My Amazing Online Robo-Shop

Greetings from the future!

I have traveled here at great expense, to share a small part of our advanced knowledge and technology with you.  For example, in my time, we enjoy vending and shopping from elaborate "cloud" malls.  These are places that do not exist in real-space, but where a multitude of wondrous and handcrafted items may be bought and sold.

However, as amazing as these cloud malls are, what makes them so useful are their robot caretakers.  These clever 'bots liberate the artisan from the drudgery of store maintenance and enable them to pursue their craft.  

So what kinds of services do the robot shop managers provide? I have listed several below. Set these up once and free yourself to do other more interesting things.

• Use statsy-clockbot to schedule your relistings. Set up all of your renewals a week or more in advance. You can pick the date and the time for optimal exposure.
• Send your Etsy shop's RSS to twitter. Look on the bottom left of your Etsy store front. There is a link for the RSS feed from your shop. Twitterfeed is an app that will convert this into a tweet automatically for you.
• Tweet your Facebook posts using the Facebook Twitter app. Everything that you post on your Facebook Fan Page will be automatically tweeted to your followers.
• Use Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to consolidate your social media accounts. You can selectively tweet or post to any of your accounts. You can also schedule your posts so that they are sent when your followers are most likely to be online.
• Use hashtags like #etsy and #handmade to catch the interest of 'tweeps' who might not be following you.
• Use Craftopolis' Edit Express. This tool lets you easily edit multiple listings at a time. So add text to titles and descriptions, and change prices to quickly set up sales and discounts.
• List your coupons on Etsycoupon.com. Its a clearinghouse for Etsy sellers to promote their coupons.

Read on for more tips and links to these tools.  http://www.squidoo.com/artsy-business

The Bulldozer's Guide to Selling on Etsy

A few weeks ago, an Etsy colleague made a remark about my approach to business. She said that I was always pushing pushing pushing, like a bulldozer, through obstacles and putting my Etsy shop out in front of people. She said that she was probably too shy to be that aggressively self-assertive.

Well.

At first I was sort of taken aback. Am I really that pushy? And apart from being rather attractive big yellow pieces of machinery, are bulldozers really all that pleasant to be around?

But I've decided to embrace it. Hell yeah, I'm a bulldozer. A big yellow bulldozing monster of an Etsy entrepreneur. Grr. Rawr. And what does a big yellow bulldozing monster of an Etsy entrepreneur do? She makes her own road and drives it.

So here are some notes and tips from the cab of the yellow monster truck on doing business on Etsy.

1. Etsy entrepreneurs are dead serious about business. They are not flirting and they are not fooling around. They have business plans and promotions and financial statements. They may be perfectly nice people, but make no mistake, they are thinking about how to build their business all of the time.

2. Whatever book you read on how to succeed on Etsy? About ten thousand other people have read the same book. When everyone is following the same rules, it only levels the playing field. To win, you have to do something exceptional.

3. You are already exceptional. You are an artist who is also an entrepreneur. That's a hell of a unique skill set. Conventional wisdom is you know, conventional and common. That's not for you. You're creative, by definition. Do things that work for you even if they're uncommon -- especially if they're uncommon.

Now go out there and create your own model of business. You don't have to be a bulldozer to move mountains. Even a drop of water is powerful. Look at the Grand Canyon.

.

By the numbers

So I woke up this morning and checked my email and lo! and behold, someone bought a Monster Mini in the middle of the night.  As I was pondering the 2:15am timestamp on the order, I got to thinking, 'I wonder how many of my customers shop in the middle of the night?'  I mean, it could be a lot, considering that most of my customers are ordering items off of the Geekery catagory on Etsy.  And geeks are well known for their eccentric hours.

But it could also be important for me to have a better handle on my

 customers habits, so that I can tailor the timing of my listings to come up when they're shopping.

So, I started pulling data down and organizing it.  I pulled out the time of day and also the day of week from all of my orders for the past six months.  You can see the charts that I was able to create below.  (spreadsheets are excellent!)

You can see a couple things from these charts.  First, about a third of my sales come on the weekend (33%), and more than a third come when customers are at home in the evening, from about 5:30pm til 10pm.  Tuesdays and afternoons at work are also good times.  Mornings and the end of the week are slow.

I think that this is pretty interesting, but it's only a few months of data.  There are a few big gaps in sales (end of December and when my store was getting started), that might skew my data.  I'll keep an eye on it for a while and see if there are any shifts.

But I'll also try to do more listings on Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings when my customers are in a buying mood.  :-)

Rejection by 1000Markets

I recieved this email today:

Dear Artsi Bitsi,  

Thank you so much for taking the time to submit your shop for approval. Our selection team really enjoyed reviewing your shop. Even though you meet the minimum mandatory qualifications, we have unfortunately decided to decline your application.  

It is never easy for us to turn down an artisan merchant. We know how hard you work at your craft and we appreciate the time you invested in preparing your shop for approval. While we personally review every shop, we cannot offer individualized feedback. In general, we look for a mix of products and an overall aesthetic that complements our brand and reflects the subjective vision for our site.  

We do hope you understand that our decision is in no way a reflection of your abilities, motivation, or capacity as a businessperson or artist. We wish you every personal and professional success in the future.  

Sincerely,  

Lisa

While it certainly is a relief to know that I "met the minimum manditory requirements" and that I was not rejected on the basis of my "abilities, motivation or capacity as a businessperson", I remain perplexed as to the reason that I was, in fact, still rejected.  I also don't understand how they plan to make money if they are rejecting people who want to pay for the privilege of selling products on their site.  

I'm not upset.  I'm just curious.  If anyone has any insights, please let me know.

What's the magic number?

A couple weeks ago, I wrote that I thought that I had cracked the code
on Etsy listings when I started listing my Monster Bags under Geekery
instead of Purses. That strategy is still working decently. I've had
more online sales in the past month than I had in the previous three
months. That's going well -- knock on wood -- and makes me more
committed to online sales channel.

But I've noticed something else that is perplexing. As a part of my
quest for enlightenment, I've been reading Etsy's Storque articles for
ideas on how to do a better job with my online store. JJM Finance has
written several (probably self-serving) articles about using hearts
and views to project sales
(http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/the-numbers-game-ratios-and-your-shops-popularity-2146/)

So, I've been checking my hearts and views pretty often, using this
Heart-o-matic tool:
http://www.craftcult.com/heartsitems.php?userid=artsibitsi&submit=Submit.
JJM Finance says that I should be looking at the ratio of hearts to
views. There's a golden proportion that will let me know when I'm
about to have a sale. For example, he says that for his shop, "my
heart-to-sale ratio has consistently been around 3".

After spending a good 45 minutes pulling down data and wrestling with
it in a spreadsheet, I have this. 

Over the last five months, my
hearts-to-sale ratio has averaged about 4.65. The low point was in
September where I had 20 hearts and only one sale. But that was
rapidly followed by a few weeks where my ratio was really good, like 2
hearts per sale. And now for the last month or so, it's been closer
to 4 or 5 hearts per sale.

:-)