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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.

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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.

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This little widget from eSellerAds is going to come in really handy for savvy Etsy sellers, since we are always looking for new ways to promote our shops online. Type in your user name at eSellerAds and the software automatically generates a widget that contains every listing in your shop, in a scrollable and clickable format that lets browsers click right through to an Etsy shopping cart if they decide they can’t live without one of your creations. Take a look:

The widget comes in several different sizes, all IAB standard sizes (to make it easy to purchase ad space). What’s more, the ad automatically updates itself whenever you change something in your shop. That’s right, no matter where you have published your widget, there’s no need to change the code or update it, because it does that for you.

These eSellerAds widgets will be available for a small, affordable monthly subscription fee, and there will be additional benefits added on as time goes by. If you’d like to be added to a mailing list so you’ll know when eSellerAds widgets are available, leave me a comment below.

I had to make a run to the bookstore this morning to pick up my copy of Bust Magazine. The August/Sept. issue is out and that means the Etsy Buy Handmade ad is in there! I think it came out pretty good. It will be interesting to see if it brings any attention to my Etsy shop. See if you can find my little spot.

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!

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