My First Creation For The Boys...

Due to popular demand, I finally created a necklace that boys would wear. It's a unisex necklace, but one that the local surfer dudes (and dudettes) have purchased from my display at craft shows.
I used some larger deep olive pieces of sea glass, with a hole drilled, and it hangs on a black waxed cotton cord.

My son loves his and I even wear one from time to time...and the few that I've sold, have been purchased for boys. So I finally answered the request... good for boys and girls, and perfect for surfer dudes...my first sea glass necklace that the males will wear.

Once again, I've been away from this blog for far too long. Between my J-O-B, custom orders, replenishing my shop and consignment shops have me swamped. I have a list of ideas for blogs, so they should be coming every couple days (now that I've settled into my new position at work) and hopefully, I'll have several new creations to share with each blog.

'til next time...

R

Friday's Thoughts....

Once again, it's been a while since my last blog entry. My recently crazy work schedule, craft fairs, servicing my consignment shops, and keeping my Etsy shop somewhat stocked, has left me with very little free time, and my blogs have suffered.

I have jotted down a number of subjects that I had hoped to blog about (and still may) but since my schedule book is still overflowing with need-to-do's, it may be a good idea to throw out some random thoughts on these subjects.... and call it a blog entry : )

The first subject is the pros & cons of promoting off of the Etsy site.
There is an obvious need for promoting. But when off-site promoting results in several hundred views, (in less than 48 hours) do Etsy shoppers begin to wonder why the item hasn't sold?

I've been using a few sites to help promote my new listings and I have found that either there are a lot of people on one particular site that like sea glass jewelry, or the members love to look at handmade items. Either way, I'm no longer stunned when one of my new items receives 500 views in less than 12 hours! Some of my items have 750+ views in the first 24 hours. But I wonder what Etsy shoppers think when they see a large number of views...and very few hearts. A perfect example is the last item I listed, earlier this week.

After listing the item, I had to run out to get my sons off their school buses and didn't have time to promote. Shortly after getting them settled into their homework mode, I promoted in the Etsy forums a little. In the first 90 minutes, the new listing had 11 views, and 2 item hearts (wow 2 hearts from 11 views...very cool!) So I promoted off the Etsy site... in the next 6 hours my item had been viewed over 600 times (and still only 2 hearts) and by the end of the night, the item had been viewed more than 800 times!

Perhaps because of listing the item (on Stumble Upon) several of my other items listed there also received views, with one item (now up over 1,100 views and just one lonely item heart) adding another 100 views for the day...and I haven't promoted that item on Etsy in several days.

Is it a good thing that my items are being viewed by so many? I'm not sure the number of views on some items is a good thing...and I wish the feature was hidden from buyers and only available to my eyes... but I also think that some of my sales can be contributed directly to promoting off-site. There have been days where I added an item, failed to do any promoting on Etsy, but did promote off-site and the item sells within a few days....and often to someone who just joined Etsy that very day! Still, I'm not sure what buyers make of a new item with hundreds of views, but no takers.

Another thought on promoting... My hubby uses traffic exchanges for his various "things" and he has promoted my shop on several of these exchanges recently...some with little to no success, but the results according to Google Analytics on a few others were quite startling!

On one particular exchange, out of 175+ visits, I had a bounce rate of 58%. But those that did look at my shop, really looked! My overall stats were more than 2.4 pages per visit and the time spent in my shop was over 90 seconds per visit...and more than half of those visits left immediately...so those that stayed, really looked around! And what is best about this one particular site...the numbers have not dropped off terribly on subsequent campaigns.

I just asked hubby if he could please promote my shop a bit heavier this weekend and I might have to look into joining one of those free sites myself, just to promote my shop on a daily basis. The numbers matched up well to those from Stumble Upon...so who knows, it may be worth the effort. (not the number of views, but the bounce rate, time on site and pages per visit.. hubby doesn't promote a particular item, only my store page, so views are not skewed)

My final thought for today's blog is ... the sea glass supply is slowly drying up. Yikes, I have a niche market and now no one is dumping their garbage in the ocean anymore... what is up with that! And worse yet, no one uses glass bottles anymore. Everything is now plastic.

My recent trips to the beach have been total busts. I've come away with very little sea glass and zero pieces that I would consider jewelry quality. And unfortunately, the conditions were perfect for sea glass hunting... no one on the beach, low tide, lots of shells...but sadly, very little sea glass.
We even had back to back to back weeks of tropical storms off the coast or strong winds from the east and still almost nothing.

I wonder if sea plastic is the next rage : (


'til next time...
R

Has The Holiday Shopping Season Begun??

I don't really pay much attention to the financial news, but I've been told that the economy is turning around a little. People are beginning to re-invest in the stock market and retail companies are doing better...that's what the latest financial indicators are saying .

Well it might be true! My indicators seem to be mirroring what the financial markets are saying. In my last entry I blogged about how the last show I did exceeded expectations. During the week, I noticed a little bit of added traffic to my Etsy.com store and over the weekend, my numbers (according to my shop analytics) hit a couple all-time highs for visits and page views, with Sunday's numbers going over 1,000 visitors for the first time.

Another indicator for my store is in the "hearts" I am receiving in my shop. I have always found that a positive indicator was to see buyer-only hearts and the last 10 shop-hearts I received, 5 of those are from buyers-only. So buyers are visiting Etsy and surfing the site. (when I refer to "buyers" I mean registered Etsy members that do not have a shop on Etsy) A couple of my individual items have also been "hearted" recently by Etsy buyers.

One of my upcoming craft shows has a blog that includes the vendors and those with websites are back linked. My Etsy shop analytics have shown visitors from the shows blog to my site, and this weekend, I received a handful of visitors from the blog.

Maybe last weekend's show was than just a better than expected show. Perhaps people are beginning to purchase gifts for the holidays earlier and spreading out the cost of their holiday shopping over a few months, rather than a 5 or 6 week period of time. Maybe we are just beginning to see a light at the end of this horrible economic tunnel.

It is certainly something to consider as I start getting my inventory geared towards the holidays. The "indicators" seem to be telling me I need to step up my plans for the remainder of the year and try to take advantage of what seems to be many buyers coming back to Etsy.com.
Hopefully the worst really is over and we all get to finish the year off with a couple solid months of sales.

'til next time...

R

Words On Wednesday

I usually post a "Wordless Wednesday" entry with images of new items. I did have images of new items to share. But I also wanted to share some info on my craft fair this past weekend. Since it is positive news, I hope it's just the start of some good things coming our way in the handmade community.

The show I did this past weekend (The Beach Plum Festival) was fairly well attended, though a few of the vendors that did the show last year seemed to think it was slower in terms of traffic. It was my first year at this show, and I found the traffic to be fairly constant and it seemed like many people stayed at the show for a few hours.

Last year I would have considered this show to be slightly better than average...one that I would probably do again next year, unless a much better show such as The Handmade Faire was held on the same day) But in a struggling economy, I viewed the show as quite hopeful for future craft fairs, since I had lowered my expectations for the early fall craft shows.

There seemed to be several people their buying items for family members or friends and people were asking vendors if they had gift boxes for their purchases, as the purchase was to be for the holidays or a future birthday.

Also quite hopeful was the amount of business cards that were handed out. I don't believe I have gone through as many business cards as I did for this show. I started with a box of 250 and came home with probably about 100.

What I also found encouraging, was that almost all of my sales were credit cards purchases. The show did have an ATM around for miles and the customers were happy to pull out a credit card and to make their purchase. this was so encouraging, that I'm considering making it known to my Etsy customers that I will take credit cards, along with Paypal payments during the holiday season.

Maybe, just maybe the economy IS turning around... people have a little disposable income and they aren't maxed-out on their credit cards. I was also happy to see that many of the handmade vendors at this show seemed leave that day looking tired, but happy that the show turned out better than expected.

I'm still approaching each show a bit hesitant and I'll continue to keep expectations lowered, but I'm hoping that everyone with craft fairs on their fall and holiday schedule have the same outcome I had on Sunday...positive and hopeful for the future!


'til next time...
R