It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

So in June many of us were upset by Etsy's meta-tag stuffing, and when upcoming changes were annouced, a lot more of us were thinking "what's that Lucy, a football for me to kick?" (Gilmore Girls reference)

And when our views vanished we were left floundering, frustrated, and wondering what happened. Many Etsy sellers threatened to jump ship, the forums were flooded with angry and upset sellers, myself one of them, but now, I believe the dust has settled and things are back on track. So much so that I am over a month backordered and I had to close down my low selling shops and just keep Etsy open. But I promised to do my Google experiment again, even though I knew the results would be off since my other shops are closed. But I still wanted to see how people are finding me.

So here goes. First I logged out of Google, and then I cleared my cache, browsing history, everything I could think of that would leave a trace on my computer. Not an exact science, but it helps. Then I did several searches. I searched for "pumpkin hat", "knit pumpkin hat", "pumpkin hat boston beanies", "apple hat", "knit apple hat", "apple hat boston beanies". I did all these searches without the quotes, and I only looked at the first 10 pages.

Here are the results:

"pumpkin hat" search
none of my items found

"knit pumpkin hat" search
Etsy-page 1 shopping guide
iCraft -page 2 shopping guide

"pumpkin hat boston beanies"
Etsy-page 1
1000Markets-page 1
Cosaverde-page 1, 2
iCraft-page 1
my blog-page 1
Artfire-page 2 (a review)
Shopping Guide had Etsy and iCraft

"apple hat"
1000Markets-page 6
CosaVerde-page 7

"knit apple hat"
iCraft-page 1 shopping guide
Etsy -page 1 shopping guide, and there was a link under another listing show more results from Etsy, I clicked that and there was my listing on page 1, but how many searchers are going to know to do that?
iCraft- page 4 (a different listing), page 9 another different listing
1000Markets- page 6

"apple hat Boston Beanies"
1000Markets-page 1
CosaVerde-page 1
Etsy-page 1
iCraft- page 1
Shopping Guide had Etsy and iCraft.

So what did I learn? I had no expectations for Artfire, 1000Markets, or iCraft to turn up in the searches. In fact it shows how on top keeping clean their listings Artfire is, as I recall my Artfire listings made it in pretty quickly into the searches last time. Also, Etsy and 1000Markets are now in the searches, in places that I can expect them to be, so this is GREAT news.

The only problem is that to be seen, shoppers have to enter terms like "knit" in order to narrow down some of their searches. I hope they know to do so, or they may be frustrated with their hits. But an Etsy product was always on page one, driving a customer to Etsy, and maybe that person will shop there and try and see what else is available and...

So make a good product, take great pictures, and use helpful, thoughtful tags, and the customers will find you.

When green is all there is to be

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why?

Wonder, I am green and it'll do fine, it's beautiful!

And I think it's what I want to be.

~It's Not Easy Bein' Green by the Muppets

The Green Revolution has really taken off. Organic food, hybrid cars, energy-saving light bulbs, small steps and ways to make a difference is everywhere. I like to think that buying handmade is a part of this, learning how products are made, and where your sources are coming from. It all matters.

I started knitting to keep my hands busy in grad school so I could concentrate on the lectures, but, tragically, I am allergic to wool. I am teased and tantelized every time I walk into my LYS and see the rows and rows of beautiful skeins that I cannot knit with. So I was forced to find alternatives to wool, and the most popular was acrylic, imagine my dismay when I discovered that acrylic is petroleum based. So I was basically knitting with oil? So I switched to cotton, that's earth-friendly, right? Well better than acrylic, but then as my research shows here cotton has it's downfalls too, unless you get organic, and many companies are realizing this.

So now that I have found suppliers for organic cotton, is there a call for it? Sort of. Customers would like it, however when push comes to pennies and dollars, many want to save the extra dollars and buy my regular cotton hats. I will continue to make and offer them, but I know they will never be popular as my other items. I am also a member of NaturalKids, an Etsy team dedicated to natural products for children.

However, like many things in life, it comes down to marketing, and that is where I heard about Cosa Verde. This is a place to showcase your earth-friendly wares, but your don't sell from there, you link to your selling venue like Etsy and Artfire. What I have noticed, they bring a lot more attention to my organic hats, and with this trend becoming more popular, all it can do is help. And it is a direct place for the people who like to shop with the earth-friendly products in mind.

The Great Watermelon Hunt

Etsy Admin Update 6/18/08 There will be changes to this once Etsy rolls out the updates and they get integrated in the search engines. I will run this experiment again. It took a while for my listings to get bumped off, it may take a while for them to reappear.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Further using my watermelon hat as an example, I thought it was time to do a thorough search of google for my listings of my hat. I have it listed on several sites and with all the hoopla on Etsy, I wanted to see, in real time, how the other sites were holding up against each other for the who's on first listing.

First I cleared my cache, my browsing history and anything that could be lurking that could filter my search. And I logged out of Google.
Next I did a simple search in Google for "watermelon hat" without the quotes, thinking like a buyer, that they want a watermelon hat so that is what they would enter.

Here are the results:
Artfire: page 1 in the shopping results
Cosa Verde: page 5
iCraft: page 6

Other hits:
Twitter iCraft: page 14
my blog, previous post: page 14
iCraft (for a different listing): page 15
another blog: page 17

Note: My Etsy and My 1000Markets listings were not found

I stopped looking after page 50, forgive me. Now as with all experiments there are flaws, so let's point them out. First I did not look at all 79 pages (there may have been even more), and I may have missed a listing on the 50 pages that I did scroll through, but I believe I was looking pretty carefully. A few other Etsy shop's listings did appear, but not mine, and not near the number for sale on the site. Also, since this is my personal computer there might still be some residual memory that would muck up the page numbers a bit, but I don't think it would make a listing disappear. Also I am a new member to 1000Markets, so maybe they are slower to put up their listings, however my listings for Artfire and Cosa Verde are also new and they made it in somehow.

And it should be noted in an attempt to find my 1000Markets listing, I searched for my exact title listing "Watermelon Cotton Hat by Boston Beanies" and still I got nothing, so I am really puzzled by that. I checked my tags, and there are enough and not too many repeating words, so it really should come up.

And when I did the same search, "Watermelon Cotton Hat by Boston Beanies", a completly different listing on Etsy came up on page 1. It is like the Twilight Zone for those two sites.

So what did I learn? Well I know the average buyer will never scroll though 50 pages, I'm lucky if they look through 5. And that Etsy is not the only site having listing visibility problems. And it should be noted, I have been watching my Google Analytics very closly this past weekend, and will continue to do so for the next few weeks, and that while Etsy is still having listing visibility problems, somehow, I manage to get more Etsy hits than Artfire hits, despite being on page 1 with Artfire. And many more of these hits come from search engines. I will not jump the Etsy ship, but I am puzzled at where the leaks are.

So the mystery continues...

Not all watermelon hats are created equal

SEO 101 from Artfire

So quite a commotion has been going on in the Etsy forums. It seems that while many of us were fretting, wondering why our shops went the way of the Leaky Cauldron and buyers turned into Muggles, Etsy admin manipulated the meta tags of everyones shop listings making sellers invisible to search engines like Google and Yahoo.

I list my hats on several sites. You can view the HTML source by going up to the menu bar and view then source or right click view source. These Title headings are in between the title tags <>
I have edited my watermelon hat titles to the bare bones for some sites.
The title headings for my watermelon hat are as follows:

Etsy: Handmade for Children on Etsy - Watermelon Hat by bostonbeanies (64 characters)
Artfire: Watermelon Cotton Hat : BostonBeanies - ArtFire Children's (59 characters)
iCraft: Accessories, Hats - Watermelon Hat by BostonBeanies - icraft.ca (64 characters)
cosa verde: cosa verde Watermelon Cotton Hat by Boston Beanies (53 characters)
1000 Markets: Watermelon Cotton Hat by Boston Beanies (40 characters)

The problem with Etsy is the adding in the front the phrase "handmade for children on etsy - " all of those characters and spaces take up precious searching characters. Google and Yahoo often will not search after 60+ characters, and Etsy takes up half of them with their tagging, leaving me without my own title tags.

Check out Artfire, they add their tags at the back, that's fine.
iCraft is a little strange and puts tags in the front and back, with the category in the front and their id in the back. Strange and almost as bad as Etsy, note the same high character numbers.
cosa verde is simple, just their name and then my title, what you don't see is that there is a verticle line between verde and Boston, but still not bad, not too intrusive, and still under the character limit.
1000Markets doesn't even stuff the title tags, they add nothing, what you type is what you get.

I am not opposed to Etsy marking my listings on their site, but keep it simple, and keep it in the back end.

Before April, when I would Google and yahoo my hats, my Etsy listings used to be on the first few pages of hits, now my Etsy listings have disappeared because the spider bots that organize the searches have to crawl all the way through the other words in the title tags to get at the heart of my listing title.

But my Artfire listing shows up on page 1 or 2 usually. This is because Artfire lists to Google base (thank you!!) 1000Markets not yet, I am still tweaking to figure out why, and iCraft still needs work, but all are better than Etsy right now.

So what should we sellers do? We can't change the front tag stuffing, only Etsy Admin can, and they should soon. They get .20 per listing but over 3% per sale which is more than .20 per hat. Right now, with my visability down to zilch, why should I bother to relist? I am glad I have my own URL, http://www.bostonbeanies.com/ and now I may just redirect that link to my Artfire shop instead of my Etsy shop. I am in a wait and see mode, and am really upset that people are telling others that this is not a big deal.

We were all left in the dark while Etsy Admin let us flounder.
They knew what they were doing.

They. Knew.

A Little Advice

A while back there was this amazing thread on Etsy with a huge list compiled by VieleraDesign with places to sell, promote, network, craft fairs all online. It's amazing! I added a few more and put it in alphabetical order (the librarian coming out in me:-)
Here are my thoughts on the places I have tried.

Places to Sell Online:
I have a few requirements that should be noted. Since traffic is uncertain at a new place, I like the joining to be free, and the listing to be free or cheap. The site also has to be easy to navigate, otherwise what is the point, I don't want to fuss to hard to figure out how to get a banner up, get a listing up and register.

http://www.artfire.com/ Just opened a shop here. Apparently they went through a face-lift upgrade and things are much nicer now. But it is free to set up a shop for a certain number of items, so I did that. They upload to Google Base, which is excellent and puts you at the top of the search in Google and lists you in Google shopping searches. Their prices for a monthly account are going up soon though, I just have the free one.

ArtFire Referral Use my referral if you want/can!

http://www.bigcartel.com/

http://www.cafepress.com/

http://www.canduru.com/

http://cosaverde.com/ Just joined. An eco-friendly marketing venue, it is really isn't a selling venue as you have to have other selling venues that you link to. But it has a clean interface, it is juried, and user-friendly. You can upload items through RSS feeds as well, and their admin responded to my suggestions within HOURS, I was stunned and impressed. And there are many promotional codes out there to get a few months free and use me as a referral if you wish:)

Cosa Verde Referral Use my referral if you want/can!

http://www.crowsoup.com/

http://www.dawanda.com/ Closed my shop down, had sold only one hat and it was really clunky to use the website. Every time I wanted to edit a page the HTML kept getting in the way. And items must be listed in euros.

http://www.ecrater.com/ Could never figure this website out. And there did not seem to be enough traffic to be worth the headache or time. Yes, I am demanding, I want to understand something FAST!

http://www.elsewares.com/

http://www.erayo.com/

http://www.etsy.com/ Have sold on here for years and was my first step into selling at handmade specific markets post eBay. Last summers"keyword stuffing" scandal" took a while to clear up, and it slowed my sales and views. However, Etsy corrected the tag situation now I am listed in google automatically so I will continue to sell here, as this is my shop that get by far the most views of all my shops. There also promises to be many positive changes on the horizen, which I am excited to see.

http://www.girlshopspot.com/

http://www.gozabo.com/

http://www.handmadecatalog.com/

http://www.handmadefusion.com/index.php?

http://www.icraft.com/ Based in Canada. Paid a one-time fee. Had a shop, ignored it, but it got views, no sales. So now I have updated it and revamped it. Best part about it, you can change your shopname/URL without changing your username, they are not attached. So when I changed names I did not lose any views or anything. Wish other sites could implement this. However, this is the only site that I know that does this, though Etsy clims this change is in the works.

http://www.imagekind.com/

http://www.lollishops.com/ This is a juried site that I joined during frantic opening days. I kept getting kicked off and reasked to join that I decided I would let them work out the kinks before I signed on. Then I saw the listing tier pricing system and thought it was a bit steep for a very limited market. But the site seems to be doing ok. There is no feedback system though, a bit strange.

http://lov.li/

http://www.mintd.com/

http://www.pinkpoodle.com/ Just closed my site to this one too. No traffic and now they charge to list. Sorry no way.

http://www.seekingdesigners.com/

http://www.shopify.com/

http://www.shophandmade.com/

http://www.silkfair.com/

http://www.skydowntown.com/

http://www.supermarkethq.com/

http://www.winkelf.com/

http://www.yessy.com/

http://www.youcraft.org/

http://www.zibbet.com/

http://1000markets.com/ I opened a free shop, the site looked beautiful, very easy to search. What I don't like, it is not international friendly, and in this global world that is a setback. I understand they are working with Amazon on that though. And payments are made through Amazon, which is odd why not PayPal like many other sites? However it was pointed out this eliminates Non Paying Buyers, so that should be a plus, but I wonder if it will be a turn off to some buyers. But it is a free juried site, and I liked the exposure, but I could not maintain it through the holidays, put it on vacation, and they kicked me off. Oh well. I think I still have an account there, so my name is parked, which is good.


Places to Advertise Online:
Most people find me, who tell me how they found me anyway, is through a Google search or by searching the site. So tags are more vital than ever to be kept accurate.

http://www.thelittleblackboxes.com/ She reviewed me! I was very excited to see this and I never sent her anything. I felt like a chosen one!

http://www.craigslist.org/ I have done this, I can't say if it helped or not, I didn't see a change in my vews or sales. And no one has ever said they found me on Craigslist.

http://www.webbcatalog.com/

http://www.usfreeads.com/

http://www.oodle.com/http://modish.typepad.com/

http://www.theindiego.com/

http://www.craftster.org/advertise

http://www.webclassifieds.us/

http://www.linkrefferal.com/

http://www.projectwonderful.com/

http://www.diyscene.com/

http://www.stumblehere.com/

http://lunacraft.com/help_promote



Social Networking Sites:
Social networking for me is still a way to connest with friends family and buyers, and I like it to be free.

http://www.artbistro.com/

http://www.cafemom.com/

http://www.thecreativespirit.ning.com/

http://www.creativestem.com/

http://www.deviantart.com/

http://www.entrecard.com/

http://www.facebook.com/ I have a facebook page, and a fanpage. I linked my blog to my fanpage so I don't have to double post and it is one more way to be seen, I don't know if I have made any sales through there, but it is a good free marketing tool that people have heard of.

http://www.flickr.com/ I have a flickr site, but I am very careful to not post anything about Etsy, they will shut you down and you will lose everything. I try to include other photos as well so it is not just my hats. You can see a few of my magical kitty Gryffin!

http://www.indiepublic.com/

http://www.linkedin.com/ My friend keeps asking me to join this, hmmmm.

http://www.mylot.com/

http://www.myspace.com/

http://www.stumbleupon.com/

http://www.smidge.ca/

http://www.squidoo.com/

http://www.stylehive.com/

http://www.twitter.com/ I have a Twitter account, I have no idea what to do with it, and honestly, it seems like one more thing I have to do and can't keep up with.

http://www.thedb.com/

http://www.weloveetsy.com/


Find Craft Shows/Fairs:
Typically for craft fairs when I am driving around and I see a show advertised I pull over and write down the date. Also I search the net for surrounding town names and craft fairs and hits come up. I like to scope out a fair the year before to see if it will be a good fit for me.

http://www.artandcraftshows.net/

http://www.artfaircalendar.com/

http://www.bazaarbizarre.org/

http://www.craftconnection.net/

http://www.craftlister.com/

http://www.craftmasternews.com/

http://craftersbuzz.com/craftshows.html

http://www.craftsreport.com/showfinder

http://eventlister.com/

http://www.hpifestivals.com/

http://www.fairsandfestivals.net/

http://www.festivaldirectory.comfestivalnet.com/

http://www.juriedartservices.com/

http://www.indiecraftfairguide.com/

http://www.indiecraftshows.com/

http://www.sunshineartist.com/

http://zapplication.org/

Free Web Design: I am excited to try building my own website, as I have my own URL. But I need it to be easy clean, preferbly free for now, and quick to make changes on.

http://www.yola.com/

http://www.wix.com/