As I’ve just joined I’m wondering whether I should upgrade from a basic account now or should I wait. I like the idea of relisting items so they get shown on the homepage - but is that the only benefit aside from no listing fees?
Would love to hear your thoughts and whether it’s worth the £45.
If you’re on a basic account how do you get your products seen?
I’ve been going through the forums and see there’s a lot of showcasing on the forums - does that mean most sales are made ‘internally’ from shop to shop or do you get your custom from outside Folksy?
I’ve not had any sales and haven’t started promoting my folksy shop yet. Gots lots to do.
I believe that only newly listed items get shown on the front page (it might be that if you relist them within a month or so of creating the listing they might make it onto the front page) and even then you are competing with everyone else who is listing new items so you might not get featured on the front page at all. The plus account let you feature items - you end up with 3 items being highlighted at the top of your shop front page (you can select which items get featured) - useful if you have lots of items.
The plus account pays for itself if you plan to list or relist over 250 items in a year (thats approx 20 items being relisted every month). I have over 200 items which get relisted monthly so for me the plus account is an absolute must. Whether or not you regularly relist your items to keep them towards the top of the categories or search results will depend on whether or not you think there is lots of similar items already listed here. eg I have some amethyst earrings in my shop - that search brings up over 400 other pairs of amethyst earrings so having those towards the top is probably a good thing. A search for ‘spoon ring’ (seemed reasonable to find your items) returned 45 listings - one page of results which I think most potential customers would have no issues scrolling through so maybe they don’t need relisting regularly to keep them at the top of the page. ‘silver ring’ was totally different result (pages of those) so regular listing would probably be needed there. One rather fuzzy benefit of the plus account is that I don’t mind listing something where I’m not completely sure of the design but it hasn’t cost me anything to list it so why not (construction is fine but something just isn’t working in my eyes but hey someone else might love it).
I know 1 of my sales that has happened as a result posting on the forums and that was actually where another shop owner offered to promote our shops on black friday rather us having to offer a discount (she picked and promoted her favourite item from my shop and a friend bought it for her at christmas). I have sporadically posted in the showcase threads but don’t know of any sales occuring because of it however I have made purchases because of things I’ve seen in the forums. I know that I have sold items to other shop owners but a greater proportion of my sales come from non selling folksy members (regular users who have set up an account) and even more from guest buyers who have come from outside folksy (that takes promotion and time).
So that’s my views and experience but I’m sure others will have the opposite.
Sasha
thanks for the replies and insight guys - I’m quite tempted - but doing a bit of an upgrade on my own online shop this week so my focus is elsewhere for the time being.
My views drop dramatically when I’m not relisting some of my items daily, such as when I’m away (I’m very low tech, so don’t do it from a phone or anything). I believe relisting brings items to the top of category searches, and even if they don’t appear on the main part of the front page, they appear on the “newest items” lower down. I would be reluctant to give up my “plus seller” account because I would be afraid of my items never being seen…
The advantages of the plus account are really if you have a large amount of listing to list and relist.
The advantage of sharing your items in the showcase of the forum is twofold. One is that we all promote each other’s items and secondly the forum posts get picked up by google so win win.
I just went for it. I figured if I am giving this a try I am going all the way. My views are already pretty low so I cant imagine what they would be without being able to relist.
