My daughter has a shop on etsy-
She's done well with it. I have been on etsy for less than a month and have gotten good comments when I've gone on critique forums, but get very few hits. I haven't made any sales yet.
When Kendra started, a lot of her sales were to friends and relatives, but she has grown beyond that. When she did her first show, I dredged up my show memories to give her advice, and found I knew quite a lot. I posted them here.
Turnabout is fair play. She sent me an email yesterday that has really got me thinking about finding a niche market, and I could use some suggestions, if you have any. Her marketing allows her to make the same product that she would if she was just selling it as soap. Her niche has not squelched her creativity in any way.
Here's her email. Let me know it you have any ideas
A gimmick or a niche. Here's how I see it: the web is enormous. The web is huge. The web is everybody. You (probably) can't sell to everybody. But if you pitch to a niche (new moms! martial artists! dentists! people who commute by bike!), you tap into a community. These people are in dialogue with each other on and off the net. One dentist might see another dentist's tooth-shaped brooch and say, "Ohmigosh, where did you get that?" Then you get picked up on dental blogs. People tell their friends. People who need to buy gifts for the dentists in their lives search for "dentist present" and boom, there you are. It's all about tapping into a subculture.
Humor works, too. Librarians love the nerdiness inherent in being a librarian and will buy ridiculous funny/nerdy library stuff. People who identify as "dog people" or "chocolate people" will feel the same way (only the stuff they like will be cheesier and less ironic). And so on. I think the only way to fail in this respect is to try to tap a culture people aren't happy with or proud of (telemarketing? cashier at McDonalds?), or something already flooded with commercialism (Nascar, Christianity). But the happy proud silly nerdy things that people like about themselves are the things they're willing to spend money on to show they identify with.
You know?
I really, really really think it helps to gear yourself towards a niche when selling online. Your stuff is beautiful and long lasting and that works great at art shows--but at art shows, you're already selling to a niche: people who go to art shows.
Your audience is bigger now. That's the difference. You have to find your neighborhood. If I were just selling plain nice soap, or tried for an angle that the market was already saturated with (Kendra's All Natural/Homemade/Back to Nature/etc soaps), I would probably never get a single hit. Doesn't matter how nice my scents are, or how natural or whatever. It's the same as the 800 other soap sellers. Carve out a niche.
And that's my sermon. Hallelujah.
--
http://www.etsy.com/shop/kickglassenamels
Humor works, too. Librarians love the nerdiness inherent in being a librarian and will buy ridiculous funny/nerdy library stuff. People who identify as "dog people" or "chocolate people" will feel the same way (only the stuff they like will be cheesier and less ironic). And so on. I think the only way to fail in this respect is to try to tap a culture people aren't happy with or proud of (telemarketing? cashier at McDonalds?), or something already flooded with commercialism (Nascar, Christianity). But the happy proud silly nerdy things that people like about themselves are the things they're willing to spend money on to show they identify with.
You know?
I really, really really think it helps to gear yourself towards a niche when selling online. Your stuff is beautiful and long lasting and that works great at art shows--but at art shows, you're already selling to a niche: people who go to art shows.
Your audience is bigger now. That's the difference. You have to find your neighborhood. If I were just selling plain nice soap, or tried for an angle that the market was already saturated with (Kendra's All Natural/Homemade/Back to Nature/etc soaps), I would probably never get a single hit. Doesn't matter how nice my scents are, or how natural or whatever. It's the same as the 800 other soap sellers. Carve out a niche.
And that's my sermon. Hallelujah.
--
http://www.etsy.com/shop/
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