Hello! Let's start chatting!

[#1]

'Bopa' here under another guise.
Thought I'd get a general chat thread rolling ... while we wait for the 'big chop'.
Shall we get our knitting needles out - like the women who surrounded the guillotine?! (seems very etsyesque!)

[FragmentDesignsEtsy]

I don't know either, my traffic sources are etsy, facebook and my blog, not sure how to get higher in google, I read a load of stuff, I got a headache spent a day changing stuff got one sale that day got really excited and then nada. Oh well!

My Dad is sending my a book on SEO (search engine optimisation) for dummies, I'm sure it will be great if I can't sleep

[Former_Member]

My views from Etsy direct are high. My Folksy views have flatlined. Don't think I'll carry on there after Christmas. I've invested a lots of time and effort for nothing. It would have been better spent on my shop here.
Try to use Pinterset and Stumbled Upon too. All these mount up to more views.

[Former_Member]

Sarah-Jane Egan so funny..LOL yes it would send me to sleep too but there might be one or two things there is you can manage to wade thro it all...

Cat.. Its hard Iv spent so much time on these things.. my folksy shop was doing really well and it all seems to have gone pear shaped.. not a great time of year for moving things around as they did..

I do the odd fair but its so expensive with petrol and table charges and if you only cover your table costs I feel like I might as well have stood in the street giving away everything.. Sometimes you have a good one but then you dive into the next have a disaster and then loose any headway you made!!

Im on all of those things like Pinterest which is good I have over 1000 followers in twitter but they dont always follow up on links and dont want to bombard people on Twitter with come and have a look.. its one way of loosing people I found! Iv also got a blog and I do get people from that but just dont get the way to get folk from Google search engines.. so if anyone finds out.. guess we would all love to know.. its hard out there and i think that getting folk into etsy is the way to get money coming in...for everyone

[Former_Member]

By the way Cat what would you say high views are? I get about 60 in a day.. is that average or bad? that would be interesting to know from people dont you think? then I guess at least it would give an idea if tags are working???

[FragmentDesignsEtsy]

Heya, I only just heard of Pinterest it had somehow passed me by and a friend emailed me about it last night suggesting it, so I've applied for an invite but how long does that take? Will have to check out this stumbled upon too.

Definitly get the not wanting to spam people on twitter, I've stop following a load of pages that were just putting up link after link, I really don't like twitte personally, find it very stilted and unsatisfying. But sure I'll keep trying to use it.

I'm getting about 40-60 hits a day at the moment, last month was more like 20 a day, getting lots of favourites which is great for the ego but it's just not tranferring to sales! And I like money to eat and stuff!

[Former_Member]

It took about a week for Pinterest to get back to me. I don't really get SU but I have views from it so it must work.
Twitter is another that frustrates me. I get lots of views from the Etsy mini that I have on my blog.
I'm averaging about 90-100 views a day compared with 30 on Folksy, worse on some days there.
Check out your shop stats to see how people have found you. It will give you some idea of the tags that are working. For me the highest key words are organic blanket. That led to the custom order.
I'm willing to set up a board on Pinterest for the team.

[FragmentDesignsEtsy]

The majority of my traffic comes directly from etsy or from facebook. And my keywords unsuprisingly are bunny and rabbit pendant :) Constellation is in there too, so should probably get a few more of them up there.

A Pinterest board could be helpful, I'll give you a hand whenever I get my invite. It feels a little like etsy customer base is made up of sellers and their friends, do they advertise at all? Most of my friends hadn't heard of it and you should hear my Mam trying to pronounce it!

Some of the cyber monday boards are suggesting that cyber monday and black friday are about buying household stuff to make your house all nice for Christmas and not about the present buying yet, so fingers crossed they're right! I did get great views yesterday so hopefully more people will know I exsist now and buy :) ....I'm trying to be optimistic!

[teabreaks]

Oh My....I am such a dummy on these things...what is SU and what is pinterest....I don't even know how many views I am getting....duh....
The "Other side" is dreadful right now and not much better on here.....EB is best for me at the moment....

[Former_Member]

Had my first 'proper' sale on the other side last night - somebody who is not also a seller. That on the very day I decide I wasn't going to list there anymore.
Straight after that I had a sale here.
I went to post them today and a van went into the back of me when I was parked up. It caused a stir the village at least!

@Brenda Stumbled Upon and Pinterest are both site where you can share links with other. SU is for anything from esty shops to videos. Pinterest is for images but they can come from any source. The link back to the original image is there too.
People share and then post on their pages and so on.
Mine is here
http://pinterest.com/babancat/

[FragmentDesignsEtsy]

Yikes I presume you're ok? Stupid van drivers!

I have had sales on the otherside (I presume Folksy) which were completely random people and given that I've put a lot less up there I was very impressed! It's just soooo bloody slow to list stuff!

Still waiting for my Pinterest invite, lalallala ...got a more favourites today then I did yesterday even though I've got a 5th of the views so far, I think people looking yesterday were just looking for as cheap as they could.

Really excited to either tomorrow or thurs, (prob thurs) start enamelling! Gonna mean I have a whole new stock and maybe stuff will take off? and it's just so much fun!

[Former_Member]

hey what a great lot of info about this .. will need to go check out pininterest again.. I ef agree about blog I was so surprised when i looked at my stats and saw the traffic from my blog.. much more than twitter! I think stats are great to help yu understand.. i got a lot of views for textile cards.. perhaps if we all shared what the best views were in tags we would all know what to sell... !! LOL

enamelling sounds like brilliant fun.. i fancy doing that

Cat I hope your ok thats like 2 nice things followed by a disaster.. life can be a bummer...

[Former_Member]

For us two it would be 'organic textile card'. Now that's a thought.

I was just getting into the car but couldn't because the van was at such an angle trying to park behind me. The boy racer behind him actually said 'Ouch!' He did stop to tell the van driver he'd hit my car. I take back lots about boy racers!
It also happened outside a cafe full of council workmen having tea. He was not in a position to argue about it.
No real damage done. He's scrapped the paintwork but no dent. It can be polished out. I hate polishing!

[FragmentDesignsEtsy]

Well at least you're alright! And woohoo for little boy racer!

[GwynnethRixon]

Anyone else doing Dyffryn Gardens fair this weekend?

[FragmentDesignsEtsy]

Nope have to work, would have loved to otherwise! Good luck.

[teabreaks]

Car...glad there wasn't too much damage.
Is it worth doing SU and pinterest then? Still a bit cconfused about it...I will take a look at your in a mo

here is my listing for today

http://www.etsy.com/listing/87742447/aceo-original-monochrome

[Former_Member]

Pinterest yes. I still don't get SU.
I know I get views from them and the more the merrier.

[Former_Member]

Cat
organic textile card sounds good! anyone else got good tags that work for them??

Glad your ok Cat

Im getting a few sales from Folksy but no a jot here and just checked my stats and not a single view yesturday or today for either of my shops!!!!! dire!!!

[Former_Member]

Things are better here for me. Folksy crashed yesterday so don't worry about that one.
My views here are 5 times higher even though I've spent the last two months promoting Folksy.
I'm sitting down in the holidays and having a think about the way forward. I'll stay here but need to get myself out there more. I think I'll let Folksy delist. I've spent so much on daily listing fees there for three months and haven't sold enough to pay for them.

[FragmentDesignsEtsy]

I've gotten a few folksy hits and sales but honestly haven't been trying the whole platform is just headwrecking! I am going to try keep it up and spend some more time on it, but at this stage that will prob be in january! Trying to get stock ready at the mo, got a fair next sat and maybe the following and I don't want to show up empty handed! Got a few sales on here this week which was great, but the last posting dates are coming up this week so ahhh! No where near the sales I was hoping for.

I think I need to get out and about with more local craft fairs that are easy for me to get to and therefore I don't mind if don't do great.I got lots of new business cards printed too and they are going to be thrown around the place like confetti! Fingers crossed we all do well in this last run up to Christmas!

[teabreaks]

I do best on ebay right now.....etsy is second and lastly Folksy which has plummeted since they changed everything.......I don't do fairs any more as the table rents meant that I needed a LOT of sales to make any profit. People just don't seem to be spending this year...which is not surprising...when I read in the paper today that the leader of the house of commons spent £37,000 on a herald which WE the tax payer paid for....mmm.....

[Former_Member]

You're right. This year is difficult for everyone.
I don't like going to craft fairs as a buyer so I'm not that keen to do them. Judging from the feedback most people aren't buying and so there's little point in it.
I'd rather stay in the warm!

[Former_Member]

Good morning everyone.....sorry not have posted for a while, been so busy with various things and this week doesn't look much better!!!

Sorry to hear about your bump Cat, hope there wasn't too much damage.

We haven't done a fair yet, Laura can't make enough stock to do one properly, at the moment we are making as we are selling. Hopefully next year we will be more organised and build up our stock a bit.

Still haven't made my Christmas Cake!!!!! It must be done this week so I'm going to set a day to do it and stick to it...lol.

Went for a meal with my son and family last night to celebrate his birthday (which was last Thursday). We went to a curry house in Swansea where you can eat as much as you like!!!!......bad idea for me and I spent the rest of the evening just sitting on the sofa trying to digest it! But it was nice for us all to go out together.

Anyway, keep warm everyone.

Kim :)

[teabreaks]

curry sounds awful to me...I only like plain British food.....lol...
My birthday today...65....ouch.....might go out for a meal later but it will be ORDINARY food....lol.....cold outside but at least we don't have snow...my son is in Scotland...thick snow there !!

[Former_Member]

I can't eat curry either. I've got a hiatus hernia so have to be careful about what I eat. Every so often I'll fancy a curry but have to stop myself.
Go on Brenda! You know you love sliding down those hills in the snow!