100 Etsy Hearts and If You Need A Black Heart… ♥

I’m excited! I got my 100th Etsy heart today!!! Yippee!! And I haven’t been participating in forums where people critique stores or exchange hearts lately. And I haven’t really even been updating or paying very close attention to my store. Real work has gotten busy again and I had orders that had to get done before promoting could begin again. And yet, over the last couple of weeks, I’ve gotten at least 20 new hearts and that’s so cool. Lots of them are strictly customers too (not other sellers).

What this tells me is while sales might be slow this month for me on Etsy, people are getting ready for their holiday shopping and bookmarking to come back when it’s time to buy gifts. I’ll be getting ready because I’d sure like to turn those hearts into sales and lifelong customers.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Everyone on Etsy wants to know how to create these little black heart symbols to add to their descriptive copy. ♥ I don’t blame them. I like them too. Unlike eBay, Etsy gives you very little creative range in the description area, so little hearts add something to the copy. They make neat bullet points.

On the Mac, like I am on today, I find that cutting and pasting works best. But on the PC, there are several ways to create the little hearts:

&heart; (all closed up like this) or

alt key  and the 3 on the number pad (obviously this might not work on a laptop, which doesn’t have a number pad).

now you know. And if those don’t work for you, cut and paste.

Here’s to lots of hearts, big, little, black and full of promise.

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Who Is Your Target Customer And Where Are You Promoting Your Business?

I’ve been participating in Etsy forum discussions a lot since I’ve joined. There is so much great information there and everyone is so helpful. It’s definitely helped me get up to speed quickly on Etsy so I understand a bit about the navigation and the process. For example, renewing listings (which costs just 20 cents) gets you back on the home page of Etsy, if just for 30 seconds, where new listings are posted and rotate. It’s a great way to be noticed.

On the forums, there is a lot of discussion about “hearts,” or marking your favorite items or stores on the site. Etsy store owners get disappointed when hearts go away (it does hurt a little when that number goes down, I’ll admit), and there just seems to be this push to have tons of hearts. But really, if you are participating in a heart promotion on the forums or doing the “I’ll heart you if you heart me” thing, are you reaching actual customers?

The holidays are fast approaching. So my question is “Where are you promoting your store?” You can promote in the forums or on crafting networks like WeLoveEtsy.com or indiepublic.com, but are you reaching the folks who will eventually buy from you? I’m not saying that crafters don’t buy other crafters’ work; that happens all the time. We are a supportive bunch. But we are also all trying to make a living at this so we are less likely to purchase than say that fashionista or new mom.

Now is the time to think about your target customer, those people who are most likely to buy your products. And then seek out venues, social networks, Facebook groups, etc., where your products will not only be seen and marked as favorites, but purchased as well.

Hearts are great. Sales are better.

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