@LakelandLoom Katrina, the Folksy Local groups are run by non paid volunteers rather than the main Folksy team. This means that the volunteers are fitting in posting on the folksy local social media around their other jobs/ day to day lives and if they are busy it is the Folksy local that gets dropped off the list. Some areas have struggled to find volunteers so if you are interested in joining the team of volunteers for your area I’m sure they would love to have you on board.
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We’ve been asking for this since 2020. And probably before. How much longer?
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Thanks 
Sadly I would not have the spare time either 
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I’ve given up on this topic because my head is sore from banging it against the wall but I will just add… Facebook posts… Three this month so far to promote the monthly Folksy selected Featured Seller…I have no idea of your reach on those posts but they don’t seem to be reaching your audience.
There are Five across the rest of the platform posts to balance with that
Not sure how that works ? 
I am with you Joy, got a migraine from this now!
Just one thing on the subject of social media one group I am on they promote at least 20 times a day, that is an individual not a team of people being paid by sellers to promote a website.
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Indeed and just yesterday, I alone, a one woman glass artist business, posted :
3 Folksy tagged tweets
2 Folksy tagged pins
as well as (non Folksy as I try to spread my promotion round all my outlets)
3 Facebook and 2 Instagram posts.
and all while handling customer queries and thank yous, orders, making and listing new glass makes, ordering supplies, managing my 5 shops and I even made dinner too. :).
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Ouch - there are quite a few different opinions out there and whatever happens you can’t please everyone - especially when different sellers needs are many and varied.
Surely we’re all on Folksy because it is a bit different to other selling sites - that’s why we love it. There are alternative sites that employ hard sell techniques - they are big, impersonal and have a lot of clout and money to spend on advertising etc. They do there job but do not provide much in the way of encouragement and engagement with sellers and if your buying you have to wade through a lot of items that are not artisan quality to get to those special things.
I think a lot of us makers don’t produce in high volume and value Folksy as a ‘selling venue’ that puts the emphasis firmly on handmade quality rather than quantity. If you share a technique with customers it usually shows just how skilled and difficult art and crafts can be and that adds value to finished products. Many of our customers haven’t the time (or skills) to make things anyway but do appreciate being able to buy handmade on a site that provides plenty of added extras like meet the maker etc.
At the moment Folksy seem to be working really hard on increasing visibility and reach & getting the SEO right. Once customers visit the site it seems silly to simply present them with an E""y look alike - it will be the quirky little extras like mini tutorials and features that differentiate us from the pack.
There’s an old saying ‘You catch more flies with honey than vinegar’ and that’s maybe what Folksy is aiming to do.
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You haven’t seen how big our wishlist is! 
It’s full of features and changes that we hope will improve the site, and is mainly made up of things which have been requested by sellers on the forum, people have come to support about or have been given in the suggested features section. Some have been there a lot longer than a few years, and we wish we could click our fingers and them all be immediately on the site, but there’s only so much we can do at once, especially when we only have one or two people to work on it (as you all know Folksy is already a small team, but we don’t all have the devevlopment skills necessary for making these features work, the development team is even smaller).
Videos are something we’ve discussed for this year, but it’s really difficult to give an actual time or even guarantee this year, because as much as we want to work on something, we’re aware there can be other priorities that come up that need to be looked at more urgently, or issues with the site that need fixing and take away from the time we have for development. Such as the SEO work, this quickly became an urgent priority ahead of everything else we had planned, and there’s not just one simple thing to fix. Although we can see we’re now showing up on Google more, it’s still ongoing work and there are other parts of this that we still need to work on to make sure it’s the best we can get it.
We’re also aware that what we’re working on might not always seem a priority to everyone, and some might think we’re just doing random things on a whim instead, but there are always reasons behind what we do with aims to improve the site and reasons why it was prioritised ahead of other things. Sometimes there will be things that need to be worked on that aren’t visible changes, but improve the performance and stability of the site, help with rising costs so we can keep fees as low as possible, help with things we need to make future improvements and just the general maintenance of the site to keep everything working at the level you already expect.
But as we mentioned, the entire team isn’t working on development, and working on these content ideas like reels for social media doesn’t impact how quickly we’ll be able to work on videos for listings and other site features.
As @folksycontent mentioned, the types of post, as well as things like frequency of posts, aren’t just done at random but are carefully judged from the information we get about what works best for getting engagement and reach. Social media is a balancing act, and as much as you want to post enough to get seen, posting too much can also put people off and affect the reach. It’s better to have one great post that’s reaching thousands, than 20 quick posts in a short time that might start with getting seen by hundreds and then quickly drops off as people get overwhelmed and bored of seeing the same account again and again. Quality over quantity.
It’s certainly difficult to please everyone, as much as we try, and it’s not just about the varied sellers, but also the buyers.
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Every single piece of glass I sell here is Handmade with care and love as is the glass I sell on my other sites which also only sell British Handmade.
I value Folksy as a lovely site, where, in the past, and since its very early days, starting early 2009 for me, I have had, according to my dashboard £73,000 worth of sales (incude postage in that) over the 4144 pieces sold.
There are a lot of sellers on here who do indeed use Folksy as a hobby, a place to sell the things they make so they can make room to make more. Who don’t care if they only sell one thing every few months. But I aspire to much better than that. I have a reputation to maintain and a lot of happy customers. The sale I made at the weekend was entirely through my own efforts… that customer has had 18, yes Eighteeen, previous orders from me !
BUT something has happened here on Folksy and it started to happen in the second half of 2022 because I keep extremely detailed records of exactly what I sell and my Folksy graph started a downward spiral then (while my other shops have been going up).
. I have not changed my approach to selling and my sales elsewhere continiue beautifully. Forunately or I would by now, if only reliant on Folksy, have had to give up as a Glass Artist as an unsustaainable business or even a hobby. Here my sales have dropped like a rock off Niagara Falls.
Now if my sales elsewhere are growing and I am still continuing to support and promote my Folksy shop here then it is surely extremely unlikely that it is my shop or shop products which has caused this.
Just saying !
Ps My latest order today is also from a repeat customer of 6 previous orders… I used to get 3 to 1 new customers to old. Now i just get old. 
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I think we are all aware there is a problem somewhere along the line - I’m sure Folksy are trying to identify and fix it ASAP but as you said up until the second half of 2022 things have been going well so the Folksy formula overall has worked effectively in the past - this dramatic drop off suggests something specific has happened which presumably can be corrected. It is worrying but I’m sure it will improve.
When i opened my shop on folksy over 10 years ago i already had a shop on the other side, i was getting a lot more sales here so i closed the other shop, but sales here for me have declined quite a lot lately my plus account expires in August so will have to see how things go to whether i renew or not
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I know. And it might seem we are having a right old moan, we all do really appreciate your hard work. But I hope you are able to take on board our main concerns, and work something out.
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I don’t think tutorials should be on here, but selling supplies has been on Folksy for a long time now. I was selling supplies under another shop name over 10 years ago
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@folksycontent personally I’m not sure “We do post almost every day” is enough. Do you have a social media consultant? If so why are they only posting once a day?
I think people are frustrated because they’re paying for Plus and I for one am not exactly sure what I get other than I get a couple of stats and I can list and re-list for free. Theres no reduction in commission or any other benefits that I’m aware of?
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@kazandstace
Here is what you get for Plus (which I’m sure you would have read before you decided to choose it as opposed to the basic option 
)
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Thanks
Everyone pays 6% commission so that’s not a plus benefit
Not even sure what the Trusted Sellers Discount Means
I think I read somewhere there was 7 make it sell courses, I only received 6
I’ve not seen any plus-only events yet apart from January was 0% commission, which was still being advertised this month!
E… Import Service is you have to email Folksy a download and they’ll take a few days to get around to doing it for you. This and the free listing/re-listing were the main reasons I signed up for Plus but thought they’d have a smarter way of doing it that I’d be able to upload a file and it would give me drafts of my listings. Ended up doing the listings myself because I didn’t want to wait.
They’re taking 6% and people paying £75-90 a year for Plus, and they post on social media “most days”? There’s more that could be done in my opinion
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In the beginning (and I still think of it as the only real reason for having the plus account) the plus account was a more cost effective way of having a large shop compared to pay as you go. The £75 of the annual plus account is equivalent to 417 pay as you go listings per year or having an average of 139 items in your shop which get renewed only when they expire every 4 months. Some people have hundreds of items in their shops so the plus account saves them lots of money vs pay as you go, if you don’t have a large shop then pay as you go might be a better option for you.
The trusted seller discounts is coming later this month (27th I think) - Folksy have been wrangling discounts out of ~ 30 suppliers which will be available to plus account holders only. It might be that none of the suppliers are of use to you so wouldn’t gain you anything but if there is a discount code for a supplier that you do use then it could save you money (possibly even save you the entire cost of the plus account over the year if you need to shop with the suppliers enough).
Plus only events - in Feb there was a ‘seconds sunday’ event where they were promoting seconds/ end of lines/ samples that were being sold by plus sellers, next month there is a special zoom Q&A on pricing your work which is being held by the Design Trust, in May there is a special event being held by Indie Roller (an email went out recently with details and a sign up link for the Q&A). I’ve heard rumours about what is happening in June but I’m not sure I’m allowed to say what it is.
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Re Plus benefits … I know £75.00 is a fair amount of money to find but if you sold through shops and galleries then the commission would be much higher than 6%. I know there are cheaper online options but I think Folksy is pretty good (after all it’s been around for a long time which is an indicator they doing a lot right). I like the benefits ‘plus membership’ gives like being able to highlight shop items and it’s possible I might use some of the advantages and opportunities that are apparently coming our way like the suppliers directory. One big advantage that plus membership has for me is that it motivates me to list items and make sure I take my shop seriously - just one of the less obvious values to plus membership.
Of course ‘Plus membership’ does not suit everyone and many people are happy with ‘pay as you go listing’ but for the moment I’m happy to pay the annual fee.
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i’m paying for my plus account even though i’m taking a massive break from making/selling at the moment and it’s still worth it to me 
i don’t know how much it costs to hire a website designer or the annual fees for hosting & maintaining a slick shop front, or do all that ecommerce faffle, but i’m pretty sure it’d cost more than my folksy fees.
i definitely couldn’t aftord THAT, not in money or mental health.
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