~ Stats from My First Month on Artfire ~

It's been a month since I paid my $14 to Artfire for a Pro account. No, I am not abandoning Etsy. But for selling low priced items like supplies, just the listing fee is daunting for Etsy. For example, I like to sell these lover dolphin brass bells as a package of 2 because they are cute that way. Listing fee for Etsy is $0.2 which is about 10% of my selling price. I try to make my packages bigger so all my items are at least $3.


Even so, I have tons of supplies to list. Right now, I have 221 items in my shop. 221 x 0.2 = $44. That's about $44 in listing fees!!! Granted, it's not like I list 220 items a month, but still. This kind of math makes Etsy look pretty bad as a venue for selling supplies. But I think, that's the only major disadvantage for Etsy. Yeah, Artfire has global editor and coupon creator and all that. But, I just like how my Etsy shop look and feel. This just doesn't look good to me.


Anyway, let's see some stats. It's pretty much expected that I would sell more on Etsy since it's a more established shop. However, I closed my Etsy shop for 2 weeks this month when I was on vacation. I left my Artfire shop open. The dollar amount sold on Etsy is about 3x what I sold on Artfire. My Etsy fees was only twice as much as my Artfire monthly fee. I definitely get more traffic on Etsy, about 5x Artfire traffic.


Here's my Google Analytics for Artfire


Google Analytics for Etsy. Note that my Etsy shop was closed during the last 2 weeks of May. During the 2 weeks that it was closed, it was still getting more traffic than my Artfire shop which was not closed.


On a side note, in my Artfire shop, there are 79 (27%) visits resulting from Artfire directly. In my Etsy shop, there were 384 (25%) direct visits. And yes, that's with 2 weeks being closed. So, it looks like there are just less people finding my shop on Artfire. Notice that I didn't say there are less people shopping on Artfire in general because this is just my stats. I can't make a general statement like that with the limited set of data I have. But, if you want to know which community is more active, you can just check the forums. On Etsy, you can always find posts that are less than 1 minute old. On Artfire, that's rare. Maybe Etsians are just more talkative.

In conclusion, I am definitely not making as much money on Artfire. And the monthly fee is not justified at this point. It's still early though. I am going to try it for a couple more months. It is more work to split the tweeting between Artfire and Etsy and having to list items on both sites and keep the inventory in sync. Sometimes, I think the amount I sell doesn't justify the time I spend running the shops. I love running the shops though. But, perhaps a price increase is in order?

~ Big Selection of Polymer Clay Doll Head Beads ~

I love these doll head beads. They are just so cute! I have made a few charms with them for my jewelry shop before and sold a few. It's really easy! I will post some tutorials this weekend.


On my last trip to Hong Kong, I found a new supplier for these beads so I was able to lower my price on them. I got a variety too! Here are some for your life events like wedding, graduation, babies, first day of school and first time seeing snow. And there's a nurse too :)


I like these fantasy ones more! There are witches, Japanese styles, fairies and fruity hats. I love the fairy one. The hair and flowers are so intricate and pretty!


These are the regular girls. I love the one with the short curl hair that look like roses! They are like anime characters!


Of course there are ones for the 12 signs of the zodiac! Which one is your favorite? I am very happy with the Scorpio one. But Libra and Gemini are a little bit weird.


They also make ones for the Chinese zodiac. I don't have all of them though. The dragon one looks like a deer. But, a dragon is supposed to have a deer head right?


I am still in the process of listing some of these in my supplies shop. Some of them are already in my artfire shop too. Speaking of Artfire, I had my first sale! I hope there will be many more to come. When my first month is up, I will tell you about the stats and a more thorough review of Artfire as a venue. So far, the views are fairly low. I hope they pick up soon! Anyway, come back for tutorials this weekend!

~ Grand Opening! Artfire Supplies Shop ~

I took a look at my Etsy bill for my supplies shop and realized it's getting more and more expensive every month. That's good in a sense that I am selling more. But, I think this month was really bad because a bunch of my items were up for renewal. So my listing fees were off the charts. So, I decided to open an Artfire shop because of the flat monthly fees. I was thinking about Zibbet, but Artfire has "Item Importer" to import my 188 items from Etsy. That helps a lot. So in about 45 minutes, after Artfire forced me to put in my bio and such , I imported my items and my Artfire shop is up!


Now comes the fun part of recategorizing all the items and setting the primary colors and such. Thankfully, Artfire has global editor. I love how you can specify items by searching through the ones you already have. However, will it kill them to put an "Add All" button to this so I wouldn't have to sit there and click on +Add 30 times? I must say though, for this task, Etsy's batch sort may be faster because you just click on each item to sort. With global editor, you have to find the items for 1 category, click on each of them, submit the change and do the next category. But this global editor allow you to globally change the price on items. It's like one of the most asked for feature on Etsy.


One thing I noticed is how they imported the text of my listings. In all my Etsy listings I put this at the end:
.•:*¨¨*:•..•:*¨¨*:•..•:*¨¨*:•..•:*¨¨*:•..•:*¨¨*:•..•:*¨¨*:•..•:*¨¨*:•..•:*¨¨*:•..•:*¨¨*:•.

All Happy Cloud Supplies items will be shipped within 2 business days of payment through USPS First Class.

Take a look at my shop for special sales and announcements!
http://happycloudsupplies.etsy.com

.•:*¨¨*:•..•:*¨¨*:•..•:*¨¨*:•..•:*¨¨*:•..•:*¨¨*:•..•:*¨¨*:•..•:*¨¨*:•..•:*¨¨*:•..•:*¨¨*:•.

Bad thing is....all the pretty stars are gone. Good thing is that they replaced Etsy with Artfire. That's pretty smart and it shows how much care and thoughts they put into implementing their features. I appreciate it a lot as a user and as a developer. Though it was funny that it renamed "Betsy Bunny" to "BArtfire Bunny".


So here are the steps to move from Etsy to Artfire Pro account:

1. Sign up for an pro account.
2. Follow their steps to set up shop (upload avatar and banner, write bio and policies, set up payment methods...)
3. Import your Etsy items using their item importer.
4. Make categories for your studio.
5. Use the global editor to move the items into the right studio categories.
6. Use the global editor to move the items into the right categories. You can probably use the studio categories instead of specifying items here.
   
7. Use the global editor to set the item primary colors.
8. Rearrange your shop if you like.
9. Set up a coupon code for your Facebook fans or Twitter fans.

Now, I am just going to sit back, relax and wait for my first Artfire sale. I am going to give it 2 months. If sales are not good, then I am downgrading. Oh yeah, if you buy from my Artfire shop, use "happyart" when you check out for 15% off! Sale ends next Sunday!