My Etsy Treasury Obsession - Overcoming an Addiction

I'll admit it. I was obsessed with making Etsy Treasuries. I made at least one a day and was on a team that had great communication to the point that I was reading emails for hours on end. That and my part in teamwork and the other team that I occasionally made treasuries for took up a good chunk of my day. All in hopes that my Treasury would make it to the Glorious Etsy Front Page.

Why the Front Page? Because there my friends, teammates and I might be seen and draw more sales to our shops. Treasury making is fun, but if you think you're not doing if for glory and sales, you're kidding only yourself. How many buyers make Treasuries, even though they can? And if they make one do you thank them? If you don't you could be missing out on sales too.

I have another confession to make. I've been kicked off of Etsy. No more Treasury making for me. This time it was my fault. I ran a bit behind in my payments and they want their money. Can you blame them? Most of the time they shut down shops, they are unreasonable, although they did refuse to work with me.  It's all or nothing, and as Etsy was my main source of income, it will be a very long time before I can pay them back and get my shops open.

There is a point to all of this, since I've stopped making treasuries, I finished my taxes; learned how to make linkable widgets (see them over there ----->); started making that website I've been talking about; opened up a few new venues to sell at; followed tons more peeps that are following me back; found and implemented addthis and designed some lovely new fascinators that will soon be listed at my Artfire shop. And yes, I am actually selling there too, not much, but it will grow. When I do a search for my items, I see the links to Artfire and Zibbet ranked way higher than my Etsy items ever were.

In summary, I am doing the things to promote and grow my business that I should have been doing all along. Etsy wants you to think that the Front page is critical to your business. It isn't. It's critical to their business. They charge high fees and then contract you for your valuable time to design their front page. With relisting fees, my overall percentage to Etsy was closer to 8%, not 3.5%. Please, make Treasuries if it's fun for you, make them if you want to get to the front page, but don't make them at the expense of loosing out on other opportunities to make your business grow.

Update to Yesterdays Treasury Making Tip

Please note that when making a Treasury as "only you" as suggested yesterday. If you just make that Treasury active, it will have a time stamp from the time you hit save. The best chance you have of getting top views and on page one is to keep it on "only you" and make a new Treasury using the links, just like you did on Poster Sketch.

See the comment left by Waterrose.

Is Your Head Spinning From all the Changes at Etsy?

Change is good.

I don't know about you, but my head is spinning with all the new changes at Etsy. Here are a few changes and how you can "adjust"

FORUMS -  Forums are now in Teams. How do you find a team that's right for you? You have to spend days wading through all the teams that have been set up now, like Mom's Basement, Team Bacon, or My Cat Controls Me or maybe you can just go to Team Finder to help you find teams.

WHERE ARE ETSY ANNOUNCEMENTS? they are now in the Team Announcements. Look, they've even announced that they are making free shipping codes. Guess thy realized that they get more money if you give away free shipping than if you give a discount an merchandise. They're might be a little slow sometimes, but they're not dumb.

POSTER SKETCH - Crud, now how am I supposed to make my Treasuries ahead of time. Just click Privacy "only you" instead of for "everyone" at the top of the page. Save if you have to leave. When you come back click edit. When you're ready to share, select "everyone" and save. Voila! A little getting used to, but when hasn't Etsy been a little getting used to.


TREASURY - Well, it's just that that new page is hard to get used to. And WHERE is my big create a list button. Darn, now I have to make the first 4 images look so good that people will want to click on them. Come on guys, make the WHOLE treasury look good will ya? If you want to get on the Front Page you need to make consistently lovely treasuries anyhow. But then again, will treasuries be on the Front Page when Etsy makes their new FP format? Coming Soon!

And those are just a few of the recent changes. Etsy could keep me in new posting tips for quite a while I think. Next Week? Who knows?

Craftcult Widgets

Did you know you can get Etsy widgets at craftcult? Well you can. You can get shop widgets just like the ones I have on my sidebar, or you can get Treasury widgets like the one I have here. They are really easy to get and pretty easy to install on your blog. Here are some instructions on installation. http://www.craftcultwidget.blogspot.com/ Have fun and spread the Treasury Love.

TREASURY TRICKERY

Now that the Treasury is all East, How do we do a speedy click and how do we get our clicks to count. How frustrating!!!!!

Well there is an issue with clicks and comments (see thread) http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6535713 that Etsy is still trying to iron out.

I'm going to give you a few tips on speedy Treasury Tricks viewing, clicking, and working with. There are Keys on your browser that can help make working your shops and treasuries a breeze.

I'm going to start with Google Chrome, because that's what I use. Most browsers have the same applications, some might have different key shortcuts.

Clicking on a link while holding the shift key will open it in a separate window. Try it!

When I receive a notification that I am in a Treasury I press the shift key as I click on the link. When I click, I open the Treasury in it's own window (not tab) try it! If I open a link from twitter and it is a tab, I can grab the tab and yank it off the window into it's own separate window.

Clicking on an image or link while holding the control button will open it in a new Tab. Try it!

Now for clicking. If I hit the control button (cntrl) while clicking, I can click through all 16 items quickly, They each open a tab in that treasury window. I can choose to look at the items, or I can close that window and I have clicked on each of the items.

I do this to send messages to each person in MY Treasuries also. With every item open in a tab, I copy my message and quickly paste and send to each person by convo. Speedy! Done!

I love Firefox, but it heats up my laptop too much. Shift and Control work the same way. Try it!

Internet Explorer works the same way with Shift and Control, but Much Much slower. Personally, I don't know why anyone would use IE. Get out of your old habits and try something new.

Play with your browser. There is a lot they can do to speed up your life on Etsy.

Next week an interview and Tips from SEOWebDesign