Living the Creative Life

I'm so happy to announce that my new e-book is done! It's been a very hectic week, finishing up all the corrections that my editor kept sending over, but definitely a fun process all in all! ;) The PDF version is available on the Etsy store and the Kindle version is available on the Amazon store ! INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING TOPICS: • What’s your first impression of my shop? • What should I sell? • What should I name my shop? • Do I need a shop banner? • Should my titles be descriptive or practical? • What should I say in my item descriptions? • Why do I need a seller profile? • Shop policies? What are those? • Why can’t I seem to get any traffic to my shop? • How can I tell if what I’m doing is making any difference in getting traffic to my shop? • Why am I not getting any sales? • Are my prices too high? • Who is my target market? • How’s my photography? • Should I use a model in my photographs? • Should I be on Facebook? Twitter? Pinterest? Ins...

Etsy recently implemented a new feature in their search section called Research View. I've found that it can really speed up the process of market research when deciding on what to price your items, as well as how to decide on relevant tags to use for each item. Using Etsy's Research View Type in your search criteria as you normally would. Try to pay attention to the suggestions it gives you, as these are commonly searched phrases by actual customers. If you can use common terms when titling your items, you're more likely to be found by your target customers! Click on the third option for ways to view your search results. This is the Research View! Unless your search returns little to no results, this screen will display a graph of other items on Etsy that used your searched term in their listing, as well as what prices and tags they used. Study the data to determine what might be an optimal price range for your item. Decide if you want to be near the lower or hig...

This topic of pricing is always on my mind. Just as soon as I feel like I've figured it out, some other doubt creeps in and convinces me that I'm doing it wrong. Please tell me I'm not the only one who feels this way. ;) I ran across this article the other day (aimed at graphic designers, but would really work for any creative entrepreneur) that gave some amazing advice in this area! Here's a quick summary, but it'd definitely be worth it read the entire article yourself when you've got a spare 10 minutes. What should I charge? This is the one area that I have the most anxiety about. I'm constantly worried that I'll anger current designers (and therefore come across as amateur) by underbidding on jobs, and also worried that I'll scare off potential clients by overbidding. It makes it even more difficult by the fact that most designers don't share their prices on their websites. (What's up with that anyway?). The advice in this artic...

One of my readers asked a really good question about my Etsy tips list the other day and I thought I'd share my answer to her, so everyone could benefit. Keep in mind that this is advice that I would consider generally true for most shops, but of course there are always exceptions to every rule. Question: Why is tip #1 helpful? Sometimes too many choices is just overwhelming. Maybe I'm strange but I generally don't look through more than two pages of any etsy shop. I'm really curious about why having 100+ items will make your shop more successful. Answer: It's because it's next to impossible to get any Etsy search traffic unless you have a higher inventory. For most categories, 100 seems to be the magic number for some reason. (Jewelry actually seems to need more items in your shop for you to start being found consistently, since there is so much more competition in that area). I really don't know why this phenomenon works, but it does seem to ...

Tip #1: Have as many listings as possible. Preferably over 100. Tip #2: If you have multiples of an item and are trying to get your numbers over 100, go ahead and list them as separate listings... just make sure to change the titles slightly from each other so Etsy search engines recognize them as different items. Tip #3: Learn how to use a camera. Tip #4: Keep track of what colors & styles sell best and make more of those. Tip #5: Keep trying new colors and styles whether or not you think they'll sell. It'll help pull more people into your shop and you never know when a new item will catch on!

A common refrain I see across the Etsy forums is, "Why am I not selling? Are my prices too high?" Did you know that a man would never ask that? I have no idea why this is, but women tend to undervalue their work, and the more I learn about this phenomenon, the more it baffles me. The truth is... pricing low gives off the vibe that your items are cheap, made of cheap materials, possibly knock-offs. Does that sound like the vibe that you want to give off? No, probably not. But I just do it for fun! When I hear people say this is, what I really hear them say is... "You should, by necessity, hate your job. And if you love it, you most certainly shouldn't be paid for it." Which is utter rubbish. What you love to do and being paid for a living don't have to be mutually exclusive things.  And why should they be? Life's too short to hate what you do every day. But no one else is charging very much either! That's probably true. They also are...

Since this is a holiday week here in the US, I am postponing our next edition of my summer blog series until next Thursday. Instead I'd like to introduce you to Caro, who I met over on Etsy a few weeks ago. She's a kindred spirit and has quickly become an email-pen-pal of sorts. Let's listen to her tell her story about how sometimes the best creative inspiration can happen entirely by accident! Hello! I'm Caro. You can find me normally over on Quirky Oak Artisan Jewelry , so come on over and say hi! Occasionally friends or customers ask me how I came up with the idea for one of my jewelry pieces, and they seem seriously surprised when I tell them it was just by accident. Of course it’s not always by accident, but some of my favorite pieces wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for something going wrong in my process. The truth is a lot of ‘creative processes’ are simply a result of someone doing something wrong while trying to do something right. Every day we encounte...

What are you charging for your creative products? On Etsy or otherwise, doesn't matter. I would bet you it isn't enough. The thing is... YOU wouldn't ever pay what your item is worth because you can make it. You are not your ideal customer. Let me repeat that... YOU are not your ideal customer. Your ideal customer thinks that what you create is amazing and wonderful, in part because they couldn't (or don't care to) make it themselves. You need to be pricing accordingly. I know I, for one, am always tempted to set a price based on 1) what other Etsians are charging, 2) what I would pay for such an item, and 3) how much it feels to me like it's worth. While I think my gut feelings are usually pretty trustworthy, I'm beginning to wonder if, where money is concerned, I'm a little scared to charge what something is worth. How do you know what something is worth? It's all about perceived value. Not cost of materials. A purse can retail for $...

Available on Etsy I got to thinking about the overall branding of my knit shop this past month, and decided that it would give it a little more polished feel to show my hats being used. I know when I search through Etsy for knit hats (market research!!), I'm always more tempted to click on the happy, smiling faces of beautiful women wearing beautiful hats than I am to click on a featureless, white mannequin. Somehow the hat seems more lovely when it's shown on someone that looks happy wearing it. Not sure why that is exactly, but it seems to be true. So... as painfully shy as I am, it took me awhile to ask one of my friends to model for me. But I finally did, and to my surprise she readily agreed! We did the shoot outdoors one afternoon this past week when the sky was a bit overcast. I love how it gave the photos a sort of autumn-y feel to them, even though we don't have any fall leaves in the background. I guess my point is, don't be afraid to aim a little hi...

I've been trying really, really hard to understand Etsy lately. This is apparently the busy time of year and my sales have all but dried up in November and December! I went on the Etsy forums the other day to ask around... maybe this is just a bad year? I was greated by happy partygoers who have been having their best selling year ever. Makes a girl feel loved, I'm telling ya. One seller did attempt to comiserate... she stated that she was a little slow today , and that maybe sales were just drying up for Christmas. I checked her shop... she had sold 41 items so far that day. Forty-one!! In ONE DAY!! That's literally more than I've sold in three years. Sigh... way to rub it in, people. I'm not really feeling your pain here. So... I figured my two options were... pout about it and close up shop --- OR --- figure out what's making these other shops tick and try to implement some of their ideas. I went through the forums to try and soak up some of their re...

Pricing is definitely one of the hardest parts of organizing an Etsy shop, at least for me. I've rearranged my pricing scheme numerous times in the past few months, trying to find the perfect price point. I don't want to price things too low, making my items seem cheap. Nor do I want to price them too high, making me seem delusional. Price comparisons inside my shop should make sense too, so that customers understand why some things cost more than others. I definitely don't claim to have all the answers, but here's how I settled on my current pricing. I've found that there are two basic ways to price my items: by yarn content or by hat style . As much as pricing by content makes more sense to me, I wasn't sure this was the way to go. While I know that Bamboo yarn is more expensive than Acrylic, will an average Etsy customer? I decided to price instead based on style, not content. Ribbed hats should be all one price, and cabled hats another price, regardl...