General Guidelines to Help Boost Numbers

Hiya Everyone
So nice to meet you!

Before I dole out advice, let me tell you a bit about me. My shop was open in 2007 for 4 months. I had about 29 sales. I closed my shop because my personal life became to hectic. I re-opened my shop, full-time July 1st 2011. My shop is now my job. I work from home. Since then I have had 690 sales. I average between 200 and 300 views a day 9 weekdays , and over 500 views a day weekends. I have been front page featured twice, and in the etsy finds newsletter twice. and between 6 and 10 individual items treasured per day, on weekends it can be as many as 15. This month has been my slowest month since July, with only 36 sales in February. I'm not trying to brag here...just trying to show that after employing these techniques it made a difference in actual numbers and sales. 

I have several pieces of advice that have helped my shop to become the little success story it has managed to become. it's not the most successful shop on Etsy, no will it ever be , but for ME it allows me to work from home and still provide extra funds for me and my family. success is defined differently for everyone. I just wanted to bring in an extra few hundred per month to put into a retirement account , and Praise be, thus far has met and exceeded that expectation. This is what i have learned, and am more than happy to share :

#1 Tags and Titles : be sure to take full advantage of your tags and titles. You have 140 characters to use for your title. USE AS MANY AS POSSIBLE. If you look at my titles , you will see that i break them up into small phrases . These are search phrases and help your customers find your items. So instead of just ' Black flower hair clip " try something like : " Black Flower Hair Clip- Lace Hair Flower- Black Hair Flower- Floral Hair Clip- Hair Accessory- Flower Facinator"
You want to use as many Phrases as will fit, and that would help shoppers find your items. the same goes with tagging. you have 13 tags to use, so try to be descriptive in them. Also mimic some of the phrases in your title. Having the title and tags coordinate make your items more relevant to those search phrases , which puts your items higher on the search results. Etsy sorts results by relevance. You can look at my titles and tags and see what i did. if you need help , you can message me :-) There is enough business for ALL of us. I will help as best I can. 

#2 Photography : You don't need to have a super awesome camera to take great pictures, but the better your pictures are the more likely they will be used in treasuries , which gets you more traffic. MOST treasury builders prefer to use items on a white or pale background. You can use white construction paper or printer paper, lining any box. Cut off one side, and the top, and tape or glue white paper to the inside walls and bottom. I have a tutorial on my fb here on how I built MY photo studio box : www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2598798375626.2148976.1424787312&...
I no longer use picnik to edit my photos b/c they are closing down . BUT There is something even better than picnik!
Fotofuze.com . It is amazing! As long as you take your pics on a white background it does everything else for you. Just upload your pic, choose 2d picture, and follow directions. They do everything else for you. It's absolutely WONDERFUL!!!!
Make sure that you get different angles and close-ups of your items, and use more than just ONE photo in your listings. your photos are all you have to sell your items. The best way to make sure your close ups come out beautifully is to set your camera to "macro" , "close-up", or " Flower mode" ( I call it this because there is typically a flower icon to show you are in the proper mode.) I take all of my pics in this setting on regular point and shoot camera., then crop the images in close before uploading them to fotofuze. this step of cropping isn't necessary, i just do it because I like my items to take up most of the frame. i will be happy to help you if you need help. you can friend me on FB , or convo me here, and i'll do what i can. I have helped several esty friends.


#3 : Have very clear policies, shipping info, return info , etc. the more professionally organized you are, the more likely customers are to trust you and your shop. Put it in writing. try to answer any question that MAY come up in your customers mind and have the answer right there.

#4 Join teams that MAKE treasuries. (my personal faves are: STATTEAM , Martini BNR team , BNR Babes, and Aloha BNR team are full of GREAT people who make lots of treasuries. I am a member of these teams and can say all of them are great teams) Also , make treasuries yourself... the more exposure for your shop the better. here are links for the teams :

www.etsy.com/teams/9379/martinis-bnrs
www.etsy.com/teams/9826/bnr-babes
www.etsy.com/teams/7508/statteam
www.etsy.com/teams/9483/irihanas-bnr-team
www.etsy.com/teams/8986/aloha-bnr-promo-team
www.etsy.com/teams/10548/top-treasury
www.etsy.com/teams/8524/bobi-bnr

I wish you nothing but the best!
Feel free to message me with any questions.

~Erin