I seem to be having  "one of those weeks" again - the kind where I lose track of what day it is and then when I find out I can't imagine where the week is disappearing to. I mean, it's July, right? The so called "lazy days of summer"..... I think they forgot to put the lazy in mine! Maybe the excessive heat we've had lately is an attempt at that - NOT a very much appreciated attempt to be sure! The combination of high humidity and heat has had us all dragging our tails - I couldn't imagine living in any place further south and having to live with something like this ALL summer (beautiful scenery is nothing when you're dying!)! Ugh! I simply wouldn't survive it!
I'm too sticky and hot to even try to knit, the yarn just drags in my hands! Spinning is not quite so bad so I've really been finishing up some plying jobs and getting yarns listed in my Etsy Shop. My Summer Sale went live today. I did it using the Etsy on Sale app which I adore! It's SO much easier for customers than using special coupon codes. Everything on sale is clearly marked and there's no frustrations for customers forgetting their coupon code etc. They know exactly what items cost and quite frankly I like the way the listings look with the "Sale" stuff clearly marked. It lets new visitors to the shop know what's going on at a glance and everyone loves to stumble across a great sale when they're browsing around! Another really nice thing is that Etsy-on-Sale has a website where newly listed sale items get posted so there's a bit of extra exposure pretty much for free.
I also did a couple of posts on Ravelry and my Yahoo Groups so I'm hoping to generate at least a bit of traffic. I find that selling on Etsy is quite a challenge, compared to selling online with my own website, which I can pay to advertise in trade publications or selling on eBay where there is already huge traffic flow and most of the interest is generated by searches. My Etsy shop is just too small to pay for advertising and it's not so easy to find avenues for exposure for free. I still don't think that Etsy's search function is very well thought out since even though you add tags as part of the listing process, Etsy searches by photo name first, title second and then tags third. Pretty retarded when you think about it. There is room for 5 photos per listing - aren't you going to name them (more or less) all the same so that when you list a number of different items you'll be able to find all the photos for each one? Not only that but there is a limit to the number of characters on your photo name so you'll not likely be able to name it "natural_creamy_white_pure_shetland_handspun_yarn" so it will get found first sweep in the initial Etsy search. Before I knew about this I only used item numbers for my Etsy photos because it was the easiest way to be sure I'd find all the photos I had of each item in my computer file. VERY annoying to find out I had hobbled all my initial listings! I'm sure I'm not the only person who didn't know this so there are probably lots of nice items that don't show up until page 17 or 30 of an item search because their photo names are inadequate! Anyways, enough griping! I invite to to hop on over and have a peek at my shop. Even if nothing there tempts you, constructive criticism is always welcome - I'm always open to new ideas on how to improve it! Cheers!