Grab your knitting needles and come relax with me.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Selling on the Internet
Hello, this is James here, Birdy's husband, and I had a thought for a blog post. We have had this site live for over a year now. We have had some sales of different items, but we wanted to get our name out there some more, so we started an Etsy Shop. We were surprised to get 2 sales in the first day and another sale within two days of those. But have not had much luck since.
This set off a fury for me, to find all the best places to sell online. I have been searching sites, and joining sites left and right, trying to find the best way to promote our site. Some I have signed up for just to preserve our name, and some we have listed items on. We have them spread through out the land, but have not gotten any sales from any. So what do we do. Well I have been in the forums of many of the sites trying to find out what others do. Many talk about their publicizing their sites on blogs, in the forums and using online advertising. So what do I do, I get in the forums and talk a bit, set up an advertising account with project wonderful, and sign up for more accounts.
Now What?
Well I guess we keep doing it, we did get one sale from our advertising promotion, which is good to see. I have alreayd sent it off, but it is the only one we can attribute to any of these efforts. We still get sales from our regular traffic, but where do we go from here? Well I guess we mention our shops more, but now there are too many to mention. *smirks* I guess that's what you get for being over ambitious. They always say take it slow, and grow at the pace the business takes you. So we will just need to let it flow as we can. I did find a neat site, that has been somewhat helpful for us, it's called ByHand.me it has some neat functions that I have not really focussed on yet, but what I like is that you can link to all your differnt shops in one place. Just the same I thought I would list some of our shop sites here for those that are interested:
Artfire: You have heard us mention them before, and seen their links around our site.
Etsy: The most popular showcase for most people, but it is getting so over crouded that you have to constantly list just to get your items seen.
Shophandmade: It's new and allows you to list for free with sponorship, but has a good look to is and random searching.
MadeItMyself: MIM for short. I really like this site and our items get good views, but no takes yet. Still new but very helpful people.
There are many more out there, but we have not listed in them yet. I would like to see which of these are going to do well before we add more. I barely have enough time to do anything else, much less socialize on each of these sites. Oh well, let's just keep trolling along, and one day everyone will know the name of Birdy's Knits!
You might consider advertising on Facebook. The ads are targeted by people's interests. So, I get things about knitting and comic books, for example.
You can also get the business a page on Facebook, and fans can sign up to join it. You then can send them news items when you get new things in to sell, so they will know they are there. I really like that feature, and have set it up for my local music store and yarn shop.
Birdy and James, I just saw your add thru The Daily Knitter's Free Pattern of the Day. I haven't been too active on LSSK and was delighted to see you add. Keep up the good work. Susie T in fort Worth
