Hi all, I am a bit stressed! I had 12 sales last month, which believe me is a lot for my shop, gave my interest a real boost, but suddenly, at the end of November, the sales stopped as if a switch has been turned off! I am now feeling totally. Invisible. What am I doing wrong? I have put loads of new listings on thinking I might just do better in the run up to Christmas, but no! nothing!. What am I doing wrong, I feel like giving up. As some of you will know, it takes a lot of effort to make pottery, itās something that can take weeks from start to listing a piece, I donāt like to sound like a drama queen!but HELP x
Itās not just you @junemccabe I think a lot of people are selling considerably less this year, and of course there will be exceptions, you just have to believe in yourself and your product and keep plugging away until the buyers return.
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Thanks Sue, I feel a bit better now, sone times its good to just whinge a bit! I know there are lots of us in the same boat, so to speak, but talking helps. X
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Hello there,
I feel exactly the same about my Folksy shop. I was doing ok up until the summer and then a huge slump and apart from a couple of sales no joy whatsoever. There just doesnt seem to be any real reason sometimes and this makes it so frustrating. Keep your chin up. If you have sold before there is obviously interest in your work. Look toward having a January Sale. : ) Val xxx
I had a poor year in general with Folksy, I have just decided to open up on Etsy, will see how that goes, Iām lucky enough to have some shelf space in a local shop which has given me more sales in a couple of weeks than this year alone in folksy
Hi , it just doesnāt make sense does it! Great idea, will have a January sale! Perhaps we will get some last minute sale before Christmas, good luck! x
Iām the oppositeā¦I had a really quiet November and stopped making anything new as it didnāt seem worth it, although I carried on with promoting on social media, but this last 10 days or so it has picked up and I have had a flurry of orders. Saying that, Iām selling more of the smaller, cheaper items this year including quite a few from my āSaleā section. I think people have really cut back on the spending this year.
Kim
x
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Hi
Just had a look at your shop and the first thing which struck me was that you havenāt bothered to set up any sort of personalised banner or an avatar - this to me makes your shop look āunlovedā which is a crying shame as your work is lovely. You also have a long, several line announcement at the top of your page which means potential customers have to scroll half a page to get to your lovely goodies.
Where do you promote ? I know youāve had sales but on Folksy you need to promote, send people to your shop.
Hope this helps and that you get lots of lovely sales.
According to my records this should be the busiest weekend in December plus hopefully also into next week.
xxxxt
I have to agree with Joy @JOYSofGLASS concerning the banner, avatar and announcement. It looks so much better when you take the time and effort to personalise your shop and it looks so much more attractive.
Most of what you are stating in your āannouncementā would be better in the ābuying from meā section. I keep the announcement section just for special announcements and try to limit them to a couple of lines so that people see some of my items as soon as they get to my shop.
The āaboutā section is also a good place to tell people about you and what you doā¦that isnāt filled in either.
I think some of your photos let you down, look they were taken on a phone in not too good light so theyāre blurry
Iām in the same boat, June. I have had sales, but not as many as previously. Please donāt take to heart criticism of your shop- there are all sorts of reasons that sales for some of us are slow at the momentā¦
Iāve just been to your shop and left some love. You have some beautiful items.
Iād agree with a lot of what others have said: I really would recommend personalising your avatar and banner - photos of your items would look lovely in your banner! Itās always nice to know more about the background behind someoneās shop, so Iād advise filling in the āAbout meā section. I also agree that your announcement has too much info that would be better stated elsewhere. When I visit your shop page, the first thing Iād like to see is your beautiful items without having to scroll down to them.
Finally, do you use social media? I couldnāt find any social media links in your shop. Social media is the best way to promote your shop (as well as joining in with promotional threads on the Folksy forum) and promotion is the key to driving the customers to your shop.
I wish you all the best with it as your pottery is delightful!
Please donāt think for a minute I was criticising, just trying to help a little and suggest areas where the shop front could be made more attractive to āpassing tradeā.
The shop has some lovely things, in fact I shared one a couple of hours ago on my Facebook page but presentation is so important in our busy crafting marketplace. xx
Helen The very reason I restrict my shop to 6 collections is that only takes up a single ālineā and that is more important to me than slightly more meaningful collection breakdown. When I have a notice on there it is never more than 2 lines (reminder here to self to add a note very soon about not closing for Christmas).
I want my listings to be immediately visible without browsing customers having to scroll to see them as that might mean they leave too soon xx
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I was browsing in your shop earlier, Joy, and it does look good with one line of collections. I struggled to narrow mine down to 6 collections and had to go onto a 2nd line. I then had to add some to make it up to 12 because I didnāt think it looked right unless both lines were full! 
I only use the announcement when Iām closing or have a sale or something important to say, as I agree that the announcement box can detract from a shopās appearance. When I use it, I try to keep it as short as possible so that the box doesnāt take up much room. Iām always tinkering with the order of my listings as well, trying to get the symmetry just right - Oh dear, I actually think I may have a problem! 
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For a while since we had the current layout I used to move my stuff about so it was colour coordinated etc but then Iād sell something or add something and have to do it all again. Now Iām a bit more relaxed but my Feature 3 line is Always Rainbow items as I mark all Rainbows as Featured - idea being to always have a very bright top line (and they are all then cycled round on the Feature line so page is always changing) and then I donāt need to ensure I have rainbow things at the top of the shop / in the collection line.
Thereās logic in there somewhere 
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Thankyou so much for all the help and advice, I can see what you mean about the appearance of the shop, itās all making sense, so I am going to give it an overhaul. I didnāt realise I could move things around, that is, I thought you could but didnāt know how. I have tried to personalise the banner, but keep getting notices about the size the photo should be, Iām afraid this is all Swahili to me! x
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Youāll need to re-size the photo so that itās small enough for the banner. I did mine so long ago that I canāt for the life of me remember how I did it! Can anyone help with this?
To move items around in your shop, you go into Shopkeeping on your dashboard and then you can click and drag items up and down into the order you want them. Hope that helps.
Hopefully someone will be able to help with the photo re-sizing - there are some very knowledgeable and helpful people on this forum.
I will share some of you items on twitter and pinterest for you xx
my banner is 978 pixels * 200 at 96 resolution. (= 260mm * 53mm ish) If that helps