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:

1. Create an account
2. Name your blog
3. 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!

Now Mairead doesn’t have her own e-commerce site and sells her bags on Etsy, a website, which allows anyone to create their own shop within the site and sell their handmade goods, like handbags, jewlery etc. It pretty much works like Ebay, where it’s possible to create a shop and Etsy will take a cut of any sold item, with two significant differences:

1) Etsy takes a smaller percentage of the sold goods

2) There is no auction-style selling.

My friend has not the option of having her own website at the moment, now, how could she still utilise the web to promote her Etsy shop with other means?

The site offers the option to sign up for an RSS feed, so it’s possible to keep up to date with any new products a certain seller puts up, but Mairead at this point wants to spread the word.

Mairead shared the link to her Etsy shop on Facebook. Another option to show this link at all times is to add it to the information, which appears on the right-hand side on below the profile picture.

These are all valid ways of reaching a very small group, only direct friends. If looking at the Facebook Advertiser tool, the following statistics are pretty interesting. In the UK alone, there are 6,860 females interested in handbags, in the US 5,720 and these are just two examples, as Etsy is used world-wide.

Further options are:

• Creating a shop page on Facebook, this can reach more people who are interested in handbags
• Stumble the Etsy shop page (which I have already done)
• Create a Twitter account and keep it public, updating people on new products posted. I’ve undertaken a handbag search and already quite a few other people utilise Twitter for this purpose
• Become a member of various handbag fan pages and leave comments, directing people to your shop

During my brief research for this, I’ve also seen that there are many shop and fan pages on Facebook for people who are interested in handbags. Mairead could also be cheeky and invite these people with her Facebook shop page, however, this could be seen as “unethical”, as it could be perceived as spam or unwanted contact by Facebook users. I’d be intersted to hear your comments on this.

Anyhow, I hope that Mairead’s business succeeds and as I can see she’s already been making a few sales, which is great! Good luck, Mairead!

There is now a second part to this “How to promote an Etsy shop online” series called How to promote an Etsy shop online – Part 2.