Im sorry joy, I didn’t mean to upset you and my comment certainly wasn’t targeted at you. I respect you very much as a maker, you have always been very helpful on the forum and I enjoy reading your comments. I can see your point about vetting the featured makers to make sure no rules have been broken, I’m a little bit surprised that it wasn’t noticed beforehand. I’ve edited my comment as I don’t want you to feel upset, especially when you’re on holiday
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Bekoko. Thank you. Xxxx
I’m still seeing the same featured seller on the homepage as last month - shouldn’t it have updated by now? Or is there something up with my browser? Everything else (favourite finds, showcases etc.) updates each time I visit, but I had to go and dig into the featured seller blogs to find out what this thread was all about!
Still showing as last months for me too…
It really should! Totally my fault. I forgot to press a button 
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Thanks Camilla - no worries, I’m sure you have LOTS of buttons to press!
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Hi, I’d like to question a couple of things you mention here.
You said that you’d like to start creating reels showing the process of making items, and publish tutorials. Why on earth would you want to do that? The business model for this site is makers selling their finished articles, why on earth would you want to give potential customers detailed instructions on how to make the items for themselves?? (and give those instructions to them for free!).
If you want to make YouTube-style tutorials then do that separately. Don’t connect it to Folksy. If you start publishing reels and tutorials with instructions on how to make the items that we sell, you’re essentially the magician’s assistant giving away our secrets.
With regard to the featured makers, one of your listed criteria is “underrepresented crafts or makers”. Could you please explain why that is a criterion? If you are using this as a criterion, you are excluding the majority of sellers here from being a featured maker.
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I would like to see how the makers work, short reels showing them putting their creations together. I think it’s inspirational and is more likely to encourage me to buy that particular item. For example, me cutting and foiling and soldering my pieces together. A short reel of how the process begins to the finished result. That doesn’t give away any secrets…but it does show that the person making the item is genuine and that the item is unique and handmade. Tutorials, as you say, belong on YouTube.
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I respect your view and that for you the act of seeing someone make something would encourage you to purchase it.
Everyone is different.
For me, seeing someone make something does not encourage me to purchase it. In fact, it has completely the opposite effect. I want to enjoy the mystique of not knowing how something has been made. I don’t want to see the mechanics of the process because for me that spoils it. I want to enjoy the wonder and magic of the finished article.
If you went to a restaurant, would you want to go and stand in the kitchen and watch the mess and chaos of food preparation? Or would you rather sit comfortably at your table and be delighted by the finished masterpiece that arrived for you to enjoy?
(Side note - a chef friend of mine once told me why he never eats out - it’s because he knows what goes on in restaurant kitchens. I often wish he’d never told me that!) 
The other aspect of this is giving away information to someone who wants to know how it’s made so that they can go and make it themselves rather than purchase the finished article. Using a simple example of my own items, if I create a reel of me crocheting one of my designs, or making one of my greeting cards, it’d essentially be a tutorial and they’d be able to use that to make the item for themself rather than purchase it from me (and if they were a seller then sell it in direct competition to me if that was their intention for watching the reel). I’m not in the business of showing people how to make my items and I’d really rather Folksy didn’t start doing that either.
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These aren’t anything new, they’re examples of content we already post on our blog and social media.
Reels don’t have to include every little step and give away all of the secrets of making the item, but many people like to see a little behind the scenes look at how something is made, and reels provide a great way to do this that works brilliantly on social media.
Tutorials can reach a different audience to finished products, and we know there are a lot of crafters using the site who may appreciate something different to try themselves, and it’s something Folksy have already been doing for years - tutorials Archives | Folksy Blog for specific item tutorials
and Exploring Techniques Archives | Folksy Blog for more general looks at techniques.
It can help highlight the work and skill that goes into the items, even when makers are sharing a more simple and basic item idea than what they sell in their shop.
Please don’t misunderstand, it’s absolutely not a requirement to do these to become a featured maker and it’s definitely not something we’d expect every seller to do.
However, if someone is comfortable sharing some of the making process of one of their items with a reel, or has something they’re happy to share and make a tutorial for, then it’s a great way for us to add some different types of content which can be more engaging and reach a wider audience (getting Folksy more well known as a site for craft/handmade).
Again, it’s not a necessity to be an underepresented craft or maker to be a featured maker (as should be clear if you look at them, there’s a wide variety that we hope includes all kinds of crafts) but it can be an advantage for us to get an opportunity to highlight a craft that’s less well known, making the content more unique and hopefully intriguing.
It’s not that if you don’t meet every single point on that list you’ll never get featured, but finding makers that meet a lot of them helps make sure we get a wide variety and that the feature and associated posts will be interesting and engaging.
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Im very curious too, and often ask many (prob too many) questions about others work. But id not expect to see any trade secrets or anything too specific to the artists own style. I like a little mystery!
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I have to say, I had no idea that you’ve been doing this for years.
When you say “Crafters using the site who may appreciate something different to try themselves” - by that do you mean people who sell on Folksy? Or do you mean the general public who come to Folksy to purchase items but might also be interested in becoming a crafter?
If you want to produce content ONLY for Folksy sellers, then you need to keep these tutorials out of our potential customers’ gaze, ie only accessible to people who sell on Folksy. Even better - create a YouTube channel and upload them there instead, because that’s where tutorials belong.
Either way, Folksy’s business model is the selling of finished products, it’s not a free education site where our potential customers can come and learn how to make our products for themselves instead.
I can’t speak for other sellers on Folksy, but I have to be honest - I would be appalled if another greeting card maker or crocheter made a tutorial or reel showing how to make these types of items, and that reel or tutorial was made available for every potential customer to come and watch so they could then go and make their own.
If someone wants to learn a new craft or technique, they go to YouTube to find and watch tutorials. I would never expect to see that on a site dedicated to selling finished products.
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As a maker, I see it as a duty to help others learn to create and don’t feel at all threatened by the idea of it. I’m thankful that so many other makers feel this way as I’ve certainly benefitted from their generosity in creating tutorials on YouTube and the like on my own making journey.
As for these things being available via Folksy, I say hurrah for that - it’s just another tool we have as a community to grow and sustain that community, which benefits us all.
We all have our own style as makers, from the materials we choose to the way we put things together, sharing some of the techniques we’ve learned doesn’t give that away and I suspect most wannabe makers wouldn’t want that anyway - they’d want to find their own style.
There are also many people who really just want to watch others create and have zero desire to do it themselves. Many of those people are our customers too.
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There are some restaurants where you can see them cooking from the restaurant floor, that reassures me I can see what the chefs are getting up to and how clean the kitchen is. 
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I feel the same. I don’t just make stained glass. I crochet, make soap, do artwork, make candles. Every single craft I’ve done has been developed with the help of others generous enough to share their techniques and wisdom. I love watching the reels on Instagram, and even now after 30 years of making glass, I still find things to learn about from others’ techniques. If we didn’t share, imagine now insular it would all be.
As you say, we are all unique. Creativity is about our own individual inner vision and nobody can replicate that exactly.
Also it can take years of practice to hone our skills, so someone thinking they can grab the materials, watch a tutorial or two and think they can replicate the workmanship on here, I suspect they’ll end up very disappointed.
The majority of buyers on these sites aren’t interested in stealing ideas. I suspect they want to be able to be a part of our creative processes as spectators who are genuinely intrigued by what we do.
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Exactly this… I’ve been to many craft fairs where stall holders are actively creating, I love being able to watch a needle felter working, a spinner spinning, an artist painting or a blacksmith forging, etc I don’t want to try any of those things but the creation of them is like alchemy to me and quite fascinating, watching other artists is so inspiring too, I’ve zero desire to copy anyone else’s work, but I’m still inspired by seeing it done.
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On the other side of the coin, I have had people come up to my stall at a fair and openly discuss that they were going to have a go and have a stall thinking my products were a good ide? They did turn up at the next fair and never sold anything because whilst theirs was cheaper they did not have the experience with textiles as I did.
One lady even bought a child’s dress with a knitted bodice with gathered fabric skirt then said she was going to give to her mother to unpick so she could make them to sell and follow my design. I did not have the chance to answer back as she flounced off!
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Back when I made soaps and candles, I always had people approach me at fairs asking where did I get my “ingredients” from and how hard were they to make, because they liked my products and wanted to make them for themselves as it would be “cheaper to do that than buy yours”.
Over the years I’ve had people openly say that they only go to craft fairs to find items and ideas to copy because “it’s always cheaper to make your own”. In most instances it wasn’t to copy and sell, it was to make for themselves rather than buy from a stall holder. I’ve also had people take what they thought were covert photos and then hurriedly walk away.
At one craft fair, I had a “customer” spend nearly two hours picking up every one of my greeting cards, scrutinising them while quizzing me endlessly about how I made them etc. When I eventually asked whether there were any she wanted to purchase she said “oh no I don’t want to buy any, I just want to know how to make my own”.
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Yes, have heard this kind of thing a lot over the years. When I first started my business, I went to several small craft fairs to see if they were something I’d want to do and overhead plenty of these types of comments and that particularly common rude, dismissive and likely misguided one: “I could make that cheaper myself”. After this, I decided that craft fairs weren’t for me!
Having said that, I’m sure there are plenty of people at fairs who aren’t like this and they certainly weren’t the only reason I decided not to do fairs (overhead costs were mostly the reason for me) 
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I regularly buy things from makers that I know how to make myself. I buy them because I have a different style and I love the way the artist has put the items together, the colours/materials they have used or the personality that is in the piece. Sometimes I buy them because of the time and effort I know it takes to make the item and if they have made something I love then why not buy that and support them as well as save myself the time so I can focus on my own product range, or go out for a relaxing cup of tea and a piece of cake 
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