On the other side, the more you have in your shop the more chance of selling.
Here, does this matter?
Are we having the visitors here to make this possible?
Do the shops with say? 200 items for sale get good return for their efforts?
I don’t know where to look to find this info?
Any ideas?
Lin.x
I’m not sure the more you have the more you sell is true for everything. I only ever have around 20 - 25 items in my shops but I’m in a much smaller market.
But, whatever you sell, the visitors you get here mostly you’re creating from your own marketing. So you can have 2000 items in your shop but if there’s no link out there in blogs, social media, or wherever you’re going to find your target customer, then you have very little chance of being found amongst all the other similar sellers.
Jo
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I don’t think it is the overall number of items you have but the proportion of items you have within a category that makes a difference if you are looking for sales from a casual browser (rather than someone who has found you via your promotion). If you have 20 items in a category that only contains 200 then your work represents 10% of the items so you are likely to be found, you could have 200 items in a category with 20000 items (entirely possible in some jewellery sections) then your work represents 1% of the items and you are much less likely to be found. Before you go making more stuff and increasing the number of listings you have please consider if can you afford to have money tied up in stock that might take a while to sell and do you have space to store your stock.
I have approx 300 listings and given the amount of time it takes to get good photos, create listings etc I’m not sure I do get a good return on my efforts as I can sell more in one craft fair than I have done in almost 2 years here. But that said its not as simple as that as I know that potential customers have browsed my folksy shop before finding me at a craft event and purchasing there so I will persist with it.
There has been a post about data analysis in the blog (on how long people actually look at a page, average 40 seconds regardless of the price which highlights the need for good photos), you could always suggest this as a blog post subject (but I’m not sure who you would suggest it to).
Sasha
Should still get found on search surely. I get found on Etsy without linking back, why should it be any different here.
Etsy items get picked up in Google shopping images, plus you are benefiting from hundreds of thousands of shop owners and their own promotion getting customers onto the site, plus Etsy has a much bigger marketing budget so they can generally promote the site too. All that helps you get browsing customers on Etsy a lot of whom will be from the US and other international buyers. Plus given the choice of a Folksy or Etsy link on Facebook (which you’ve got both of, so you are linking back to Etsy), I bet most customers would go for Etsy as it’s bigger and they’ve probably heard of it, so feel more secure using it.
There are just under 6000 shop owners here, a lot of whom are just hobby crafters, so wouldn’t do the sort of promotion that a business crafter would do, and Folksy don’t have an advertising budget to anywhere near match Etsy.
That is why you need to do your own advertising and promoting on here and not rely on passing customers. On both sites, you are much more likely to sell to a customer who has seen your item somewhere (facebook, twitter, pinterest etc.), likes it, and follows the link here. Like Sasha says to rely on a customer happening on Folksy, searching ‘bag charm’ and then not finding anything they like on the other pages of the search until they reach your item, is pretty slim.
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Any ideas how we could get our items to be picked up by google shopping? Should we start lobbying folksy to get them to look into this or is there something we could do ourselves.
I’m pretty sure it’s a paid for thing, so there’s nothing you can do to get your own images on Google shopping without the host site (Folksy) paying for it.
If one of your items is being shown repeativily ie links found in social media, blogs forums then google will pick up your items.
I really do google image searches on my items and they show up over and over again all in different places.
You do need to promote outside of Folksy.
So what are we getting out of being on here then, as now I am confused?
A) Promote outside of Folksy in as many places as possible continually
B) Have has many different items as you can manage in your shop as that means you’ll have a wider product line which will appeal to a wider market demographic.
This is because if your shop has little on the shelves customers will not linger long and therefore are unlikely to find something they’ll buy.
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it’s a selling platform. you get to have your own online shop hosted for you, and be part of a community, and sell the things you make, and socialise on the forums, and run your own business - all for just a few pence. those are the things i’m getting out of it, anyway. if your shop is not working for you, there are many things - as discussed over and over again in other topics on the forum - that you can do to improve things for yourself. the key to making sales online is effective promotion, and it’s up to each shop owner to figure out the best way to do this for their own business.
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I’ve just looked at your Facebook page. I see very little promotion of your Folksy shop. You really do have to get out there and make a real, and continuous, effort to promote, promote and promote.
If you are posting about listings in your Folksy shop then don’t post the link in the main post and don’t talk about bought, sold or any such commecial words - Facebook will limit your posts. Post a directly loaded picture in the post and the link underneath in the comment - it is far far more effective.
My only direct, automated online shop is on here. My website points here as does my facebook page. Folksy handles, and safely, the taking of orders and the payment and that is a pretty big plus.
I’ve said on here many times. If you opened a b&m shop, you would not expect visitors and therefore sales unless you advertised to your customers that your shop is there and what a wonderful range of goodies you have got in your shop to entice the lucky punters in there. Without advertising they will not know your shop is there and even if they do happen to walk past they would have no reason to notice your shop unless you have a tempting eye-catching display in the window so they are forced to stop and look in.
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I don’t have my own online shop I have it here on Folksy. If I was to set up an online shop then I would have to pay for it - shopify basic is $29 per month (~£230 per year) plus credit card fees vs folksy plus account £45 plus commission and paypal fees. Some rough calculations indicates that you would need to sell almost £3000 per year via folksy for it to cost the same about as having your own website. I would have to promote my own website the same way I would have to promote my folksy shop - at least here I do get occasional sales from people who are folksy users.
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If only more people would do the sums, they would probably get a shock in how many sales they need to even break even.
The vast bulk of my sales come from craft fairs, plus sales to business contacts and friends.
If you sell small value items, there may be less of a profit margin in them, but even larger value items can swallow up your costs too, so everyone needs to be realistic on cost, margins, not just turnover.
Lots of companies out there with big turnover, but are slowly going bankrupt as their costs are too high or profit on sales is too small.
One of the important decisions is to decide whether one goes for a credit card machine ( i.e. a proper one ) . Whilst you probably will get more sales using one, always work out the costs first before committing, and work out how much more you have to sell to cover those costs.
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I think I’ve only twice been asked if I can take a card. When I’ve said no, one customer went to the cash machine across the road, the other borrowed from a friend. I could not possibly justify the cost of a machine.
There are free options out there if you want your own site and card machine. I use Tictail and iZettle. Both are free. Tictail charges nothing for basic set up. I only pay for using my own domain name and the ability to offer discounts. This costs me about £2 per month. That’s all. The iZettle card reader, which is free to obtain, takes a small percentage of what you charge. As a hosting platform, Folksy is becoming expensive by comparison.
Can you print out a receipt for the customer with both of these devices ? Some people don’t want or trust an emailed receipt, including me !
Certainly the iZettle card reader pro machine allows you to print out receipts via a blue toothed printer (there is a list of tried and tested printers on their website featuring both desktop ones and portable hand held ones). Since receipt printing is a functionality of the app rather than the card reader I think you can also print receipts with the card reader lite. You can also customise the receipt so that it has all your business details on it.