You'd be making more sales if only...

As a part of my "Yay Money" project and researching stores with no sales I thought it might be cool to write about some of the stores I'm getting to see but don't buy from (by the way, I ordered 3 things already and waiting for them to arrive so I can write about them). I feel a little strange criticizing other people's business choices without them even asking for it, and I'm sure different things works for different people and also that people use Etsy in different ways. However, I think this is a good way for me to review some of my own Etsy experiences and share what works and doesn't work for me.

Saying that, I've decided to start with a topic that's especially difficult to write and talk about but that a lot of people think of which is:

You'd be making more sales if only your prices were lower

For this review, I'm proud to present the work of Dick Haakman from HaakmanGallery. Dick is a super talented painter, I love his style and sensitivity, and his work is excellent. I especially love his still lives. The store is in existence since March, have 12 beautiful paintings in it and haven't had any sales.

The reasons for it to me is pretty clear, the cheapest item is a 1,000$. I don't know about other shop owners, but in my experience, any single piece that is priced at over 60$ is hard to sell. It's a bit hard to hear, I know, but really, I have not manage to sell a painting for more then that.



Isn't it strange that we go to art galleries and see paintings that sells for thousands and tens of thousands of dollars and yet, we go online and beautiful pieces doesn't sell for a 1,000$ or so?! this have a few reasons:

1. Artists makes only a fraction of the gallery sale price. I just had the luck of getting a piece ready to be in a gallery show, Ned got a photo in an art book and a show, we had to do the math to price it. printing was about 150$, though we were lucky to claim a favor and get the print for free. Frame was 300$, the gallery takes 50% of final sell price. Basically, we priced the piece at 1,200$ and after gallery fee and frame, made 300$ of it, if we had to pay for printing it would be even less (or we'll have to push the price up) If we had an agent or manager, or signed up with a gallery, we would be getting even less. It really sucks, but that's how it is, after expenses, materials, gallery fee and so on, the artist makes about 10-25% of the sale price in a gallery.

2. Galleries appeal to collector while Etsy, mostly, target people who wants something cool to put in their apartment. Why is this important?! because A collector is a lot more likely to spend a lot of money on a piece they think (and mostly because the gallery endorse the artist) the piece will be worth more in the future, most people don't have a 1,000$ to spend on a painting if it's entire purpose is decorate a room.

When the artist is more famous and successful. It's a strange and pretty unfair vicious cycle, but that's the gallery business - when a gallery show an artist in their space they are basically saying "We think this person is worth taking notice off" the more the artist does this, the more they get attention and the value of their pieces go up.

It's strange to think about it, but the same piece can be worth 10$ or a million dollar depends on the history of the artist's fame and exhibition history.

So - what can be done?
What can Dick Haakman do to make sure he does generate some sales?!

Even though I read his profile, I can't really know how much his art worth as far as investments goes, if a collector do goes on Etsy, it would be helpful to have his exhibition history and, if possible, contacts in those galleries and links to those galleries so they can check if this is a good investment, lets say his last show was super successful and every painting sold for 10,000$ - then suddenly paying a 1,000 for one of his pieces seem like a great idea.

If Dick is targeting collector, he would need to draw them to Etsy on his own, as far as I know, most of those buy things through galleries, because that the gallery endorsement of an artist means that they stand a better chance of making money of the investment and because each piece that sells in a gallery makes the artist more incline to succeed in getting exhibited more and selling for higher prices in the future, which means the collector again, stand a better chance at making money of their investment.
And so - if Dick already sold some pieces and he is in connection with the collector, this is a good time to send them e-mails referring them to his store, also, it might be a good idea to look for galleries that show the same style of art and send them e-mails or letters urging them to check his online gallery.

Lets say both those plans doesn't work, it means Dick will probably have to find a way to lower his prices, if he wants to make any sales.
I know it takes a long time to make a painting and he might not want to, and so there are a few ways to create a product that would not take as much time and so he can price them cheaper:

1. Make smaller pieces - this is what I do, when I started selling paintings on Etsy I priced them at 70-60$ - non of it sold, one day I took a piece of paper I was about to start drawing on and cut it to 4 - it took me about the same amount of time to make 4 small paintings as it took me to make 1 big one - the painted surface was about the same, I priced each at 20$ - overall, I made more money of the sale of 4 small painting, but each buyer paid less for an original painting.

Strangely enough, a lot of people who saw the smaller cheap paintings bought 3-4 of them, they paid the same amount that they would for 1 big one, but I think the feeling of getting a good deal - a few paintings, made it easier for people to spend 80$.
Like those - some of those paintings are slightly larger then a postcard, but are strong enough to change a room.

2. Make Digital prints - either get a great scan or a great photograph of the painting, and do either a limited edition or an open edition of the artwork. The benefit of this is that even if you sell them for cheap, you only have to do the work on one - if you make a closed edition of 100 prints, and sell each for 20$ (if they all sell, which will be awesome) the artist get to make the 2,000$ AND keep the original painting to sell later or for himself. Like Peppermint - those are awesome (and cheap!)

3. Art Prints - this means learning an new method of work and maybe change style, but either doing block printing, etching, silk screens, gocco or monotype, means you can produce a work of art that have multiple copies, which means you both retain the artistic mechanics of work and can sell each copy for relatively cheap. Like Marissa's beautiful shop - she has a very successful Block prints shop, that sells beautiful and very affordable prints.

Whatever Dick Haakman chooses to do, I hope he gets lucky and sell everything in his shop! do check it out, his art is gorgeous!

Google Analytics

Look I'm on the front page again! how cool is that!

This is one of those blog entries who would really interest only people who are on Etsy, but hell - I'm going to write it anyway cause I'm excited and also need to put things in order inside my brain.

Yesterday, after not doing it for a very long time, I went into the Etsy forum, It's a stressful place to hang out that usually makes me both loose a couple of hours before I even notice, and get me very angry about ususally very small things (like a person that makes another acount just ot put themselves in treasuries or expectations to lower shipping rates and so on) but it's still one of the best place to learn about what's new in Etsy and catch somw usful information and non usful gossip.

So the big piece of news I found was that now, I could finally link google analytics to my Etsy store. I've been using google analitics with all my other websites (yes, there are a lot of those...) and most of the time it's just a nice ego pat in the back to see how many people are seeing my sites, also, when views drop I know it's time to update the sites, it's also a good way to see if I was featured anywhere and other such interesting things.

I really wanted to have analytics on the Etsy store, mostly for that ego pet in the back - when nothing sales for a week and I get really worried, it would cheer me up to know that things are still working and people are still looking in my shop.
I honesly didn't expect and suprises.

Boy - what I wrong!

This is the interesting things I've learn from less then 24 hours of data (I installed it at about 4:00 AM last night, and the numbers I have so far are true to about 4:00 PM)

Big surprise number 1
I had 80 views so far, I didn't update my store today neither renew or list anything new, and still the store generated a really nice amount of views, much more then I expected. I always assumed that on non listing days I have about 0-20 views (seeing the view count change on the first few listed items). This is really good to know and makes me a little less stressed out about renewing or listing all the time. Right now I either list or renew an avrage of 5 items a day, knowing that on a no list day I still get visits, makes me want to rethink the whole "renewing" thing alltogether, or at least do it less. This will definitly save me some money.

Big surprise number 2
30 of the 80 views were direct. That means that people who visited my store knew where they were going cause their either RSS it or bookmark it or go and check it on their own accord. I think this is super cool, I really didn't expect this amount of direct traffic at all. I've been thinking and puting a lot of efort in preserving repete costumers and making sure people who buy from my store would feel comfortable to do so again, and it's really nice to see this is working (I know that at least one of those 30 people is my sister who will not buy from my store cause she can have anything she wants for free, but still...)

Big surprise number 3
I always assumed that my main and probably only useful marketing tool was flickr, I actually often encourage etsy people to use it to promote their stores and was sure this was the tool that divery most trafic to my Etsy store. My reasoning was this - I get a lot of views on flickr, so a certain % of those people go and check my store. Frickr indeed diverted some traffic to my store, but actually a lot less then I thought - only 4 hits came out of flickr. I have about 500 hits on flickr on avrage so 4 hits on the store out of 500 is a pretty crappy turn up, much less then I expected.
My blog however, generated 2 hits to theEtsy store, while only having about 10 hits for itself.

Why is this important?! because it means that even though less people read the blog then the people who see my flickr account, they are more likely to see my store (probably cause the blog have etsy mini with images on it, while in flickr, you have to move from the photo page, to my profile, to a link to the store) so even though it feels redundent to update a blog that only have about 20-30 readers a day in avrage - it's not! and I could and should aspire to emprove the blog to have more readers.

Big surprise number 4
And this one is a really big shock! my larger sorce of entries, as said, were direct hits, but second, with 18 hits was.... (drum roll...) google! can you believe it?! 18 people got into my store by searching things. This means that:
1) I'm really good at tagging and choosing words to use in my descriptions.
2) There is always room for emprovment and I should look more into what makes strong keywords (well, aside of XXX and sex).

What were people looking for that lead them ot my etsy store?!
the most common words were Etsy and Etsy.com after that were Blue bondage, perfect tea set, owl shaped mug, Illustration + humble, circa ceramics, paper menagerie, interesting historical events and a few other words.

At a first glance this seem really random, but then I figure out that at least one of the words in each of those searches was in the title of the listing (aside of etsy and etsy.com of course) - why is this important?! Because it means that titles as far as google search robots are concern, probably worth more then taggs. So, I am going to try and keep my titles as descriptive as possible.

Since if some wants a painting of an owl they will not searcg for "painting" or "art" but for "owl painting", I should include that topic rather then just the item in the title. Sometime I do list something as "a tea cup" but I should list it as "a handpainted tea cup with owls" or something like that. The more information, and the more exciting and relevant the title is, the better.

I've seen people on etsy go for interesting titles before, like "sunshine and stars necklace" to describe a necklace that has gold and silver in the pendent - I always thought it was sweet and goot marketing, but now I realize that they need ot have a more descriptive less fancyful title if they want to potimise their lisitngs for search angines. The thing is that a buyer who's looking for a necklace that's made of gold and silver will google "gold and silver necklace".

There are more things to analize I'm sure, but I think that even just those 4 facts are going to really change how I market my store and how I percive selling and making sales.

Thanks so much etsy for solving the analytics problem and making it possible for me ot use this tool.

Whole sale order!

My second whole sale order! How cool is that! an Etsy seller who also have a store in LA saw the listing of the first wholesale order and asked for something similar. I was really happy to make them. It was a strange mathematical problem, realizing I only have 6 vases more because 8 went to the trunk show. Luckily, 4 came back from the trunk show (4 actually sold) and I could complete the order.

It's ready to be send tomorrow.

It's 6:40, I was working on a new and exciting project all night, I'm so tired now.

My First Whole Sale Order!

I started focusing on my Etsy store and actually making my first sale after a down period in my life, I was trying to get my art seen, exhibited and selling, but dealing with Galleries, market pros and business people, as well as the notion of rejection was just too depressing, and for every submission I manage to do, I would get so upset, it just wasn't worth it.

I really love the fact that the store's out there, with prices and all, and if people what to by my art they can, I don't get rejected, but I do get to shoe my art and share it with people as well as make some money off selling it, without having to face any professionals in the process.

But now that change! because I did manage to finish the whole process of dealing with some pros! It was really hard and though I was happy with the idea of making a bulk sale, the notion of dealing with another business was really difficult and I just couldn't bring myself to consider that this will actually happened.

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by a nice woman who owns a beautiful store called Flora Grubb in San Francisco, and who wanted to order 10 vases, I had to do the math, find out about shipping and worry about non of this working out, but eventually! It did, I got paid and tomorrow a package full of vases is going to the post office. I just hope non break in the mail.

The coolest thing is that in the meantime, another store, who saw the listing for the first order, wanted the same deal! I'm going to make a lot of vases tomorrow!

I'm excited and a little freaked out...

Making New Things

Sometimes it's really nice to invent new items. It's not that I'm tried from glasses cases and cards, but it's just nice to be challenged with something new and feel what a new material feels in my hands.

I found this awesome vest in the Salvation Army store - my favorite shopping destination ever! it cost, I'm almost embarrassed to say, 3.99, and it's really beautifully made and just feels great. I spend 3 days embroidering it with a lilac elk and a shooting star. It was so much fun to make, even though it took ages...

This heavy wool like fabric is the best embroidery surface I found so far, it was a pleasure to work with.

Also, after our oven was finally fixed, I finally discovered the awesomeness of Phabeo porcelain paints. And used them to make 3 small vases. One was already sold this morning!

New Store

After I made the books from the set paper Ned used for a shoot a couple of days ago, using Ned's photograph to decorate the covers, we thought it would be really cool if Ned had an Etsy store to connect to his Erotic site, and sell photography prints and other erotic related art in.

So today we set it up together.

It was not easy, we were both stressed and were having a pretty shitty day as it was, but we went for it. Ned manage to get a cut on his hand from the frame glass he was cleaning to take a photo of one of his prints in the frame, and then break it. We were feeling more shitty then before. Eventually he shot it with the frame without the glass and it came out really nice.

The cool thing is that while we were trying to not get cut by glass and freaking out, the new store first sell happened! it was so exciting. One of the notebooks we listed less then half an hour before got bought! it was awesome.

I felt like we were doing the right thing after all!

Check out Ned's new store!

Experiment day 7

This is the last day of stage one of the renewal project. It went pretty well so far. The bad news is that the 2 item sale from yesterday got canceled. It was a funny story of birthday present, 2 confused people, one of which trying to surprised the other, and other misunderstanding. So sadly, I'm a little behind. However, the good news is that a deck of tarot card got bought this morning, just out of the blue, I didn't renew that one or anything - but I'm sure the renewing did help.

So here are the numbers for today:

Item renewed
10:00 - Maps and Legends - Reader Kit - 28$ - views 33
11:00 - O solitude - Original painting - 45$ - views: 16
12:30 - Morning - Original painting - 25$ - views: 15
2:00 - Rocky Raccoon - 22$ - views: 13
4:00 - Summer apple Art Kit - 35$ - views: 4
8:00 - Heart - Original Art - 40$ - views: 20

Item listed
Lilly squirrle Notebook - 17$

Item sold
The Black Lilly Deck of Tarot - 60$

Hearts 1067 (weepee)

So, result so far:
money spend on listing: 1.80$
Money spend on renewing: 7$
Money earned: 194$

Tomorrow I'm going to try the second phase of the experimen, and renew all 5 items in a batch!

Finally...

Tarot cards - cups, originally uploaded by lilly1975.

Finally, they are done, photographed and listed in the store! A new series of 14 cards, the cups from the minor arcana decks. I'm really proud of myself for finishing those, the illustrations turned out really elaborate and I like them very much.

The minor arcana deck is a set of 56 cards, an old version of the today known playing cards. each suite is made of 14 cards (unlike playing cards that have 13 in each suite). 10 of those are number cards, starting at Ace and finishing at 10, and then 4 royal family cards. usually, those are "page", "knight", "queen" and "king. Though in my version of it, It's "page", "knight", "princess" and "queen.

Each of the suite have an object that represent a certain element and a facet of life or a type of energy. In this case, cup represent the element of water and the energy of love and emotions.

I chose to use the same model who's also a friend for this suite. By working with the same person, I hoped to express how we move through all type of emotional related situation through life and how different types of love and the expression of it change as we change.

The cards are hand painted and come in a nice handmade bag with a short set of instructions.

Check it out!

Weekly Summery

Sales This week: 2

Hearts: 301

Treasuries: Curated 2

Main source of inspiration: A random photo of flickr of a bear, inspired me to create 3 notebooks with images of dears.

Best thing to eat: undoubtedly the Fried Chicken at Egg. The started doing dinners this week!

Shopping: Actually, there's extra in the kitty box for shopping, I had to return papers I got last week, so 6$ back from Staples. Still need to solve the paper problem though... I got 3 skeins of embroidery floss just cause they were pretty. And a pack of nice blend wool felt came in from Australia, I ordered it from an Etsy store a couple of weeks back and got them today.

Greatest achievement: Not the best week for me, I'm glad I manage to keep the store going even though it was slow and I felt crappy.

Disappointments: Only 2 sales?! that sucks!

OK, so lets see how I did with this weeks goals...

1. Last week I made my monthly goal of sales, it was 25 - I was hoping to make it to 30 by the end of the month. I'm on 27 sales now, there are still a couple of days, I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

2. Make 2 tarot decks for the store - done! there are in there now

3. Starting to work on the minor arcana cards - this sadly did not happened at all!

4. Make a new weasel and a new fox - big success! I not only made a new weasel and fox, they both got sold! I was so excited that I made another weasel, she's up for sale now!

5. And idea for a new item never got executed. I might give it a shot tonight. instead however, I made some new notebooks, so I think it balanced it out nicely...

6.I did write a cut out + keep tutorial.

7. I got 2 treasuries, which was great, one was dedicated to block printing and the other to peanut butter and chocolate colors. I wasn't featured in any, bummer.

Goals for next week

1. list a new item everyday - so far this had been the best tactic to get buyers - just keep the shop fresh.

2. Try and get the cream paper I was using originally for the tarot. If I find it - make 2 new decks.

3. Make another fox and get some red felt for a weasel like fox and make one.

4. I'm really scared to do this for some reason, I guess cause I'm more sensitive about art then about crafts, but I got to get over that - list at least one art print \ drawing \ painting.

5. get at least one more treasury and hopefully, be in one.

6. Write a blog review about another store.

7. Get those minor Arcana cards going!

As said, this was not the best Etsy week ever to say the least - so hopefully, next week will be better - wish me luck!