Etsy Milestone

We have hit a milestone with our shop on Etsy and are proud to say that we have reached our goal of 500 sales by 12/31/10 in April. We’re not even half way into the year and we are celebrating our victory. We are too excited about this and would like to share with you the DO NOTs about Etsy.

First, don’t make the mistake we made. We opened our Etsy shop in 2006 and did noting and I do mean nothing with it. It just sat there hoping to be recognized. Unfortunately, the same ole same ole NOTHING happen in 2007 and part of 2008. It was not until late 2008 when we finally decided to do something with our Etsy shop after being asked countless times “Are you on Etsy?”.

Second, don’t just promote one avenue of shopping for your items online. We were extremely focused on promoting our webstore to the point that we ignored venues like Etsy. We have learned the more places such as Facebook you promote your products/services, the more likely you’ll be seen in Cyber world. .

Third, don’t forget to add your Etsy url to all your marketing items, brochures, catalogs, business cards, etc. Etsy is extremely popular and is becoming more recognized with each day. Therefore, you may have customers who shop Etsy exclusively and if you’re not informing your customers of all the avenues they can find your products then you may be missing out on sales, relationships, networking opportunities, etc. You never know who your customer(s) may refer your product to.

Fourth, don’t be intimidated by the Etsy forums. Get in there and make yourself known, join groups, street teams, network, work out trades, promote, have specials, etc. Remember I said Etsy is getting more and more popular by the day so you never know who is lurking around, it could be your lucky day.

Finally, don’t forget to have fun and to be respectful while doing so. Your business is a reflection of you and in today’s world we can find a great deal of information about a person with the click of a button. So please remember while taking part in online discussions not to forget you are representing your business.

I hope these don’ts will help someone in one way or another. It took us a while to catch on, but once we did we saw light at the end of the tunnel.