@folksycontent
I was in IG yesterday and saw your latest post said the Featured seller was for the Month of March which was somewhat surprising.
Why on earth are single sellers now getting such extended promotion especially when there are so many super other sellers on here who have been loyal Folksy sellers for ages and selling steadily but never ever been featured.
Maybe the sellers themselves could make suggestions for this desirable feature like the daily feature theme
?
I was rather surprised and cannot really understand the criteria bring used for choosing a seller to be featured.
In this case can I please suggest you should vet featured shops and Not select if the rules are so obviously being broken by.both listing and shop links to sellers own website !
I do note that the previous featured seller from mid Feb is still showing on front page . If featured sellers are all getting a month each … ?
I am with Joy on this, disgusting 1 sale and breaking the rules with a link to website. Thought that was not allowed.
Do not forget Folksy that those of us that have been around a longtime are loyal but appears loyalty stands for nothing now. Are you trying to tell us something?
The other day I reported a toy which was not CE tested (or it certainly wasn’t mentioned anywhere that is was) and yet it was a folksy favourite!
I’m a bit shocked to be honest. Although it does seem that Folksy are really pushing new sellers since the price increase, great for the new sellers, not so great for anyone such as yourselves who’ve been here a long time.
I guess it makes good business sense though if you think about it, if all new sellers get on the front page as a ‘folksy favourite find’ for example, then all new sellers may benefit from the exposure and get a few sales, which in turn generates income for folksy and keeps new sellers happy to stay here.
Those of you who are already selling well, already generate a decent income for folksy so they don’t need to push your shops if that makes sense? I’m absolutely not saying that’s right or that’s the right way to do things by the way, quite the opposite, you should always look after your loyal customers in my book, but, that’s just my observation.
If it’s just focusing on new sellers then yeah that’s wrong and not fair on people who have been selling longer. Also dont agree if it’s truly one seller per month that’s a long time when there’s hundreds of sellers out there
However I do think it’s good to help new sellers to get started, because everyone who has sold something knows that high you get when you get your first sale. I’ve had other Folksy shops previously and sold items, but I’ve not sold a thing in my new shop yet. So if being featured gave people a sale and a little push to carry on then I’m all for it!
My main question though is why is the feature extended like this. It used to be a week ( and without any social media posts which are 2 or 3 a week now). Then 2 weeks and which appears to be spreading to a month. Lucky the seller who gets the pre-Christmas months.
Please note I am not put out by this for myself, I have a featured star from 10+ years ago, I just think more care should be taken and maybe more inclusivity with a return to 52 sellers a year not 12.
Ah right, sorry for my misunderstanding…
I have been here years do not sell a great deal although tick over and would be nice to have the opportunity to be promoted to help those of us with fewer sales to get more.
Plus note when I joined not once did I get a featured seller or had one since, yet been paying my money for approx 7 years is that fair? This seller is directing people to her website in the description which is not allowed and had 1 sale how is that fair on everyone else.
May be resign and start again and get a featured seller post, hmm! something to think about then again may decide not to come back.
I think everyone following the rules should get help, new or not. Maybe have separate new sellers and established sellers featured regularly so it helps all?
If that seller is linking to their own site and thats against the rules then yeah Folksy should definitely be vetting that
Agree, as an example, just now on the front page six out of the eight favourite finds are relatively new shops with no sales. A bit of sharing the limelight between new and not so new would be really nice.
I was featured many years ago, and it was a week.
Then it went up to 2 weeks, but now its a month???
Thsts not fair, folksy, and you know it. Especially as now the previous featured seller conducts the interview with the new artist. I know you still have to do some work, but come on…
A month is too long. Its only 12 artists a year!
I’d also like to see a bit more balance as it does seem to have been mostly fairly new sellers recently. What about us oldies? We’ve been paying our bills for years, not just weeks and it would be good to have a mix of fresh faces and experienced sellers.
A month as featured seller, if thats the intention, is just not acceptable. Where’s fairness gone? Spread the love a little more, why dont you.
And I’ve just seen Peter Rabbit bunting and as this is a licenced fabric then it is solely for your own use. You can’t even give it away (seemingly).
I’ve often wondered about how Featured Sellers are chosen, and whether one featured seller chooses the one who comes after, (as usually the seller before conducts the interview) or whether the Folksy Team chooses. Does anyone know?
It used to be folksy admin, but i wonder if its now the current featured artist who chooses the next one. That would perhaps explain one illustrator being immediately followed by another.
I have been on here for 10 years I’m not a fan of featured sellers having a star by their shop name after being a featured seller as i think it gives the customer the impression the shop is superior to others much prefer it when it said featured the customer does not know the reason for the star and i think this makes it two tiered selling. When a shop can only be on folksy a few months be a featured seller and earn a star is hardly fair for all the long standing shops on folksy who have been loyal for a long time
Did not realise about the star, agree unfair.
Hi everyone. There’s a lot to respond to here, but I’ll try.
Firstly, you are right Joy, we have taken the decision to try featuring just one maker a month this year and see how that works. As a really small team, we have to carefully prioritise our work, and our experience over the past few years has been that featuring a different maker every fortnight limits what we are able to achieve. Our hope is that by extending the feature to a month in length, we can better explore not just that maker’s work but also their craft in more detail, while also freeing up time to promote and share other makers across our social media, and allowing us as a team to focus on other tasks which will help Folksy grow.
As an example, if we featured a stained glass maker, we could then not only talk about them but also create more content around stained glass as a skill during that month, potentially creating reels showing the process, write an Exploring Techniques article for the blog where people can learn more about the craft and/or publish a tutorial. Not only does that give us more engaging content (which helps us reach a bigger audience), but it also means that rather than publishing 2-4 posts on social media about the featured maker over that fortnight, we can spread those out over a month, giving more space to other pieces, makers and topics we would like to share.
Our hope is that this will work better for the featured maker, us and all of you - and ultimately that everyone can get more out of it. Although the Meet The Maker feature might not seem like a lot of work, it is, and we’d like the time we put into the interviews and content to be as effective, interesting and engaging as possible.
In terms of choosing the featured maker, we always try to have a mix of new and more established artists and makers. We do and have in the past asked our featured makers for suggestions of who they might like to interview, and used that to inform our decisions, but it is us as a team who decide. Things we are looking for when choosing our featured maker include:
- fantastic images
- an interesting story
- underepresented crafts or makers
- a mix of heritage crafts and pioneering modern crafts
- or conversely trending crafts
- a range of geographical locations
- a range of backgrounds (eg trained professional potters as well as self-taught crafters working at their kitchen table)
- a strong social media presence
- the ability to create great content we can share on social media is a bonus too
How many sales someone has had is not usually a factor. We want to try to support Folksy sellers at all stages in their journey - so those who have been with us for a long time as well as those who are just starting out.
If you feel there are makers who we have missed and you would love to see featured, we’ve set up a new thread where you can tell us your suggestions - Who would you like to see as a featured maker on Folksy?
In terms of featured sellers breaking our terms and conditions, this is my mistake. I do usually always check that everything is in order and we always ask that our featured sellers have a clickable link to Folksy in their bios on social media - but I missed it this time. We have asked our current featured maker to remove all external links but please remember that this forum is not a space to call out fellow users for breaking terms and conditions - there can be many reasons someone has not adhered to a particular rule and it is often not intentional. If you see something that you do not feel should be on Folksy, we ask you to report it to our Support team (as I know some of you have, thank you) rather than sharing publicly on the forums or Facebook group.
In terms of the star that the featured maker has next to their name, this was an icon that was chosen many years ago to indicate they have been featured on Folksy. We have previously discussed as a team whether this is the right icon to use, as it is not necessarily clear to customers what the star indicates. So that may change but we are currently prioritising SEO work which takes precedence.
I hope this (long!) reply helps and that I have answered most or all of your queries. If not, please do let us know.
Thank you Camilla for your comprehensive reply.
I do apologise for any calling out element in my post but I wanted to raise the point I raised and the links did need mentioning. There were shop links on another featured seller a few weeks ago too so I did decide it was a valid point which needed making.
Very pleased you’ve opened a thread for suggested sellers. The star of course is helpful there as we can immediately see if someone we want to suggest has already had the honour 
I’ll leave you in peace now as I am sunning myself in beautiful Cyprus, nicely timed to avoid the UK cold weather 
Ps. there was nothing ‘mean’ about my post as I have already explained, it was a necessary part of the point I was making, perhaps @bekokodesigns you would care to remove your rude comment which has upset me.
Wow, that’s a great big reply! Thank you for answering the queries that have been expressed here. I agree that calling out individual sellers not appropriate for the forum as we are usually all very supportive of each other.
I can appreciate how having just one featured seller a month would be much less work for you guys. It’s worth a try, if the new feature length works the way you thought then great, if not then you/we can always try something else or go back to the way it was. If @folksycontent need any support with finding makers/content with a similar craft to the featured maker then I’m sure you’ll help on the forum if you ask.
Maybe you could make a thread a month or two in advance to let people know the craft of the seller that will be featured so people can give ideas of items they have found on folksy that are similar that can be shared over the month or ideas of what aspects of the craft should be highlighted or made into a tutorial etc. Then as many as possible will be involved
Thank you Joy for raising this subject and thank you Folksy for a reply. The more experienced sellers who have been on Folksy from the beginning maybe should be consulted before Folksy brings in changes to assess the reaction to changes.