Black Friday on Etsy

Etsy is having a Black Friday and Cyber Weekend sale!  This is a fantastic opportunity to promote your shop for the holidays.  ColorBee will be participating by having a Buy One Get One Free sale from November 26 through the 29th.  Here's how to participate:

• Etsy will be promoting sales via three universal predetermined tags. The tags will be linked from featured areas of the site including email, Etsy's homepage, and promotional banners. 
• Sellers conducting a promotion during these dates may use these tags to be included in the site wide promotions: 

1. Black Friday Etsy
2. Cyber Monday Etsy
3. Free Shipping Etsy

Buyers can search these tags to find fantastic Cyber Sale items across the Etsy site.  Happy Shopping!

Visit my shop to find great gifts for the person who has everything. www.thecolorbee.com


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Etsy October Sales and Stats

Etsy's October Weather Report is out. Can you believe it, Etsy just keeps setting sales records with every month that goes by:

The stats:
♥ $29.9 million of goods were sold by our community in October, 12.4% higher than September's $26.6 million. That represents 1,677,986 items sold for the month, 14.5% higher than September’s 1,466,039.

♥ 2,452,359 new items were listed in the month, 11.6% higher than September's 2,196,970.

♥ 322,466 new members joined the Etsy community in the month, up 41,928, or 14.9%, from September.

♥ 842,291,766 page views were recorded on the site in October.

Sales were up 55% increase from October 2009's total. All the October stats represent new Etsy records! 

Definition of a Dream

 

Seems to me that more and more people are finding out about Etsy and that's good for all of us.  ColorBee's October sales were down from September's, which hasn't happened since I started out in March.  But I'm hoping for a strong November and December, working hard to get there!

Visit my shop for colorful art prints, cool posters, typography and more!  www.thecolorbee.com

SEO Your Etsy Shop

This week I've been spending some time learning about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The 'experts' say to be successful online your site must be found by google, yahoo, bing and must get on the first page of search results. Learning SEO and doing it well is the first step. My head is swimming with all my new knowledge, I think I'm drowning in it:) I'm a little skeptical about the promise of millions of visitors to my website, but it's worth a shot and I'm into techie stuff. After I optimize my shop and my website maybe I'll actually get some work done!

Interested in becoming an Etsy SEO Ninja? Here are a couple of tips I learned today:
Title tags, Description tags and Keywords are most important to search engines (in that order).
Be sure to place your best keyword phrases in your Shop Title.
Section Titles and Listing Titles are really important too.
So where do Search Engines find these tags?

* On your main shop page, Title tags come from your Shop Title, Description tags come from the first 160 characters of your Shop Announcement and Keywords come from your Section Titles.

* On each section page, Title tags come from the particular Section Title of the page you're on, Description tags come from your Section Title too, and Keyword tags are all your Section Titles.

* On each listing page, Title tags come from the first 50 characters or so of your Listing Title, Description tags come from the first 160 characters of your item description and Keyword tags come from your Item Tags.

It's important to do your research and use good keyword phrases. Finding the right keyword phrase is really hard. You have to think like a shopper and try to imagine what someone who might buy your item would search for when they're on the internet. Then you have to figure out if there are enough searches done to make it worthwhile, but not so many so that there's too much competition! Oy. I still haven't figured out what the best keyword phrases would be for my shop. I'm open to suggestions! This blog post from the Sellers Assisting Sellers Team is really helpful if you're interested in learning how to do keyword research.

Visit my shop:
Art Prints, Cool Posters, Typography, Inspirational Quotes

Follow Your Heart

It almost seems trite to say it, but it's true.  Follow your heart, do what you love, live the life of your dreams!

Follow Your Heart Wire Sculpture by TheTinkaTree

I recently read a couple of books on creating crafty businesses and highly recommend them!  Both books have loads of inspiring profiles of people who created successful businesses by following their hearts :)

The first one is Craft, Inc. by Meg Mateo Ilasco.  This book has tons of practical advice for everything from naming your company to writing a business plan and paying taxes. Plus, the author asks really interesting questions in her interviews with people like Jonathan Adler, one of my faves.

Next is Crafting A Business by Kathie Fitzgerald.  This book focuses on female artisans and includes a nice cross-section of success stories, including Amy Butler.  Gorgeous photos of each woman at work too!  I believe Kathie is connected with Country Living magazine so you know the photos will be nice.  There's a brief section at the end about setting up a business, but it mostly profiles the women and their stories.  They each started with an idea and followed their dreams!

You can get these books on Amazon, or do what I did and grab a copy from your local library:)

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Fun with Color

Here's a neat little optical trick from Before & After magazine, demonstrating how our eyes and minds interpret color.

When a shadow crosses the wall, what happens? Our minds compensate for the shifting light. Result: Circle B appears much lighter than circle A.

But...

Removing the shadow tells a very different story.  Below are swatches of the colors.  Color B is actually darker and grayer than Color A.

Hard to believe isn't it? I know!

Being the skeptic that I am, I did my own little experiment and cut circle A and circle B out of the original image, so I could look at them beside each other.

Hmm.  Well what do you know, it's true:)  

Have a fun day!

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