♦♦♦♦ Alberta Street Team CHAT THREAD for JANUARY 1 - 31, 2017 ♦♦♦♦

[#1]

Hello and welcome to the Alberta Team Chat Thread for January 1 - 31, 2017. Posting here counts towards your team participation and is the main place to get up to date on what we are doing as a team!

Post your New Listings in our promo thread:
https://www.etsy.com/ca/teams/5084/alberta-street-team/discuss/18209861/

WHERE TO FIND OUR TEAM & PARTICIPATE:
FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/AlbertaStreetTeam
TWITTER: twitter.com/etsyalbertateam #EtsyAB
PINTEREST: www.pinterest.com/ABStreetTeam/
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/etsyalbertateam/ #etsyalbertateam

If you have any questions about the team or how to get more involved please contact Kalen, the Team Captain, at www.etsy.com/shop/minibytes

Previous chat thread here:
https://www.etsy.com/teams/5084/alberta-street-team/discuss/18173710/

[Former_Member]

Hello all,

Yay for another new month. Not yay for the frosty cold in the Edmonton area today. I'm hoping it warms up before Saturday as I'm a bridesmaid in my brother-in-law's wedding and don't want to freeze during outdoor pics! Not holding my breath for that though, judging by the forecast.

On an Etsy note, I'm trying out Promoted Listings, mainly because I've never tried them before. Any thoughts on this feature?

Donna: If you're still needing feedback I'd be happy to help you out.

[hopnflop]

Happy New Year everyone!

"Knock on wood" I have not succumbed to a flu...yet. It's definitely been going around from what I heard from colleagues.

January/February is definitely inventory time for me and I too also use a normal spreadsheet that is copied over each year, but I'm still working on the best layout for item, value, quantity.and variation.

Margo - have you tried Uline? Or inquired with WRD display in Calgary for the bubble wrap pockets?

Shayla - nice, I have tried promoted listings awhile ago, but I didn't feel I was getting results in sales, just views. That being said, I didn't have it last too long too and I wasn't well equipped to know what was working or not. It will be great to hear your feedback with the process and how it's working for you.

Has anyone else tried promoted listings or other Etsy features?

[minibytes]

I gave it a go and it was a complete failure for me, lol…saying that I definitely didn't have a targeted approach.

I saw more listing views for sure, but no direct purchases came out of them. So hard to say whether I ended up getting indirect sales out of it or not. I also set my maximum $ limit to the lowest it could go, which probably didn't help.

If anyone has ideas as to an actual strategy to use with promoted listings I'd be willing to give it another shot, unfortunately I just don't have the time to run my own experiments with it.

[minibytes · Accepted solution]

Posting this in case you guys didn't see it, Etsy Resolution signup is happening.

"Four simple instructional emails will outline how to open your shop, from finding inspiration to making your product look pretty."

"Get the support of a community of peers while you create your shops together."

"Successful Etsy sellers will mentor and guide you through each lesson, where available."

https://www.etsy.com/ca/resolution/

[Former_Member]

Happy New Year! Not too much going on over here for the next week, but I'm really happy for that - the fall and holiday season were a total blur :D

Hope everyone is recovering!

Margo - also check Shipper's Supply. At least for shipping boxes, they don't require you to purchase in mass quantities, so it makes things a little less painful on the wallet if you don't need a ton at once.

[cindylouwho2]

I have experimented with search ads, mostly for keyword research. I have found that at least half of the sales I get from them are for searches that I am already on page 1 for, so I probably didn't need to advertise at all to get that sale (& since I cannot track some sales, likely MORE than half of my sales from them were searches I was on the first page for).

I have also found that renewing my top seller once every 3 days if it hasn't sold is a MUCH better return on my money than search ads, even if I count all the "already on the first page" sales. I don't have enough top-ranked items in search to make renewing a viable strategy for my whole shop, though, & that item makes enough sales that I only spent 80 cents renewing it in Dec. I may try a few other items with good quality scores to see how they work.

a few things to remember about search ads:

1) what Etsy chooses to show for any given search is based on how well the item usually does in search (i.e., its quality score) and the bid, so if your item doesn't usually do well in search, advertising it is unlikely to get you a lot of impressions unless you bid much higher than average. I found it useful to limit my advertised items to those that had the best views & heart to view ratios.

2) most people report their best results from bidding very low, but I think that higher bids COULD be profitable on high-priced (over $100) items

3) some people report higher impressions after the ads have run for around a month, & that stopping & starting ads loses that advantage (I found the same) so you likely need to run ads for a few months to get the full picture of how they will work for you.

[Former_Member]

Thanks everyone who volunteered to preview my website. I won't be ready for that until at least the weekend, but I'll email you the link when it's ready. I appreciate the feedback!

Getting back into the swing of things at work, so it's a busy week. Hope everyone is enjoying the sunshine and "heat wave" we have going on today.

[lampworkbyjulie]

Hey peeps.
Sorry to hear of sickness for many of you. I'm so grateful that I rarely get ill. My mantra is 'I never get sick' and I know it helps. As a firm believer in the law of attraction, I shake my head about the 'winter flu' or 'I catch a cold every fall' kind of folks. Live with that thought process and see how it works. Lol
I'm a spread sheet person too. I've completed them every 3 months for 3 different businesses for nearly 30 years.
Cindy, do you still renew 5 items daily? So about $30 monthly. If I remember correctly, that works well for you?

[cindylouwho2]

Julie, I have never relied on renewing items. Renewing this one item every 3 days if it hasn't sold is new for me since fall. For $30 a month to be worth it to me, I would have to bring in well over $300 of sales from it. I suspect it could work with this one listing, but probably not many others I have. I think I would need an average item price in the $75 & up range to make that work, & the items renewed would all need good quality scores. I may experiment some more in February, but I have to get through inventory first, then update my search ebook.

[Former_Member]

It's only been four days, but I thought I'd share some of my search ads results:

My views per day overall have increased by roughly 120%. According to my stats, only about 15% of this increase is actually being counted as clicks (views from ads). So I really don't know if this is directly related or just a strange coincidence.

I've had two sales so far that are recorded as coming from ad views. If nothing else, my ads thus far have paid for themselves.

I am bidding extremely low ($0.03 or less per click) on my most popular items that I already know my SEO is good on. I started with all, but switched on the second day. My daily budget is set to $1.00 but I've not yet spent that.

Overall I'm happy with the data this test is giving me so far. I get to see the impressions on these items, something regular stats doesn't fill you in on. That right there is worth the few dollars it's going to cost over a month. I've realized there are some items that get few, if any impressions which would explain why I'm not getting any views or sales from them! So, now I can grow my product line, keeping that data in mind.

[Former_Member]

Interesting stuff here. I may try Staples for bubble wrap envelopes. I don't need a huge number.

[myCorabella]

Shayla, can you clarify - is that a 20% increase, or 120% increase?
E.g. if it was 10 before, did it increase to 12 or to 22?

[cindylouwho2]

Shayla, remember that Shop Stats count every view in your shop, but promoted listings stats will only attribute the first view to the ad click. Any subsequent views after the first will be attributed to a different source - your listings, your shop etc. So you should see a larger increase in views than the ad clicks show, unless visitors are only looking at the ad page then leaving your shop right away.

Also remember that Etsy will serve your ads on the same page as your organic listings, so you might have gotten those sales anyway (the ones Etsy said came from the ads). It is important to track each sale to see its source, & see if you had an organic listing on the page as well. If you don't have Google Analytics set up, do that now, so you can better track the source of your sales.

I agree that ads are good for tracking impressions & keywords, although the impressions for ads will be partly based on other shops' bids, so they will not be exactly the same as your organic impressions. Still useful, though!

[WireExpressions]

Happy New Year!

Interesting discussions going on here. Not sure I can weigh in much - my brain feels muddled!

How about New Years Resolutions - anyone have any to share? I haven't made any resolutions yet (i'm a bit slow on the 2017 uptake here! Just trying to regain my sanity after a crazy December!) I'm thinking that, I need to rethink my priorities around home. It's so hard as a stay at home mom to balance family, household duties, and running a business. I would say business usually comes first, family second and house third. Pretty sure I've got that backwards. I need to make my family first. Not sure how to proceed on that at the moment. Any thoughts on how to make a home business grow, but keeping it # 3 on that priority list?

Stay safe and healthy, and enjoy 2017!

[BubblegumSass]

Hi all ! I sure have missed this group. I closed up my shop (& custom orders) for the month of December to focus on family time. And I have decided to do that going forward each year. It meant missed sales, I'm sure, but worth it.

Spent today cleaning the sewing room (it was such a disaster, I couldn't even step foot in it, we were just piling stuff where ever we could reach. It becomes a dumping space for any & everything.

Little out of the crafty/Etsy loop, but I'll try to pop in more frequently now. Happy New Year!

[Former_Member]

myCorabella: A 120% increase, eg. 10 views to 22

Cindy: Most of the views in the past few days seem to have come from search. I'm seeing way more data for search terms than I normally do. There is some intra-shop views, which could quite possibly be coming in how you had suggested, ad clickers browsing more, but not an overwhelming amount.

I do agree that a buyer can find my listings just as easily without the ads, so I'm not convinced yet that this is a long-term marketing approach for me. But there is a separate section in my stats right now that shows Ad order totals in addition to my regular order stats (the numbers are not the same so I'm pretty sure it's accurate that some of my sales in the past 4 days have been organic). I've got Google Analytics set up...but I have to confess I've been slacking with it lol.

[minibytes]

Shayla - thanks so much for sharing your findings! Keep it coming, would love to hear how things continue for you. Ugh google analytics….I really wish I could sign up for a webcast (preferably brought to us by our expert Cindy) and just brain dump the info in. ;)

Sarah - Welcome back! You have been missed. This Christmas I set a hard "stop" date where all my orders should be done, shipped, and I close up shop. It was December 5th for me this year and doing this actually saved me from myself. I always tend to say yes to crazy custom orders that are time-sinks and end up working crazy hours up until the last minute. This year was the first year I actually feel slightly refreshed and ready to open my shop again.

Kristi - my new years resolutions this year are to go easier on myself (ie, learn to say no and not care what people think if I'm feeling overwhelmed), to set up a saving program to give more money to charity, and to grow more food this year. With moving into the new house last year I didn't have a garden and I missed it incredibly!

Originally I also had "drink less wine" added to the list but I removed it, LOL. If I want to reward myself with a glass of wine I am going to, dangit!

[cindylouwho2]

Search terms from ads do also show up as search views in stats. If you have a bigger increase than that, then it could be just coincidence, because ads don't directly help your organic standing. Selling something can give you a boost in search, though, which is hard to separate out.

Kalen, wine is a necessity these days 🍷😄

[Former_Member]

You're right Cindy, I'm thinking it's more coincidence and the selling boost. After all it's only been four days. A little too early to say there's being any definite dramatic changes.

Hehehe wine...it's a definite necessity 😂 and an excellent reward.

[Former_Member]

I just checked out Aeris's painting she just posted in our new listings. It's gorgeous!!!! The talent in our group amazes me

[lampworkbyjulie]

For those of you who struggle fastening your bracelets, I just listed some lampwork bracelet buddies. Since we're not allowed to add the links here anymore, you can see them listed in our new listings thread. And some cool glass fish with undersea scenes inside them.

[Former_Member]

Sounds interesting Julie. I will take a look. Will one help me put a bracelet on with my bum wrist? Got to get photography down this year. It is such a struggle for me in my small not well lit space.

[lampworkbyjulie]

Next time I'm in the city, I'll come see you to see if I could help with your photos. Not that mine are very good but maybe I could offer a tip or two.
The bracelet buddy might help with your bum wrist. Take a look at the pic where it shows how to use it. I also can show you how to use a door knob, a rubber band and a paper clip to do up your own bracelet. That might work better for your bum wrist. I hope physio is helping.

[Former_Member]

Thanks Julie. I have seen the paper clip trick. Not sure how it works to remove a bracelet LOL. And photo tips are always welcome. My issue is what space I have (or not) to work with.

[cindylouwho2]

Try self-closing clasps for bracelets. As you know, I have quite a bit of trouble with my hands, yet I can do those up pretty easily. So I don't sell any bracelets with clasps that aren't self-closing.