@JoSara i’m one of those sellers who does just that. my items are reasonably priced (on average around the £8 mark) and i do all of my promotion through facebook. i use facebook in a genuine way, as mentioned by @SeetheWoods above - interacting with other pages and customers and fans of the page. (ie, really using it to socialise and interact with people, rather than asking for likes or, say, using giveaways as an incentive just to get people to like and share the page) - i really enjoy running the page, and love having the chance to chat to people and show my work to a genuinely interested audience!
i direct all of my customers to my folksy shop, and have had 1647 sales here.
compare that to etsy, where i don’t put in any effort really - and i have had only 28 sales there to date!
(i can’t comment on which shop has better views really, as i never look at the figures or keep track of those.)
@littleblackheart that’s totally what I’ve discovered about Facebook. I really didn’t understand it, I didn’t use it personally and just kind of had my business page in the background as somewhere to post a few pics of my items as I listed them, not really expecting much out of it other than a shop window. Any page likes have grown organically over the last two years. Then at the start of this year (as a kind of New Year’s Resolution) I tried making more of an effort to interact. There are some great things being made and shared on Facebook and if I genuinely liked something I would say so. That started gathering me likes at a much greater pace. All people who are interested in what I do, and what I like, and who regularly pop a like or comment on my posts (and as a bonus who also buy and commission things from me too).
I see the people who are always asking for the likes, or sharing the ‘Share this page and we’ll all like yours back’. They’re sitting there with thousands of fans but their posts get no interaction at all, so I doubt a fraction of those fans are seeing them, and if they do I doubt they even care what it’s about.
And thanks for backing up my point about sending all customers here. I think it’s a choice for all shop owners. I personally like having a few places to sell because of what happened here with the search engine traffic dropping off. My other shops picked up that slack. Maybe something else will happen in the future that means Folksy will pick up lost customers from elsewhere. If you’ve got a good, loyal, repeat customer base, and if you’ve got average priced items (I need to think of a nicer sounding word than average), you’re more likely to be able to sell multiple items to customers, and Facebook is great for people sharing the things they’ve bought on their own pages and spreading the word for you, so directing them all to one place will work fine.
Jo
A big thank you to everyone for your input in this thread, it’s really spurred me on! I didn’t even realise you could invite people to like your FB page, so I have about 980 likes already and will hopefully get more and be able to interact properly as you guys have said! I just sussed out instagram better in the last hour also.
I know there is a Folksy button somewhere to add to our FB pages, but I can’t seem to be able to add it as it’s a bit complicated for me. I think if we could have an easy to install button, like my Etsy shop has, that would help!
I’m a Facebook dummy, so I was thinking of getting one of the “For Dummies” books to help me. Does anyone have one of these? I wonder whether to go for “Facebook for Dummies” to learn how to interact with people generally or to go straight to “Facebook Marketing for Dummies”. At the moment I just post occasionally when I have something new in, but not many people seem to see my postings and they rarely get liked or shared. I’d like to share other people’s work but I don’t know how! Perhaps even the “for Dummies” books will be too advanced for me…
@coatimundi Christine, sharing a post on Facebook couldn’t be easier. If you see a post you like, at the bottom of the pic there’ll be a choice of ‘like’ ‘comment’ or ‘share’. Click on share and you’ll get that post come up in a separate box which says Share on Your Own Timeline. There’ll be a blank section for you to add some words, ie what you like about the post, and a big blue button saying Share Post. Click that and it’ll be on your page for your fans to see. The page you’ve shared from will get a notification that you’ve done it so you might get them popping over to see your page. And maybe some of their likers too. I wouldn’t do it with a view to that happening though. Just share things you like, for that reason. You could even just '‘comment’ on the post which means you’ll get to add some text in a box underneath the pic only on the owners page. They might reply to you. One of their fans might pick up on what you’ve said and visit your page. It’s all very organic.
I don’t know if a book on marketing would be a good thing or not. I really think being genuine on Facebook is key, not being business-like, as such, and not forcing it if it’s not really for you.
Jo
p.s. Just had a thought. If you want to test sharing something, feel free to use anything from my page - https://www.facebook.com/JosaraDesign - if you want to share it onto your page, and then practice deleting too, I wont be offended 
Susan, there’s a Folksy shop widget which you can stick your Folksy shop onto Facebook using an HTML app (like WooBox) - http://blog.folksy.com/2014/02/24/new-folksy-shop-widget
Not sure what’s going to happen to it when my Facebook page gets converted to the new look business page, but it’s there for the mo.
Jo
Thanks for the advice, Jo! I’ll give it a go later- I do love the things you make so I’d be happy to share them!
I’ve done one, Jo! But not until after I’d “liked” your shop under my own name! Now I’ll have to keep it up and start commenting and stuff. How did you get your Folksy shop on there? I was only given the option of Etsy or a couple of others I didn’t know…
@coatimundi I got the notification through on Facebook that you’d shared, and liked, ta
I’m really not sure it’s worth worrying about getting your Folksy shop on Facebook as a tab because of the new business page where the tabs are going.
Is anyone using the new look Facebook page? Did you have an Etsy shop tab? Or static HTML shop tab for your Folksy shop? What happened to them? Are they still on your page under the ‘More’ bit? How is it displayed if they are?
You know what you could do in the meantime though, Christine. In the short description bit of your page info, add your folksy shop as a link in there then it’s fairly prominent and it’s clickable too.
Jo
I hate to be a real grouch but it isn’t just sales via the internet that have dropped. For the past 3 years I have had stalls at craft fairs, both big and small, throughout the year. In 2011 and 2012 the events were really good and I always made a reasonable profit but last year, things were so dire that I have decided not to do any this year. I spoke to lots of other crafts people who made a huge variety of beautiful things but sadly many of them have also decided they will stop doing what they love to do because they can’t cover their costs. My sales on Folksy since I joined haven’t been fantastic but I have definitely sold more than I did at several events I went to last year !!
Hello,
Thought it might be helpful to chip in with some solid figures. Visitor numbers in the last 30 days are down slightly on last year but conversions are up - so overall revenue and things bought is up. We had 250,000 “non-sellers” (i.e. potential buyers) visit in the last 30 days. This is people, not sessions of which there were 340,000. So we get around 9,000 potential buyers (non-selling buyers) a day at the moment. April is usually quite a quiet month though. We’ve been working hard to improve conversion however, and this is now around 1.25% from .90% in the same period last year (due in part to improvements in search, the checkout process and editorial features like Favourite Finds). Organic search traffic is the main culprit for the visitor drop, as ecommerce sites are pushed into paid shopping listings. We’re going to trial Google Shopping later in the year to see if it stacks up financially.
Someone mentioned the beta URL being to blame for poorer google rankings. We talked about this a while ago on the old forum (it feels so good saying “the old forum” :)) this gist of this was - yes, it has a small impact but shop views account for a small minority of views. The vast majority of people coming to Folksy land on item pages - products - which are totally unaffected by any beta URL and from there people navigate to shop pages. It is very rare we see people land on shop pages from a google search for anything other than the shop name. So beta doesn’t affect views much at all. That said, we’ll be moving shops out of “beta.” in the near future.
It might also be worth remembering that we don’t count views of items in index pages or search results in your stats views. Yet most items are viewed daily in such pages where people scan them to see if it’s the kind of thing they want. That’s why good titles and photos are so important.
Hope that helps a bit.
James.
Thanks for your advice, Jo. I’ll have a closer look at my page tomorrow. I think I may still get a “Dummies” book though- you can get one for “seniors”, apparently! That’s me! Sorry, @SamsGemstoneJewellery, I started to reply to you but decided what I said wasn’t that useful so deleted it, but it still got sent to you! Jo, my “reach” on Facebook is now up 1,300.00% on last week!
@ James, could you possibly add a link to the facebook button in this thread, I can’t find it.
There isn’t one Susan, the old folksy shop tab for Facebook stopped working ages ago after Facebook made some changes.
At the minute, in lieu of a proper app, some of us have used the woobox app on facebook, woobox is just a static html page so that whatever html you copy and paste in there (the folksy blog widget you’ll find on your shop dashboard) it will display it and your likers can use it to get to your shop.
But … the Facebook pages are changing. Some people already have the new layout but we’re all getting it and what you currently see as tabs on your fb page showing likes, folksy shop, etsy shop, etc will disappear and be replaced by a small ‘more’ link. Page likers will have to click that to find what used to be tabs and page owners with the new layout say that page likers aren’t using it (likely can’t find it) so it’s better to link to items/shops from pictures and in posts rather than relying on shop apps.
I don’t have the new layout yet, but once I have I’ll fiddle til I break something to see if there’s any way to get links to my shops on my page front instead of two clicks away.
This is turning into such a helpful and informative thread! I’ve learned quite a bit here - about Folksy and views (though I don’t understand what “conversions” are - someone did tell me once, but it didn’t stick!), also about FB and their evil plan to rule the world - and wring as much money as possible out of the small business owner.
And about some of the lovely people here at Folksy too! X
Just to add my tuppence-worth; I’ve started to put a link to my Folksy shop when I post photos of newly completed books in my “Ready Now” photo album on FB. It gives people a way to buy something and hopefully encourages them to come and see my shop (and potentially other shops) at Folksy. Kind of, “Oo, she has a Folksy shop! My natural human curiousity makes me want to go and seeeeeee…” - clicks on link… (we hope!) 
Lizzie
LizzieMade Hand Bound Books
Thank you Leanne, I have now managed to install the woobox app and have my Folksy shop on there at last!!! Yay, can’t believe it as I am rubbish and don’t really know what I am doing, but have also changed the horrid woobox picture for my own peacock feathers!
Susan I’m impressed… I hadn’t even heard of “woobox”… Must investigate!!
Lizzie
I sometimes feel I’m in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language!..
Me too! Just when I think I am beginning to understand it all, somebody says something like woobox!