December 29, 2013

Free Download - Digital Scrapbook Printable Page

Hurry up and get a free digital scrapbook printable page from Huggable Me Designs. This offer won't last forever. Click the product image to download.

Image of free downloadable, printable digital scrapbook page with Valentine's Day theme
Free downloadable, printable digital scrapbook page with Valentine's Day theme

Do you like this digital scrapbook page? Purchase this collection from our Etsy shop. While you're there, check out our many designs and packages.

 Buy from the Huggable Me Designs shop   

Terms of Use:
This digital scrapbook page is for personal use only. Commercial use is prohibited. To obtain a commercial license for this product, you must purchase the page (individually or as part of a bundle) from our Etsy shop. This is a digital product. A physical product is not available as part of this offer.

You MAY NOT use digital designs, images and clip art by Huggable Me Designs to share, resell as original digital or printed artwork or to claim them as your own designs.

December 19, 2013

Etsy Sales Patterns - Ups and Downs

Once you open a shop on Etsy you will immediately want to see sales and cash flowing in. Well, be patient. What we have learned is that there are some reliable patterns that occur again and again. We have also learned that there are multiple sales patterns affecting sales at the same time.

For example, sales are dependent on your product and its relationship to things like school schedules (start finish, breaks, events), weather (hot, cold, nice, rainy, etc.) and holidays. Birth patterns affect sellers who sell stuff related to babies.

Also affecting sales is the ability to show up in Etsy search results, search engine search results (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) and other Etsy features (treasuries, favorites, followers, reciprocal following, a treasury featured as a handpicked treasury on Etsy's home page, featured shop, recently listed items, community, etc.)

Etsy loves fresh listings and updated content. Even relisting a product that has not yet expired seems to indicate freshness to Etsy (and an additional .20 of listing fee revenue). It seems like Etsy favors content so spend time coming up with great product titles, product descriptions and tags. All of these things affect search engine optimization (SEO) techniques used by Etsy and popular search engines.

Everything I have mentioned so far is free except for relisting products. If you are patient then you can roll some of your profits into things like ads that help direct customers to your Etsy shop. Facebook is a good place to run ads. Google is another place that is good for running ads. There are a million other options out there such as running ads on blogs related to your products or even sending product samples to professional bloggers in hopes of receiving a good review and a quality link back to your Etsy store.

Consider starting your own blogs. Offer tips for Etsy sellers. Offer how-to videos and posts to show people to do what you do. Share your expertise. If you write your own blog then you can also write about your products and link your blog back to your Etsy shop.

There is always a lot of speculation about how to appear higher in search listings. Patience, persistence, quality content (text, images, videos) and consistency are the best methods of increasing free exposure. Build that network. Once money starts coming in then use some of that money for paid advertising and networking. Don't try to keep up with the Jones's. If you look hard enough the you will surely find an Etsy shop that opened a month ago and already has hundreds of sales.

Examine shops that seem to hit the ground running. The shop owners may have previous Etsy experience so they already know what they are doing. They may have a great product that is in demand. Study their product titles, descriptions and tags.

Selling on Etsy

Selling on Etsy is a two-step process. Easy, yes. But it still takes two steps to make it happen.

Step 1: Register for an Etsy account

  1. Go to www.etsy.com
  2. Enter your email
  3. Create a password
  4. Select a user name. This name is the name that you will use to log into the etsy website
  5. You can optionally enter your First Name, Last Name and Gender. My advice is to save this for later when you are more familiar with etsy and understand where your first and last name will be used on the etsy website. 
  6. Click the Register button
  7. Once you have an Etsy account, spend some time looking around on Etsy to see what kind of stuff is being sold. Also spend some time thinking about what you might want to create and sell. 
  8. Take a look at the Community postings to understand some of the ins and outs of shopping and selling on Etsy. This step is crucial for understanding the Etsy ecosystem that has developed. This will also help you target your products to the right customers.

Step 2: Become a seller on Etsy

  1. Sign in to Etsy with your username and password
  2. Click the Sell link at the top left-hand corner of the webpage
  3. On the next page, click the Open an Etsy Shop button
  4. From here you follow the steps that Etsy requires. Steps include setting up a method to receive payments from customers, establishing a method for you to pay Etsy fees, creating a banner and badge for your store, a store description and so on.

December 1, 2013

Finding a shop on Etsy

How do I find that shop again? Etsy shop names do not allow spaces. For example, if I want to find the Huggable Me Designs shop then I...
  1. Go to the Etsy website at www.etsy.com
  2. In the "Search for items and shops" search box, type "huggablemedesigns" without the quotation marks
  3. Click the Search button to locate the Huggable Me Designs shop