Friday 30 July 2010

An experiment in advertsing

I know that July is typically a quiet time for Etsy sales but my shop has had no sales at all for a couple of months.  I joined in the Christmas in July sale, admittedly a little late in the month but I got there.  My shop has had a few more item views but nothing to get excited about and no new sales. :o(

So what to do about it?  I use sites like CraftCult and Craftopolis and I've seen the Etsy shop ads on there and I have to admit I can never resist clicking on some of them as some of the items for sale look great.  On the other hand, I don't think I have ever bought anything as a result of clicking on an ad.

In the end I decided to bite the bullet and go for the full 7 day carousel / 7 day side bar ad package on CraftCult.  The carousel ad started running on Wednesday evening and the side bar ad started running on Thursday evening. It's now Friday morning and yes I can see a difference in hits.  Look:



I've circled my ads and I can see I've had 58 new views since they started.  I also have 3 new shop hearts. :o)  No sales yet but I guess it's early days.

I've also invested in some gift boxes to package the slightly more expensive items in my shop and updated some of the listings accordingly.  Even though I bought 4 different shapes and sizes of boxes I still have some things that don't really fit comfortably in any of them so I'll need to keep searching for that elusive item, the perfect packaging.  I want my customers to feel like they got a good deal so getting the packaging just right is just as important as making the jewellery perfect.

Anyone else had any good or bad experiences with advertising?

2 comments:

  1. Ok, it's now Wednesday morning so my week's advertising is nearly up. The scores so far:

    New shop hearts - 10 (plus assorted item hearts)

    New views - 406

    New sales - none, sadly

    I'll total up again on Friday morning after the last ad has finished.

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  2. It's Friday and my ads have finished running. Final figures:

    New shop hearts - 15 (plus assorted item hearts)

    New views - 652

    New sales - still none, sadly, but I guess the ads have raised some awareness of my shop.

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