Celebrating two years of online selling

I am three today!

OK, so if it is the dog's birthday, that means it is also an anniversary for my Etsy shop, the first one I opened online, and means that I've now been selling online for a full two years.  I don't claim to have any special insight, but I must admit that hanging out in the Etsy, Folksy and Dreamaid forums, I've seen so many people start off with great enthusiasm and then realise how hard getting noticed is and fade away, that I do feel like a bit of a veteran!

It all has been much more complicated than I thought when I started out - I had that basic "I'll put it online, people will see it and buy it, job done" sort of idea.  I had never really thought about the competition for SEO, the complexities of pricing, how much time social networking would take etc.  Then there are the off-line tasks - photos, listings, business cards, packaging.  It really is a full time job, on top of a full time job.

This week's earrings

My advice to anyone starting out would be don't start unless you are really happy to spend more time on the business of selling than you are on making things.  This works out OK for me, as most of my jewellery is quick to make, and if I spent as much time on that as promoting, this tiny little house would be bursting at the seams.

I enjoy the selling, but the making is still the best part for me. I've moved on in terms of crafting skills as well, and I hope this shows in my work.  There is so much more material available now in terms of interesting and colourful gemstone and findings - as many of you know, I'm as much addicted to buying beads as making things!

And another pair of earrings!

I have five online shops (Folksy, Etsy, Dreamaid, Zibbet and Stylistic Gallery), but my main focus is Folksy, as it gives the best value for money in terms of SEO and that's really what gets online non-crafty customers to your shop.  I've nothing against crafters of course, but I want to reach the real magpies in the population who adore gemstone jewellery but don't want the hassle of making it themselves.  I've been very lucky with around 117 online sales across the shops in the 2 years, and only about 5 of those sales have been to other crafters or handmade shop owners.  Thanks to all my customers, as well as those folks who have given great advice over the two years - I literally couldn't have done it without you.

Other sales in the 'real' world have boosted my total to around 150, thanks mainly to colleagues in the day job, and it's great that they and some online customers are now regulars.  I don't sell to friends and family so if they admire something, I tend to end up giving it away (one of the many reasons why I'll never be a millionaire!) but I have inflicted a number of items on them as birthday and Christmas presents - poor things!

Enough rambling.  In the spirit of onwards and upwards, I'm celebrating this anniversary by launching my own website www.blueforestjewellery.com  Two years ago I could never have dreamed I'd be able to do this, so allow me a proud moment, please!  It is in it's early stages, though, and I'm still on a steep learning curve, so please pop along if you have time and do please send any comments you have.

A blog about not blogging

Coming soon to a Folksy shop near you...

Just a quick blog to apologise about the lack of blogging!  I know, I might as well have prepared a proper post in the time it will take me to type this, but hey, I never said I was logical!!

Amazonite reminds me of the sea.. 

Just to prove that I'm not spending these long summer evenings doing absolutely nothing, I'll let you into the secret that I'm preparing the all-singing, all-dancing Blue Forest Jewellery website.  I've set myself a target of having it ready for the 4th August, the two year anniversary of starting to sell online, and incidentally, the dog's birthday.  Progress is slow, however, as every time I enter a new element, I then have to change my mind about 60 times about the look of it.  Good job no-one is paying me to do web design.

Sunshine in a bead!

Yesterday I had a parcel from the lovely Cathy of Headpinwear on Etsy - part of a little bead swap we arranged.  She was very generous and there are lots of things there that are just a little bit different from what I would normally use, so expect something a little bit different.

Suitable for the Queen of Sheba

And there is the new range of jewellery in antique bronze.  It was a mistake to get started on that - now I'm using the excuse that I need to see all my designs made in silver and bronze to buy more beads and findings.  Cunning, eh?

 And before I go, I must confess to smelling nice now (too much information?!) thanks to my friend Chrissy's lovely birthday gift of bubbles and body lotion. And of course, a beautiful card too!  So lucky to have such good friends.

Good and bad for online sales

As my regular blog followers know, I think there's a lot of luck involved in successful online selling (see this blog post on luck if you missed it). However, looking at my stats now another financial year has ended, there seem to be some patterns in my sales and some things that I can't back up with hard evidence, but are serious 'hunches' and I wondered how many of you agree that these are good or bad for sales and views? Here goes, and remember each one is just my opinion or gut feeling.

A great eternal truth of shopping:owls a

re really popular

The recent sunny weather prompted these thoughts and my first proposition:

Sunny weather is bad for online selling. People are outside instead of in browsing the Internet. So bad weather is much better for views and sales.

Winter, autumn and spring are better than summer for sales and views. Even if it's a bad summer in the UK, there's still less Internet activity. This applies to Etsy too, even though it's a global marketplace.

August is the worst month, October is the best. It's either very organised Christmas shoppers who are attracted to my shops, or the change to autumn sends more people to online buying.

Weekdays are better than weekends for both views and sales. The exception is late Saturday night when some folks clearly go back to things they spotted online earlier, and being at the most relaxed and happy point of the week, decide they will, after all, treat themselves.

Evenings are better than daytimes - certainly for views.  But sales can happen at any time of the day or night.

Sales (as in discounts) and promotions are counter productive for smaller sellers without high numbers of returning/repeat customers. If your customers mostly find you online through searches (rather than being sellers on Folksy or Etsy themselves), then they are probably browsing your shop for the first time. That means they never knew what your non-sale prices were, and they probably don't care much if you've got 20% off today. In fact, if they like your product and it fits their needs, they may well have been prepared to pay the original price for it. 

Returning customers are different but if they think you might be having a sale, they may decide to wait for it, and in the meantime get distracted and buy elsewhere.  Better to offer your returning customers a discount for future purchases, then they may be attracted to buy whenever they see something they like, knowing they are making a saving.

And lastly, and most controversially...

Like marmite - love it or not, instant reaction

Hard selling and persuasion don't work.  At least, not for me with jewellery. Jewellery's not like double glazing - you don't need to be talked into the merits of getting it, you either like it enough to buy it, or you don't. 

Good pictures and descriptions help to reinforce that gut reaction you get when you see something you really like.  But they don't actually sell items. 'Wanting' and 'needing' feelings control whether people buy things, even so-called impulse buys, and you as a seller can't really influence much whether your potential buyer has those feelings.  Sure, you can tempt them.  So the main thing is to make sure those potential buyers can see your products... and that means focusing on listing and SEO. 

What do you think - agree or disagree?

Unconventional tips for selling online

My shops have been open for just over a year and a half now, so I got to thinking about the great advice which I've got from forums, blogs, and other lovely sellers. This advice has been invaluable in developing the style and content of my shops. For anyone starting out, hanging around the forums of the major handmade sites is time well spent. But here are a couple of tips which you don't see so often in the forums, and perhaps that's because they are just a little bit controversial...


They are just my humble opinion, of course, and I'd love to hear what you think of them.

One. If you're just starting out, don't start to promote your shop until you're absolutely happy with how it looks. Everyone will tell you to start promoting straight away, but you might find later that you wish you had waited until you've improved your photos, written better commentaries on your items, and got some feedback on where might be the best places to spend your time promoting. So my advice would be to take a little time to ponder and to tweak your shop, especially when you're starting out.  Selling online is a long game, you probably won't miss thousands and thousands of sales, but you will be laying down a good foundation for later!

Some recent sold items.  Can you spot a target audience?

Two. Don't worry about your target market. You'll probably find lots of different sorts of people will buy what you make, and they won't obligingly fit into any different categories. Of course, if you make a particular project niche product, this won't apply to you.  But even if you make for a particular market, for instance, clothing for babies, you may also find your items are bought as gifts by folk who are not parents or close relatives of babies. I've found many different types of people purchasing my jewellery. They don't seem to fit into a particular age bracket. Are they rich or poor? I have no idea. Does that matter? Probably not. Are all my customers women? No, a fair few are men buying gifts for friends and family. A quick look around the bus or Tube reveals that is very hard to categorise which women buy which sorts of jewellery. And those who are magpies, like me, will probably have loads of different styles in their collections. People just refuse to sit in the neat categories the marketing folks would like them to! And what a good thing it is that people don't - the world is a much place for us all being different, IMHO.

More sold items - my customers have eclectic taste!

Three. Have excellent customer service.  Communicate with your customers as much as possible so they know you've acknowledged their order, have put it quickly in the post, and want to hear back from them that they love the item, or even if there's a problem with it. This is where the handmade movement can really outshine the big online retailers. Don't worry about bothering people too much - if someone doesn't like getting an additional email from you, they can always leave it unopened in their inbox.  But most customers I think, appreciate getting a note to say when their item will be posted, I know I do.  So make first class service your aim.

Lastly, be very patient. Neither Rome nor Marks and Spencers were built in a day!  However much you promote (and you could find yourself needing 36 hours in a day very quickly) it will take people time to find your shop. It's a online jungle out there and you need to prioritise taking care of yourself and your time.

What would your unconventional tips for other sellers be?

Shop and save: A Dreamaid collaboration for Christmas

Chrissys and Blue Forest Jewellery are taking part in a Dreamaid Christmas collaboration, so it's the perfect time to sort out your Christmas cards and tags, and your jewellery gifts at the same time!

These eco friendly gift tags are so classy!

Every time there is a purchase in my UK online stores, I'll be enclosing a business card from Chrissys which entitles the holder to a discount on her beatiful handmade cards and gift tags on Dreamaid.   Similarly, if you make a purchase from Chrissys, you'll receive a unique 10% discount code for Blue Forest Jewellery.


Don't forget that all purchases from Dreamaid benefit projects in the developing world, so you can buy both charity cards and tags and charity presents this Christmas. 

Single cards and multi packs available

The easiest way to claim your discount is to let the seller know what you wish to purchase, quoting your discount code before buying, so that a special listing can be created and reserved for you at the discount price.  Alternatively, you can quote the code as you go through the Paypal payment process and the discount will then be credited to you as a partial refund through Paypal.

Robins and holly - what's not to like?

It may be the first time that there's been this sort of online joint promotion, so for those of you who are shopkeepers yourselves, Chris and I will keep you up to date with whether this venture increases views and sales in our shops on our blogs. 

A little jewellery sample...

Here's hoping!

Look out for a Dreamaid Christmas special compilation soon on this blog.

What makes a successful shop?

This post originally appeared as a guest blog on Iyobo Design's blog.  Thanks to Beata for featuring it :-)

OK, I’m going to make a bold statement now. I think I have a successful shop! Actually, I have four online shops on Folksy, Etsy, Dreamaid and Zibbet. I’ve been selling for 11 months online and across the Folksy and Etsy shops I have 54 sales.

Were you expecting the number to be closer to 5,000? Or 500? What do you think it means to have a successful shop? Is it loads of sales, loads of stock, repeat customers, wholesale orders, being a household name?

I guess like most sellers when I started I was a bit naive and imagined that customers would be queueing up to buy my jewellery on a daily basis – maybe I wouldn’t be able to make things fast enough! I soon learned that making the jewellery and listing it was the relatively easy part. There were all sorts of things about promoting online that I didn’t even realise that I’d need to do – blogging, tweeting, chatting in forums, all that was new to me. Now I spend a lot of time promoting, but I’ve learned to focus on the things I enjoy. And customers still don’t come in droves. So why do I think I’m successful? Maybe I’m just mad LOL

It’s because of the best thing about online selling, something I’d never even thought of when I started my shops. It’s about the customer experience. A lot of people I’ve sold to have emailed me about the jewellery, have left me feedback in the shops, have blogged or mentioned my shop in other forums and online venues. I’ve been lucky all my feedback so far is really positive. And that’s the real joy of it for me.

Everytime I sell an item and put it in the post, there’s a bit of anxiety about whether the recipient will really like it. After all, they’ve only seen a few pictures and read my description of it, and I’m no David Bailey in the photo department! And all my designs are from my imagination and are things I’d like to wear, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world shares my taste, does it? So the relief and pleasure when you get feedback that it’s beautiful, that my mum will really love it, that it’s well made, that it’s better than the picture etc etc, is really sometimes better than the sale. I don’t think people working in a bricks and mortar shop get that experience very often. So I’m happy to trade loads of customers for a few, really happy online buyers any day!

It’s lucky that making jewellery is my hobby and I do feel for people trying to make a living from their crafting in such tough economic times. And if a hundred people suddenly found my shop and each bought an item, I’d be overjoyed. But just at the moment, on an average of a just over one sale a week, I’m quite a happy bunny. So my advice to new shops would be, don’t be impatient, work hard and the customers will gradually come and then, well, it’ll be lovely!