Wednesday 21 September 2011

Week 4 of being on Etsy!

Well here I am again....!!  I guess I should actually post some photos actually.  One thing which is not right with this blog is the recent absence of photos....!

Okay, first thing's first, I made some more Prehistoric jewellery last week because I realised I didn't have a great deal of it.  But I ended up making a few really nice and simple pieces.  My favourite is the Obsidian necklace - the stones are really tactile and organic.  They're just lovely to hold in your hand!  It's very dramatic but I love it.  I made matching earrings too :)

Now, this week I have decided to try and get used to Twitter and Facebook and figure out the best way of marketing my stuff.  I know this is probably a steep learning curve as I have never done this before, but I am keeping an eye on the stats both in Etsy and with Google Analytics.  They both come up with differing numbers but roughly the same outcome with regards to what time people look at my Etsy store.

Of course, when I first uploaded items I had no end of visits, and the week after that had some good visitor numbers too.  These last couple of weeks haven't been very high with visitor numbers though.  Obviously I don't do any at the weekend....but perhaps I should do the odd onw or two tweets and messages about my Etsy store at the weekend perhaps?

Anyway, the other thing I have been looking at is how often I should send messages out and what impact it has on my visitor stats.  I read that if you tweet a LOT then people are more likely to "unfollow" and "unlike" you, and you're more likely to get more people following you if you tweet facts, hints and tips.  Today I tried historic facts - one an hour - and I had NO hits from 8am till 12noon.  Then I tweeted about an item in my store and it went up to 4 hits as soon as I tweeted the first one at 12noon....!  So I just carried on tweeting something in my store every hour or thereabouts and it's been fairly even for the rest of the day.

Tomorrow I think I will tweet about something in my store, perhaps combine a fact with a product, and do it once every 30 minutes.  Yesterday I went a little crazy and did one tweet every 15 minutes and it wasn't that exciting LOL!!  I tried once an hour and it was very slow so perhaps once every 30 minutes might just be okay.  Between 8:00am and 5:00pm is when I usually tweet and message.


Currently my stats say I get most visits weekdays between 10am - 2pm, 4pm - 6pm, Saturdays 12noon - 4pm and Sundays 10am - 12noon and 3pm - 5pm.  Might just try focusing on these times for the rest of the week.  I know 12noon - 2pm falls in many people's lunch hours when they would be more likely to look on Etsy.  I usually end up missing a tweet at 1:30pm and 2:00pm so perhaps I should try to tweet at those times a little more.  I'll try it tomorrow and see what happens.

So far I have had ZERO sales too.  I know it's early days and I have only just started my 4th week promoting my Etsy stuff, but I'm wondering if it's a combination of that and not actually being known much.  I haven't sent many business cards around, although I keep giving them to friends and family to distribute.  I'm wondering if I should create some postcards or leaflets, pop into town or perhaps make a trip to Birmingham and Nottingham to distribute them in the right places, as my cards are really quite small.  I'll think about it, because it means designing more things and spending more money.

Anyway, next week will be the last week before I go on holiday.  My shop will be closed for 2 weeks - until the middle of October, and then I shall open the shop agan and promote everything from scratch - I have an action plan ready and I'll blog about it when the time comes :)

Wednesday 14 September 2011

Happy Wednesday! :)

I have to say I have been quite productive lately - this week I started listing my Prehistoric jewellery online, and I realised that I didn't have a great deal of it....so I made more! LOL!  Actually the thing which irritates me the most about all this is taking photos.  It so annoying when I take lots of photos of one necklace only to find out that they are ALL blurred and I have to take them all over again....!! I think it was too dark though, I did that last night, late afternoon after the sun had made its way around the garden :)

Anyhoo, I now have 21 followers, and of course I would LOVE some more!  I have sent messages to LIKE my Facebook Page to pretty much ALL of my friends on Facebook and I know only a handful have done so.  I'm not sure when to send them out again....I don't want to spam everyone!  Of course, there may be the odd chance that nobody can be bothered.

But hey, it's early days yet, I've only been going for 2 weeks, and the other thing I have been doing is looking at statistics of how often I have visitors and when.  Quite useful - at the moment I have discovered that Thursday and weekends are fairly quiet days.  Weekends - possibly because I don't list anything then, but I have no idea about Thursdays.  Ialso found it interesting that as I promoted my jewellery online I was still getting quite a few visits.

Last weekend I wasn't able to do much as I was in Cambridgeshire watching my brother take his vintage biplane flight (woohoo!) and on Saturday I was in London at Proms in the Park (again - woohoo!) and didn't get back until Sunday late afternoon.  It was still useful to find out how visits drop during the time when I am not listing or promoting!

Also, my website has finally corrected itself! It is www.wix.com/gemstone_orchid/portfolio
I have added my Twitter feed on the right hand side twitter.com/GemstoneOrchid
But unfortunately I can't find a widget for my Facebook Page so I'll put it here:
Gemstone Orchid Facebook Page

See you later! :)
Siobhan xx

Wednesday 7 September 2011

Here we go!

Hi everyone :)

So my store is up and running, and I have added a little Etsy widget on thi sblog here, it should be on the right hand side there.  on September 1st and 2nd I uploaded several items of jewellery, and I have continued this since Monday 5th September.

I have been tweeting and posting messages on my Facebook page.  I only have 11 followers at the moment, yet I have sent requests to many more than that....but I won't be deterred!  I will continue selling.

I haven't had any sales yet, but it really is early days.  I went on a few forums on Etsy and asked someone in the States to tell me if they thought my jewellery is too pricey, and she thought it was just a little too pricey.  I have brough down prices of earrings and bracelets, but not the necklaces yet.  I'm asking a couple of other people I know in the States to get their opinion.  Its really hard when you start thinking about prices which are reasonable in the UK, but when you convert them to US, Canadian or even Australian $$, it's hard to know whether it's a reasonable price for them too, or too much.  Perhaps I shouldn't be thinking this way?  Perhaps I should be pricing things at what I think is a decent UK price, and not think about how an American would see it?  I have no idea, I'm still very new to this!

Anyway, I need to find a widget or something to put on this blog, which connects to my Facebook and / or Twitter page.  I shall investigate this later on, so watch out for it!

In the meantime I have made absolutely NO more jewellery LOL!  I have been concentrating on listing my items, and so far all the Egyptian / Middle Eastern pieces are up.  Today I decided to plug seperate pieces on Facebook and Twitter every 30 mins.  I didn't think this was too invasive of me, and I have kept an eye on my Etsy shop stats and Google Analytics, which both come up with similar numbers but different useful and sometimes random information.  For example, most people who have visited my Etsy store in the UK are in Liverpool, and most in the US from California!

I will be looking into joining a forum or two soon, and I will be uploading prehistoric inspired jewellery next I think.  I'm putting up my best pieces of jewellery - which I think are the Roman, Greek, Tudor and Victorian pieces - last and nearer to Christmas.  I really like a lot of my jewellery and I really hope it starts selling soon.  I think I just have to work on my networking, and perhaps when Etsy have another live critique session, I might join in to find out several opinions.

The website it up, but there is a problem with the url which appears in Google searches.  It turns out that Google crawled my website before I even uploaded it, but why it's got a different name I have no idea.  The good thing is that the link works, as does the url, wierdly, as well as the real url which also appears at the top of the web browser either way.

Did I mention my business cards?  They are BRILLIANT!  And because I reported to MOO that there were 22 cards which were mis printed, they are sending me 100 more business cards for FREE!!  How cool is that?!

Anyhoo, I must have a look at widgets so I can add things to my blog so everything is linked up.  Sorry for the rambling! :)  I have a busy weekend ahead too, I'm seeing Lee Evans in Nottingham tomorrow night, going to see my brother take his vintage bi-plane flight on Friday (weather permitting) then gatecrashing my boyfriend's parents house for tea and cake afterwards.  On Saturday I'm going to Hyde Park for the Last Night of the Proms on Saturday, and coming home on Sunday.  Perhaps I will wear a noticeable necklace in the hope of getting comments so I can distribute business cards...... ! :)

Siobhan xx

Friday 2 September 2011

Gemstone Orchid is on Etsy!

Yesterday I finally went LIVE with my launch of my Etsy store here at www.orchids.etsy.com!  Hooray!  I have been making quite good progress listing my items up gradually throughout the day, and I also managed to make one treasury which has great comments and as a result I have been starting on a little Etsy network!  How exciting!

I have been Tweeting and posting messages on my Facebook page, and this afternoon I will be letting more people know about the Facebook Page.  I have a few followers on Twitter but I hope to increase that number soon.  I think it all has something to do with hashtags and trends, I have been looking to see who I can follow.  The main thing to know about folowing people on Twitter is that you can lose your account if you follow people aggressively - if you follow 50 people in one go.  Not good!  Yesterday I think I followed around 8 people and 4 of them followed back which I think is about average.

I'll be adding a widget to my blog if I can too.....and the Website is ready but there is a problem.  Well, it's Google's problem....basically, when I searched for my website on Google, it came up and worked but the URL was totally wrong and I need that to change to what it actually is before I make the website live.  I don't really want people getting confused with the URL, so I might have to wait another month before Google updates it.  I'm not too fussed about that as Etsy is my main concern :)

There are still lots of things to do of course, tweaks here and there, but I think everything is going as I want it to.  I have even had my mini cards delivered which I love, from www.moo.com and 22 out of 200 of the cards had been misprinted - the image was crokked on the card - so I let MOO know and you know what they did?  They're sending me 100 more cards for FREE!!!  I love MOO!! :D  They are brilliant!

Ok, gotta run, I have jewellery to list in my online store!

Siobhan xx