, remember that lady/man who came up and asked you about something, and you actually had to engage yourself in a conversation with her? Maybe you had to talk her in to it, by telling her that the toaster still worked, you just decided to buy a new one? well, it's the same type of phylosophy online. People want to "engage", or connect with you, so describe your items as tho you were looking at the person in the eyes, be honest, and detailed, but try to do it in a way that you may "connect" with someone online, whom you will never meet. You must convince them to buy it, with common, everyday words you would use if you were looking at them. I call this "smiling with words" .

Again, I cannot stress enough the importance of backlinks, and the building of your SEO online. Soon I will be offering ads on this blog for 2.00 a month, a clickable photo will be included with these ads, so if anyone is interested, you can just shout at me on Facebook! This is also an awesome backlink builder...ads...but we will get in to that next time around!  

Tricks of the Trade....an Etsy help guide

This is just a few of the things I have learned since January of this year, and is by NO means everything there is. It seems to me that a LOT of Etsy sellers like to keep their little trade secrets to themselves, but every once in awhile, I will run across something, and find it to be a usefull tool in the "Etsy world" of selling.

Because etsy is so large.....do you know how many sellers there are on Etsy? It would probably astonish you to know.....but because it is such a large place to sell, it is sometimes hard to know what is what, and what to do next. For me it was a little overwhelming, because I knew NO ONE who was a seller on Etsy, and therefor knew NOTHING about what a person just starting out can do.



These are the things that have worked for me:



1. Are you in a treasury, and someone forgot to tell you? Find out here:

http://www.craftopolis.com/



2. Twitter - now a LOT of people see this as a nuisance, or something, I don't. In my SEO my twitter acct shows as #2 in the rankings for me, and also shows on the first page when you search for superioragates, so you tell me....The ONLY thing I do know about twitter is this: do not open any links sent to you in a direct message from anyone whom you dont know, or have not seen before in your circles, ther ARE some folks who like to spread virus' around, so just use common sense with it.

http://www.twitter.com/



3. Blogger...this is a great tool for Google...even if you cannot write anything to save your own rearend, try to come up with something. The most important thing tho is to STAY ON TOPIC, in other words, if you sell jewelry, use your blog to write ABOUT JEWELRY, if you want to blog, and help others, this is awesome, but, use a different blog for it.



4. customer service...this one should be obvious to all of us, but sometimes...well we get so busy living, we just seem to forget to say Thank you to those who have made it possible for us to continue to do our craft. Say thank you, answer any and all questions posed to you, etc etc etc



5. Sharing - now, this is NOT the traditional sense of the word....on the right hand side of your shop home page, you will see a "share" button, click it, and it opens up a short list of places to share you pages to. You will find this on every single page of your shop. Use it, it's great! Don't have an account with Kaboodle, or tumblr? create one. Even if you dont know anyone on those sights, your links can still be shared to these sights. When you create ANY acct. anywhere on the net, no matter what, use your shop name, this is important. Everything online you see about me, is under superioragates...everything, on every sight I am on. share, share share share, and share some more.



6. Everything you do online - Think of the web...punn intended...as just that, a huge spider web that YOU have to build, YOU have to connect all the ends of the web together to make it strong, and durable, and valuable. Now then, I am not saying that I have completely figured this out by any means, but, the way I see it is this example......."I uploaded an item to Etsy, tweet that page, I just shared something on Myspace....so now what? OH...I will tweet that page....then I share on Facebook....tweet my fanpage........so my friend Jo shared my link on her page....tweet her page.....get my system?



7. LINKLOVE - I had NOTHING to do with creating this awesome backlink builder, this is a great tool, and if you are not invloved in it you should be. You can read the guide, with helpful how-to's over on the LINKLOVE group page...really...think about those backlinks long and hard. It's one thing to creat a link that someone can see for the time being, but what about creating one that is behind the scenes, making sure your original link STAYS seen on the web? backlinks backlinks....LINKLOVE rocks



8. FORUMS - I have tried and tried to make people see...if you look online for "how to boost my rankings"....you will find that 7 out of 10 reccomend forums, because google LOVES them. Google likes to crawl them because they constantly have new and fresh content. This is why I created our linklove forum...every single time you post something, or comment on something, IF you have your links set up in the signature line, google will crawl those links...BACKLINKS again!! so now you have posted in the forum....oh yeah..tweet this page too!



9. Now you've done all this....now what...MORE BACKLINKS. If I had people who would do it for me this would be awesome. If you have folks who would put your shop link, and your face book link in the signature line of all their emails, this is another highly reccomended backlink builder.



10. Treasuries - If you are included in one, share it one everything you would otherwise share on. If you create one, click on everything in the treasury yourself, and share it on everything you normally share it on...twitter, kaboodle,facebook,myspace,bebo,gogglebuzz,delicious,orkut,tumblr,stumbleupon, or where ever else you might share your shop & items.



Well, those are the top ten I know of, and I KNOW there are a LOT more on the subject, so feel free to post what you have as well in the comments. This would be an awesome list of things for someone new to online selling to use.

Free Tutorials!

I am always having some ask me where I learned to wire wrap....how I do it, which in itself is something of a different deal, but I wanted to share with you where I learned to wire wrap. The basic come from a guy who goes by "bikerrandy"....he has this basic wrap tutorial posted on a forum that i frequent daily...I will share the link with you in a moment.........but the basics are actually pretty simple...it's those stinkin curly Q's that got me at first!!
If you can, wrap your mind around letting the wire do the work...that is, when you are trying to do the curlies, after the basic wrap, they should turn out smooth, and even. All wire has a creasing point, use a piece of scrap wire to find that, and it gives you an idea of how far you can "bend" the wire until it finally has a crease, trying to avoid that is key in wire wrapping. Gently bring the wire in to a loop, and you will see the wire start to work itself, instead of forcing it to do what you want it to do.
There are a lot of resources for free wire wrapping tutorials in which you can learn from, just type free wire wrapping tutorials in your browser, you will be amazed at what you find. The wraps you see here http://www.etsy.com/shop/superioragates all started from the basic wire wrap I learned from, and I progressed from there.
Find the basic wire wrapping tutorial here:
http://andy321.proboards.com/

Learn how to do the basic swirls, with double square wire here:
http://www.jewelrylessons.com/tutorial/how-make-double-square-wire-swirls
And learn how to make a more complicated wrap, my style, here:
http://www.jewelrylessons.com/tutorial/blue-agate-cabochon-sculpted-pendant

Wire wrapping gemstones is a wonderful hobby that just about anyone can learn to do! Take it from me....

http://www.etsy.com/shop/superioragates Come check out the Lake Superior Agates!

Agate is said to enhance one's perceptiveness and to stimulate analytical capacity, and to provide balance between one's physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual states. Agate is also said to alleviate hostilities and promote goodwill. Agate is believed to help discern truth, accept circumstances, and is a powerful emotional healer. Legend says that Agate improves memory and concentration, increases stamina and encourages honesty.

It is believed to prevent insomnia and ensure pleasant dreams, to enhance personal courage and protect one against danger. Agate provides a calming influence, improves perception, concentration and helps to develop and increase one's analytical talents.

You should also know that, if you have a favorite stone that you'd like to have wrapped, I can do that as well!
http://www.etsy.com/shop/superioragates?section_id=6732180