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.