gaseousclay

how long did it take? assuming of course most of you promoted your site and were using e-commerce sites like big cartel, etsy, etc. I was thinking of trying my hand at using big cartel, etsy and maybe ebay to increase sales. not sure which is most effective but did any of you find one better over the other or was it a matter of playing the waiting game?

 

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NaturalUnnatural

Now i haven't really promoted my etsy shop that well (And its empty right now until i get my business plan finished)
But i found it to be a total waste of time for the 6 months i had stuff up. But then i might have been doing things wrong i don't know.

I've started doing cards and brooches (tshirts soon..) and i found that contacting stores directly was a much better use of my time.

 

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gaseousclay

how does etsy work exactly? you sign up and set up your virtual storefront for free, right? don't they take a cut of each sale though? when you had your etsy shop up did you not promote it? have you tried selling your stuff on multiple sites rather than just one? i've considered contacting shops but i'm not quite sure how to go about it. do I send an email or do I eat the cost of a shirt and send samples out?

 

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NaturalUnnatural

Etsy does let you setup a storefront for free, and its fairly decent. I like etsy there is some cool stuff on their (but also some real rubbish too) but i know people have mixed results with selling on it. Seems to be that people have sales of several hundreds+ and others have next to none.

They do take a cut of each sale. Though as far as i know sites like big cartel which are more customisable do charge a monthly fee. So it really depends. Also i suppose there is the argument that if youre selling direct to shops then you have to charge wholesale anyway which is less than retail so you may make more money from etsy. Though i feel that there is a lot of admin with etsy that you may or may not mind.

I don't really know the best way to contact shops. I have read a lot of places that going in their with your stuff under your arm is a bad idea. However maybe writing with a follow up phone call or something with the letter to grab their attention. I don't know about giving away samples for free, maybe charge the wholesale cost and take the cost of their first order or something like that. This is something i am really still learning about so any experiences you have had would be appreciated!

So scary but so exciting!

 

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