Hi. I have been on Folksy now for nearly 2 and a half months with no sales. I have been reading up on the forums etc and been horrified to hear that some people took a year for their first sale! I don’t think I want to spend £60 on Folksy plus with nothing to show for it! (I realise a year is not necessarily average, but it worried me!). I wondered if you could take a look at my shop and tell me what I am doing wrong/could improve. I have tried to be active on forums, introduced lower price items, tried to list a variety of things but nothing seems to work. I am trying to get into social media, but it’s a slow process. Feeling quite despondent and I would really appreciate your help and suggestions.
hi @Bimblebird, I’ve actually replied on the 365 challenge a little to your qn.
I think you could do well to develop a larger range with those fern imprints- people often want a matching set of pendant and earrings/bracelet/whatever. They are very nice. I used to pay £40 for a day stall at craft fairs, so for me the £60 a year is worth it at least to have a functioning shop front.
Maybe choose a banner that is different- you could have the felt animals there, or maybe a nice set up with the fern jeweller?
Just one extra thing, have a look at the photo on your listing here - the second photo looks a bit different in colour. https://folksy.com/items/7472275-Green-copper-fern-leaf-earrings-botanical-dangles . I’ve also had this issue with a couple of my paintings- the green sometimes looks minty but is actually a vibrant green!
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Hi Julia @SulikoSoul. Thank you for replying (and on 365). I agree - I don’t mind paying £60 per year for a functioning shop, but having zero sales is not really a functioning shop?!!
You are right about the second photos, I used them because they show the leaf detail better, but you’re right, I should take some new ones soon. I like your idea of visually grouping and will try that. I did actually make some matching pendants but didn’t like them so much. I may re visit that option as I do see matching sets quite often. 2 sales in less than 2 months is a lot better than no sales in 2 and a half months (!) so congratulations, you’re doing pretty well - and I love your paintings, your colours and subjects are beautiful. Thanks again for taking the time to give me useful feedback.xx
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I think there are 2 parts to your query which I will deal with separately.
1 - is the folksy plus account good value for money for your shop?. At £60 for the year the plus account is equivalent to 334 listings per year (or 28 per month) or listing 111 items and then relisting every 4 months when the listing is due to expire (that is all based on the pay as you list price of 15p +vat per listing). Based on the current number of items in your shop the plus account is only worth having if you plan to relist the entire shop every month or plan on listing a lot more items in your shop. You might want to consider switching to the pay as you list option.
2 - how long does it take to achieve sales? I got my first sale the day I opened my shop as I had been trailering opening my shop on my facebook page and then announced that it was open so that people could go and buy. Promotion (and social media as a result) is very important to help your shop gain traction in the early days. You have no links to social media on your shop page, do you promote your shop in any way? If you are not planning on using social media to promote your shop (or use it but direct people to another selling platform) then sales will be sporadic and you need to make sure that your description and tags are as search engine friendly as possible (for both the internal folksy and the external google algorithms). The folksy blog has lots of articles on this. https://blog.folksy.com/how-to-sell-craft-online-folksy-seller-handbook
Sasha
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Thank you Sasha. I only used Folksy plus because I needed to transfer listings in bulk from my other shop on Etsy. I am renewing regularly to take advantage of that feature. I was planning on making and adding new items regularly but having no sales is not a great motivator! We come back to Social Media promotion again - I need to have a real bash at Instagram as had no luck with Pinterest or Facebook business page, but probably not using them very effectively. Thanks for the advice and link. Will look into your suggestions.
PS Your jewellery is lovely! Just favourited your shop.
Folksy admin were doing an etsy import service - you need to email them support@folksy.com for all the details. Since you have a plus account you might as well get all the listings up it won’t cost you any extra!
Social media isn’t my thing either but I know I’ve had sales from facebook and pinterest so I keep at them. I only joined IG last year and I’m slowly getting the hang of it. They are unfortunately a necessary evil. We just have to keep at it.
Good luck
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Hi @Bimblebird,
I am feeling the same today. I had two sales in the first week back in April but nothing since. (Still chuffed with those sales though btw!) There was a similar subject this morning that @SashaGarrett and I responded to and I think that a lot of it boils down to patience, promoting yourself and getting involved on the forums. I have to push myself out of my comfort zone with the social media but everyone is so supportive, it really helps when you are feeling a bit downhearted. I am reallly enjoying creating again, so I shall just keep on keeping on as they say.
Your stuff is lovely (just realised that I have favourited you!!) so keep the faith!!
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Hi @Plaindotty, yes, I think I faved one of yours too! The Folksy folks are indeed lovely and supportive and t.b.h. I think I may have seriously been considering closing my shop about now if it weren’t for the lovely feeling of community on this site. Wishing us both some luck and determination to get to grips with social media, and here’s hoping for more sales!
Hi Becca, I love your earrings, but I can’t see if they are clip-ons or for pierced ears.
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Sorry, I have just found it! xxx
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Hi @plumporridge, I do say they are studs in the description but maybe I should show studs when I do new pics.
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A picture of the back would be good, and perhaps ‘pierced’ in the tags. I think your use of copper on green has an art deco feel to it, love it.
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Hmm, hadn’t thought of Art Deco, but now you’ve said it, they do a bit, might add that to tags too! Thank you.
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Fingers crossed!!
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Hi @Bimblebird me again 
I’m not sure that the ‘re-listing’ option is understood too well by everyone, so I would encourage you to keep the plus account. Basically, re-listing daily (available on Plus) means that your work gets refreshed and if a potential customer goes onto a general category to browse, say, earrings, the most recently listed or re-listed items will be first. Think realistically about how much a customer is going to want to browse through tons of pages to find the earrings they like. They’re not. Obviously they can use the tags to search, but that assumes they know what they are looking for, not browsing. So personally I would stick with Plus.
I looked for you on Instagram but couldn’t find you - there is another Bimble Bird but they are another business. I think Instagram is pretty useful for getting your work known and also for looking at other people’s stuff. I have had to seriously take the plunge over the last year of marketing my work, which is really hard for me as I wouldn’t usually want to post stuff about me, but I have got used to it!
Whilst £60 might seem a lot at the moment, a lot of this selling stuff comes with highs and lows. At craft fairs last year, sometimes I sold random bits of original artwork, often as a snap purchase someone just walked past and loved it. Sometimes- just a few cards. I paid £75 for a much touted festival a good drive away, froze my a**** off for 10 hours, and sold a keyring. I have run my little art business now for a year and just done my tax return- it’s not in the positive, but I know a lot of that is because i had set up costs, I still have stock, I would now only do certain fairs. I am still in the experimental stages, and it will take a while to be profitable. I wish i had started online selling and using Instagram earlier.
sorry for the essay! hopefully some of that will be useful, and the main thing is not to get hung up on how many sales you have or haven’t had (yet). I might have had 2, but they could have been 2 card sales or 2 original painting sales…
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Hi Julia,
Thank you for sharing your experience. I think that other business was one that opened on Etsy after me and not only used the same name (which I randomly made up) - could have been a crazy coincidence, but then used an almost identical logo too! We sell completely different stuff though. I wonder if that will become a problem when I open a Bimble Bird page? I have an Instagram page for my other shop (Spangle Lab) on ‘the dark side’, but haven’t done anything with it yet, building courage (!) to get my head around that. Was hoping to do that by end of month so I can get my practise in, and then open one for my Folksy shop. I never seemed to have enough stock to justify paying high prices for London market stall (I don’t drive, so outside London not practical) but will certainly consider doing that in future as stock hopefully increases. You’re absolutely right though - got to grab bull by the horns, get over social media/self promotion fears and get on with it! Wishing you many more sales and thanks again for your time and advice.xx👍
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Hi Becca - great advice from everyone so far.
I really do second the use of social media though. If I take a few days off from Facebook, my sales totally dry up and as soon as I start posting again (even if you post photos of work in progress, finished pieces, little tutorials, a photo of your cat), people pop over to my Folksy shop for a look and I get sales again. Same with Instagram.
On Instagram, I have a link back to my Folksy shop (I have also just been approved for Intstgram shopping - where you can link a product driectly back to Folksy but I haven’t given that a try yet - I think that will be really useful)
Also, on the 365 club, I do pin most people’s products and I find I get a really high percentage of traffic coming from Pinterest, straight to my shop - so that’s definitely worth sticking with.
I also heard when I first started, that a shop needs at least 50 items in it to get seen (I can’t remember where this figure came from or to get seen by who…lol!)…but I do try to keep my shops stocked up to at least the 50 item mark if I can.
Your work is beautiful by the way - you’ve honestly just got to promote, promote, promote!
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Hi Sarah @thedotterypotter , Thank you for that. I think it is clear now from what everyone has said that I can’t escape/avoid it any longer! Got to throw myself into online promotion. As I said, I will practice on my other shop first where I have had a few sales, then open an Instagram for folksy shop. In the meantime, will try and build up listings as you suggested. Incidentally, if I could get even quarter of your sales that would be great! You have a very desirable and appealingly priced range of products. I love your colours too.x😊
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I totally agree with you Sarah @thedotterypotter and Sasha @SashaGarrett regarding social media. I also find my sales drop when I stop using them. By the way I have now followed all of you above (Instagram), if I wasnt following you before!!
SallyAnn
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Hi lovely, I was just looking over your shop and I find it really lovely, I just think you should be patient and try to learn 2-3 things each day about self promoting and social media. As a suggestion, maybe try to add a picture of someone (even yourself) wearing the jewelry as it’s really beautiful but people may not realise how it would look on them. Also, I found Pinterest to be a good help in learning to self promote as you have a lot of visual inspiration there and it can give you ideas and also it can send people to your shop, thus increase traffic.
I favorited some of your items as well <3
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