Using the Etsy Promo Forums to Your Advantage

Hi, I'm Tessa & I make eco-conscious graphic tees at Krmbal. When I started Krmbal, I opened up on Storenvy because I work with a printer to make sure my tees are printed responsibly and the chemicals to make the screens and the ink are properly handled and disposed of (screen printing ink is actually considered hazardous waste until it's fully cured and I didn't want to be dumping any of that down a drain!). When Etsy decided to start allowing manufacturing partners and a friend sent me some free listings, I decided to try it out. The review process actually went very slowly for me, but eventually I was approved and could start selling.

I made a single sale in the first week I was on Etsy, but after that I had a long stretch of several months where I had no sales. I was really struggling to make the Etsy marketplace work for me and I thought that I might give up after my free listings were gone. I wasn't promoting Etsy on my social media because Storenvy doesn't take a percentage of my sales, so it just makes more financial sense to push all of my outside promotion to my custom Storenvy shop. I wanted to try to take advantage of the Etsy marketplace though because it is one of the really great features of Etsy.

I was averaging about 30-40 views a week on Etsy and 15-25 favorites a month. Those are pretty dismal stats. I tried changing up my search terms, even tried some outside promo just to see if boosting views would help me in the Etsy marketplace. Nothing really made a dramatic difference.

Then, my friend Danielle from Squshies mentioned that the Etsy Promo forums were open again and that she really enjoyed them last year as a way to promote and to find new things. I hadn't ever used the Etsy forums before, so I asked her a few questions and then I dove in.  You can find the Forums link at the bottom of the page from anywhere on Etsy. The Promo forums are the last topic on the page in the forums section.

Basically how it works is someone posts a thread topic like Blue Items or Halloween and in the first post may include rules to post in that topic. Sometimes the rules are that you can only post 1 item from your shop, sometimes it's to post an item and favorite a certain number of items from other people and sometimes there are games where you post something that matches a color in the last item posted or is the next letter of the alphabet. As long as you follow the rules of the post, you shouldn't have any problems.

I use HabitRPG to help me keep track of my To Do list, things I do often and daily tasks. I decided to make it a daily task to spend a short amount of time each morning posting to the Promo forums. I don't spend more than 10-15 minutes each day and my views and favorites went right up.

Then something awesome happened. I was found by an Etsy team that devotes 2 days a week to finding a group of shops with low sales and "attacking" them with favorites and/or sales. I made 1 sale that day and got over 100 favorites. The next day, I got another sale.  That boost really helped Krmbal get some traction on Etsy and I think they found my shop because I posted in the forums on a topic for shops with low sales.

The Sneak Attacks team definitely gave me a boost, but I've kept that momentum going for about a month now and I think that's all due to the Promo forums. I've more than doubled my monthly views and my favorites have gone from 15-25 a month to over 100. In fact, this week alone I had 2 days where I got as many favorites in one day as I used to get in a month. I've also been averaging a sale a week since the boost from the Sneak Attacks team. That's not amazing, but it's much better than I had been doing!

I still don't promote Etsy outside of the promo forums any more than I used to, so the increase in traffic is all from the forums and getting better reach thanks to those favorites. I think favorites are pretty key on Etsy, they seem to be what really help expand your reach. It's especially true now with the new home page featuring the recent favorites of your friends and other people you follow.

If you're struggling on Etsy, I'd give the Promo Forums a try. If you've never tried Etsy, but want to give it a shot, ask any of your Etsy seller friends to send you a link for 40 free listings (they'll get free listings too) or feel free to use mine.

Do you use the Etsy promo forums or others venues to promote your Etsy shop? What have you found to be most effective in marketing your Etsy shop? 

It's not Storenvy vs Etsy

There seems to be some line drawn where handmade people think you have to either sell on Storenvy OR Etsy.

Total myth.

You can sell on both. They work well together. And it's easy. Storenvy never set out to compete with Etsy. They just wanted to create a place where indie artists and creative entrepreneurs could open a free online store and enjoy the benefits of being part of a marketplace full of other creatives!

Here is some blunt perspective on this non-existent Etsy vs Storenvy war and how they can actually work hand in hand:

Say you are already selling on Etsy and you want to expand to reach a new market and build your own branding identity by having a fully customized shop, but you're all like "Ugh, I have eleventy billion items listed on Etsy, it's just not worth it to me to spend time setting up on another site" you can start jumping for joy right now because Tonka Park has built an Etsy to Storenvy importer that quickly and easily copies over listings, product photos, descriptions, tags and prices. Pretty awesome, right?

And if you are worried about selling an item on Storenvy that you have listed on Etsy and then that same item selling on Etsy and you're all like "Oh noooooooo, what do I do if I double sell?!" stop worrying and set up an account with Stitch Labs to easily, seamlessly manage inventory on both platforms. When you sell an item from Storenvy, the identical item will be automatically removed from your Etsy shop. Boom. It's that simple. Check out their Storenvy and Etsy integration to learn more.

Then there's the people who think Storenvy doesn't have a place for handmade shops - not true, they have an entire marketplace set up just for handmade shops which makes up a huge chunk of their total number of shops. And I have heard "But I see resellers" - well, yeah. I see resellers on Etsy too, but if you're already selling there, I don't quite understand that concern regarding Storenvy's handmade market, you know? I think as artists all we can do is create beautiful, quality wares - because realistically, true artists are not competing with resellers. But that's a whole different topic altogether. 

And of course there's the concern you can't print shipping labels straight from Storenvy like you can from Etsy. Not directly from Storenvy, but they integrated with Shipstation so their users can print shipping labels for Storenvy orders quickly and easily!

So what have we learned?

It's easy to have both Etsy and Storenvy shops. There's not battle between the two sites. Etsy provides you with a great audience and buyer visibility whereas Storenvy provides you with the ability to create a brand for yourself by allowing total shop customization and the ability to domain host (so you can be yourshop . com). Storenvy is also backed by a powerful search engine within it's marketplace that ranks products in real time popularity base on recency of listing, Envies, and purchases so you also reap the benefit of your products reaching a new audience in a much less saturated market, allowing your products to really stand out and evolve.

There's one thing I want to say though - I've helped a lot of people set up a second shop on Storenvy.com and usually, three months later they say it's not working for them. Why? You have to promote it as much as you promote your Etsy shop. You can't just open shop, import products and leave it - you have to market it, talk about, drive your clients to or else how can you expect it to be a success?

What do you think? Will you be taking Storenvy for a test drive?

Etsy: the new handmade

I saw this on Facebook this morning and thought it was really interesting. It is very thought provoking look into Etsy's new policies, which I am sure you have heard about because the handmade community has been very vocal about these changes - some don't think they are a big deal, others think it skews the entire perspective of handmade.

Take a look at this Etsy Treasury curated by Judit of Glassimo. Leave a comment with your thoughts about it and how you think it effects buyers and sellers on Etsy.

The new "handmade"

understanding etsy's new browse feature

Etsy is renowned for making frequent changes to their site and tumbling their sellers into confusion and a mad scramble to work out how they can optimize for the new system. I've had an Etsy shop for 3 years now, so I've been up and down on the rollercoaster a few times and learnt what to look for. I'm going to be sharing some of my Etsy insights with you here, and you can also find more information about running a website and using social media on my blog, createpixelate.com.

In this post I'm going to help you understand the new Etsy Browse feature, how it affects your shop and what you can do to make the most of it.