Before I started selling my jewelry on ETSY, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had no clue about ETSY or how to market my sandals. I decided to invest some time and money into reading something meaningful, and in the process purchased 3 books on "Handcrafted Market". Among the books I got from Amazon, this was one of them.
This book was written by Timothy Adams, a fellow ETSYan and a successful artist who have mastered the industry. After reading this book I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of useful, hands-on information I have received.
Within the first few chapters of the book, not only Timothy dicusses how to get to know the basic principles behind ETSY, but also goes in debth of how to research recent online trends to truly get to know your market before you begin selling on ETSY. This was one of the most helpful sections that I read from the book. Timothy talked about how to use Google Trends, Google Insight and Google Analytics - amazing tools I did not know existed before I read the book.
Chapter 3 discussed Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ), which a powerful tool online. Your listings will not be getting as many views if you are not properly optimizing the key words in your listings. This book gives you an in-depth analysis on how to get the best out of SEO.
Chapter 5 talks about the importance of social media to your online business. The book discusses what you can do to involve your audience and how to appropriately use facebook/ twitter / blogging and ETSY forums and teams.
Next, Timothy talks about blogging and why it is important to have a website / blog on which you can share your shop's news and build back-links to ETSY.
I created this blog last year and at that time did not know what blogging is, how to blog, or how to even set up an appropriate layout for the blog. After spending some time trying to figure out the details about blogging this year, I finally realize that blogging IS a great idea and a great business tool for your ETSY shop. Since I "seriously" started blogging two weeks ago ( and by "serious" I mean 3 days a week ) I have notieced a drastic increase in traffic on ETSY. Maybe this is by a coincidence, or maybe blogging actually works. Either way Chapter 7 in Timothey's book is a must read!
In the last 2 sections of the book the author includes interviews of different top sellers on ETSY. They answer extensive questions about getting started in the business, provide advice about product descriptions and give you awesome, overall information on how to successfully run your shop.
I only partially read the book last year before opening up my store, because I was SO EXCITED to open my store I didn't read all of the pages I should have. I reread the book again recently and noticed that I missed a ton of helpful information.
I highly recommend this book for a purchase. I bough it off of Amazon and it cost me $11.00. Not a bad price for a book that will increase traffic in your shop and bring you sales a lot greater than 11 bucks.
Check back on Sunday for another post!
