According to my “Shop Views” graph, my shop is currently getting less than half the views it was getting this time last year, and this has been the case for the last few months. Is the graph accurate, does anyone know? I know I could look at Google Analytics to get more detail but I haven’t yet managed to make sense of that and the Shop Views page is so easy to access.
If its right, why would this be the case? I’m not doing anything different and my other shop on the “dark side” does very well. Do I need to change titles and descriptions in light of the new search?
My views have halved but only in the last six weeks, I used to get between 60 -100 views each day now I am only getting 20-40 with the average being in the 20’s
When I started in 2010 100-200 views when promoting was normal. Now however 40 ish is an exceptional day and that`s with a lot of work, mostly with an ordinary amount of promo they are between 10 & 25.
Sales are also non existent these days too.
I have given up looking at shop views for Folksy. Also, I used to get loads of sales on here, between 10-20 per month, but these days I would be lucky to get one sale per month. I’m still getting very healthy sales on E**sy and lots of views/ interest over there. I have actually stopped adding new listings in my Folksy shop until I decide whether to carry on with it!
Same as Linda for me, views of 100+ were very much the norm with a little regular effort, now day after day of solid promotion brings a couple of dozen at best.
I don’t really blame folksy to be fair, etsy has so much traffic and eyes wandering about that you can’t swing a cat without it dragging in 50 views. Views are a doodle there and more views (hopefully ) means more sales, or it usually does for me.
I always knew I was driving all my own traffic to folksy, or a very high percentage of it anyway but now with social media changing, Facebook being the obvious killjoy but views from pinterest have also halved since they brought in the new product view to compete with picsity meaning anyone looking for something to buy can find them and search them all in the product view but only items pinned with rich pins appear in there and I don’t think folksy has enabled rich pins on the site yet.
Nearly all the sites have gone down the nofollow route so any links on them don’t benefit seo like they used to so views from Google search have dropped off. Not that Google pay much mind to they way a lot of people (myself included) post links any more.
I know Facebook catch a lot of flack for their changes, they’re trying to make money and going about it in a very greedy and often deceptive way not only expecting a monetary outlay from page owners often without any results but also expecting a huge outlay in man hours from page likers just to keep seeing the pages they like in their feeds and page owners are often torturing their likers with constant ‘like me tiny human’ style posts which will now be picked up as spam by another new algorithm.
Waffling and off on a rant now … I guess if we’re trying to drive traffic to sites like folksy etc which don’t have as much random passing trade as other larger sites then we’re all going to have to go back to basics, pretend we’ve only just arrived on the Internet, ditch the old habits and learn everything from scratch again, knock the whole ‘I do Facebook, pinterest and twitter’ cr@p on the head and start talking to the people on those sites instead of at them.
@ Leanne, just reading your very well written response. I do agree that there is no point in blaming Folksy for lack of sales. I think you must be right about changes within google, as this is where 99% of my customers have found me in the past, during my “hayday”. I realise my customer base is not within Folksy. When I was doing very well, I was less computer literate than now and didn’t use facebook very often or any of the other promotion sites. I use them all now of course, so something out there has changed. Like you have said, maybe it’s a back to basics thing…
Some days it feels like the more I know, the worse I do but I’m really going to have to make the time and learn how to use all the sites again these days. Old habits are so hard to break though, some days it all feels a bit … why bother.
Oh dear, I’m starting to remember the old office job with rose tinted specs … can’t be having that:-)
In a month’s time I will be approaching the anniversary of my shop’s drop into the abyss! I’d been doing so well until the end of May, then nothing. I’m certainly not going to give up because I love making stuff but the incentive to prioritise my shop above other activities has gone. Even during my best year I only earned (after deducting expenses) what someone with a normal low-paid job would earn in a month, so for me it’s not worth worrying about.
So it’s not just me then…
I thought it was because I’ve had so many other things to do, that my views had dropped - even though I have tried to keep up with the online marketing stuff. Maybe there is more to it than that…
It is discouraging to make no sales. My mojo has taken a holiday recently and it’s only a lovely custom order from E**y and a friend’s new baby, that have encouraged me to get back to my work table!
I’m so glad it’s not just me. I was going great guns this time last year and I’m having to put so much effort in now just to get a couple of views. I’m promoting in all the usual places so don’t know what else to do
Well, it seems I’m not alone. Thanks everyone for your responses. Do you think Folksy admin monitors these threads? If we’re all suffering, there might be things they could do, if only in terms of advice. Over on the “dark side” there is a host of info on how to improve titles, descriptions etc to make your shop found more easily.
I keep dreaming about being able to give up the day job, but this online selling lark is so insecure - usually due to factors outside my control - and I have 2 more kids to put through uni!
The thing is I’m not really sure everyone is suffering. A lot of shops have worked hard at building relationships with their customers instead of spending time working the seo angle and they reap the rewards of those relationships because they make things they love and they’ve found customers who love them too … logically they probably have a lot in common so can have a natter and get on great beyond the selling aspect rather than their customers accidentally finding their item in a Google search and bing, bang done they part company.
I see so many pages on facebook just clamouring for likes and bigger and bigger numbers but corner them without a laptop or phone and the page owners probably couldn’t rattle off the names of a dozen of their likers because they’re all or mostly just numbers. It’s a bit one sided to ask people to like us and then not bother to get to know them.
I’m not sure what folksy could really do to help those of us stuck in a rut, there is advice on the folksy blog about titles, descriptions etc although I’m not sure how up to date it is. Any advice on good seo practices regarding titles and whatnot is just as relevant for a folksy shop as it is for an etsy shop.
I need to completely gut and overhaul all my shops, I’ve gotten so lazy cutting and pasting from one shop to another which Google hates and I’ve been at this 5 years now and people are a lot more accustomed to shopping online now so a lot of the assurances that had to be right there in the description back in the day are just bloody wordy and waffly now so I need to trim the fat too.
Plus I’m completely guilty of getting down in the dumps and just not feeling much like being social sometimes, I end up avoiding things like facebook and I’m convinced that we all need to be a lot more genuinely social in order to find the right customers.
Hi everyone, I’ve also noticed a slow down in sales from the middle of March onwards andover the past few weeks my shop views have been abysmal. I haven’t had the time to promote recently due to the addition of a cute little puppy to the household and my hands are slightly tied at the moment, and through this I would definitely say self promotion is certainly a key factor. You really need just to get your name out there the best way you can …promotion, promotion, promotion. I seriously hope things pick up soon though and hope I am able to get back into the swing of things soon.
Hi, this interesting reading what some ‘old hands’ have to say about Folksy and sales. I joined in March and don’t feel that I have got anywhere. I thought it must be me and maybe it is? But maybe there are other reasons for the low views and lack of sales. I am always surprised that when I talk to people about what I am doing no-one has heard of Folksy! I don’t know if others find that?
Anyway, just keep trying I suppose.
Many of my Folksy items are showing up on the 1st page of google, but for some reason they are not selling well. I get sales almost every day in Etsy, around 30 per month and many are to UK customers, some with very smart London addresses, which I only mention to say my stuff does sell and receive great feedback on the other side!
I’m trying my best with facebook to improve my pages and my blog and just joined instagram, maybe this will help!
What do any of you think about the Folksy best seller chart? I have noticed it seems to be (mostly)the same small handful of sellers all the time. I would expect it to be more diverse and change constantly if overall sales are good on here…
Very interesting and useful - thank you for sharing your thoughts on this.
A note - the Folksy Blog has posted recently about updates to the Search algorithms. It means that listing titles and also categories are used, to find items that are relevant to the search terms. Previously, if you entered a search, the more words you entered, the more results you got - whether relevant to the whole search, or not. Now, the search uses the words to narrow the results down.
This is good news for sellers and buyers - but it also means we need to consider our item titles differently and word them carefully. One-word titles will restrict how often our listings are found in searches - which means our potential customers, having found Folksy.com, will maybe not see our beautiful items at all!
A while ago, I posted in frustration, on the old Folksy Forum. I had searched for “bird lampshade” (I genuinely wanted to buy a bird lampshade for our new sitting room).
I got about 1700 results for that search. Most of them had nothing to do with Lampshades and a lot had nothing to do with Birds either. I was really fed up about it - both from the POV of a buyer and also as a seller.
Today I tried the same search. I got a list of 28 beautiful lampshades, all with birds. Nothing else. I was Very Pleased!
I know I keep banging on about this, but I have had a sudden realisation about what’s been happening with my shop on Folksy, and things like the bestsellers being the majority of the same shops etc.
What’s helped with that realisation is I suddenly get how to use Facebook to market myself and my stuff, and I’ve suddenly started selling, well, through it. But also being around on Facebook more I’ve started noticing some of the regulars in the bestsellers list appearing a lot. And I’ve noticed that they almost solely point their customers here to buy from them. They’ve got massive, loyal customer bases who clammer after their things everytime they list them, so if they only sell here it’s going to show well in the bestsellers list. I’m spreading my sales over 4 selling venues at the moment, and this site is by far the slowest, so my sales totals are very diluted here.
I wonder how many of the bestsellers that are selling average priced items (not the ones that get in from selling one huge bit of furniture) are only marketing, and selling from this site and nowhere else. I bet if some of us totted up our monthly sales and they were all done through here we’d be pretty regularly in the bestsellers chart too. I used to be, before my website and other shop started pinching all the Google traffic that used to come here for me.
Thanks Lizzie. That’s really helpful. I spent time a while ago changing my titles to just “Birthday Card” etc. Looks now I need to go back and add “quilled”, “handmade”, “personalised” etc, etc.
