Tomorrow (june 19th) I am celebrating 3 years of selling on Etsy.com. Tonight I spent an hour or so looking through the first few pages of sales I had on Etsy, going over the photos, reading the listings, and thinking back to when I first started out. The site, my work and my shop has changed a lot in those 3 years!
So, what I have I learned? Well, I learned that it takes a lot of time to sell online. Time creating, time photographing, and most of all, time promoting. 3 years ago I had no idea what a blog was, how to make a banner, barely used forums, and didn't even know what an avatar is! LOL
Photographing your work in a way that not only shows off the piece, but will also catch your customer's eye is key. My early photographs were badly lit and taken from too far away. Once I learned how to use the macro on my camera, experimented with using different colored backgrounds and photo editing software -- my photographs really improved.
Probably the most important thing I learned was that YOU have to promote your shop. A lot of times people sign up for a shop on Etsy, list their items and expect to sell right away. You really do have to work hard on getting your name and your work out there. It takes a lot of time and effort, but it's worth it in the end. Sure, sometimes you get lucky, the right person sees your work at the right time, talks it up and your shop takes off. But that's not always the case, so you have to make things happen for yourself.
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