I come from the home of Folksy and even now in Sheffield, nobody knows of Folksy. Many many years ago they used to hold their own craft fair in Endcliffe park, but this ceased sometime ago. I know they are only a micro company so don’t have the marketing budget that Etsy has. BCH though constantly post on Instagram and FB about the sellers on their site and that is basically a one woman band. Even though you now have more shops than ever, many of which have moved from Etsy, I think a lot of your long term Folksy sellers have also closed their shops. I dont understand why you have no marketing experts. Also a lot of shops you have on your front page as best sellers hardly have anything in them. I think you need a massive rethink on how you improve, more sales for sellers improve your bank balance, so instead of promoting workshops, concentrate on marketing
I’m with both Buy British Made and Folksy. It hasn’t increased my sales, but I have had more shop visits reported on Folksy, but I don’t know what the breakdown is from which source. When I do a promotion on FB from my Folksy shop, I do get a lot of ‘Thumbs Up’ and Hearts along with some (but not many) comments. Promotion, promotion, promotion is the way to go, but I’m not good at taking the time to do that regularly. Fairs is where I win with sales and interest. I buy from British Made and Folky where I can and then I do have a couple of those E businesses that I buy from but only a couple of them.
This is not to promote me, but I mention Folksy regularly and specifically on this page for an upcoming exhibition with fellow artists in Sheffield. They have my name wrong in the link hey ho, that often happens. https://lovesheffshow.wixsite.com/love-sheffield-artis/angela-harpman
Nothing wrong at all with a bit of promotion for yourself 
My daughter has been selling on the Other Side. She’s made very few sales through the site but was able to take part in their local Christmas market, where she did very well. Could Folksy organise some local face to face markets for their sellers? I think that would be an effective way of raising the profile. Not everyone uses social media, so other options should be looked at.
Folksy did organise one a few years ago. The table space was I think about 3 foot square. Big enough for jewellery sellers but not much else. Certainly not big enough for my big display stand never mind the smaller one I need for fused. Couldnt even consider it.
I can’t find the forum posts about it and could be wrong but …sure someone will correct me if i am
I sell in person at just a few events a year, but always tell people about folksy, (it’s true hardly anyone has heard of them) but if anyone mentions E*** I take time to explain the difference, maybe we all need to carry an “Ask me about Folksy” shopping bag ?
Whatever you carry, when people are online shopping they are not looking at bags but at what they have seen or what they see online either by the many social medias available or the various search engines.
I note if you search the forum you will find many topics just like this one. And every one says it needs Folksy promotional effort .
@Caroleecrafts I think your idea of Folksy bags, wrapping or even stickers is a great idea. Whenever I make a sale, I always put an “OasiscraftUK” sticker on the box - you never know, a postie may be interested and google it! To have a folksy sticker would be fab!
I find it difficult to promote myself on social media and also find forums quite daunting if I’m honest, but I’m learning with Folksy that I have to promote myself if I want to get sales. Too many of my friends say they’ve never heard of Folksy so I’m going to use their logo on everything I post from now on!
I print my own labels, may get some round labels and put the Folksy logo on the packaging, good idea.
Yes it was in Sheffield in about 2016, I believe it was a collaboration with an event company. The price was reasonable I recall, but the tables small which put me off, but I went as a visitor and it was lovely. Stall holders had some great ideas for their use of the space, but it wouldn’t suit everyone. There’s a thread on here somewhere, we were recalling it a few weeks ago, I’ll have a look.
Here it is
Thanks for that. Glad I wasn’t being silly.
@JOYSofGLASS You mention a lot of the shops aren’t tagged, but the purpose of the posts is to get people on Folksy, not liking Facebook pages. The posts will generally include a link to a gift guide/seller’s shop/tag page, where people can see all of the items from the post and buy directly from Folksy.
If there’s only a single link, it’s very clear where the person viewing has to go to buy. With more links, there’s less clarity and people might go to a Facebook page and get distracted looking through posts or find a link to another platform and forget to go back to Folksy (it is generally checked that sellers are linking to Folksy if they’re shared that way, but it may be that some occasionally get missed and slip through, or for older posts that the seller has changed their main link).
And as you mention, simply having “thanks for sharing” comments may not be the most interesting interaction for potential buyers to see, but that’s down to us the people liking the page, and whether we decide to interact only on posts that share our own items to promote ourselves, or whether we take the time to genuinely interact with what we see and answer the questions asked in the posts. Tagging sellers’ Facebook pages isn’t going to help with that angle.
@oothatsnice Personally I don’t see any promotion from BCH other than the odd seller mentioning their own shop, but that doesn’t mean they don’t promote, just that I don’t like or interact with their posts and obviously aren’t in the target audience for their promotions.
Folksy have had paid promotions targeted at both buyers and sellers over the past month, but adverts can be aimed at a specific audience which might mean we don’t see them. If the aim is to get those people who have never heard of Folksy (which from this post seems to be what people want), then people who like Folksy’s pages may be excluded from seeing the promotion. Unfortunately that can lead to sellers thinking there is no promotion just because it doesn’t come up on their own feed.
Thinking outside the box a little here, the game ‘Candy Crush’ seems quite popular and hosts ads to gain in game boosters. The ads seem to be local and er, from what I’ve seen from looking over my partner’s shoulder, quite low budget. Would it be worth Folksy looking into this potential avenue? Would the players match Folksy’s target market?
Ah I do understand now on closer reading. Sorry, Too small on my phone, misread.and never played Candy Crush …
If you look at the Design Trust list The 39 best places to sell handmade crafts online - The Design Trust you will see Folksy is on there, along with a few you may have heard of, and about 30 that we and our customers probably haven’t.
When this topic was discussed in 2016, tote bags and bumper stickers were designed and available for sellers to buy. They were only produced in small quantities, so not cheap enough to just hand out with any order - I think I bought 3 stickers for £5. But every order I post has a business card with my Folksy shop details on it, and I’m sure most other sellers do the same. Ok it’s a reminder to someone who already found Folksy once, but it’s a little bit of help.
I recall quite a few topics in the Blog and the Handbook about magazines that Folksy was regularly featured in, and recently with the Christmas in July lecture too. I assume there are still people who read magazines, and some of them may shop online too.
It is a lot of work to organise a physical Craft Fair, and most of us would be too far away to attend anyway. Even my “Local” group covers a huge area - how many people would be interested in travelling 100 miles to do a Craft Fair? What if we ALL said “yes, I want to sell at the Folksy Fair” and there’s only space for 50 stalls? Who gets to choose which sellers are sufficiently worthy?
Here online we are all equal - whatever our driving status or other job commitments, we can all attend our own online shop at whatever time of day or night suits ourselves. And there is space for thousands of us all here together, with as big a “table” as we want!
I would much rather Folksy staff concentrated their energies and budget promoting their existing, established, online shopping site to people who shop online. If we can help in any way, that’s great. But we are not necessarily visiting the same places as our customers, so may never see what is already being promoted.
Kim with the greatest respect I feel I need to respond on the several points you have made. I hope you will read my response as helpful as it is intended to be. We all want the world to hear about Folksy and it would be so good if one day we could say that it does.
Of the 9 ads in the last 7 days :.
3 are specific to sellers
6 to buyers of which :
1 is a Featured seller post – fine
2 are features for specific chosen sellers…. With links to their Folksy shop
2 are gift guide posts … but oddly you have tagged one FB page in each but not the other 7 - which I can’t quite get my head round - why not none or all ?
Sorry but it looks a little careless to me and I for one would not dream of doing a Folksy Friday without fully tagging.
1 is to a theme of the day and in that one 4 of the 8 FB pages are randomly tagged though you say you don’t want to direct to individual pages but only to Folksy ?
So honestly it does just looks a bit random.
We sellers all put such a lot of time, effort and often money into our own promotion and that benefits the entire platform not just our own shops. I am sure that what we, your seller customers, would all really, really appreciate is to be assured that some reciprocal effort was also coming from Folksy. The number of topics, going back years, in this forum on this subject, the lack of presence and promotion of Folksy, I am pretty sure backs that up.
I appreciate you are putting lots of effort into getting more shops but you already have lots and lots of other shops too and they would obviously like sales. Your new shops will not stay long if they find they are not getting any especially those most recently migrated from E**.
re TBCH I think you can rest assured that they have lots and lots of paid promotion and that is right across the whole platform as well as specific shops, listings ads.
I know because I see them all the time even though I have liked the page.
I know my customers see them too as one recently emailed me:
“Thank you so much, that’s excellent service.
The power of social media! I’ve been pondering for a week what to send my friends when your advert popped up. It will be just perfect for them”
I can also see that they run ads on their Facebook page, it is public information as for all FB business pages. I can see my own, though have not run any last couple of month of the summer as I am away too often. My most recent early summer ads for Folksy and for my other shops, were Boosts not ads so don’t show to the world as normal proper paid ads do.
But Folksy shows to me as 0 ads running and no recent history of any. So I am rather perplexed.
And I have never ever seen one, certainly none directed at buyers, and I would certainly have stopped, squealed, screenshot and shared if I had.
And again I find myself confused. You say you don’t see TBCH ads because You haven’t liked the page but you then say none of us ever see Folksy ads because we Have liked it. ???
I have never been able to direct my own ads to exclude page likers. I can Include page likers and people like them but I have no option to exclude likers. So as I said I am a little bit confused by it all.
We are all here to sell our items and to make money. If I don’t sell here I will move somewhere else. I have bills to pay and no matter how much I love Folksy, I am here to sell.
I agree Folksy definitely need to do more paid advertising to increase sales and make the site more known.
I print a “thank you” postcard which goes in with any sale order using Folksy logos - and our own shop. I also have round stickers for our shop which go on the outside of the package. I have prepped new stickers for folksy and our new thank you postcard will have a QR code to both folksy and our own shop. New business cards will have QR codes too. All prepped ready to order next time we need more stationery.
Although I quite like the idea of Folksy stickers and printed logos etc for those who do craft fairs I really couldn’t see the point in sellers spending money on them to put in Folksy parcels bought from Folksy as clearly the buyer has already found Folksy. Or am I missing something?
We have a theme of the day every day on Folksy but we don’t seem to see a great deal of SM posts used for those themes, perhaps that could be something Folksy could post about each day …afterall I really thought the bears may have had a mention on National teddy bear day 
, might be another year at least before they get a mention now.