I have seen quite a lot of comments on here recently from people who appear to be selling a lot more on the other side than here on Folksy. I have to say that my experience has always been the opposite with relatively few sales over there (although I can’t say I’m overwhelmed here either but it is steady). I was just wondering if this was down to how people promote their shops - I only ever promote my folksy shop (I love it here and want it to succeed and don’t have time to do both), my et*y one is there but other than adding the occasional listing I don’t really do much with it so am not surprised I don’t sell much there. Are people with more success over there promoting it more or does it just happen for them. I wonder if the shop content has anything to do with it in that some appeal more to the American market than others.
Too new here to say for sure, but I promote here more than there at the moment, and get more sales there. I find it quite disheartening that if I don’t post in promotional threads here, I get single digits views (or no views). Still, I said I wouldn’t make any judgements here until I had 100 listings up…
I only have my little Folksy shop so all my promotion points here. I just haven’t got the time for selling in more than one place at the moment.
I do sometimes wonder if I would do better on the other side, but I love it here even though sales seem slow for me.
When there have been people in this forum complaining about lack of sales if I go looking at their social media I almost always find that there are significantly more mentions of their ety shop (if they have one) than of their folksy one and given that people are more aware of ety I think that is the one they remember and go to. I don’t promote my shop on the other side at all, I set it up using free listings as an experiment to see if people would find my work in the mass that is E*sy and whether I would make any sales from that. I have made sales (not many) but based on the key words that have been bringing people into that shop I’m now considering moving some stock over there as the larger number of users means that unusual materials (like fordite which I love using) get searched for. (fordite over there sells within a month of listing, over here yet to sell despite getting featured in gift guides)
So for me its shop content rather than promotion.
Sasha
Fact - I’m bad possibly because I’m longer there and have more items there, but day by day I’m promoting more and more my little Folksy shop So fingers crossed that result with more sales here
I find it too time consuming to promote more than one shop , so I don’t promote my E… shop, because sales do trickle in by themselves.
I promote here and get a lot more sales,but if I don’t promote they stop dead here.
I’ve been actively selling on here since 2011 and for the first 3 years it was my only online shop and sales increased each year, although never in large numbers. At the end of 2014 I opened a shop over the pond and in the following year took more in that shop than I’d ever managed here. At the same time, my sales here started to decline - that could have been because I was promoting two shops instead of one, but sales over there have continued to rise, while sales here continue to fall, so now I’m selling twice as much over there.
I still promote my Folksy shop and still sell here occasionally, but sales over there are more regular even without much promotion.
Most of my sales on here are to UK customers; most of my etsy sales are to international customers, although a significant number are to the UK. The international market is bigger, and etsy is better-known, so I’d expect to sell more there. Folksy is great and it’s British, which I love, but I’m in business and need sales, so I go where the potential market is bigger.
My sales on here have declined over the last couple of years, but they’re still better than my Etsy shop, which seems to have come to a full stop. I don’t know if it’s down to their search. I entered “The Owl and the Pussycat cufflinks” and it came up with “no matches”, even though all those words are in my keywords, text and title. I was totally disgusted, yet there is no way of contacting them and asking why. It was only when I changed the title to exactly the same as my search term that it came up.
Folksy was my first shop and I feel more inclined to shut my Etsy shop if I’m not making a profit…Lovely approachable and helpful management here
Totally agree with Christine @ciesse I’m exactly the same length of time selling, although I opened a shop here and on Etsy within a month of each other. But the sales pattern is the same. I always promoted to here at the start because I thought the UK would be my main market, and it was easy to get sales here originally. But as Christine says, sales just seem to continue rising over there without actually having to do very much promoting at all, which is great for me as I can use that time to promote my website, and since I’ve stopped promoting to here, sales have all but stopped. It’s a choice you have to make as a business in the end. I’d rather use my promoting time for my own website.
Some interesting responses and not really what I expected. I will continue to promote my Folksy shop to the exclusion of the one over there although maybe I will put a bit more stock in there once I have rebranded and just see how it goes in the run up to Christmas, a couple of chance sales should cover the listing fees. Totally agree with Christine @coatimundi - I feel much more secure here knowing that admin is a brief email away and they are always so helpful and quick to respond.
I have 2 shops in each place. I don’t really promote either of my ffflowers shops, but over there ffflowers is really well established and just looks after itself in terms of sales (although last month was quiet).The equivalent here doesn’t get many sales at all, although every time I think I’ll wind it down it surprises me, and the run-up to Christmas is good.
My main art shop is here because I much prefer the layout and design of Folksy and that’s important to me. Many of the things I make are one-offs, so whenever I have new stock it gets listed here and inevitably I found my Etsy art shop getting emptier and emptier until I put it on vacation while I decide what to do with it. Really, I have found 4 shops are too many for me and I need to focus.
When I first started I didn’t do any promotion at all of either shop; I naively thought it would be like ebay - list it and they will come! Both did about the same number of UK sales, but the other shop had international sales too.
Then sales here started to drop, both in number and value, but the other side continued to increase.
For the last 18 months or so I’ve been doing some promotion, roughly evenly spread. Other side sales still way ahead of here, and craft fair and gallery sales way ahead of either. I would hate to put all my eggs in one basket because the buying public is so fickle.
This month I am too busy to do much promotion myself, so I’m paying British Crafters to do it for me. My links are two to Folksy to every one to the other shop, and I’ll see what results they bring.
That’s a good point, and it’s why I keep a shop ticking over here. My reason is also Google and how it suddenly decides every once in a while to totally change how things are found in searches. So one selling venue that is doing really well for you can suddenly disappear, practically overnight, to searching customers. Spreading yourself sensibly thin (in my case it’s 2 online shops and my website) so you can keep an eye on it all and how it’s working for you is a very good tip
I am not sure my sales are a consequence of promotion because no matter how much I am promoting both shops, my Facebook page is dead. I also do Twitter and Pinterest, but again, I am not sure the customers come from any of them.
When I first opened the other shop, it didn’t work for me at all, I kept changing the products, the name, etc, but when I added more than 60 products and I worked on the titles a little bit, the sales increased considerably. My sales on Folksy also increased after I updated to plus account and added more products so to me it seems to be a matter of having a lot of products in my shop and diversifying the range of what I am offering. My trinket boxes sell particularly well there and not so much here, even though I had a couple in the Favourite finds collection. On the other side, I have customers from overseas as well as from the UK and every time I have an order from the UK I wish they knew about Folksy. Summer was particularly slow in both shops, but things started to pick up over there and I am still waiting to pick up here too.
I love it here, but I feel the other one has more activity, such as networking games etc. But sales on both are really low, and I don’t have an answer. My makes I believe are as good as anyone else’s but if you can’t get found then no one will see them. I check out some high sellers over there as get very disheartened as many are so similar to my things yet I struggle on both sites. Folksy could do more for us. I know its just a platform to sell, but so is the other one. The twitter hours does nothing to bring any decent views and I can bring the same number by just tweeting directly. We have to just fact it, we are our own promoters and need to do the best we can. Now where’s that magic wand?
I’m fairly new to Folksy. Joined here January this year and also re-opened on the other side after a long pause. So it was like starting a fresh in both places. To begin with I took part in forum discussions on Folksy but not at all on E…y. Not really much in the way of promotion for the last few months as time has been in short supply. I’ve found that on Folksy low priced items sell occasionally, but not the higher priced ones generally. Whereas on the other side and through my blog international buyers seem happier to spend larger amounts.
I like the style of Folksy very much and happy with sales for my first 8 months. I certainly will be staying here and will try promoting more when I get the chance. It will be interesting to see if I can encourage higher value sales.
I’ve only just started listing on here and have some higher priced items £30-£50 and will be interested (after reading the last post) to see if the higher priced stuff sells.
I’m actively chatting and posting in the forums which does generate some views.
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