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 :)