After about 5 minutes in the store, I had my shopping list picked out. ShopGirls is my new favorite obsession, a classy boutique on Queen Street West in Toronto’s Parkdale district that features fine art and fashion from an all Canadian Artist base, with an emphasis on local work. Shop Girls is now carrying many Sixth & Elm pieces in their beautiful shop, and my work is in very good company there.

I fell in love with many items including some beautiful and unique jewellery, scarves and some very amazing mixed media pieces. Okay, fine, I actually did buy a necklace and pair of earrings and I had to keep reminding myself I was there to sell, not to buy in order to stop myself buying more. I have a feeling any money I make there will not last long and will quickly be used right back up buying goodies there for myself. Oh well, groceries are over-rated anyways.

With Christmas closer than any of us are willing to admit, it’s time to start finding that perfect gift. If you’re dedicated to buying handmade this season, this means you’ll be spending lots of time on Etsy. To save you time, grab the Etsy Search Plug-In for firefox or IE7 (You’ll get a dead link in safari or IE6) and you can search Etsy listings right from your toolbar. This saves you going to the homepage for your searches, jumping right to your results from whatever page you were on before.

This tool is provided by Etsy, so you can trust that it is safe to download and install.

Boo! In time for Halloween, or the first term of school at Hogwarts… It’s Rupert the Reproachful!

What I need from you, dear reader, is advice on what colour to stain him.

Did I mention how much I REALLY want to go to school at Hogwarts, even though I am 30 years old and it… um… doesn’t exist?

Yeah, yeah, you’re supposed to be posting items in the shop or making a new ad banner for Project Wonderful, but you know you’re gonna spend almost the whole time looking at cute pictures of your friend’s new cat on Flickr or looking up old boyfriends on Facebook. While you’re there, you might as well get a little marketing done. Here are some ways to drum up some interest for your shop while wasting time on the internet.

1. Upload all your item photos. *Given*
2. Search the Flickr groups for keywords related to Etsy or your craft and join the groups.
3. Upload a few photos to each group whenever you are on Flickr.  Etsy sellers, buyers and bloggers all frequent the groups as well as more popular design bloggers.
4. Make sure you have a link to your website in your profile. As per Flickr rules you are not supposed to use Flickr for marketing so you are not supposed to add your Etsy site address, just your blog address, but I haven’t been caught yet. Please don’t rat on me.
5. Search for users with tags related to Etsy or your craft and add these artists as a contact. Chances are they will add you too and see the your new items when you upload them to Flicker.
6. Comment on other artist’s photos – a lot. People follow the link back to your profile if you do, I promise.
7. Add me as a contact

1. Search Etsy forums for “Twitter” to find other Etsy buyers and sellers to follow. They will probably follow you too.
2. Go to TwitterFeed.com and set up your Etsy shop RSS so you will generate an automatic Tweet whenever you post an item to your Etsy shop. While you’re there set up a tweet for your blog too. contact me if you need help with RSS or finding your Etsy RSS URL.
3. Fill out your profile and make sure there are links to your Etsy shop, blog and/or Flickr account.
4. Go to your favorite design blogs and look for a “follow me on Twitter” link to follow them. Even if they don’t follow you, they will probably still at least check out your webpage.
5. Of course, follow me on Twitter!

 

1. Add the My Etsy Application to your Facebook Profile – Go to the App page and enter your ID. While on that page (after hitting submit) go to the very top of facebook and go to Settings>My Etsy Settings (the settings menu beside your name) and chose the “Profile” tab, then click “add” beside the Box selection. You can try the Etsy Shop App too, but I just got an error when I tried to add it.
2. Join the Etsy Sellers Facebook Group, upload some pictures, explore the group page and write on the wall or participate in the discussions. Sellers can be buyers too, and I have referred more than one buyer I could not help to Etsy Sellers I talk to on facebook, Flickr or forums.
3. Add photos of your shop items into albums in your Photos section.
4. Add other Etsyians as friends by searching for “facebook” in Etsy forum posts (like this thread, or this one) to find people who want to add other Etsy sellers or buyers to their friend lists.
5. If you want to get REALLY into it, you can make a Facebook page for your store, and encourage other Etsyians to become your fans if you become theirs. I have not done this yet since I don’t have time to maintain a store on Facebook too, and this list is mostly for quick ideas you can do while puttering online.
6. Add me as a friend: (make sure you let me know you’re an Etsyian, or I’ll think you were a random serial-friender).

1. Add shops and items to your favorites, especially new shops. They shops with 1000+ hearts don’t always have time to visit each shop when someone favorites them, but the newer sellers will without fail.
2. Choose an interesting shop item of yours for your avatar. When people see your avatar in convos or forum posts they will be curious and click through to your shop.
3. Participate in lots of forum threads. Lots. Talk it up, baby.
4. Join street teams.
5. Create treasuries, or make friend with people who do!
6. Pitch story ideas for the Storque to the editors. If accepted, you will get a lot of exposure for authoring an article.
7. If you have nothing new to list, renew items on a regular basis to keep your page appearing in the recently listed sections.
8. As always, check out my shop.

Other Online Distractions:

1. Check out your Etsy stats at Majaba.org
2. Comment regularly on the Indie and design blogs you read
3. Add your name to the Etsy Sellers Blog List
4. Check out my blog! Oh, wait, you’re there now…

Yay for justifiable online puttering!

Molecular Jewellery by Raven Hanna available from Made From Molecules – www.molecularmuse.etsy.com

Okay. We all know there’s nothing more annoying than an expert who analyses TV shows about their profession, like the (other – not me!) chemists who watch CSI and exclaim that you would never centrifuge one sample alone or that the GC takes an hour to analyse a sample, not 10 seconds (although I do get really excited when I see that CSI uses the same pipette or HPLC as me, and then Adam laughs at how geeky I am).

But I do have one CSI beef. Why do they keep doing things when they have already done them? For example, one of the CSI people will be shown taking a sample from a carpet, plating it on a slide and then looking at it under the microscope. Then a colleague walks up and they immediately explain how they found this sample of carpet, analysed it and found that it is from a specific manufacturer and they have a list of buyers. If you already did all this, why are you still taking a sample and looking at it under the scope? Or they will be pipetting a sample and getting it ready for the GC, and their boss walks in and they proceed to show him the GC printout of the sample he is working on. Why are you still taking a sample from something you already identified?

I am never going to be able to plausibly deny my geeky-ness after that confession, am I?