OMG a post
How sad is it that this the closest icon I have to crafting? I should fix that.
At any rate, this is a post related to crafting, or rather to the business of crafting. As in, I'd like to give it a shot for real. Not quit the day job (yet) but roll my pants up and get knee- or at least ankle-deep all up in it.
Artfire.com is offering a pretty awesome deal for a week. If you sign up for a Pro account by noon PST October 1, you pay $5.95 a month. Like, you always pay $5.95 a month. Until you don't need a third-party seller because you've opened up your own shop or whatever. You don't pay transaction fees, which is pretty stellar if you do a lot of traffic, or if you price just so and are tired of paying out of it to Etsy and PayPal, which, really, is your own fault because you ought to be pricing that in.
So you think about the benefits of Artfire vs. Etsy. No question Etsy gets more traffic and attention, but then it becomes about the quality of the traffic and attention. How much of it is potential buyers and how much is sellers eyeing the competition's wares? If you make fandom-themed items, as I frequently do, how many people are going to see "16,202 results for twilight" or the still-daunting "2,752 results for harry potter", who's going to wade through all of that? So either you list something every two hours, or you generate your traffic externally, which could be directed to Artfire as easily as it can be Etsy.
And then there's always the option of doing both. Artfire has the option of listing stuff and possibly everything you have on Etsy on Artfire as well, but then there's the naming question. I'm not in love with my Etsy store's name, but I would want both stores to have the same name to minimize confusion, and I don't necessarily want to start fresh or whatever still with that name. And looking back at the Etsy store, I'm not necessarily that attached to it. I never built up a lot of stats to speak of, and there appears to be some copyright infringement going on in the Items Sold section. But then I have to think of a new name in the next week that I'll be chained to presumably forever.
For the moment, I'm a fan of doing both. Maybe I could run one as a WYSIWYG and the other as customizable pieces. I dunno. Also, for real and for serious -- business cards. Which means a logo. Which means a name.
At any rate, this is a post related to crafting, or rather to the business of crafting. As in, I'd like to give it a shot for real. Not quit the day job (yet) but roll my pants up and get knee- or at least ankle-deep all up in it.
Artfire.com is offering a pretty awesome deal for a week. If you sign up for a Pro account by noon PST October 1, you pay $5.95 a month. Like, you always pay $5.95 a month. Until you don't need a third-party seller because you've opened up your own shop or whatever. You don't pay transaction fees, which is pretty stellar if you do a lot of traffic, or if you price just so and are tired of paying out of it to Etsy and PayPal, which, really, is your own fault because you ought to be pricing that in.
So you think about the benefits of Artfire vs. Etsy. No question Etsy gets more traffic and attention, but then it becomes about the quality of the traffic and attention. How much of it is potential buyers and how much is sellers eyeing the competition's wares? If you make fandom-themed items, as I frequently do, how many people are going to see "16,202 results for twilight" or the still-daunting "2,752 results for harry potter", who's going to wade through all of that? So either you list something every two hours, or you generate your traffic externally, which could be directed to Artfire as easily as it can be Etsy.
And then there's always the option of doing both. Artfire has the option of listing stuff and possibly everything you have on Etsy on Artfire as well, but then there's the naming question. I'm not in love with my Etsy store's name, but I would want both stores to have the same name to minimize confusion, and I don't necessarily want to start fresh or whatever still with that name. And looking back at the Etsy store, I'm not necessarily that attached to it. I never built up a lot of stats to speak of, and there appears to be some copyright infringement going on in the Items Sold section. But then I have to think of a new name in the next week that I'll be chained to presumably forever.
For the moment, I'm a fan of doing both. Maybe I could run one as a WYSIWYG and the other as customizable pieces. I dunno. Also, for real and for serious -- business cards. Which means a logo. Which means a name.