I think you have just confirmed my suspicions, that people prefer to buy from people, not from website pages. Bother … back to the drawing board I think!
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Some things work for some, some things work for others. Like the masses of social media that can be used to promote, you’ll enjoy and understand some, and others will seem completely alien to how they work. Everything isn’t going to suit everyone. You might find face to face is the best way for you, but you can always ask for help with your online selling in forums like this.
Online selling is fantastic for me, and that’s selling things that weigh nearly 2kg and all the postage rates that come along with that. Customers are even happy to pay international postage for my items, which is mostly adds 2/3rds again the cost of the item again. I guess because they aren’t going to get what I sell anywhere else. One of those ‘must have’ situations, which is perfect. So I don’t think you need to stop selling over the cost of postage, customers will pay if they really want the item.
Just had a quick browse round your shop. I do love a bit of vintage, so the small tote bag caught my eye. But, there’s no sizes in the description. How small is small? There’s a kind of scale against the door handle, but I wouldn’t buy on the off chance it’s big enough for what I need.
Little things like that stop online sales. You need to think like a face to face customer and make sure your descriptions and photos cover everything they might want to know and see if they were handling the item for themselves.
Also, I went to follow the link to your Facebook page and it doesn’t work, so you might need to check the link, or remove it if you’re not on Facebook anymore.
Hope that helps a bit.
Jo
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Thanks Jo that’s really helpful. Something has gone very wrong here because I remember typing the size! And yes I did save it. Also I agree about the FB link. Could you tell me how you managed to link yours and I will have another go?
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Good pointers @JoSara, any chance you can give my shop a quick once over? Never asked anyone on here.
I think its fine, but a fresh eye could be useful.
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Just had to go and look at my shop to find out. It was ages ago that I set it up so I’d completely forgotten. In Shop Appearance at the bottom of the page is where you link all your social media, and the facebook bit needs the full URL, including the http bit so I would open your facebook page and copy the URL out of the search bar so you get everything. So it will look like - http://www.facebook.com/JosaraDesign - with your facebook name at the end instead of mine, obviously 
Well, with a critical eye, some of your pics are a bit grey/blue, so I think you need to find somewhere with some better natural light, or use something like Picasa to edit your photos online to brighten them. But, what really caught my eye, because it’s something that bothers me as aesthetics are quite important to me, is where your photos are cropping off edges of bracelets, and half of one earring. It’s easy to sort. Even, if for time’s sake, you only sort one photo per listing. Decide which one you want as the shop front pic, and crop it to square, so you know exactly what you’ll see when it’s loaded. Then you can compose the square around your item so it all fits in and has a nice ‘border’ of background around it.
I quite like the colour grading you’ve done with your items though. If it doesn’t get too time consuming, that’s a nice way to display your stuff.
As for descriptions, I quickly looked at a couple. They’re quite short and sweet. I think you’ve got most of the info, but adding a slightly fuller description gives you more words to be found in searches. So with your bunting, you could add that it ‘could be used outdoors in the garden’ (I’m assuming as it’s washable fabric that you could use it outdoors in summer), then you’ll catch anyone looking for garden bunting, or outdoor bunting. Just think what customers might type in to search and try and add those words in.
So, just tweaks to what you’ve got already really 
Jo
Aww, thanks @JoSara, will go and have a tweak and totally agree with the photo editing, some are cut off at their prime, 
and the odd discription is probably where i have run out of energy! Really appreciate you looking.x
Thanks Jo. I have taken a large mallet to the FB link and it is now working. Strange, because last time I tried it there wasn’t a problem. I have also added the dimensions; I cut and pasted the description from my other site so I suspect something went missing en route and is flapping around in cyberspace! Thanks for your comments … you could of course develop a sideline in checking our shop pages for us. Seems as if there is some need for it.
Hi - photos can be a complete pain … they look fine on your screen until you add them to a listing! Picasa is really useful and I am (gradually) converting my images to square format. Picasa has a crop feature called “CD” which gives a square image; don’t be put off by the size because you can still shrink it down if you need to. Backgrounds and light are also difficult in our climate. I am experimenting with a very pale grey background because white can pick up the colour of the item itself and this can’t always be edited back to white with ease. Some cameras can alter the colour of the image; I use a Fuji Finepix and it hates anything pink or red (in fact it will turn holly berries into cerise which is a pain during the Xmas card season). If you can find or download your camera manual it’s worth looking up “aperture priority” and “white balance”. But to be honest, in my case I am going to upgrade the camera this year because it is now rather “past it”. Oh, and hope for some fine weather!
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I sold at a tattoo convention last weekend and I have come to the conclusion that people really are struggling and luxuries are something of the past… I’ve liked items from everyone’s shops so I hope that gives a little boost xx
Hi,
I am in the same boat as You…No sales at all…don’t know,how others get 3000 sales on Folksy…((((
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Don’t copy and paste your descriptions from your other sites that is a big no no and will push you done in a google seach as it’s seen by google as spamming.
instead rework your listing descriptions for different venues. And for each item never copy and paste.
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I notice people are not using there tags. You need to edit your listings and use your tags and sort out some of your descriptions using the words you have in your titles. Describe the item as if there were no photo’s.
Promote your items not just on one site but as many as you can muster.
Use word of mouth and business cards drive traffic to your shops.
There is a lot of hard work to do it’s not as simple as putting up a photo, a couple of lines and a price then siting back and hoping for the best. The internet is a large place and you need to get seen and you can only do that if you are pointing people in your direction.
All the best
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I’ve gone down the list and tried to like one item from everyone’s shop hopefully it might boost a little interest I would be really greatful if you lovely folk would return the favour, I’m at a horror convention this weekend which is proving to be low on sales for everyone so it seems people are struggling x
A horror convention sounds like a nightmare to me, but probably appropriate for your items. I had a look though your shop, and these pretty cufflinks would appeal to those who don’t even know what steampunk means:
Aw thank you very much, I do try to make things that appeal to everyone but some people just see my creepy items then don’t look at the others. A lot of people are scared of spiders so those are some peoples form of horror lol x
My views are still very low! Even Facebook is struggling to get me views to here! Sometimes, just sometimes, you rethink things and wonder whether all this promo and social media is worth the time you put in.
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I know how you feel. I have concentrated so hard on promoting , spending 2 or 3 hours a day, at least, promoting on Twitter, forums, groups and Facebook. It seems the more I promote the less views I get, and the less I sell.
! year ago I had only been open a month and was feeling my feet, so only had a few items in my shop and very few followers on social media, yet I was selling more…my views are about the same.
I think I am now spending too much time on the computer and not enough time at the sewing machine, so have decided to limit how much I promote…maybe an hour in the evening and couple of 10 minute slots in the day when I’m not at work, otherwise it’s just too demoralising…
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hi kim,
i was just having a look on your twitter page and i was wondering if you had thought about hashtags and adding them to your tweets? they may reach more people then. for example #bags #craft #handmade and so on.
just a thought.
sally.
hi again kim -
also wanted to say how much i like your kitty keyrings and think that these would make a great range in different colours displayed in your shop and advertised on twitter #cats ( as LOADS of people love cats on twitter as we know!)