Photo by Chris Campbell
Time flies. It seems like not very long ago when I first signed on to become a member on Etsy. That was February 07, 2006 - which was almost four years and three months ago! I sold my first item on January 17, 2007 - almost a year after I registered as a member. For the record, this was the first thing I sold on Etsy: Zodiac Monsters micro booklet / zine. Price: $0.50.
I certainly did not expect to sell my 2,866th item three years after selling that very first item. Along the way, I had made a few mistakes and learned a few valuable lessons. Today, I would like to share some of the lessons I picked up from the past three years as a seller on Etsy:
1. Nothing is Easy
Trust me, it does not become easier for you as you become more experienced selling on Etsy. You need to work as hard now as you were from the very beginning. As more and more people start to sell on Etsy, the competition becomes stronger. Start to relax and rest on your laurels and your competitors will overtake you in no time.
2. Change with the Time
In 2007, when I first started selling on Etsy, social media networks like Facebook were still in its infancy, and Twitter had not even existed. Blogging was the only thing we did. Fast forward to 2010, we now have a hundred and one social marketing tools on the web at our disposal! I would have been dead if I didn't try to keep up with the time.
3. Never Give Up
It's never easy for your morale when you saw your sales dipped on certain months and you felt like the end of the world. The easy way out was to close your shop and do something else. That's what many sellers who started out around the same time as me did when things didn't work out for them; the few who refused to give up are those who went on to sell thousands of items and became the top sellers on Etsy today.
No comments:
Post a Comment