Well, my listings are starting to expire for the second time, and since I haven’t have a single sale from Folksy since I opened my shop in April I have decided that it’s just not worth renewing them again.
I like the community of sellers here, but without any sales I can’t justify throwing money away.
I’m lucky enough to not rely on this for my income, so if I could have just covered my listing costs I’d have been happy to carry on with very little return, as I find the process quite enjoyable.
I have a while before all my listings have expired so I’m not leaving quite yet, but just felt like I wanted to express my disappointment.
Have you joined the Daily Listing challenge thread? I say this because my experience is very similar to yours, I joined about the same time and have listings expiring or about to expire for the second time, and I wonder how long to keep paying out on relisting fees. Like you , I enjoy making things and I think Folksy is great - friendly and easy to use, but without sales it is unsustainable . However , my one difference to your experience is that I have had TWO sales ! And both of these came from fellow Folksy-ites on the Daily Listing challenge thread, which is why I suggested it to you. Unfortunately I dont have enough new listings to do the challenge again, and cant justify keep on adding things with such little return, but it certainly helped!
I love your grey wool and alpaca scarf. Unfortunately just had to shell out £267.00 on a new central heating pump for the boiler. Will hopefully have enough money to purchase it from you in the new year.
I love your stationary. Perhaps if you had more scarfs in your shop you will sell more. There is another selling making hand woven scarfs, but more expensive than yours and she seems to sell well on Folksy. Try to keep motivated to keep going. At the present time most sellers are experiencing a severe drop in sales.
I have to echo Liz @samazama s comment. I have had a lot of sales through other Folksy members, they are both sellers and buyers so it’s really worth engaging in the daily challenge, if you can, plus other threads on here. It’s also really important to push your shop through social media as often as you can as this generates sales too. It’s a bit of a hard slog but well worth it. You have lovely items in your shop and I wish you the best going forward.
Hi, I’m by no means an expert because I’ve only had three sales myself but I have attended some of the folksy online workshops which have given me some useful tips on how to get your work seen. Your scarves are beautiful and the fact that they are handwoven is a definite selling point.
Maybe take a look at your listing titles, in order for buyers to find your work when searching you need to put the key words first in the titles. Think what someone would search for eg Scarf- handwoven. Or with the notepads: Notepad- dog design - gift for animal lover.
Make use of all of your tags. Eg scarf, handwoven scarf, red scarf, winter accessories, gift for her, gift for mum.
Check on the folksy theme of the day to see if any of your items fit with the theme.
Promote your items on social media with a link to your folksy shop.
Hope that helps a bit.x
Hi Heather @cornbrookcrafts you have some lovely items, your scarves are beautiful, they arn’t the kind of thing I wear personally (I wear mostly Goth) but beautifully made and very good prices.
I agree with others that you need to add more to your titles and your tags. I looked at the lovely red scarf but I don’t remember seeing the words ‘scarf’ or ‘scarves’ in the tags. Is there anything you can elaborate on in the description at all?
I havn’t come across your shop before, if I had seen them earlier I might have been able to gift one for Christmas. It would be a shame to give up your shop already, this year seems to have been much harder for a lot of shops, hopefully things will pick up next year.,
Hi Heather
Not getting sales can be a bit sole destroying but it does take a while.
I agree with others your shop and scarfs and stationery are lovely, its just your titles and tags that need tweeking your title is the most important thing to get found.
I checked out your rabbit notepad, you have notepad 3 times in the title. Id vary it, for more chance of being found. Notepad, Small rabbit notebook, A6 cute bunny Jotter.
The ever increasing cost of postage doesnt help with sales, especially on small value items, maybe change to second class postage.
Hope you get your first sale soon
I have always promoted other crafters / artisans and often I have been asked why.
I do not see others as competition because the chances are your work and theirs will have enough differences to appeal to different customers.
As an artisan, your followers / customers will come to trust your judgement about other artisans and see you as not just an artisan but a useful resource.
If you only ever promote yourself , your followers will soon get fed up of seeing the same things and are more likely to unfollow you.
So promote away but mix it up and give your followers varied content.
I’ve never really considered the daily listing challenge as I only have a handful of items. I think I’ll consider it if I decide to relist several items in the future.
Thank you everyone for your supportive replies.
I’ll spend some time refining my listings, and promote more on social media until my current listings expire.
For tags, I haven’t included words that are already in the titles, as I thought they would be flagged in the search. Am I wrong? If so, I’ll add the words from the title into the tags as well.
I am sure points are earnt for titles, first line of the description and tags so the more times ‘scarf’ is mentioned the higher it will show in searches. I always add teddy bear to my tags more than once i.e teddy bear, collectable teddy bear etc.
I’m glad you suggested the daily listing challenge - I’ve been on Folksy since last November (or thereabouts) and have not sold one single item other than a few items to family members. I have quite a few items so I sign up to Folksy Plus every so often and relist that way. But I have been quite disheartened at the lack of sales othr than to my family!
I’ll try the daily listing challenge to see if it generates anything, thank you!
Noelle @littleredsquirrel can I suggest you take another look at your photos - specifically the crop of them. Folksy displays our images as squares in the search results and on our shop fronts so any image that isn’t already square gets chopped off. Lots of your pendants are missing their tops and bottoms on your shop front. I opt to pre crop my images (I use picasa) but you don’t have to just make sure that there is enough of a border around the item.
