I have been a busy little crafter lately.  What I have been making is for gifts, mostly for my daughter.  I really want to show off what I have been making but my problem is that the connector to link my camera to my computer is broken and the only way to up-load the pictures right now is by taking the memory card out.  My laptop doesn't allow for that but my daughter's does.  So, I can't post any pictures until after Christmas or she will see the gifts ahead of time.

I have been working on a necklace for her for her Holiday party.  I will try to get that one up soon, as it turned out nicely, even if I had to make it twice.  I am hoping that someone at work has a laptop that will take my memory card so that I can up-load that way.

For now, check out my store at Etsy http://www.etsy.com/shop/elizanne1?ref=si_shop  It's not much yet.  I haven't even come up with a name or banner yet, although I have some ideas perking in my crafty brain.

My third attempt at Facebook ads were a little more successful, especially when what I want to increase my web presence, more than make a sale.  I received a lot more views on my site from the ad but my bounce rate was not great and the number of pages viewed was pretty low.  What I am really trying to do is determine how well I have set up my site, and are people going to look at it.  It looks like I found out my answers.


There are lots of things that can be done with hyperlinks, and how you can direct potential customers.  This time I directed prospective customers to a particular place on my site, based on the ad, rather than just my site alone.  For instance, I will open a specific Valentine's Day page on my site in January or I will create a catalogue category for Valentines day alone and move product there and the ad for Valentine's day will go to this page directly.  

Using any on-line site to promote your product takes a lot of reading and researching.  I have been into a craft forum which is very helpful.  It is a great place to ask questions.  It is also a great place to find products.  http://www.craftster.org/ is a great place to find answers.  As a crafter, become a member and you are able to post, and can ask questions.  I have been following a great discussion about Facebook, and have been able to add my insight from what I have learned using Facebook Ads.

I asked people through Craftster what they think of my site and took their suggestions to heart and made some changes to how things were organized.  I don't think that I am done, there are still some changes I want to make, but the Facebook Ad has confirmed that what I did do has been effective.  I also think that as I understand more about the Facebook Ads the better the bounce rate is.  I will make the further changes, and then test again using the ads to see how it is doing.  I will also start a thread on Craftster for those of us that have asked for advice, to have people go back in and up-date their opinion or critique our changes.

The biggest problem I have with using Facebook Ads, or any on-line advertising site or crafter mall is fitting my product into a category for searches or target market.  I find them restrictive.  For instance, I have bookmarks that are made with ribbon or wire and one site only offers bookmarks under paper products.  I am often not sure if I am hitting my target based on categories available.  Part of this is probably my logic, I am not following the logic of the site, or the customer, to find what they or I want.

I seem to be rambling today, yet everything seems to be interlinked, Craftster, asking questions, up-dating my site, Facebook Ads, testing the response, and hitting my target when testing.  They all swirl around the issue of research.  As a beginner in the world of selling crafts on-line, I don't have a lot of money to spend on professionals who can help with marketing, so its all up to me, and what tracking tools are at my disposal to determine the success.

I will definitely go into this topic further, as I have been analyizing lots of data recently.

Happy Crafting
CraftyLadyLiz

I thought I would try Etsy.  I only have a few items posted, but since I had decided to use iCraft over Etsy, I thought it was time to find out the differences.

I feel like I have been swallowed by a giant.  It is huge.  It will take days of research to go through everything there and figure it out.  I can see why I chose iCraft first.  It is smaller, and easier to use.

After two days of postings, I have 11 views of my products.  I decided to only post bookmarks here to see how they do.  The scary thing, after two days posted, searching the item within the category, I ended up on page 19 before I found any of my bookmarks.  There are 40 listings per page.  Well, at least I am in the top 800.  Now, I will need to see what I can do about moving myself up.  Not much, I think.

How does this compare with other sites?

iCraft - there is a photo ribbon across the top of most pages and any up-dated items will show there for a few days after the item is up-dated.  They also send out messaging on Twitter when a new item is posted or an item is up-dated.

GLC Mall - the more active you are on the site, the more items of yours will show on the home page.  When I do a Google search of GLC Mall, my site shows in the search results.  Other than that, I am not really sure what they do to get visibility for their stores.


Fees:  It costs $.20 USD to post an item on Etsy for four months.  At the end of that time, the item is deactivated.   It can be reactivated  and the fee paid again.  This fee is based on the number of items you have.  If you have three of the same item, it will costs $.60 for the listing.  I of course, only listed one of each item.  What is the point of listing that I have three if I don't sell any of them.  If the item sells, I will list it again.  When an item sells, Etsy takes 3.5% of the total sale price as a fee.  Although I didn't take this into consideration when I priced the item, this could be added into the price of them item to ensure you are receiving the profit you are looking for. Right now, I am more interested in selling.  I will, however, ask my daughter to set up a formula for me so that I can calculate the selling price less this fee, to keep my profit margin.

So how does this compare to other sites?

iCraft
Charges a $25 registration fee.
1- 5 items free indifinitely.  You can put times on hold, and post a different 5 items.
 5 - 50 items $5/month
5 - 100 items $10/month
Unlimited - 15/month

I paid on a deal and received three years for $150 which is $50 per year.


GLC Mall


1 - 12 items - free - cannot put items on hold.  If you want to rotate items you need to delete some first.
13 - up - $12/ month - unlimited


How does this compare?

I have 108 live items on iCraft which would have cost me $64.80 per year on Etsy - significant savings there as I could double the items and it would double my Etsy cost.  I have the same number live on GLC Mall and it is costing me $144 per year.  Significant loss in comparison.  However, I can easily reach $144 per year on Etsy by putting the actual number of items I have, which is generally 3.  This would then cost me $194.40 on Etsy.

Etsy sells in US dollars.  I remember that this was something that stopped me from using Etsy before.  This time around, I was able to change the currency, although it took a while.  My items are listed in Canadian dollars with the US price below it.  There is not a significant difference, although the difference is absorbed by the buyer and the exchange rate can change the price for the US buyer.

Setting up a store is pretty easy, as well as posting an item.  It helps that when you are ready to post items, you have reviewed all the fields and have the appropriate descriptions ready.

If you really want to get into the community side of crafting, Etsy is definately for you.  The community is large and varied.  Lots of teams to join, as well as forums.  I joined one team and applied to join two others. You can only post if you join the team.  There are lots of people to talk to, places where you can ask questions, seek help, exchange ideas, or just get involved.

There is a Sellers Handbook which I will need to go through before I can really say much more about Etsy.   Since I can track the views, it will take a couple of weeks to see if this is worth it in relation to the amount of time I need to spend on Etsy to stay visible.  I only need to spend about 15 minutes each a day up-dating items on iCraft and GLC Mall to keep my items visible.

Any feedback about Etsy would be appreciated.

Happy Crafting
CraftyLadyLiz

I had an interesting experience last week and was very glad for the support of iCraft.  I received an e-mail from someone who was interested in purchasing one of my products.  Of course, I was excited, who wouldn't be, and I responded accordingly. Here is the story"

The person wanted to know the condition of the item and wanted my Paypal information to pay for the item.  She was going to arrange for someone to pick up the item.  I realized that she was not buying off my iCraft site because she was having the item picked up and didn't want to pay the shipping costs.  I went in and reduced the price of the item by the shipping cost and told her to go in and pay for the item.  I was willing to allow the pick up of the item in the interest of the sale.  

Her response was to again ask about the condition of the item and then told me that she was having trouble paying her pick up agent through her bank account and could she send me the money through PayPal and I wire the money through Western Union.  

Oddly enough, the first question I asked was "What does she mean am I sure of the condition of the item?  Of course I am, I made the stupid thing".  This is what really caught my attention that something was off.  I also asked myself if I wanted to got to the trouble of doing she asked, but my first question was what really caused concern that something was off.  I sent an e-mail to iCraft about this and found out that I was not the only person who had received the e-mail from this person.  We were advised to not respond to her.  That it was a scam.  I am not sure what the scam would be, whether it had to do with PayPal or if she just wanted my address.  I was voting for the second and that really spooked me out.  

It is not nice being suspicious, and losing a sale is not always easy to handle, but I wrestled for a large part of day with the question of how for I was willing to go secure a sale.  What were the limits of customer service, and how did her requests and situation follow-up with my question of why do people buy on-line (she said she was an oceanographer who was at sea).  Others I spoke to me asked her she didn't get her friends or family to accept her bank money to pay her pick up agen, and I eventually realized that the story was questionable because she would have to be buying everything on-line locally for the pick up agent story to work.  

It was a disturbing experience but I have to thank the people at iCraft for being there as support.  It makes selling through a crafter mall totally worth it.

I tried the Facebook ad, and what an eye opener. I cost me a fortune for a lot of nothing. I paid what I considered an outrageous dollar amount per hit and didn't get much for it.

When faced with composing an ad, it got an insightful view of my business. I realized that I am making too much, I feel like I have the equivalent of an on-line department store, stocked by one frantic manufacturer.

 My daughter asked me once if I knew why people shopped on-line. I have been puzzling the answer for while and I think that this question along with my insight into my department store status, has given me an answer.

 People are looking for the unique, not the generic, that they can find while cruising the Mall or a department store. When you are creating at a frantic pace, you can easily end up with the generic, cranking different versions of the same thing, with little thought to uniqueness. This year I created one new holiday product, it took me weeks, and I really love it. My newest Christmas Stocking. I blended my different skills and came up with something definitely more unique. I am leaving the rest of my crafting time to make for my friends and family, and work on my web presence. I am more planning to post photos of items I make for gifts rather than for sale.

 My problem is that I love to make things and have far too much to give away. I do well at craft shows, selling quite a bit, however, with a full-time job, I find going to craft show a strain.  The uniqueness should also show in your website, and/or craft table.

This has become a challenging thought, and a definite new direction to follow.  Now, if I were less impatient, what I am doing might work.  How can you establish a niche or a uniqueness when you keep changing image, every 6 months or so.  It is a good idea to review your business plan and marketing plan on a regular basis, and track what you are doing, to estimate the success of what you are doing, you just have go give yourself enough time to accumulate the data for comparison.  For all I know, what I considered a bad ad campaign was just that, or it was actually good, I just picked a bad time of day.  I will try again, I shouldn't give up so easily, it really doesn't do much for establishing myself if I don't.

Happy Crafting
CraftyLadyLiz

I have grabbed a weeks vacation from my full-time job and intend to spend the week crafting.  To celebrate, I am offering blog readers a 25% discount on anything on my GLC Mall site.  There are lots of great, inexpensive ideas for the holidays, some are even unique.

Until December 15, 2011, readers of my Blog can save 25% with this coupon on my GLC Mall site at http://www.glcmall.com/store/store-detail_192_elizanne-handcrafted-treasures.aspx

GB261111

Enter this code at the time of purchase and save:  GB261111

My gift to you for the holidays as my thanks for following my blog.

See something on my website or or my iCraft site that is not on GLC Mall that has caught your attention?  E-mail me at www.elizanne@rogers.com and I will post it on GLC Mall, you can only keep saving.

Thanks and Happy Holiday shopping
CraftyLadyLiz