Jan - I think you'll love it! I do. I get far more sales with Direct Checkout than PayPal now. It's easy and nice, you can wait until Mondays for deposit or get funds sooner if you need them. At first, I was concerned having to wait because I do some pretty high dollar custom work that requires me putting money out in advance for the items I print, but shortly after that Etsy changed it to get funds to sellers quicker which sold me on DC for sure!
Jacki - it's hard to say how long it takes for a first sale. One of the best pieces of advice I give is find your niche. Sellers that target a specific demographic tend to do well with sales. My husband always asks why I target a single audience and I try to explain that many people do t-shirts but very few offer shirts to the people I do and while my demographic is smaller, my sales are high. Tags are a really important part of this, too. Make sure you use as many if not all the tags. For instance, your blue butterflies listing could have tags like blue, butterflies, Chinese, Asian, English, influence, cottage, China, flower arrangement, wedding, anniversary... etc. Make sure you use the tags and try to put as much as you can for description in the listing. The more and better the description, the more people will find you. After you do that, give Etsy's search ads a try. You don't need to spend much to get more advertising on Etsy. Also, if you don't have a Google Adwords account, do sign up. There are a lot promos that will get you $100 or more in Google Adword credits for first time users! Look for a promo code and get that free credit, link your Adwords ad to your Etsy page! Your stuff is lovely, just need a little tweaking and you should see more results soon! Good luck!
