My plus account expires at the end of this month and I have been thinking long and hard whether it is worth renewing and I might even run my shop down and eventually close. £45.00 actually isn’t expensive, in London I pay more for a table at a local craft fair, but if I I don’t see a return for my money then it it is not viable. I did really well up to last Christmas, I even was on the best seller list a few times, but then it died a death and never recovered. I have only had three sales since then ! I am doing alright on Etsy, I sell on average at least three to four items every week,and don’t know now whether I wish to continue with two shops. I love Folksy and would much rather sell here than Etsy but if I want to run my shop like a business and not a hobby I think I will have to concentrate just on Etsy. How do people promote both shops equally ? I am at my wits end trying to think of ways to get my sales moving here. So unless things pick up drastically here, and we are in the dead months of the year, I won’t be listing new stuff after my plus account expires.
I think it’s a common problem Nora, many sellers are feeling a downturn now. As you’re doing better on the other side, maybe your products appeal more to that market, rather than to the predominantly UK market that Folksy attracts. If that’s where the customers are, that’s where you should focus your attention, in my opinion. Keep a foothold on here if you prefer, but just a few listings maybe. Good luck anyway.
Christine 
I seem to have the opposite problem! Although sales figures here are not massive i struggle to get seen on etsy and have very few views and no sales (so far). I think it must all be down to how you promote your shop which seems to me to be easier here than “over there” but we’re all different (thankfully!)
I think that there is a general downturn at the moment and I always do better on the other side than on here. I am hanging on by the skin of my teeth here…which is such a shame…
I appreciate that folksy wants to stay UK based but I think it would help us all if we could go global. At the end of the day we are in it to sell and make money and no matter how “British” we are, if we don’t sell, then we have to make serious decisions.
My sales haven’t been brilliant either since just before last Christmas on here. They have been non existent on Etsy so I’ve been running that down. I also have a website that I don’t spend a lot of time on, but plan to do so now my etsy shop is practically empty.
My plus account runs out here at the beginning of August so what I’m planning on doing is have a listing frenzy before then and not renew my Plus account again until it picks up again for me.
I’ve actually sold more on Facebook this year than I have done on any of my online shops, but I find it hard going to keep up with all the promoting and sometimes I get so frustrated with it.
I’m not sure I can actually add anything to what has already been said here. I also found that sales slowed for me after Christmas on Folksy but I was actually quite busy with Etsy. What I did notice about Etsy is that my sales are coming more from the UK now than from the US - that’s quite a surprise to me. That also was before the Etsy ad came out.
I will be renewing my Plus account later this year. I’m just hoping sales will start picking up. To be fair, much of my social networking is done around either Etsy or my own website but I don’t actually find FB very useful in getting sales.
Thank you all for your kind replies. Christine over half of my Etsy customers are actually from the UK so it isn’t that. I think, like Pauline, I will renew all my listings now before my plus account expires and add some new stuff and then just see what happens. I opened my Etsy shop in the middle of November last year ( I actually registered in 2010 and opened for two weeks and then closed again due to having no time due to work pressure) which is about the time that my Folksy shop nosedived and I am wondering now if it is more than just a coincidence. I get a lot of views directly from Google, perhaps it doesn’t like having things duplicated and I should alter my texts for Folksy. Anyway sorry I am rambling its just that it is such a shame that Folksy doesn’t seem to work for me.