Jewelry Makers Discovering Etsy
I've been an Etsy lurker for years and occasional purchaser as well, but because of my ever-overflowing plate, I've held off doing much more than clicking around and admiring all the talent over there. Finally, however, like so many of you, I decided to give it a shot and opened up my own little Etsy store last week. Another trend many of us are involved with on the forum is reorganizing and cleaning out supplies as we create more space to work in our studios, so I decided this might be a good way to test the Etsy waters with items I'm discovering as I continue to work through my massive studio clean-out.
I have to admit the set up was extremely easy, though I can see now that maintenance and promotion can be where all your time would go if you are trying to really make a "go" of your store over there. I provide some more thoughts on my initial experience as a "real" Etsy member over on the forum, and you'll find a number of helpful threads going on where members are providing information as well as asking their own questions about selling jewelry and other items on Etsy.com. If you've been thinking of testing the waters yourself, you'll find these discussions really helpful:
What about your own Etsy experiences? As a buyer? As a seller?
Comments
One thing to remember, having a shop on Etsy doesn’t automatically ensure sales. If you want sales, you have to constantly advertise,promote and re-list. It’s a great way to avoid setting up your own website, but it’s not an automatic success either.
Excellent point! No matter if it’s your own site or you have an etsy store or even a brick and mortar store, no one will find you if you don’t spread the word.
As a buyer I’ve enjoyed etsy probably a little too much. I’ve always loved handmade items and when you have a site full of thousands of them…well it’s a match made in heaven. In the last year I’ve purchased purses, trash sacks for cars, bobby pins, scrapbook cards, paper beads, lampwork beads, and a lot of jewelry. I used to shop quite a bit on ebay, but it’s getting harder to tell what is actually handmade and what is not. So I pretty much stick with etsy now. For the most part I just window shop, I love looking at other peoples work, I find it inspires me to be more creative in the things that I do.
I know what you mean. It can dangerous to the pocket book over there!