My First Paid Advertising with Craftcult

Shelling out $15USD for a Carousel Ad for 4 days makes me feel... all businesswomen-y. So here are the parameters of Craftcult Ad Experiment 1.0: The item listed had an initial view count of 10 with no hearts, the ad started on Monday 4th May 2009. I spotted the ad at around 10am (New York time), with a view count of 16. Will be posting more data at regular intervals, so keep a look out!

8.50pm (New York time)

View Count: 27

New Hearts: 0

7.00am (New York time)

View Count: 33

New Hearts: 0

My featured item has changed, so it's a little hard to track the change in views since I last checked my shop, urgh...

7.00am (New York time)

View Count: 186

New Hearts: ??

2nd featured item: Coral Rose Necklace

9.00pm (New York time)

View Count: 231
New Hearts: 2

Made a sale! It's not the featured item though.

My third item is up!

7.00am (New York time)

View Count: 120

New Hearts: ??

8.00pm (New York time)
View Count: 135
New Hearts: 0

6.00am (New York time)
View Count: 152
New Hearts: 0 

4 item just posted:
View Count: 268 (original)
New Hearts: 0

12.00am (New York time)
View Count: 283
New Hearts: 1

My last item is taken off!
View Count: 291
New Hearts: 1

Total New Views:

1st item: 6

2nd item: 45

3rd item: 32

4th item: 23

106 views

3 new hearts

Hmm...106 views seems like a lot, but then with US$15 will let me renew 75 times, even if I get only 5 hearts each time, I'll still get a total of 375 views. Of course this data is not totally accurate, but another advantage of renewing is getting back on top of the pile, which means a higher chance of getting noticed and featured in treasuries/ front page/ gift guides.

I guess I'll stick to adding new items to my shop for now, plus renewing. 

It'll be a while before I advertise again.

Buckle Up!

Just added a new hot pink peacock stretch belt on Etsy...went to this really traditional craft shop to get more of the plastic floral belt buckles, and to my horror they're all sold out! What a shame...I really wanted to keep a few designs for myself...well technically I could do that and not earn anything, but the capitalist in me wins in the end. Hopefully the new buckles I bought won't be sold out that soon.

Etsy Find Of The Day

Paper Circus with Dancing Pigs

While crafting, I left Time Machine 2 on Auto Scroll and this cute paper toy caught my eye. The pigs even move when you rotate the flag! This will make a fabulous gift, check out other variations (dogs, hares, squirrels etc) of this toy at Under The Stairs Studios.

Etsy Tip Of The Day

As a new seller on Etsy, I'm really thankful for all the great tips I've gathered from the forums. Hang out there, make a few Etsy friends and you'll be pleasantly surprised at how supportive they all are. So here it is on my blog, a tip every now and then on what I'm doing to improve my shop. It may sound painfully obvious to the experienced sellers, but to the uninitiated, this may be of help to you.

So what's my first Tip? Well, there are actually two. Firstly, add your shop name to your tags. You never know who might be googling your shop and hey, there're 14 tags to fill up, don't let it go to waste!

My second Tip: do you find it a hassle to keep checking on who has hearted your items instead of your shop? There's craftcult to the rescue! I check Google Analytics once in a while (still trying to wrap my head around it, statistics...argh!) and I'm always curious about where my traffic comes from. And craftcult popped up. Oh. My. God. I'm saved!  I believed a few of my items were featured there for a while. There's a function called heart-o-matic in which you feed your shop name and immediately you can track who has hearted you today, how many page views you have etc... even views per heart ratio, which is pretty useful in knowing which items are more popular. Try craftcult, it's the best tool I've stumbled upon!

Etsy Find Of The Day

Ouija Board Necklace

Item available at TheCaravan

I fell in love with this necklace the minute I saw it...I thought it was a pendant bought from a supplier at first but it turns out to be handmade from scratch.  Immediately on my favourite list. 

Also available as a bracelet.