More thoughts on online selling

Yesterday I waxed poetic for a while about my "adventures" selling - or trying to sell - tie-dyed stuff on Etsy.

I do appreciate having an online venue, don't get me wrong. It's nice to be able to tell people to "Check out my Etsy shop" so I don't have to display my wares all over my house all the time. Problem is, I've been relying on it to make my sales, and that approach has definitely had some big-time shortcomings.

Let's say I'm a buyer on Etsy and looking to buy some tie-dye. I type "Tie dye" into the search and up come pages and pages and PAGES of listings - sorted by "Most Recently Listed." If I haven't listed anything new lately, then my stuff is probably on Page 50 - or higher!

AH, but there's a way past that: RENEWING! Yes, for a repeat of the 20-cent listing fee, I can "renew" an item, basically listing it as new, and it'll show up closer to the top of the search. Theoretically, anyway....

Y'see, if 4 or 5 shops are all renewing items, the first page or two aren't big enough to hold all the new stuff AND the renewals, so even renewals and new items can end up on Page 3 when they FIRST appear. And that's just the tie-dye - the people who really get hosed by this are the jewelry makers, because there are so many of them.

To try to get more "hits" in the search engines, I try to make sure my items have helpful "tags." I get up to 14 of them to use! I do try to keep them relevant, but I'm also competing with people who use the tag "tie dye" whether ot not their item actually IS tie dye. Something knitted or crocheted with variegated yarn, for example, has a tie-dyed look, so it's not really out-of-line to use the tag to snag people hunting for that look - but it does have the result of pushing actual tie dye further down the list. Blatant mis-tagging makes it hard for sellers to reach potential buyers AND for buyers to find what they're actually looking for.

Now, whether the "Search" feature on Etsy is really working properly at all is another story entirely, and it's way beyond my personal scope and ability to write clearly about. Suffice it to say that if it isn't working, then tags and search terms are pretty useless and I can only hope that tie dye comes up as often in jewelry searches, thus sending people to my shop on a whim, as jewelry shows up when I search for tie dye.