What Do You Think of this Idea for Promotion?

Shop Talk
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@HelenCliffordArt

Hi Helen,

Thanks so much for joining in the discussion; I really appreciate it.

You’ve raised some great points about how a site like this would fit into the picture. For customers who are already aware of Folksy and come here to search for items, it would make absolutely no difference. Instead, I see the site as a way of bringing in new customers who aren’t aware of Folksy.

The site wouldn’t bear any resemblance to Folksy whatsoever; after all, Folksy is an e-commerce site, whereas the site I’m proposing would be more like a gallery. Think of it like http://craftgawker.com, but when viewers click on the images, they’re taken through to your Folksy store, rather than to a blog. Does this make sense? What you think of sites like CraftGawker?

PS As previously mentioned, I made sure I cleared this forum topic with Folksy staff before posting it. :slight_smile:

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I’ve never heard of craftgawker what is it?

It’s not something I’d even heard about on the craft forums and I’m on 10 different craft forums.

mmmm had a look and it appears to be a place that for, How to Make /Tutorial/free pattern type of place.

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@EileensCraftStudio I just discovered them the other day as well when I was searching to see what’s out there. They get around 300,000 visitors a month, which I thought was fairly significant. Interestingly, they used to allow people with stores to post their work, but no longer do so (only blogs etc).

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Hi Natalia, an interesting thread, the right sort of promotion would be a good thing so I’ll be following this thread with interest. :slight_smile:

Would your site be just a gallery or would it be more of a blog with discussions, meet the makers etc? You say you have a food blog (do you have a link)?

Would the ‘crafters’ have any sort of say in any advertisements you may show?

I don’t really understand what affiliate opportunities, markets or links are but I believe you would get a ‘commission’ on any sales??? correct me if I’m wrong :slight_smile: Where does the commission payment come from?

Sorry for all the questions but I’m trying to understand it all x

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@HandcraftedbyPicto Hi Jan,

Fantastic questions – thanks so much! :slight_smile:

It’s great to chat about all of the details because I literally only had the core concept when I first posted on the forum, so I’m now being forced to think about all of the details, which is incredibly useful.

Regarding the content, ultimately, the sky’s the limit. However, in my experience it’s good to start small and focused, so the initial idea would be similar to a gallery. Once that was successful (i.e. there were enough visitors), then there would be opportunities to branch out and do interviews, write articles and all sorts of other fun things. As the gallery would link to your Folksy store, visitors could find out more about you there.

As for the advertisements, I personally really hate it when I visit sites and am bombarded with ads, especially irrelevant ones. If ads were shown, they would have to be minimal and relevant.

Are you familiar with www.wanelo.com ? The core premise as I understand it is that they are bringing together collections of great products. What I envision is similar, but only for handcrafted items. The site would be a gallery, but when you click on the product, you’d be taken to the person’s Folksy store.

In fact, I know people in this community already use sites like I am envisioning. For example, yesterday someone was kind enough to introduce me to http://craftori.com/ , which is very similar. However, I think there are things which could be done to improve usability, as well as get in front of a wider audience. A good comparison could be the mass media: even though multiple newspapers, magazines, TV channels etc all cover the same stories, they reach different audiences. In a similar way, I see the benefits of having multiple independent sites promoting quality craft, and ultimately bringing new and different visitors to your stores.

I’m not yet sure what specific affiliate opportunities there might be, but I’d love to clarify the concept in general. In a nutshell, an affiliate commission is a small amount of money paid to someone when they recommend a company. The interesting thing is that it is the company that pays this commission – the customer is completely unaffected and still pays the normal price. It’s easier to understand with a tangible example, so let me find one.

OK, the site www.craftsy.com has an affiliate program, so I’ll show you how it works. The blog ACreativeBeing is an affiliate with them and has a post about Craftsy classes. ( http://www.acreativebeing.com/2014/03/10/giveaway-craftsy-crochet-class/ ). When you click on the links in the post, you’re taken to the Craftsy site and, if you choose to sign up or buy a course or product, Craftsy will pay ACreativeBeing a small commission. The customer will not pay anything extra at all – the company (in this case Craftsy) will pay the person who referred the customer (in this case the blog ACreativeBeing) the commission. I’m not sure how much this particular company pays, but you could read about it here: http://www.craftsy.com/blog/affiliate-program/

Sometimes people can feel confused about where the money comes from for these commissions. In essence, companies have advertising budgets and so if, for example, a blog is bringing them customers, then that’s money the company doesn’t have to spend on other forms of advertising, so they can easily afford to pay a commission to the blog.

Affiliate relationships are extremely common these days: whenever you’re visiting a site, if you scroll right down to the footer, you’ll often see a link to join the site’s affiliate program. Also, you’ll see many blogs and websites have an affiliate disclaimer where they clearly state their policies around using affiliate links. Once you start looking, you’ll find these tell-tale signs everywhere.

Providing people are transparent and ethical about affiliate relationships, they can be a good way of earning a bit of money. Personally, I think the key is to only ever have affiliate relationships with companies who you would happily recommend for free anyway.

Hope that helps and please do ask any other questions you might have – it’s really helpful for me as well!

PS My food blog went into retirement last year, but if you’re curious, contact me privately and I’ll send you the link :smile:

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Hi @HandcraftedbyPicto ,

Fantastic questions Jan – thanks so much! :slight_smile:

It’s great to chat about all of the details because I literally only had the core concept when I posted on the forum, so I now get to think about all of the details, which is incredibly useful.

Regarding the content, ultimately, the sky’s the limit. However, in my experience it’s good to start small and focused, so the initial idea would be similar to a gallery. Once that was successful (i.e. there were enough visitors), then there would be opportunities to branch out and do interviews, write articles and all sorts of other fun things.

As for the advertisements, I personally really hate it when I visit sites and am bombarded with ads, especially irrelevant ones. If ads were shown, they would have to be minimal and relevant.

Are you familiar with wanelo? The core premise as I understand it is that they are bringing together collections of great products. What I envision is similar, but only for handcrafted items. The site would be a gallery, but when you click on the product, you’d be taken to the person’s Folksy store.

In fact, I know people in this community already use sites like I am envisioning. For example, yesterday someone was kind enough to introduce me to Craftori, which is very similar. However, I think there are things which could be done to improve usability, as well as get in front of a wider audience. A good comparison could be the mass media: even though multiple newspapers, magazines, TV channels etc all cover the same stories, they reach different audiences. In a similar way, I see the benefits of having multiple independent sites promoting quality craft, and ultimately bringing new and different visitors to your stores.

I’m not yet sure what specific affiliate opportunities there might be, but I’d love to clarify the concept in general. In a nutshell, an affiliate commission is a small amount of money paid to someone when they recommend a company. The interesting thing is that it is the company which pays this commission – the customer is completely unaffected and still pays the normal price.

For example, have you ever read a blog post which mentions a book? Well, in most cases, the blog post probably links to a store where you could buy the book, for example, Foyles, Amazon or any other store. The owner of the blog could well have an affiliate relationship with the bookstore. In this case, when you click on the links in the blog post, you’re taken to the bookstore website and, if you choose to buy a product, the bookstore will pay the blog a small commission. The customer will not pay anything extra at all – the bookstore will pay the person who referred the customer the commission.

Sometimes people can feel confused about where the money comes from for these commissions. In essence, companies have advertising budgets and so if, for example, a blog is bringing them customers, then that’s money the company doesn’t have to spend on other forms of advertising, so they can easily afford to pay a commission to the blog.

Affiliate relationships are extremely common these days: whenever you’re visiting a site, if you scroll right down to the footer, you’ll often see a link to join the site’s affiliate program. Also, most blogs and websites these days have an affiliate disclaimer where they clearly state their policies around using affiliate links. Once you start looking, you’ll find these tell-tale signs everywhere. Providing people are transparent and ethical about affiliate relationships, they can be a good way of earning a bit of money. Personally, I think the key is to only ever have affiliate relationships with companies who you would happily recommend for free anyway.

Hope that helps and please do ask any other questions you might have – it’s really helpful for me as well!

PS My food blog went into retirement last year, but if you’re curious, contact me privately and I’ll send you the link.

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Hi Natalia

I think I have a better idea of what you are proposing now; essentially, something that isn’t too different from the various craft type websites that already exist for crafters to promote themselves but yours would be presented as a Gallery and have better usability and be paid for by the people to whom the referrals were being made (i.e. the shop owners). So we would pay a percentage for every click that gets sent through to our shops.

My personal view, for what its worth, is that the existing craft sites are niche and whilst internationally some may attract significant numbers of hits, for me, the market whereby crafters promote themselves to (by and large) fellow crafters, is saturated. Just my view going by what hundreds of conversations I have read online and everyone else is entitled to their own view!

I would however be very interested in a site that promotes itself as an online shopping place and gears all of its marketing accordingly (think Not On The High Street in the UK). But for a website to be that successful you’d need significant investment to undertake the advertising required, especially in the early days. I don’t think that’s what you’re proposing.

So for me, I wouldn’t be interested in another layer of costs being added to my Folksy shop, but I do wish you well in your new venture and it would be interesting to see whether you can get the shopping audiences to your new venture. Without significant final investment you’d have to rely on natural search, which would take a lot of time and if that effort was to come from shop owners then I’d agree with @HelenCliffordArt and I’d in every case would want to undertake that effort for a direct link to my website or my Folksy shop, not to something which adds another layer of both costs and potential leakage in the sales funnel.

All the best but as that very well known programme in the UK says - I’m out!! :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

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You do sound like one of the Dragon’s Heidi @HeidiMeier. x :grin:

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Ha ha - too much telly eh?! @tagpress (and prob when I should be promoting my shop lol!!). :wink:

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hi-
is it just folksy you would be promoting then on your proposed site ? or are you approaching other craft platforms additionally?
if it is a gallery of folksy items, then it sounds like a replication of folksy except you can’t buy the items on there.

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lol x :laughing: @HeidiMeier

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@NataliaBraga, I’m always happy to be promoted, and if it’s for free, even happier! But there are caveats with that. :wink:

The things I love about Folksy is it’s UK based, and it’s niche market, David vs Goliath stance. It makes it special in my eyes, and fits its name well. I’d like to see that reflected in your new venture in some way, with branding and marketing itself to the right kind of (potential) customers. If anyone wanted to promote me I’d want to make sure it would fit in with what I’m trying to achieve, and not weaken or dilute it in any way. Hope that makes sense?

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@HeidiMeier Yes, the site would be like a gallery, featuring handcrafted items. When a visitor clicks on an item, they will be taken to the person’s store.

No, the store owner will not pay anything – the site will be completely free to use for both visitors and craft sellers. (So no extra costs to you!)

In this thread we’ve been discussing quite a bit how the site could support itself (which is why ads, affiliate opportunities etc have been mentioned), but the site will be free for everyone to use. In fact, think of it just like many of the blogs out there: they provide great information for free, but often have other ways they support themselves without needing to charge either the visitors or the other people they feature on their blog.

Similar to having your work appear on a blog, having your work featured on a gallery-style site like I’m proposing would have a lot of the same benefits, including:

  1. New people discovering your work and coming to your store
  2. Links back to your store (which helps with SEO)
  3. New people following you on social media

In terms of existing craft sites being niche and potentially saturated, I completely see where you’re coming from. In fact, this is precisely why a site like I’m suggesting could be valuable; instead of cross-promoting in the same circles, what if the site helped attract completely new visitors who haven’t seen your work before?

Thanks so much for mentioning Not On The High Street – they do great work. This is a good example of an e-commerce site, basically, a website which functions as a shop and allows you to buy products. Folksy is another example of an e-commerce site. You’re right in that this is not what I’m proposing. Instead, I’m suggesting a site which would bring interested people to your online stores. Also – just to be clear – these are people who have not seen your work before. After all, the idea is to bring new people to your stores – your existing customers already know and love your work.

The concerns about attracting interested visitors are extremely valid, so I’m really glad you raised this point. This is where I think the skills I’ve learnt in my day job come into play; I’ve worked with online marketing and promotion and know how to get good-quality products in front of the right people to boost visibility. I love a lot of the work here on Folksy but the problem is that the Internet is just so noisy – imagine if I could cut through that noise and help buyers who share the same ethos and values discover your work.

I really appreciate that craft sellers already struggle to find enough hours in the day, so you would not need to promote the site – that would be my role.

Thanks again for the great questions and comments. :slight_smile:

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That’s hilarious! I actually didn’t even realise the new series was on – I’ll have to catch up!

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I think this sounds like a great idea and I’ll be really interested in seeing what comes from it (I’ve filled out your survey too, Natalia) Wanelo looks like an interesting site, though I hate the fact that I can’t look at it without signing in, I think that it really user unfriendly.

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@SallyandtheFreckles Great question! I started the discussion here because I really like this forum and trust your opinions. Without wanting to mention names, I’m also considering asking similar communities in Germany and France for their feedback.

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@BigBirdLittleBird Great point Liz! It really sounds like the underlying values are key. If you could describe your ideal customer, what would they be like? What kind of person would you love to see discovering your work?

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@millyandpip I know what you mean – I was pretty annoyed I had to sign in just to look at the site… Not good.

Thanks for the feedback via the survey :slight_smile:

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Spot on Sally – it’d be free. :slight_smile:

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I didn’t get any further than the home page because I didn’t want to sign up to anything : /
One question about your idea, will your site be curated?

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