Love Yourself First.

Treasury by ArtsiBitsi (also for ArtsiBitsi)

Do you know about Etsy Treasuries? They're a member curated gallery of handpicked items from Etsy member stores.  Each treasury features the best in a particular category, or the best example of a certain style of work.  Etsy sellers love to get featured in a treasury, for the distinction, and for the opportunity to have their work seen by a new audience.  Anyone with an Etsy account can make a treasury.

Now here's a little activity for you to try to see how this can work for a seller.  Click each of the two links below and note the differences and similarities in the results.  (Try substituting your shop name for ArtsiBitsi in each one.)

1. Treasuries featuring ArtsiBitsi: http://www.etsy.com/treasury/search/?search_query=ArtsiBitsi
2. Treasuries created by ArtsiBitsi: http://www.etsy.com/people/ArtsiBitsi/treasury

   Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.  ~Michel de Montaigne  

Sometimes I make treasuries for fun.  I like the challenge of filling up a treasury with a particular color, or difficult to find item.  Sometimes I make treasuries especially to feature members of one of my teams.

And sometimes I make treasuries just to promote myself.

   Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson  

Here's how it would work.  Say for example, I have a new item in my store, like a new zombie or alien design.  To promote it, I do the traditional things like post about it on my Facebook, twitter, and Flickr.  But sometimes I also build a treasury around it.

To make my promotional treasury, I put in one item from my own store, but fill it out with other sellers who are doing something similar.  Making robot paintings or robot t-shirts, for example.  This is really fun.  There are some really amazingly talented people with stores on Etsy.

After I build and publish the treasury, I contact each of the sellers and give them the link.  Now they are happy because they are in a treasury, and they look at all of the items.  They might even see one or two things that they really like -- this being a treasury of zombies or whatever.  Hopefully they also tell their Facebook Fans and Tweeps about being featured.  And these people look at my treasury too.

   If I am not for myself, who will be?  ~Pirke Avoth  

In the end, a few more people see my new design than would have seen it otherwise.  And fifteen other sellers get a little more exposure than they would have gotten otherwise.

Is it such a terrible thing?  To love yourself first, so that others can love you too?

   Put your future in good hands - your own.  ~Author Unknown  

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?  Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God.  Your playing small does not serve the world.   ~Marianne Williamson, 1992 (commonly misattributed to Nelson Mandela)

Whats in a Name?

Shakespeare famously said: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet." Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)


But is that true?  We spend a lot of time naming things.  We name our pets and our children.  And then we give pet names to each other.  We name our cars and we name our discoveries.  We must think that names are important.  Or maybe we think that when we name something, we own it.  (My Dear, My Sweetheart, My Pookilicious?)


So important, so fraught is this naming business, I was nearly paralyzed when it came time to pick a name for my Etsy store.  And then, just to add to my general baseline anxiety, when you start an account on Etsy, the registration page tells you that you should pick a good name, BECAUSE YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO CHANGE IT LATER.


This is a terrible thing to tell a brand new entrepreneur.  Back in those days, I thought that I would be selling paintings on Etsy.  Maybe purses.  No, watercolors.  Or backpacks.  Or appliquéd patches. Or earrings.  I honestly had no idea what would sell.  I could see that people were selling all of these things, but I didn't know why, or how they had found their market.  My plan was to test a few items in each category until I found something that buyers liked.   

So, back to the name.  Here were my general requirements

• It needed to be nonspecific enough to accommodate whatever artsy-craftsy thing I ended up making that people would buy.
• It needed to be memorable.
• It needed to be easy to search for.

So, because I couldn't be sure of what my final product would be, I decide to make my business name about me.  Bitsi has been my parents' nickname for me since I was a baby.  (Yes, they spelled it with an 'i' on the end.  My mother spells a lot of things with an 'i' on the end.)  So my artsy alter-ego would be named Bitsi too.  And sometimes just Bits, like when Bitsi sounded too-twee to me.


After deciding on Bitsi as an element of the name, I decided to distinguish myself a little by sticking the Artsi prefix on, too.  (as if there was going to be a lot of confusion about which "Bitsi" I was.) But I particularly liked the lyrical sound of it: "Artsee Bitsee dot Etsee dot com".  And for a while, I dithered on whether to spell it ArtsyBitsy.etsy.com, with 'y's, to make the rhyme more obvious.


Well, you know how it turned out.  I decided to leave Bitsi with an 'i', and then  Artsi had to also have an 'i' too.  And that choice has made it a little easier to find me online.  And eventually even Google stopped asking me "Did you mean Artsy Bitsy?"


What's in a name? I'm still not sure. Would I be doing better if my store name matched my products?  Or would I start to feel limited by a shop name like "Monsters R Us"?  


What have you named lately?

The Tao of Rawr

Way back in the summer of 2008, I started making Happy Monster backpacks in my spare room at the back of my house.  I thought that they were funny and useful and I hoped that some other people might like them too.  I sold my first Monster, Millicent to a college girl in San Francisco that July.  Many more sales followed.  People bought Monster Backpacks for their children!  I never imagined I would have kids for customers.  By fall, I had added mini-Monster pouches to my inventory.  


By the end of the year, I was exclusively selling monster-y items. I would say that was the point when Monsters officially took over my life.

As ArtsiBitsi has grown, I've become a better craftsman, a better photographer, and a better business person.  For the first time, I feel like I'm really using my MBA.  I've also gotten to meet hundreds (maybe thousands) of talented artists and cool people in the arts and crafts business.  


I owe it all to the Monsters.

So now I am a disciple of the Way of the Monster, also known as the Tao of Rawr.  If you would like to learn more about the Tao of Rawr, here are a few of the key principles.

1. Each of us has an inner Monster aspect.
2. Our Monster came from the Great Monster, and it leads us towards reunion with the Great Monster.
3. Every Monster is distinct.  My Monster does not look like yours.  
4. The Monster is the Monster. We do not judge our Monster.