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As you all know by now, I am HUGE fan of Etsy. Many of my blog readers and clients sell handcrafts through Etsy shops and I even have a Wedding Skulls etsy shop.
Many of my Etsy clients are concerned about the amount of time they spend promoting and managing their shops verses the amount of sales they actually make. One girl said “currently, I’m putting in 50 hours work for every sale.” She’s selling handmade bracelets that sell for under $10.
So I’ve put my head to the task and come up with three excellent tips for scaling back your time managing and promoting your etsy shop (giving you more time to craft those beautiful things!) If you’re not an Etsy seller, don’t look away, you can apply these tips to any small business or non profit!
Create a Plan (and STICK TO IT)
Divide your business activities into four sections – Creating inventory, packaging and shipping inventory, marketing and promotion, and shop maintenance. Decide how much time you are to spend on each of those activities each week - 5 hours on inventory, 2 on marketing, 1 on shop maintenance and 2 on packaging, for example.
As soon as you’ve used your allotted time, move onto the next activity. Keeping yourself locked into time constraints like this is an excellent motivator to work productively.
Use Templates for Conversations
A lot of a seller’s time is spent answering emails and Etsy conversations. To save time, I keep a word document on my desk with all the ’standard’ replys I send out “Your item has been shipped and is winging it’s way across the Atlantic as I type…”
I cut and paste as the need arises and add name of customers and items. I know everything I send off sounds professional and is properly spell-checked. This saves me so much time.
Market Smarter, Not Harder
Forums, chatrooms, blogging, twitter, facebook, bookmarking…all the different online promotion tools can feel overwhelming, especially when it seems like you put in hours of time for not much reward.
The answer is not to market harder, but to market smarter. Instead of trying ALL these things – try one or two. Do you get more conversions from you blog readers or your facebook friends? How about Twitter? Drop the promotion activities that give you the fewest sales and focus your attention on improving your efforts in the others.
