A while back I was listening to a podcast with a wonderful potter Tiffany Thomas, who makes some outrageously beautiful pots. She said that she didn’t use Etsy (a market place on line where crafters and artists sell their work) to sell her wares anymore. She had several solid reasons, but the one that really resounded for me was this, “Why should I send people to a place where they can find other potters to purchase from?” This was a revelation for me. The idea of switching away from Etsy wasn’t too hard to imagine but creating an e-commerce page seemed impossible without spending a ton of money, which my business couldn’t support quite yet. I didn’t think I could ever tackle it on my own.
I looked into it several times over the next few months. I was dancing around it and sticking my toe in here and there. One morning I decided to go for it and sat down and spent the greatest part of a Sunday setting up a page…DISASTER! It was awful, my whole page was completely destroyed. It took two days for the lovely people at Blue Host to right the wrong. For awhile at least my dream of selling from Yellowdoorpottery.com was quashed.
I started analyzing my Etsy page. There was nice traffic, people often “liked” my work and therefore my page, but the overwhelming majority of my sales were driven there by me. On one hand it is good for exposure, but for me the random sales weren’t enough to rely solely on them.
Yesterday I decided to try again. It was a sunny day and the screen porch was open. Katie was in the pool, so I needed to be with her, it was the perfect time to sit down and try to make this work. By the way I am a complete novice when it comes to websites, I figured, I set this page up originally, who’s to say I can’t add the e-commerce element? After several false starts and quite a few curse words, and quite frankly a couple of pints of Guinness, I had my first item for sale on this page! I’ve got a ton of work to do to clean it up and add more products. However I am on my way, please be patient with me while I work out the kinks. I’m not completely giving up Etsy just yet, because there is some exposure, but I will no longer be directing people there, which reminds me, I now need new business cards…it’s always something. Thank you for your support, Teri.
