Hi Rhiannon/Nancy :+) The teams I captain are all about marketing outside of etsy. We figured we can like each other to death --- but if the outside world doesn't see us, we aren't going to sell like we'd like to. I love having etsy shop owners buy from me, but that's limiting ourselves to a very select customer base. SO we built our website in one team (three of us did) -- and we highlight items -- going state by state -- and then have anyone who comes in vote on their favorite. The people who are selected want to "win" because the picture of their item links back to their shop. If they win round one, they stay in for round two; if they win that they stay in till we do our first elimination round (four times a year). At the end of the year we'll have four people who have gotten free advertising for a year -- and then we'll have a vote for the 2013 winner. So they encourage everyone they know including friends and family, to come vote for them. The people who come in also see our things (only fair since we pay for the website! LOL) and everyone is happy. We have blogs, we have facebook, we do pinterest, we do Wanelo, we do google plus. The main thrust of our IN etsy advertising are treasuries because I think shoppers DO tend to look at those. So in a nutshell, that's pretty much my notion on selling in here.
I remember the first time I saw etsy --- this was probably three years ago -- it made NO sense to me. I saw the front page, searched for the daughter of my friend who was selling on here, and absolutely could not find my way around the place (and I'm pretty computer savvy and internet savvy). SO I figure if a potential buyer comes in, especially for the first time, they aren't going to necessarily find the activity feed, or realize what the front page is even FOR. I stumbled around in here for probably three months while starting up my shop -- people said "convo me" -- what the heck was a "convo"?? :+) It was like coming into a new country! :+)
Oh yeah -- and learning SEO (the REAL SEO, not what etsy says) helped too :+) (I'm a tad jaded LOL) -- My neighbor's adult son is a computer guru -- he is hired by company's and governments to break into their computer systems -- that sorta kinda tells you how good he is. He also work for google for a while. He says that computer people WANT us confused about search engines and all that --- otherwise, if it were easy to learn, they'd make LOTS less money :+) And it doesn't "change all the time" as we are constantly being told :+)
Now I've got to go out and see where everyone is from and how many members are in the team! Thanks again for asking me in -- oh and that button avitar that's in here -- that's me too -- but I'm NOT in that shop very often -- if you want to remove it, that's fine.
