Attention to Details

My reasons for starting an Etsy shop:

• I love making crafts and I see craft-making as an art. I like exploring new crafts and learning new things.
  
• I love browsing and shopping on Etsy, which makes me want to do contribute with my own items. I like to share my crafts with others, to see others enjoying them.
  
• I want to try the small-business model, and see what I can earn by starting out with just a $100 investment.
  

As I work on my Etsy shop, I want to record my thoughts, insights, experiences. And of course, document some of the fun things I make and how I make them. So I'm going to blog about my process.

Here's some of the things I've prepped so far for my shop:

Choosing a Shop Name

There's a great post on Storque, the Etsy blog, on how to choose an etsy shop name.

I've tried to follow its advice. Since I want to sell multiple types of items, I didn't want to limit myself to a name like Crochet Creations. I wanted it to be memorable, and expressive of my personality and interests. I titled my shop Attention to Details. It totally fits me (I admit it, I'm a perfectionist).

A Temporary Banner and a Profile Picture

So I admit, I'm not very good at Photoshop, Illustrator, or other graphic design programs. There are all sorts of useful instructions and I played around with making one, but it still hasn't turned out how I wanted. Here is one of my attempts:



You can probably see why I'm not too happy with it (this was one of my better attempts). I had some good ideas, but alas and alack, the results are just not quite at the quality I want them to be....

So I'm going to work more on crafting the perfect banner, but I wanted to make sure I started out with something that looked professional and cute and had my shop name on it. Luckily, Etsy has a free banner generator, which I used:



I'm pretty happy with it. There's 8 available styles; I liked this one the best. Ultimately I'll replace my banner, but at least I have something to start with.

I also wanted to choose a profile picture, since that's something everyone sees. There seems to be three main approaches--a visual/brand, an Etsy item, or a picture. I decided on a picture of me on top of an afghan I made--it makes it personal, and shows off my handmade skills.



It looks like Etsy automatically cropped this original picture to make it square. Which is fine by me.

Making enough items to start out

In my opinion, some of the new Etsy shops suffer from having only one or two items on them. Back when I was 17, I worked in a children's store, and I learned a few things. For example, the front window display needs to have attractive, cute items to draw people in to the store. At a certain point, it doesn't matter if the customer buys what's on the front display, as long as it gets them into the store. Then they browse the items--hopefully finding the item that's the exact fit for their wants and needs.

The same principle applies to an Etsy shop, except there's not a guaranteed front window display--shoppers can enter your store through any item, depending on if they search by Etsy category, colors, cities, or through the Time Machine. That's your window display item, and maybe someone will buy it. But that may just get them into your shop, and you want to have other options so your customer can find exactly what they want.

I'm starting out with some card sets and some jewelry in my shop. Right now I have 5 or 6 different sets of cards and 3 pieces of jewelry to list in my shop. And I think that will be a good start. Once I get these items up, I'll keep adding items as I make them.

Stamp for my cards

Since I'm selling cards, I decided to make a stamp that has my shop name and my Etsy url. That way if I sell a card and then they give it to someone else, it keeps on advertising for me. Or if I give away a card as a promotional item, it always has my name on it. I just went to Office Max and they made me a custom stamp for $20--10 minutes after getting there, I was done.

Coming Soon...

My goal is to have items up and listed on my Etsy shop by the end of the week (fingers crossed). I'll be posting about the experience, including writing a shop announcement, listing items, taking professional-looking photos, and building a light box.