Since starting to sell on Folksy, I have had rather disappointing sales and viewer stats, and I’m really not sure what I’m doing wrong. Would I do better if I upgrade my membership type, is there somewhere on the boards I should be posting new listings? Is there somewhere else I should be publicising my shop? Why does Folksy never choose any of my items to promote on it’s frontage when my work is just as good as anyone else’s! I feel like I am paying quite a lot of money to folksy to list my stuff, and not receiving a lot in return I’m afraid.
Your shop looks absolutely fine to me, I found when I started (and I’m still not many sales ahead of you) that it takes A LOT of promoting your folksy page to get the ball rolling. I use offers to direct people in from facebook and twitter and plenty of links from twitter. It’s a bit of a slog but I’ve noticed since hitting 40 sales that it’s got easier and I can spend less time on it xx
Sorry to go off the subject slightly Elizabeth, but Lucy @LucyWithDiamonds do you think people have more confidence in your products/shop after you have a few sales notched up, especially as these are displayed on our shop front, or do you think that your promotion is just hitting the right target?
Elizabeth, WOW, I have loved your little Wren so it will have a few moments of fame on the front page.
Suzzie x
I’m not sure as I as a buyer tend to look for a sleek looking shop and good product images. I noticed an upturn in views and sales when I used twitter more, using the hashtag #folksy and also tagging @folksy in the tweet. Also I had an offer on over a weekend and promoted that on my facebook page. To be honest I get really good sales from Facebook but I know that’s not the case for everyone. x
Nothing wrong at all,in fact good enough for me to favourite. It is all down to promotion, I have had just one sale and my web hits fluctuate this is because I am building up stock before I promote much,Take heart,you will get followers with the best skill and talent as I have so that will tell you your work is well up to scratch.
I looked at your Facebook page and the link there is to your Etsy shop,I couldn’t see any mention on there of Folksy. If you are pointing people to your Etsy shop, that is where they will go…
If you want them to come to your Folksy shop then you need to link to here and promote it…
The plus account is only worth having if you are going to list/ relist over 250 times per year - I’ll let you do the maths as to whether or not you are going to achieve that. There are strands in the forum where artists chat and show off their work you could join those or any of the other promotional threads as fits with your work. As for why folksy doesn’t pick your items you might want to look at your photos - folksy crops to a square image so if yours isn’t already square the edges will be lost, this is particularly evident with your landscape orientated cards. Personally when I’m buying art (and I do buy it online occasionally) I like to be able to see all the image and the surround in the first image and then look at close ups of detail. I also think you could work on your titles, descriptions and tags - folksy’s search function uses these to prioritise results when someone runs a search and google will scan the title and description when it is looking for search results. Of your listings that I have looked at none of them had tags and these are very important for the internal folksy search so you should seriously think about adding them, I just ran a search for both duck etching and duck print thinking that would bring up your work and found and it found none of your relevant listings even though looking in your shop some of your items fit the bill. When I searched whippet print it found ‘buddy’ but none of the others. For the description you could expand upon what the image looks like and the overall feel of the piece (I was once told to write descriptions as if I was describing it to a blind person, which is what the web bots are in a way), what setting would it work in, what paper is it printed on, how big is the margin, would it fit a standard size frame, is it mounted.
Hopefully some of that will prove useful.
Sasha
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I can’t do the maths, but personally I think it’s worth it to keep items in the public eye…
If you’ve got 20+ items and you relist them every month then its worth it, less than that then its probably not worth it, a shop like mine with 200+ listings definately worth having it.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with it - selling is just hard. Promoting is really important - we have a Folksy shop group on Facebook and you could join in with British Crafters on there too, as well as the forums here. I have favourited a few items in your shop.
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If I was looking for a card depicting geese I would use the word geese card or bird card in the search bar. So you might want to think more about what word or groups of words a potential buyer would put into a search bar to find your items.
Untill now I’ve never come across your shop. Where do you promote your listing and how often?
Come use the showcase part of the forum where we promote each other’s items.
Do put sizes in your listings potential buyers will want to do dimension.
Promotion is extremely important along with titles, tags, descriptions and photo’s.
The more places you promote the bigger/wider your reach.
It does take time to get followers and to get views and sales it’s hard work but worth it. It’s no quick get rich thing it’s a long haul thing where you have to work your socks off continually.
Here’s a list of some places to promote on
Facebook
twitter
pinterst
google plus
craftjuice
wanelo
instgram if you use a android phone.
Buisness cards
and in the showcase part of the forum.
hope some of that helps
As everyone else has said before it is not easy selling online. I have been on Folksy & Etsy for a long time and unless you can constantly promote yourself all the time, then sales will be really slow. I only run mine as a hobby but, if you are doing it as a business, then you have got to promote and publicise. You probably need to spend more time promoting than making your products. Also remember that many successful companies have now gone bust, despite all the support from the experts that they receive.
I quite often tell myself I am not going to make anything else, due to things not selling but I enjoy making things. Good luck with whatever you do.
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I think you need more information in your listings. For example £6 is a lot of money for a computer printed valentines card, but if it’s a hand pulled screen print then it is a completely different beast and worth paying the money for.
If you put more information in the listings, describing the process and maybe include some WIP photos of your printing equipment, your work will seem more valuable.
Finally, to my mind, if you capitalise the P in your shop name so that it reads “Elizabeth Moriarty Prints” instead of “Elizabeth Moriarty prints” it makes the prints seem more important.
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I am one of your customers, I love your work, I am a buyer and seller on Folksy, and I put in a word to search for what I wanted! I love lino prints too, and added something else to use at a later date, that is how I found you 
Hi - does that mean everytime one of our items is favourited/Liked, it appears on the home page of Folksy?
hi there - yes it does show on the main page when somebody ‘likes’ your item.
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Yes, until someone else ‘loves’ someone else’s item. Can be a mere minute, but often longer.
Suzzie x
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I think it depends how many items are being liked at any one time…Folksy show 2 items on the front page that have been liked and it seems to change about every 10 minutes. I have ‘liked’ items and they have appeared there, but other times they haven’t, but by liking something it does get that chance of fame!
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hi there -
your shop has lovely artwork but perhaps you could add some more tags to your listings - for example prints, lino, hand made, printed, hand printed etc.
i notice that some of your listings do not have many tags.
also - perhpas add a bit about yourself and your work by filling in the ‘meet the maker’ section (it’s in your dashboard in the profile section) - i think that on sites like this it is important and also i personally love to find about people i am buying from.
hope this helps.