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.)
- Treasuries featuring ArtsiBitsi: http://www.etsy.com/treasury/search/?search_query=ArtsiBitsi
- 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)
