Hi all.
I’ve had my shop for a while now but only had 5 orders. I sell on Etsy and NOTHS and do incredibly well on those but not Folksy. I would appreciate any tips anyone has or if you can look over my shop, see if it needs any improvements at all.
Mann thanks in advance.
Zoe
Welcome to Folksy.
Sadly, Folksy believes it is up to individual shop owners to advertise Folksy. Folksy will not invest in any advertising, therefore it has remained almost completely unknown since its inception many years ago.
It’s a sad situation that the regulars on this forum have discussed at length. Many pleas have been made to Folksy to invest in advertising but they will not budge on this critical activity.
The upshot is, if you want to make any sales on Folksy, you will have to do all of the advertising yourself. If you are already doing incredibly well on other platforms, you may wish to stick to what works best for you.
I have looked over your shop and there’s nothing more you can do to improve it, everything looks lovely.
Good luck with your shop here if you decide to stay.
Thank you for your reply. Plenty of people do well on folksy so that’s what I don’t understand. Despite you saying that folksy won’t pay for any advertising..
A lot of my sales on Folksy come come via my social media…I point people in the direction of Folksy. I have limited stock on E but I don’t promote it and I do get some passive sales but my focus is definitely Folksy
I think to sell well on Folksy, it’s a matter of concentrating on it as your main sales platform, otherwise it can end up feeling a bit ‘diluted’. I noticed in one of your Instagram posts, you say that the product in question is available on all your platforms…so I guess people might either go to one they recognise or have bought from before, or get a bit confused and end up being unsure which one to choose!
Have you looked at the Folksy blogs about optimising listings? Maybe more key words in your blurb and also titles are heavily weighted for Folksy search so maybe have a look at where these can be improved to include more descriptive words about the product being listed.
Also, it can take time to get found on Folksy…good luck and hope things continue to grow for you.
QUICK EDIT Folksy do newsletters, features, featured maker etc. which have all helped me with visibility and sales. Optimising listings for searches really helps too. I thought my answer made it look like I don’t get sales on Folksy other than through my SM…I definitely do. Tagging Folksy in SM posts also helps them to see what you have available in your shop.
Hello Zoe @zoesblooms
Yes, there are plenty of people that do well here. Folksy just helps fund my hobby, I am not aiming to make a living out of it, but I do ok since my promoting is a bit hap hazard! I am happy with it, but there are others who do a lot better than me.
You do need to promote your Folksy shop on social media though to direct your customers here if you want to do well.
I don’t think i could have put that any better. Zoe is obviously an excellent seller elsewhere and I remembered that she was a featured seller a few months ago too … but sadly that feature does not seem to get many sellers into the public eye, where it needss to be to be seen by customers, as a Folksy shop anyway.
The shop is lovely. Nothing I could think of to improve it except for advertisment by Folksy,
Oddly Folksy seems to be less known as a marketplace in recent years than it was before. I used to get 1 in 5 repeat customer orders. Now it is 1 in 2 ..which is a good indication of the marketplace invisibilty to the general shopping public.
Had a look and your shop is lovely, I love the dried flower wreaths, good descriptions, tags etc so it’s a shame you havn’t had many sales.
I agree with others you have to self promote, I do well on here, mainly down to my promotion and return customers who make up the biggest percentage of my sales. I havN’t had as many new customers this year which is worrying as I feel I am now preaching to the same people with my posts. I’ve just had a good month but the previous few have been half the amount and down on last year and the one previous. I need it to grow not go backwards so I am considering other things as well. I like Folksy and I do sell so I’m not looking to leave at all but I may need to expand and in the very least make my website which I have talked about for long enough.
I hope you give it more time as Folksy is a lovely place to belong, good luck with your shop and sales. I think a lot of people have noticed this year is slower and not just on here, I’ve spoken to people in galleries that have said the same. As far as Folksy goes it is a shame that the name doesn’t stick with people especially with the amount of sellers promoting it every day.
Thank you for your reply. I’ll have to have a look at the blogs. I do wonder if I’m selling on too many platforms, is it doing more harm than good I wonder.. I have a website but I don’t do great on there. I have noticed sales on other platforms haven’t been as good this year so maybe it’s just been a rubbish year all round..
Thank you for your reply and kind words. I do think it’s been a slow year all round really so maybe that’s why sales have been poor.
My initial thought was that maybe your titles needed tweaking to work better with the folksy search algorithm but then I ran some searches (bridal hair comb, bridesmaid hair comb) and you performed very well in those. So if anyone is searching folksy for your type of item I think they will end up in your shop. (Your photos are excellent, my only suggestion would be to have a picture of the combs being modelled by someone like you have for the crowns.)
Then I took it back a level and ran the same searches on duck duck go to see if it found either your shop or the wedding category on folksy. Unfortunately neither showed up - there is an absolute myriad of shops selling wedding accessories and there was rather a lot of stuff from temu swamping the results. (The results on Google may differ)
And that’s the perfect example of why Folksy needs to invest in advertising.