I received a message from a customer to say that they were following advice given in a Critique but they were not sure how the favoriting things exactly worked. They were getting more traffic but they felt that it was only Sellers returning the favor and how exactly was that going to benefit them.
I want to post my response here because I think it will help some of you to understand how it works:
"Favoriting people clearly brings you traffic and/or favorites in return. The fact that you're getting them in return is what is important. Activity feeds work viral, so when someone hearts your item, that shows up in their activity feed to all the people in their circle. Any of those people may then also heart that item which will show up in their activity feed and so on.
This is why it is important to keep people in your circle who are in a lot of circles but only if they favorite a lot of things (inc yours) too.
You can be in as many circles as you like, there is no limit. The limit set by Etsy is how many people YOU add to your circle. The limit is 1080. If you click on Your Circle, you'll see that you have 108 pages of people in your circle. Go to page 108 and remove anyone who has set their favorites to private (unless they're a personal friend) and also anyone with little hearts or circles, they will not be helping you.
Work your way back to say page 105 and make room for more people. Keep doing this. No one who is removed gets any notifications and if they are not hearting you and therefore helping you, the chances are they won't even know that you've removed them. If they should heart you later, this will still show up in your activity feed and you can go and give them a heart back.
The more circles you are in, the higher your traffic potential when someone hearts your items. If you heart people back who heart you, you'll find that some people will do it regularly. You keep those people in your circle as they will be doing the same as you.
Remember too that all those hearts you are getting means that those are now sitting in those sellers favorites folder and you will also be visible there. It may therefore not bring you immediate results but you could suddenly make a sale a week down the line because someone saw your item."
