tinahdee

You get to know yourself pretty well when you’re your own boss. If I was going to give myself a progress report today, here’s what I would put in the “needs improvement” section.

1. Planning ahead! Right now I should be figuring out what new items I want to have that could have a special theme related to the holidays. I’m good at being aware of that need, but execution is difficult for someone like me who flies by the seat, if you know what I mean. I’ll tell myself every day that I need to do it, right up to Black Friday….

2. Expanding my line in obvious and important ways. For every one of my wedding bands, I should design a matching band in a narrower or wider width so that shoppers can buy the set. Also, I need to create samples of my sterling items in other metals like solid gold. Again, I can tell myself this a million times, but doing it comes much harder.

3. Designing better record keeping systems. I’m not sure I can be of much help to myself here. I think it requires going for outside help. I am just not wired for this kind of thing, and I know it. The required action here would be to take the steps necessary to get help.

4. Taking better care of myself physically. I’ve been working on this one and feel pretty good about my successes here – BUT, I really need some prescription eyeglasses and I have been majorly procrastinating on that – probably because I can’t just take care of this issue by myself. The reading glasses have been great for a long time, but are just not cutting it and my arms definitely are not long enough…

Personalized Sterling Dogtag Bracelet

If your photos are a bit flat or if you’ve been told you need to “brighten up” your product pics, you might need to adjust the highlights and shadows. Don’t worry, it’s easy if you’re using the free photo-editing software called Picasa.

Open your image in Picasa. Click on the Tuning tab. You’ll see four sliders, a color picker, and under that, a colored graph called a histogram. The histogram shows the distribution of light and shadow in your photo. With the sliders above it, you want to even up the distribution as much as possible, so that in your photo you have “high” highlights and “low” shadows, giving the image depth and making it “pop” from the screen with lifelike clarity.

It’s easy – while looking at the histogram, move the sliders for highlights and shadows over until each side of the histogram is stretched out to the edge of the graph. Check the photo and make sure you don’t have too much highlighting or shadow and adjust the sliders as necessary.

Notice how your picture comes alive with this easy technique?

Gold and silver stacking rings

Another recent addition to our family schedule is “reading time”. This is actually a resurrection of sorts – we have a history of reading this book or that to our kids when they were younger. Darin read them the Chronicles of Narnia four or five years ago and it was a wonderful time for them each night. I remember often hearing the kids begging for just one more chapter before bed.

We didn’t give up the tradition out of a conscious decision – like so many other things, it just faded away in the brighter light of the more urgent or up and coming. We’ve been focusing on teaching the kids about world and American history and current events, and there are some really good books out there on the topic if you’re willing to dig a bit. So we got a few of them and re-instituted our family reading time.

Of course things are different now, with a fourteen year old boy in the house who needs to be convinced that gathering around and listening to dad and/or mom reading is a great idea. But given the right choice in reading material and a little time, I think he’ll come around.

Enjoying family time and a meal at Daytona Beach, 2010

For the past couple of months, my husband and I have been getting up early and walking the neighborhood. Early! Before dawn. That’s the only time during the Florida summers that you can go outside and not melt. As we walk, we talk about whatever comes to mind – the issues of the day, family, funny things we’ve heard. It’s become a great way to get our day going the right way with togetherness and exercise. It’s hardly ever easy to get up that early, but it’s always worth it when we do. Our dog Elby loves to walk with us. I think its his favorite part of the day, except on the days he gets to have peanut butter for his treat.

Your product description is important for different reasons. You should include certain elements in your description in order to glean the most benefit from it.

Tiny Details: On Etsy, the product description is where your customer finds out important information about the item specifications: how heavy is it? what are the measurements? is it available in different sizes? can it be customized? So make sure you take the time to measure your item, describe the weight and feel, and spell out any options that are available.

Search friendly: The description should also be a rich repository of relevant keywords so that buyers can find your item easily and it shows up higher in search results, both on Etsy and search engines like Google.  Make sure that your keywords occur early in your description. Choose certain keywords that are descriptive of the product and your shop in general. For example, one of favorite keywords is “rustic”. It describes my jewelry well, and helps people find me. I try to include this keyword in most of my titles and descriptions. A general rule of thumb is that you should repeat the most important keyword that is in your product title, in the first sentence of your product description. If my item is titled “Rustic Sterling Silver Stacking Ring”, then I begin my description like this: “I handforged this rustic sterling stacking ring and added oxidation to bring out the details.” Wow, I got almost the whole title in there, and it doesn’t sound fake or forced. Google will like that.

Your Vision: If you have an artistic vision for the product, you should include it in your description. Make sure it is from the heart, and your story will resonate with the right people. For example, my brass stacking “Redemption” rings have an interesting and true story that have persuaded many buyers to get the ring because they identify with the story. One customer fighting a deadly and rare disease purchased my Braveheart ring in part because of my vision for the ring. Don’t make up a story just to make one up – that’s not compelling to the buyer and it is easy to see through. It’s better not to force yourself to make up a backstory. I don’t include an artistic vision on every product, just on the ones that are clear and obvious to me.

Suggestions: Buyers appreciate usage and customization suggestions, so include them in your description and even if visitors don’t read your description, the keywords will be searchable. You’re not supposed to include suggested uses in your tags, but there’s nothing wrong with putting them in the description. Often I’ll include sample personalization ideas in the description and buyers will use those ideas. This makes the buying decision easier, and that’s a good thing for you.

Link back to your main shop page: I include this on every product. That way if a buyer lands on your product page from a search engine or an inward bound link, it’s easier for them to find and *stay in* your shop, as opposed to going right for the orange box at the top of the page (that links to the main page of Etsy). I’ve read in the forums some opinions that Google Shopping frowns on links in the product description, but I’ve been doing this for over a year and have not experienced any problems. Your mileage may vary.

As you can see, your product description is really important. The time you spend crafting a well-written description is worth it.

Rustic Braveheart Copper Ring

Just as signing up for a diet program doesn’t mean you will lose weight, buying an ad doesn’t mean you will get sales. There is a whole litany of details that need to be attended to before weight gets lost or ads get sales. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because you plunked down the cash you deserve results.

First, is it a good plan? If you’re signing up for one of those fad diets, you might be wasting your time and money. Or if you can’t live without carbs, don’t expect the Atkins Diet to bring great results on the scale. In the same vein, you have to find the right place to advertise your Etsy business. Know your target market and tailor your ads and the places where those ads will be seen to your target.

Second, are you putting enough effort in? Now that you’ve found the perfect diet or ad venue, your job is not done. You have to put the effort into “working the plan”. Are you following the rules of the diet to a “T” or are you a little fuzzy on the calorie limit? Regarding your Etsy product, are you offering the very best to your potential customers? Are you displaying that in your ad, and perhaps more important, when potential customers visit your shop are they impressed by what they see? You might be on the best diet plan in the world but if you don’t put the effort in, you won’t see results. Same thing goes for your advertising plan.

Finally, are you just dieting or are you adding in some exercise too? You will see faster results if you exert yourself on a daily basis, both in your weight loss efforts and in your quest to get more sales. Add in a routine that includes getting the word out about your shop by networking with bloggers. Offer stellar customer service that makes your buyers want to tell the world about their experience with you. Find ways to give of your time, your resources, and your abilities – be generous, and the world will be generous to you.

Give these things a try, and who knows? Suddenly you may discover a lean, mean sales machine emerging from that once sedentary shop.

Oxidized Sterling Nugget Rings

Looking back I realize more and more what a rough patch I’ve been through over the last two to three years. You could call it inner turmoil, I guess. And I knew at the time that things were not the greatest in my life, but I didn’t begin to understand the depths of that until I started to come out of it. I’ve come to understand more and more what the jewelry making has meant to me in one of the darkest places of my life.

Before I started making jewelry I was working full time as a freelance journalist specializing in enterprise technology. For about a decade I wrote about things like open source software, corporate servers, and the like. I’m a writer at heart – I always have been and I always will be. But writing about technology is not something my heart desires. I did it for the money, and that’s all. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – I’d daresay most of us work solely for the money and if we had the choice we’d not be getting up each morning and heading for our current job.

Jewelry making came to me in an unexpected way. I’d never made jewelry before, never had the desire to, and if you’d asked me I would have told you that I didn’t even have an aptitude for stringing beads attractively, let alone cutting, hammering, soldering, and melting metal. I didn’t like power tools or getting really dirty. But today, those things are my daily work and right now, they are where my heart is, and they are where my healing is. Jewelry making has literally been an unexpected lifeline out of the pit for me. And let me be clear: writing about technology wasn’t what put me in a pit. No, it’s much more complicated than that – and some of you might think it’s much sillier. And now that I am climbing out of the pit, I can see a bit better what put me there, and I can talk about what being there was like, and what it is like to see daylight again.

Where my heart is

I’m back today with more tips on what works for me in product photography, specifically for jewelry. Sellers are always asking for advice about how to get more people to buy what they’re selling. Photos have to be one of the most important, if not THE most important details. You could have the best product on the Internet, but if your photos don’t reflect that, you probably are not going to be able to twist someone’s arm to buy your stuff.

Last time I talked about lighting. This time I want to share my thoughts about settings and background. In an effort to dress up their photos, sellers will place items on busy backgrounds like patterned paper, or surround the item with foliage or flowers. This rarely works well because in order to draw someone in to your shot and coerce them to click through, your product needs to be the most important thing in the picture. I heard someone say that your item needs to be the star. With small items like jewelry, that is especially true.

There should be no doubt in the shopper’s mind what you are selling. That doesn’t even mean that the entire piece needs to be inside the boundaries of the photo – sometimes it’s better if you leave a bit to the imagination. What is means is that there should be nothing else in that photograph that distracts your buyer from the item you are trying to sell. Nothing.

Simple is better. It’s good sometimes if your background has some texture, but not too much texture. Color, but not too much color.  Definitely not too much of both.  I use tumbled marble tiles for a lot of my photos. They have a lot of texture but very little color, so it works.

If you are showing your item on a human model, the rules are a bit different. If the model is attractive, this can work in your favor for getting clicks and it doesn’t matter quite as much if your item is competing with the model for attention. Get them to click and then you can show them more details about the piece you’re selling.

Renaissance Pattern Wedding Set

Some days are just so introspective. Have you ever noticed that introspection does not lend itself to happy-go-lucky moods? When a friend dies, it makes me reflect on life, the fleeting nature of it and the many injustices and ironies in this world. That’s how it was for me yesterday.

It helps to run to something that comforts – but so many things offer a cold comfort that betrays me later. Only by running to something larger than myself can I be truly comforted. I find that larger thing when I run to the creative. Sitting at my table and making things connects me to my maker and I can find peace.

I’m still feeling introspective, but it is tempered with perspective.

Fall seven times, stand up eight

Today seems like a good day to talk about advertising for Etsy sellers – what works?

It’s in the thirties here in West Central Florida. Interesting weather! I have a lot of jewelry making to do today because I’m finishing up my Valentine’s Day rush orders. I also have a lot of housework and kid stuff to catch up on. I think I’ll write a blog post. Do you blame me? Who would want to go out into the garage/workshop in this kind of weather? I’m going to wait until it’s at least 45 degrees.

I still owe you part two of my photography tips blog post, but in the meantime, advertising is on my mind. I’ve tried a lot of different things in the 19 months since I starting marketing jewelry on Etsy. Experience has shown me that there are three big things you can do to get your shop in front of shoppers.

1. Editorial coverage (get people to write about you and link to you from their websites).
2. Google shopping results (get your content syndicated in what used to be called Google Base).
3. Renew, list new items and relist sold items on Etsy.

This trinity of tactics is what works for me. Of course, for these things to work, you’ve got to have a marketable product (unique, attractive, and in demand), and FANTASTIC photos. There’s no point in being seen if what they’re seeing doesn’t draw them in. And your tags, item titles, and descriptions have to be accurate and crafted in such a way as to make them relevant in search results.

Notice that I didn’t include traditional advertising in this list. Not that advertising never works – it’s more that finding the magic sweet spot of the right place, the right placement, the right time, and the right place takes a lot of time, tweaking, and money – or sometimes you might just get lucky. The best ad placement I ever had was an unexpected spot on the front page of Brownstoner that I got for free as a result of helping out eSellerAds with some testing they were doing. And even that ad didn’t bring me more than one verifiable sale – but it was great exposure during the time it was running. It brought me a lot of high quality traffic. The only problem is that once the ad is gone, the traffic is gone.

That’s why it is important to get websites to write about you and link to your site. That kind of advertising is worth a lot more than paid advertising, because not only is the owner of the website vouching for your product, the content and the link to your shop stays on the Internet indefinitely, so your presence expands as time goes on. Plus, search engines will rank your shop higher in search results the more other sites link to you and vouch for your product. Your shop becomes more credible, and then every time someone searches for the type of thing you have in your shop, you are more likely to come up in their search results.

And what about renewing on Etsy? Well, you pay $.20 to list a product in your shop. That twenty cents gets you the privilege of having your item listed in your shop for four months. But when you renew your product before the expiration date and pay another twenty cents, it also does something else very special: it bumps your listing up to the top of the search results when sorted either by recency or relevancy. And in that way, it is a very effective way of promoting your shop. Etsy has done a great job of getting people there – and once they’re there, you want to be able to draw them to your shop, because not only are people browsing, they’re shopping. You want to get your piece of the money they’re going to spend. So when they decide to search for that particular item they have in mind, or drill down to the category, you want your items to come up first (and then those fantastic photos will cause them to click – IF your photos are indeed fantastic).

A few months ago, I stopped all my paid advertising (with one important exception), and transferred that budget into renewing. I have seen my sales increase to a consistent daily amount since I did. That is truly advertising that works.

I stopped almost all my paid advertising, but still participate in “gallerias” on popular style blogs. These are seasonal listings in which blog owners charge a small amount for you to be placed in a juried collection of items that are hallmarks of the season. Usually these placements include editorial content and links – the kind of vouching for that makes advertising truly worth it because, remember, those links (from popular, highly ranked blogs and websites) stay around indefinitely.

So there you have it – some ideas and opinions from a highly opinionated Etsy seller on what has worked for me. Now I’m off to do some much-need laundry.

silver braveheart ring for men $130