I have just been over on the other side lol not eB-- but the other one and poor Folksy is not getting any good representation, I think Folksy really need to advertise more and put Ya self out there Folksy, come on there is a lot of potential here but people aren’t finding it and just don’t have a clue who you are, we the people can’t keep promoting ourselves I feel you should help us out too.
Even D-w---- are doing very well, help us out Folksy come on, I’ve read a few posts in here and some of us aren’t happy, we need you Folksy to help get recognized.
In full agreement with you here Aasiyah @wobbear - Folksy needs to get its name out there a bit more - when I mention I have a shop on Folksy the reply is usually ‘Who are they’ - If we are found more we will benefit but so will Folksy - visitors and sales are certainly down this year. - also sighing in hope
Agree with all your comments. Everyone should be really busy now but still not many potential customers trawling Folksy. You only have to look at the visitor tally on the unsigned in front page should be thousands not hundreds.
Whenever I’ve suggested that Folksy could advertise, I’ve been shot down in flames! Apparently it’s up to us to advertise our own shops. Funny how Etsy,eBay and NOTS don’t share that opinion.
Wow Christine that is harsh. . . . . and for us advertising ourselves well just like the other places you have mentioned they do this for their sellers so I’m just baffled and wondering why Folksy can’t help us???
It does get a little bit tiring promoting all the time, we have our handmade items to make, price and then list.
Couldnt Folksy apply for a grant from the arts council (for artists) or the government (for digital promotion) or other sources that might just help them afford to do promotion? or is that really daft of me?
If Folksy don’t help the shops on here, then they will put up with it for so long and then leave. I sell on ebay, I don’t have to do any promoting, just good listings. It seems that Folksy has reached its full potential. There is no sentiment in business, if a shop is not selling, even the B&M shops close them down. I have’nt been very active this year because of circumstances and my Plus account is valid until March. But I won’t be renewing my plus account, and others may do the same. That’s the only option, vote with our feet. Marg. x
The business model for Folksy - like any marketplace - is based on volume attracting search and social acquisition and we invest a lot of resources in content marketing and promotion. However, at 6% commission (inc VAT at 20% and minus PayPal fees) most paid for advertising is not commercially viable. On an average order of £19 our net revenue is approximately 70p. At this point to understand whether to invest in advertising you need to know what the lifetime customer value (LCV) is - so how much someone spends in their life time - on average - to know whether the cost of acquiring them is worth it. The LCV for a buyer on Folksy is around £50, giving us a net revenue of approximately £1.75. If we take 20% of that as marketing spend it leaves us with about 35p to spend on acquisition.
We’ve trialled a few different paid for models and most end up costing between £1.70 and upwards of £5 to convert a lead into someone who buys. Typical retail mark up is 100% and most paid for advertising is based on that model. Other businesses mentioned here charge more or are funded by venture capital money to subsidise paid for advertising (often unsustainably). One option - and one we’re keen to look at - is to help you pay to advertise your work through Google and elsewhere so you can assess if it makes financial sense for you to do that. It might do for many people - however, I suspect for most good social media marketing will be more cost effective.
I think most shop owners are working hard promoting their individual shops and items, but what seems missing is a general awareness in ‘the public’ of Folksy itself and what it offers, which we can’t address. We might be able to get a news article about ourself, and mention folksy as much as we can, but we also need a top-down approach, which can only come from the Folksy team. The Saturday Telegraph Good Buys guide (for instance) is never going to include an item I send them as an individual… but if the Folksy Team bombards them with press releases and gift guides showing the wide variety of brilliant items on here and with interesting ‘meet the maker’ pieces, they might well take an interest.
No, listing fees were not considered in that working out as it is almost negligible. So adding another 15p to the figures. If we take 20% of that it adds another 3p to the net spend for acquisition.
In the workshops we recently ran most people were surprised at the small amount available to us to spend on advertising and also the high relative cost of advertising itself. As a result, most people in the workshops revised their own pricing model substantially to allow them enough to do paid for advertising. That said our social media acquisition has increased substantially in the last year and we believe that it offers a viable and sustainable way to grow and achieve sales on the model we have. This content led strategy still costs us 20% of revenue.
We do press work as part of our marketing. Bombarding journalists doesn’t work and you’d be surprised at how many of those features that look like editorial features are actually paid for. We’ve trialled paid for work and it doesn’t convert well at all - in fact it has been the worst performing trial we have done. PR generally is done as a means to raise awareness but it doesn’t bring in much revenue - the reasons:
Paper to web converts poorly - you need to have web based content to work effectively and much in the Saturday and Sunday papers isn’t on the web (or isn’t very visible)
Supply. Having a featured item in the paper can be wonderful for the seller but - usually when there is only 2-3 items in the listing - they are not able to capitalise on it as supply is very limited. The problem with handmade! So £000s of publicity we have generated doesn’t translate into much actual revenue.
That said we have been featured on the BBC, the Guardian, The Mail, Red, Cosmopolitan etc - the list goes on. Public awareness is reasonably good as we have around 4million people visit a year and 9 out of 10 of those are from the UK. Not all will remember us and fewer still will share and recommend Folksy - but we’re working on making those who do visit convert better and want to talk about us. This is far more cost effective than acquiring new customers through paid advertising. WoM rules!
To Folksy staff.
You have thousands of sellers on here all willing to advertise in their own way. We all get bombarded by branding and we can name a brand without seeing the name, just the logo.
Is there any chance you could come up with a symbol, and obviously the Folksy name to go with it,that we can print out ourselves, put in our car windows etc just to get people used to seeing it and curiousity may get people to visit, maybe buy. We are your free advertising, we just need 1 advert to start with.
We did talk about this (posters etc) when I did a thread in Sept. Promote Folksy?
Remember you can get business cards and hand them out, you can share and retweet Folksy’s posts as a way of spreading the word.
