tinahdee

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

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

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

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

In the time that I’ve been selling on Etsy, I’m not ashamed to say that my product photos have improved tremendously. Could this be part of my selling success? I think so. I see a lot of items on Etsy that are not presented in a way that shows their true beauty. A clear, properly lit, beautifully staged set of photos makes your item come alive to the customer. I have some definite opinions about what it takes to make a great photo, and I’m going to share them with you. I’m sure not everyone will agree, and there are many people who successfully use techniques other than the ones I do. But if you like my photos and want to emulate this style, here’s how you do it.

Note: My jewelry business was launched with hardly any cash outlay, so another benefit to my favorite method of getting the product shoot is that it is very inexpensive.

Natural Light

The most important element to taking a great jewelry photo is lighting. I am a proponent of natural light, the kind that comes from the sky. For one thing, it’s free. You don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on bulbs, light stands, light boxes (even homemade ones take cash), diffusers, or any other kind of equipment. All you need is the outdoors, or my favorite, the ubiquitous window sill. No exposure to the elements required!

When I first began taking photos of my jewelry, I did what most people do. I placed the jewelry in an attractive setting like an embroidered tablecloth or a beautifully printed piece of paper, turned the lights on, zoomed in, and clicked. Unfortunately, this method produced washed out photos with a lot of glare.

Washed out, with glare

It didn’t take me too long to figure out that this style of photography wasn’t going to cut it. As beautiful as my renaissance crown might have been, looking at this picture you’d really have to use your imagination to realize it. Not only is it washed out with a harsh glare – it’s out of focus and the background is way too “busy.” (More on that in another post.)

Next, I moved on to outdoor photography. This worked OK for some things, but I was having the hardest time getting a good shot of say, shiny silver items. This was because I was setting my item in direct sunlight – not a good plan for bringing out the texture and details of your piece. The key to good lighting is to have some light and some shadows – but neither of these should be harsh or hard. Harsh light washes out or causes glare, and hard shadows obscure parts of your photo or cause a distracting extra shape in your composition. The solution to this is to use bright, but diffused light.

Bright light from the sun is perfect, but it needs to be diffused. This is what makes a cloudy day ideal for taking photos of your jewelry in natural light. The harsh glare of direct sun gets eliminated, and so does the hard shadow. Everything is softer and more subtle, which focuses the attention on your jewelry instead of other distracting elements. So when there’s a cloudy day in the forecast (for some people this is every day!), take advantage of it to get some great shots.

What if you need to take picture and it’s a sunny day? There are many ways to use the bright light of the sun while avoiding the harshness of its rays. One way is to take pictures in the shade. Make sure your shade is consistent and not dappled like the effect you get under a tree. Dappled light will just make your photo dappled. Find some good shade and then experiment with pictures. Sometimes bringing the item right to the edge of the shade will provide a good balance of light and shadow, while shooting your piece in shade that is too deep can result in a flat, dull picture.

Another sunny day solution is to use the window sills in your home. If you’re lucky, you have sills on more than one side of your home, which allows you to use different ones depending on the light levels and the time of day. Window sill photography is my favorite method for getting the lighting just right. For example, I have a sill in my bedroom that is perfect for getting dramatic shots when the sun is just coming up.

Dramatic morning light

The picture above was taken with no flash, just the diffused, interesting light from the early morning sun.

Other sills in my home give me good results in the afternoon and evening. If you have a large window that allows a lot of light in, you can even move your shots further away from the window and experiment with light balance that way. Whatever you do, don’t use your flash! Find out how to turn it off and then keep it off. If your photo comes out too dark, you just need to move closer to your natural source of light.

Next, I’ll share some of my tips for getting a good background.

You don’t have to have it all mapped out in order to create something beautiful. Especially if the lack of a concrete idea is becoming an obstacle to your creating. If you’re telling yourself you can’t sit down and make something until you have an idea, you’re probably procrastinating. See, I believe that creative people always have ideas floating around in their subconscious mind. Otherwise, we wouldn’t know that we were creative people. It is the idea that is the seed of creativity. The conscious mind acts like a sentry to those ideas sometimes – probably for myriad reasons, not all of which are valid. Sometimes, it just might be that we want to sabotage ourselves. Sometimes, we have irrational fears. Whatever it is that is keeping your inner idea from expressing itself, let’s just go ahead and ignore that.

How do you ignore your conscious mind? You bypass it. Don’t listen to the voices telling you that you have to have a plan mapped out before you can create. Go to your place – get your tools, whatever those are, and place them within reach. Get your supplies out and put them in front of you and look at them. Put on some inspiring music. Close your eyes for a few moments if that helps you relax. Clear out the thoughts of your busy day and all your troubles. Open your eyes and look through your supplies and pick out something that catches your eye. Play with it. Use your tools to play with it. Don’t try to have a certain idea about what you’re going to make. Just play.

The purpose is not to come up with something “useable” or “pretty”. The purpose is simply to let your subconscious mind bypass your conscious, strict sentry, and just create. Don’t judge whatever results from your play time. When your time is up, just put the item aside and go back to your daily routine. Your subconscious is still working on being creative, and you just gave it something to “gnaw” on. Make a practice of this, and pretty soon your conscious mind won’t work quite so hard to discourage you. Either that, or you’ll just get better at ignoring it.

Peridot and Sterling Lariat $35

I offer free worldwide shipping in my Etsy shop. I used to be afraid to ship anywhere but the US. Boy, have I come a long way. Just today I heard from my customer in South Korea, who got her shipment from me eight days after I sent it. Last week, one of my customers in Australia received his order after only four days. That’s astounding, considering it takes at least that long sometimes for a letter to make it from one side of the US to the other.

I hear from handmade artisans all the time who say they only ship within their country. I live in the USA, so this blog post is coming from my perspective as an American jewelry maker. I have no problem with shipping my jewelry all around the world. When I first started on Etsy, I was apprehensive about shipping outside the US. No one makes it really clear exactly how to ship a package to another country, and I didn’t want to risk losing my product simply because I didn’t know what the rules were.

So I’m here to tell you that shipping from the US to other countries is easy and economical. The first ounce, via First Class International (package rate), is only $1.44. I’m lucky because the vast majority of my orders are under an ounce. Here’s how to ship a parcel via First Class International:

1. Pack your item as usual but include a slip of paper with your return address in case something happens to the envelope or box. I’ve never had anything untoward happen, but just in case, it may help your item make its way back to you.

2. Tape the outside of your package very securely. I ship in an envelope and tape the entire outer surface to make it more durable and at least somewhat waterproof. If you’re going to do this, make sure you address the envelope, including your return address, before you cover it with tape. If you use a box, tape all the corners and seams very securely.

3. When you address your parcel, make sure you copy the address exactly as it is listed on your Etsy receipt, and make sure you write the country name under the address. Write USA under your return address as well.

4. Fill out customs form 2976, for orders that are valued under $400 USD. For orders over that amount, use form 2976-A. There are two parts to the form. One part goes on the outside of the package, and the other part stays at the post office on file. You can fill out a customs form online and print it at home (http://webapps.usps.com/customsforms/) or pick one up at the post office. If you fill it out at home, you can tape the customs form onto your package so it is not obscuring the address. Make sure the form is flat and smooth so the bar code gets scanned correctly.

5. If you have a scale at home you can weigh your package and put your own postage on. First Class International (package rate) starts at $1.44 for the first ounce. Or you can take it to the PO and have them weigh it for you. To find out exactly what your postage will cost, you can visit the USPS postage calculator.

6. Some countries may have restrictions on shipping your type of item. Many countries bar the shipping of precious metals like gold and precious gems like diamonds. My jewelry is not considered “fine” jewelry (although I think it’s just fine), and so has never had a problem making it through customs. When you fill out your customs form, be honest about what your item is, but also be wise. Instead of writing “fine artisan jewelry” on my customs forms, I write “handmade fashion accessory”. Both may be true, but the second is probably a lot less likely to invite closer inspection. To check various restrictions, take a look at the USPS’s Index of Countries and Localities.

7. Make sure the postal worker scans your customs form and prints you out a receipt. This gives you at least some proof of mailing, since First Class International mail doesn’t carry delivery confirmation. Additionally, you can pass the customs form number, which should be printed on your receipt, to your customer, and they may be able to use the number in their country to check on the package if it gets held up in customs. You can also look up the customs form number at the USPS website and it will show that the package was accepted at the post office on a certain time and date.

8. If you’re going to ship internationally, make sure you have noted in your shop policies what your customer can expect. First Class International carries no delivery guarantees and makes no promises about a delivery time frame. Your customer should be prepared to wait several weeks for their delivery, even though most of the time it will be sooner than that. Make sure your customer knows that if they need their item by a certain date, they’ll need to upgrade their shipping, and that most of the time that carries a very greatly increased cost.

Stay in touch with your customer – email them when you ship, and ask them to let you know when the package arrives. Reassure them if they’re getting nervous – my South Korea client had emailed me just yesterday wondering where her package was. I sent her the customs form number and let her know that she needn’t worry yet.

Of course, if you ship internationally long enough, you’re bound to have an “incident,” just as you will if you only ship within the US. Plan for that, and count it as part of the cost of doing business. I hate to think of all the sales that I would have missed out on if I felt it was too risky to ship my silver jewelry all over the world. The benefits have far outweighed the risks. And they will for you too. So give it a shot!

Copper Hinged Hoops $32

Having an IKEA store in our neck of the woods has been fun. It just so happens to coincide with the beginning of our need for some interior decor items since the new part of the house is nearing completion. IKEA has some fantastic deals on wooden venetian blinds; we were able to put blinds on four windows in our new master bedroom for under $100. The blinds are great quality and look really nice. There was just one problem. The holes in the slats where the string passes through are just a skosh too wide – at night when the lights are on inside, you can actually see through these little holes from the outside of the house. For a living room that might be acceptable, but for the bedroom, no way!

Darin mentioned he’s seen blinds at Home Depot that had some kind of ribbon woven through the holes in the slats. Those blinds were very expensive though. Our budget is definitely IKEA-sized. I had a idea: why not hot glue ribbon to the cord in front of the holes? We’d have to leave the top unglued since the cord retracts into the top of the blind depending on which way you twist them. But I thought it could work. Darin and I headed to Michael’s craft store and agreed on some nice looking ribbon.

I just folded under and glued the edge at the top, and worked my way down the blind. At the bottom, I also left the last slat unglued, folded under the edge, and glued it to keep it from fraying. As you can see from the pictures, the ribbon looks nice and it definitely covers up the holes. The blinds work as expected – you can close, open, pull them up just as usual and the ribbon goes right along. Take that, you peeping strangers!

If you’re an Etsy person, you might have heard about blog giveaways. You may even have been approached by someone who keeps a blog. They may have asked you to participate in a giveaway or to donate an item for a giveaway. But you should really consider doing your OWN blog giveaway – why not keep that wonderful link love for your own blog? Giveaways can be a fantastic way of advertising, if you do it right. Here are some things you can to do to help make your giveaways a success.

1. Host your own giveaway. You don’t have to wait for someone else to invite you to their blog – go ahead and host your own giveaway using your own item! Write a blog post about the item you’re giving away, the rules for entering, the deadline, and how you will choose the winner. One technique that people use a lot is to have the entrant visit your shop, select their favorite item, and come back and post a link to your item in their comment. This creates lots of links back to your shop, which is a desirable thing. Make your post as attractive as possible – tell a story about the item you’re giving away and put up a nice picture of it.

2. Publicize your giveaway. Get on Twitter and send a tweet about your giveaway with a link to the blog post. Announce your giveaway on Facebook, Myspace, and in the Promotions forum at Etsy. Mention your giveaway to your family and friends. And get your giveaway mentioned on giveaway sites like the Etsy Giveaways blog. Do a google search for other sites where you can enter a link to your giveaway. People love giveaways and before you know it, your entries will start flowing in.

3. Get your entrants to publicize your giveaway for you. This is where it really starts to get fun. Give your entrants extra entries for publicizing your giveaway for you and then coming back to your blog post to leave a comment about what they did. Give an entry for tweeting your giveaway with a link to your blog, another entry for blogging about your giveaway, and another for becoming your fan on Facebook or for following your blog. You will be surprised at how hard people will work for you if they really want your item.

4. Make sure your item is something really worth it. This is imperative – give away something nice! The nicer it is, the more people will fall all over themselves to get your item, and it *will* get talked about online. If you get a reputation for giving away nice things, people will remember and come back next time too. Think about it this way: doing giveaways is a way of advertising that works very well and is a long lasting mark on the Internet that people will find later when searching for items similar to yours. When I do giveaways, the retail price of the item averages around $40. That’s a small price to pay for that kind of exposure.

5. What kind of exposure can this bring? If you have a popular giveaway, sometimes the people who didn’t win will come and buy the item from your shop. What’s more, your giveaway stays in Google search results, and later one when someone is searching for an item like yours, it will come up in search results that much more often. I do a lot of giveaways with my personalized sterling dog tag bracelet, and when I ask people how they found my shop, many times it has been when they typed in a favorite inspirational phrase into Google, and one of my giveaways came up because I have people comment about what they’d like to have inscribed on their bracelet if they win!

5a. How to pick the winner (added by request of justgivemepeace on Etsy, thanks!): I use a random number generator and number each comment. That’s why it is important for everyone to leave one comment for each entry they get. Check out Random.org for a good random number generator. The first blog giveaway I did, I actually made slips of paper with numbers and had my daughter draw the winner out. You don’t have to choose your winner randomly – you can pick the best comment if you want, or think of some other way to do it. It’s your giveaway!

6. Your winners will publicize you later! If you give away something nice, your winners will talk about it later. They’ll tell other people where they got their item, and they may even take pictures of themselves with your item and blog about it. All in all, hosting a giveaway is a fantastic and affordable way to advertise, with long lasting good results.

Did I forget to mention anything? Ask away or share your own tips and hints for giveaways!

Sterling Personalized Dog Tag Bracelet

Some brilliant artists (and writers I might add) sketch their designs on paper before creating them. These designs might come to them in the middle of the night, and I imagine them groggily reaching for the notepad and pencil beside the bed to make a rough drawing that can be fleshed out in the morning. Other set aside a special time each day to work on new designs. Such discipline, I am sure, results in a steady stream of creativity.

For me, designs come in a much more haphazard way. Sometimes I don’t even really feel qualified to call myself a jewelry “designer” for just such a reason. I do design all my pieces, but to call myself a designer sort of makes it sound like I’ve been at this for professionally trained decades – and that’s just not the case. Anyway, my designs sort of just float through my head and I try to grab them and hold them. They’re never completely “unfuzzy” in this infant state – my main task is to tie an anchor to them to let them float but keep them from floating away. I miss a good percentage of them, and they go off into my brain sky, getting smaller and smaller until I can’t see them anymore, so high that they must eventually pop and fall back down to the soil of creativity in my head, to sprout again as something quite different on another day.

I never sketch my designs. I think that must be an awesome way to capture ideas, but it just doesn’t work for me. I think it’s because my designs remain fuzzy throughout the process, until they are finally brought into focus by the medium and by my hands. To draw the design is to commit it to something before it is ready to be committed, and that act consigns it to death.

The way my weird brain works is that I have a kind of shape-shifting idea, not really totally sure where I’m going with it, and I sit down and start working with the metal or the gemstones or whatever it is. And the idea responds to the movement and activity in my hands and begins to flow, almost as if it were electricity that was powering my body, and the idea comes to life. Sometimes it is quite different from what I thought I saw in my mind – but it is always either recognizable to me, or a logical progression from the fuzzy picture in my brain. Sometimes I might even think that my final design was the result of a “mistake” – but I have begun to learn that there are very few actual mistakes when it comes to designing this way. What I think is a mistake is just an unexpected direction. When I set the “mistake” down and come back to it another day, I can many times see the original intent and not just an error.

One of my most popular designs is my Bud and Leaf ring. This ring is the result of one of those “mistakes”. Originally it was supposed to be a simple ring with a little concave domed disc soldered on. But the disc got too hot and it crumpled a little and got crooked. I grabbed the pliers and pinched one side of it – I honestly can’t remember why now – and it looked just like a little leaf. So I melted a bit of silver into a ball and soldered that right next to the leaf. “No one will ever take a ring like this seriously,” I thought, “after all, it’s a mistake.” I set the ring aside for three months, never really intending to do anything with it except maybe melt it down for scrap.

But I found the ring again one day while rummaging around on my (rather cluttered) bench, and it was at this time that I could see the intent of the design and I knew that was what the ring was meant to be all along. It just took some time for me to realize it. Such is life – not just in designing jewelry, but in every area.

Bud and Leaf Ring, from Sterling $27