We Need a New Keyword (Tag) For Artisan Handmade on eBay

When I started selling my handmade photo albums, scrapbooks and journals online, I started on eBay. It was the easiest place to start and at the time, the only game in town. Now I sell on my website and on Etsy too, but I do still sell on eBay and I have to admit, when I’m putting my energy there, it’s still my most successful venue. Let’s face it… with 250 million-plus registered users, the audience is there.

Something bothers me a little on eBay though. Well lots of things about eBay bother me lately, but this one is specific to trying to sell handmade items there.

On a whim this morning, I searched “handmade” on eBay. And I got 48,971 results. That’s a lot of handmade in what has primarily become a commodities marketplace. As I sifted through the results though (and believe me I didn’t sift through them all or I’d still be doing it), I noticed that many of those “handmade” products are not handmade by the person selling them, which really muddies the waters if you are looking for products that are handmade by the artisan. There’s lots of fair trade products on eBay, and lots of items that I’m not sure I would believe are actually handmade, but hey, who am I to judge?

So I searched Indie… 3,000 plus listings here but these referred mostly to vintage indie-designed clothing, s that won’t work.

eBay has categories for finished crafts and artisan jewelry. I don’t make jewelry but I know I don’t use the finished crafts category often because I don’t get great results there.

Self-representing artists have their own category and they also have EBSQ, which is an association for self-representing artists. When you see this tag on an art listing, you know it has been created by the person selling it.

We need something like this for eBay artisans as well. A tag, an acronym, an organization we can promote on eBay listings that defines us as self-representing artisans and crafters.

Yes, we have Etsy, and it’s growing and making a name for itself. Based on views vs. sales though, I still think I’m being checked out primarily by other sellers. I have less visitors on eBay but a much higher sell-through. That’s because eBay is established and reaches a mass consumer market. And I’ve been there longer.

Most eBay pundits feel that niche marketing is the way to build a future on eBay. Actually, that’s the way to build an Internet business. And you can’t get more “niche-y” than a handmade line of whatever it is you are creating.

So I think we need to come up with a new keyword for our eBay titles that makes it clear that the items we are selling on eBay are handmade by us. And then we need to let the masses know. It will certainly help our target customer find us without having to sift through 48,971 listings.

Any suggestions?

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Selling crafts on eBay or Etsy? Don’t miss this promotional opportunity!

About a month ago, I sent out an order to a repeat customer (my favorite kind!) While she loved the album as always, this one was a rush order for her, and I made the mistake of throwing the album into a plain plastic bag and just sending it. She was very disappointed that it wasn’t wrapped the way I always send my albums…in tissue, a clear plastic bag with a bow and a thank you note. I apologized profusely, and I’ve been very careful not to send an order out that way again. Customers buy an experience and if they take your item out of the box and get excited even before opening the package, you could have a customer for life!

Your packaging should reflect the same care and creativity that goes into your products. It makes for a special experience for your customer and it also helps them to remember you and your name. I add a thank you note that I created in Microsoft Word, put my logo and a picture on there, so it helps customers remember my brand. Right now, I’m also enclosing a 20% off coupon for each customer’s next order. The holidays are closer than you think.

Treat your packages that are going to customers the way you would expect to receive something or would like a gift sent to a loved one.

Recently, I purchased some fabric on eBay. The fabric was gorgeous, arrived very quickly, but the seller only enclosed a receipt. There was nothing to remind me of her name. I might not buy from her again, because who knows if I’ll remember who she is? And that’s a shame because I buy A LOT of fabric, and I could be a great repeat customer.

Put something in each package that brands you and helps your customers remember who you are. Package your products with care so your customer knows that whenever they receive a package from you, it will be special. It doesn’t have to cost a lot! When those customers come back again and again, you’ll be glad you made the effort.

I buy tissue and bags at Nashville Wraps. They are inexpensive, I can buy in bulk and it’s easy. I’m off to get some gift boxes!!

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My Very First Album Blog Review!

I’m so excited! I’ve gotten my very first blog review, on The Bathrobe Bride.

You can see it here: http://bathrobebride.com/blog/91.html

And while you’re looking, check out all the other great bridal advice Crystal is giving out too!

Getting your brand name and pictures out on the Internet through review blogs, forums and social networking now will make the upcoming holiday season a raging success. That’s what I’m working toward anyway. I want to have enough business this holiday that I can barely keep up!!

I’ll be letting everyone know about my first review! 🙂

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Indiepublic.com and other Crafty Social Networking Sites

So in my search to find out all that I can about Etsy.com, I began searching forums this week. And while finding out cool etsy stuff, I also found some great crafty social networking sites.

I joined Facebook a while back, and I’ve been building my friend’s list there and playing Scrabble with one of my friends….so cool! Check out Scrabulous if you are on Facebook. So I’ll digress for a moment…when I was dating my husband and then newly married, we lived near my parents and our Saturday routine was to go to my Mom’s house on Saturday afternoons, drink wine and play Scrabble. Great memories of drunken spelling! My mother passed away before the Internet age, but she would have loved it. Email, social networking and Scrabble online! Who would have thought?

Anyway, back to social networking for crafty people. I found two sites: craftbuddy.com and Indiepublic.com while browsing the forums yesterday and immediately joined both. I was so impressed. Now I can network with other people who are as crazy as I am! I haven’t had a chance to do much on craftbuddy.com but I did spend some time on Indiepublic.com yesterday and I think just about every Etsy seller is on there too. Everyone is so friendly! I can’t wait to spend more time browsing and getting to know the other crafters on these great sites. And it’s great for driving traffic and promoting your craft too. You can customize your home page and put the etsy mini widget on there too (even in comments to other crafters!) Check them out. You can check me out on indiepublic.com too: I’m Diane Falvey on there. Add me as a friend!

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I Created This Easy Custom WordPress Header!

So yesterday, I decided it was time to get this blog rolling but I didn’t want to use just the regular headers that were available from wordpress. Not that they aren’t great, they are. And wordpress makes this process so turnkey, it’s amazing. But when I was tooling around the designs, I realized that some of the headers could be customized, so I decided to play a bit. And I was pretty proud of what I came up with considering the graphics tools I have to work with. It may not be perfect, but it is definitely more branded to me than what else was available.

I was so impressed with myself, I went ahead and redid my etsy store header too. You can check that one out here: irisandlily.etsy.com.

The neat thing here is how I made my header. It was really easy. I used images I had, Microsoft office Powerpoint (believe it or not…it’s a decent graphics tool in a pinch) and Snagit to capture my header, resize it and turn it into a jpg. You can find out more about Snagit here. I think they even give you a free two-week trial.

WordPress gives you the size you need (size varies depending on the design you choose) for your header image. For Etsy it’s 760 x 100 pixels, and here’s what you do. I had logo image already and some pretty graphics from an old site I used to have, plus a picture of one of the albums that I make. On a blank slide, I created a box in powerpoint and inserted the images, moving them around until I had them the way I wanted them. (Not that they are so awesome….but believe me, graphic design is way out of my league). The trickiest part was getting the little images to sit in front of the bigger images….here’s how you do that on Powerpoint. In the bottom left corner of the tool palette there is a DRAW function. Click on that and the top selection is Order. Click on that and it gives you the “Move to Back,” Move to Front commands. It only took me like 3 months to figure that out. 🙂

When I had this the way I wanted, I used Snagit to take a screen capture of just the part I wanted to turn into a header, resized and cropped it in that program and voila…..turned it into a header image that fit perfectly. So fun.

If you don’t have a logo, Powerpoint has a WordArt program that gives you the capability to turn plain words into…well, art. You can create a logo there too. I did that for an eBay store I had for a little while, see….. I created the logo with wordart, added the little bee guy (isn’t he cute?) and turned it into a jpg. Easy. I think you might be able to even do this in word too.

There are lots of you sellers on eBay who have opened stores. Even if you use eBay’s templates for your store design, you can really make your store your own with a simple logo like this, created with tools almost everyone has on their computers.

So on this blog, I’ll be talking about some of the ways I’ve sold my crafts online, even though I’m kinda a non-techy type. What’s so amazing about selling online is all the cool things you get to learn and have fun with. I’m off to Facebook next to create a page. I’ll let you know how that goes. If you’re a Facebook fan, watch for my IrisandLily page, coming soon!!

If you stumble across this post and you are wondering who the heck I am, check out my About page…. my craft is bookbinding.

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