My 2p worth: I don’t personally have a problem paying Folksy to act as a selling platform for me, given that I am a computer numpty and it would take me forever to get anywhere near building a working online shop from scratch myself - from where I’m sitting I think I’m getting a fair deal, I’ve been very well supported and I don’t feel exploited in any way. It’s up to the platform how much they advertise themselves, I don’t expect them to advertise for me, I’m not paying them to do that. (I am only paying E to do that because they forced me into it and tbh it isn’t hugely effective for my particular shop anyway.) The Folksy promotion and cross-promotion that I do takes relatively little time, it brings me sales, I hope it brings buyers to the platform in general, it builds community engagement and I hope it brings sales for other Folksy sellers too. If that is stupid, well, I’m going to carry on being stupid and enjoying the results. After all the main point of my products is to make people smile 
I too am happy, I do the social media bit and as you said does not take long each to do. A. also happy with the cost of Folksy, Had my own website for years and cost a lot more money and had to pay for advertising.
Maybe Folksy is better for people that do not necessarily have to sell to earn money. I am registered with the HMRC and have been for years, nothing derogatory just that I do not have the need for a full time income now. When I did used to slog away daily.
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i’m going to take issue with being called stupid.
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folksy is not the government nor an employer. folksy is a private business. you don’t need to strike, or incite other people to bring it down. you can just choose another platform and leave
Hi Fiona
Sorry if I offended you, I have changed the wording because it wasn’t what I was trying to say. Using the word was not appropriate. People have been complaining that Folksy don’t do enough advertising. I agree we should be doing our own advertising, but Folksy could do a bit more themselves. I have had my shop for years and happy with my sales to date and I have no intention of leaving.
Hi Wendy
Your inspirational. Yes, your work is lovely, please keep going on Folksy.
Hi
I didn’t do any SM for a few weeks due to a family emergency. During this time my stats did drop. When I started doing it again they did improve.
Good to know it works for you too!
I think you are right. Views have indeed dropped suddenly here on Folksy. And they stay consistently low for days…
At the same time, I notice there are some changes in the forum’s look. I wonder if this is relevant…
Pretty 99.99% sure that the slight redesign of the forum is totally unrelated to
views. But tahnk you for mentioning it as I was beginning to wonder why nobody else had noticed and was it just me 
I’ve been monitoring my views for the past couple of weeks as I had no idea most of the time, I was hardly looking at the stats. I wish they showed the history… but anyway I’ve started keeping a daily note and was pleased to see that my traffic went up last weekend, presumably as a result of the market, and it’s been showing a slight but steady increase all week so maybe all that promoting I did is still bringing people in?
I’m doing a real-world craft fair over this weekend and don’t have time to make new stock so I’ll be taking pretty much all the readymades out of my shop for a few days and won’t have time to do much on social media - will report back with what effect this has on my views!
Hi All
I like the ‘items visits’ on the stats. I can see what people are looking at and it gives me an idea on what items and designs to concentrate making more of in different colourways and sizes. I tend to treat this section as my market research! I also like to see which SM platform people are viewing from. Shop visits have always been quite high for me. Search clicks gives me an idea on what people have been looking at in particular by clicking on '‘items’.
I find the new stats more informative for my business. A lot of my jewellery will be taken out of my shop in the new year and dismantled. I have more of an idea on what people are looking for in general. That’s the beauty of gemstones and prestigious metals, you can remake items so money on materials has not been waisted; only my original design and labour time has been lost. Unlike knitted finished items. No way could I undo and remake it!!!
Hope your event goes well - we are out at a two-day event tomorrow and Saturday. It’ll be freezing 
Hoping both your events go well @LooneySpoons and @ccbandatp !
I have events on Saturday too, Much Wenlock Christmas Fayre (outdoors brrrrr!) for me - and my good lady will have a table in the marquee at The British Ironwork Centre Homemade Christmas Fair, near Oswestry, both great venues and events.
Hi
I hope you sell well for being cold! Is it the Trading Standards 'made in Cornwall ’ Christmas fair? I used to do them years ago and always did extreamly well. I am sure we have met at a craft fair in the past! Now I am disabled I cannot attend any local craft fairs. I would like to thank you both for supporting my SM tweets. It’s much valued and appreciated.
A busy weekend for you and your wife Mick. We are indoors - beautiful old building but stone floors and walls walls and virtually no heating. We do have a small kitchen with a kettle so hot water bottles are packed to stuff up jumpers or sit on 9am to 9pm tomorrow so a long day. Have fun 
I am sure we have probably met somewhere. No - we are over the border in Devon - Tavistock. In the Butchers Hall. It’s their Christmas Market rolled into their Dickensian Evening with steam engines (you would love it @SteampunkCreativeEngineering, lantern parades, lights on, live music etc. Brilliant evening but we see very little of it being inside. Hopefully lots of visitors though with full wallets 
Oh I’ve been to Tavistock market. My sister lives in Launceston so we stay at a campsite just outside Tavistock so we can visit her. Didnt go to the market this year but have on two other occasions. I bought a small painting on slate there one year and a rainbow dreamcatcher with feathers.
That sounds wonderful @ccbandatp , Victorian with steam, I love the atmosphere of that sort of event. Hoping that you have a great time and find many full walleted customers
Don’t know why it hasn’t occurred to me to do this before but… just been to compare my views and visits on my E–y shop for the past 7 days with those for my Folksy shop.
My E shop has around a quarter the number of listings but the site as a whole is orders of magnitude bigger in terms of both buyers and sellers (and presumably advertising budget…) and I’ve been there for 15 years compared with just over a year on Folksy.
I get about three E orders for every Folksy one.
I was expecting the E traffic to be waaay higher than here, but actually I’m only getting about twice as many item views and twice as many shop visits on E.
So in terms of traffic Folksy is punching above its weight considering the relatively small size of the platform - and I guess all the promotion I’ve been doing has helped too - but my Folksy conversion rate is roughly 2% (sales to views) compared with around 3% on E. I guess that means I need to add more personalised items to my Folksy shop since those are the ones that are sustaining my other shop? I don’t think that will hurt either business as I’m guessing I mostly sell to different pools of buyers on the two platforms.
Will be interesting to see what happens after the Xmas rush is over!
Just a word of caution - Etsy stats are said to be wildly unreliable at the moment and have been for a while - their bots have skewed do much crawling over pages there.
I do hope it’s right though! 