How I Increased My Etsy Views ... and Some Metal Clay Heart Jewelry

My latest “research” has to do with Etsy stats.  I wanted to see if I noticed a difference by consistently relisting 5 items every day.

I wrote down the daily views/visits for every day in July 2013.  Then starting on August 1^st, I began renewing 5 items a day, and tallied my daily views/visits.

There can be a lot of factors that play into these numbers that has nothing to do with relisting.  Time of year, my social media activity levels, etc.  But The numbers came out significantly enough for me to want to continue the testing.

BTW, we can mention that Etsy has never been one of my best venues.  It’s not as bad for me as some others were, but it’s right up there with pretty much laying dormant (or is that lying?).  Nonetheless, I like Etsy.  Well, I don’t like how the commercially made stuff is almost fully integrated with the self-represented handmade stuff, but the fees aren’t bad, they look is very nice, and I’m making a lot of wonderful acquaintances through Etsy.  They do bring in a certain amount of their own foot-traffic (which is a biggie for me because I don’t promote my eBay or Etsy stores… any time or money I have for promotion goes directly to my own website).  So a site that can bring in foot-traffic without me doing much is important to me.  That’s probably why Artfire and I weren’t a good match.  I listed over there but never did anything to promote my shop… or my zibbet shop or my Rubylane shop, or my

Just realized I have an account at Handmade Artists.  I don’t have anything listed there, though.  Does anyone have any opinions of or experience with that place?

I also set up my Square store, but have been dragging my feet about listing in it.  I don’t really get the Square Market yet… I mean, shopping-wise.  Do you have to use keyword search to find anything?  I don’t see any categories or anything like that.   Then say I search on the word “necklace”… is that it?  I’m supposed to just scroll to find what I want?  Ick!  Either I’m missing something very major or fingers crossed they change the way customers can look at products soon.   At least put a price sorter there.

In an attempt to find a couple more I tried out, I googled several articles of lists of handmade online venues.  Since I didn’t see any of the other ones I had shops in, I’m guessing they fell into oblivion.

And I hate to say it but the ones I found that really and truly seem to only have handmade items (no vintage, no supplies, no mass-produced imports) look very bedraggled.

I supposed it’s the holy grail to find a wonderfully established, highly polished-looking online selling venue that only allows truly artist-represented handmade goods.

Okay, back to my original reason for posting here tonight.  I forgot WHY I got off on that tangent, but I think it was to explain to you why my Etsy numbers (views/visits/sales) are so low (which is because I don't actively promote my Etsy store).  I’d love it if my numbers weren’t low and I’ll do as much as I am comfortable doing in order to bring the numbers up. 

In July of 2013, my monthly total for views was 860 (that’s an average of 27 views per day).  I made 3 total sales.  I had listed or renewed 30 items during the entire month. 

I should also tell you that when I have an Etsy “sale”, it’s usually a tutorial.  I rarely sell my jewelry (yet) on Etsy.  That’s one of the things I’d like to see changing in the near future.

So anyway, in August of 2013, I tried to make a point to renew 5 items per day, not all at once, but spread out throughout the day.  A couple times I forgot some and ended up renewing 2-4 in the wee hours, but you never know when people are around (although they really ARE mostly around M-F between working hours).

So for August, by listing or renewing 5 items a day (for a total of 155 for the month), my views for the month increased to 2048 (a 238% increase from July).  My daily average number of views went from 27 to 66. 

There is, of course, more cost involved.  Listing 5 items a day for a month is $31 (or $30, depending on the month). 

My sales, however, doubled.  (Again, don’t get too excited… we’re talking about tutorials here).

I didn’t lose money in August, but I didn’t make significant gains.  I feel it may take time to see the real growth and I’m not ready to stop yet.

There are definitely people out there who say (and perhaps rightly so) that renewing items is only a money maker for Etsy, not for the shop.  We’ll see.  I like research.  I’m going to continue my testing and see where it leads.  I’d love to someday have a viable (aka profitable) Etsy store.

I’m going to tell you something sad and stubborn now.  Prior to my recent “August” test, my views had been pretty much the same from month to month… for the past year only though.  Before that, my views were high.  But not because people were looking at my handmade jewelry.  It’s because I was destashing my beading supplies.  Yes, that brings the people in.  And views are views, right?  Maybe.  But here’s where the stubborn comes in.  I want this Etsy store to be about my jewelry… so I opened another Etsy store for my destash and ne’er the twain shall meet (except for a mention in the store blurb because that’s Etsy TOS).

With an average daily view in July of 27, I wanted my August average daily view to be 50  That was my goal.  So I very happily surpassed that goal.  Yay!

Anyway, September’s looking pretty good.  Maybe with the kids all heading back to school, parents have some breathing room to peruse the internet.  Whatever it is, I hope the trend continues because my average views for the first 6 days of September are 92 (remember July was 27 and August was 66). 

Anyway, let me show you what I’ve been working on (because my other goal is to have 100 items in my shop… I currently have 82.

I made a little faceted Black Spinel ensemble for the Project Runway Jewelry Challenge we’re running on the SRAJD blog.

And also for the PR challenge, a heavy, colorful necklace.

Then we have a spurt of metal clay (mostly copper and white bronze) and hearts, apparently.

Now I’ll leave you with a link to what I’ve decided to put on my Christmas wishlist (‘cause a gal never have too many gadgets):  Fabtotum Personal 3-D Printer