In November 2008 I posted some ideas about how to promote an Etsy shop online and had great feedback from the Etsy community, which has encouraged me to continue with a second part of my series “How to promote an Etsy shop online”.
In my previous post I really concentrated on Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools. But social media isn’t everything. The next few paragraphs will show you the other side of getting your Etsy shop known.
- A simple email
Write an email explaining about your new venture and include a link to your Etsy shop. Send the email to all your friends and the rest of your contacts. This should already add up to a decent amount of people. Ask these friends to pass on your link to their contacts.
Especially do this again a few weeks before bigger events, such as Mothers’ Day, Valentine’s Day, Christmas or Easter. Remember those are dates where everyone (especially males) are looking for presents desperately and people are more likely to spend their money then on your lovely item, rather than in a highstreet store.
- Create a blog
A great example for such a Etsy blog is Akane Designs, which I think is a really lovely blog and really well executed. If you visit the site you can see this lady has put in a lot of hours creating and maintaining this blog. The blog has also a large group of followers. You can create a blog for free either at Blogger or Wordpress. With blogger you can start blogging after 3 steps:
- Create an account
- Name your blog
- Choose a template
With Wordpress you are only required to fill out 1 form and you’re ready to blog. Note that with Wordpress you can also host the blog yourself with a domain name of your choice but this will require for you to purchase a domain name and webspace and may not be very straight-forward for anyone who is not too internet savvy.
Then start blogging about new items you’ve created, post pictures and link back to your Etsy shop. Tell all your friends about the blog and also share the new blog posts on your personal Facebook page but also on your company Facebook page and Twitter.
I would like to see some more examples of Etsy sellers’ blogs. Leave a comment with your link on this post!
