How to use a "how to" to drive traffic to your shop!

Hello team! If you're like me, I'm sure you've spent some time at your computer, staring at the monitor with your Etsy shop open, wondering how to magically make more visitors and sales occur. One of the great things about being part of a team is sharing information with one another. When one of us tries something new and has success with it, we can tell each other all about it!

So one suggestion I'd like to make to you that I've tried recently is to publish a couple of  "how tos" on crafts you have skills in. One great site for this is Instructables.com. I recently joined this online community that I've used a lot in the past to learn things. All three of the instructables I've posted so far have been featured by the editors, and the first one I published has had over 15,000 views!

Sites like Flickr.com discourage you from outright linking to sales in your images, and it's likely Instructables.com has a similar spirit. Be sure to check the terms of use for every site you're on. What I did with my instructables is mention how I've made art with these techniques as part of my daily art challenge, and asked visitors to check out my blog- ArtProject2010.info. There are therefore indirect links from my blog to my art shop, and it gives people a chance to get to know me and see my new art as I post it on the blog first.

While I can't say with certainty that it has translated directly into sales as of yet, I know it's brought new readers to my blog, and I have had a few sales through my blog, since I post new art there before I put it in my etsy shop. Like everything, this is one option that may or may not work for you, but I wanted to share my experience with it in hopes it can be of use to you. Happy crafting!

"How-To" Saturday #1

Welcome to "How-To" Saturday

My name is Rebecca and I am the Sactometro Etsian from the Rockknitmomme Etsy shop.

I've loosely themed Saturdays as how-to day, so if there is something you'd like to know how to do – craft or Etsy related, let me know and I'll do what I can to post about it.

This first week, I've decided to go with Etsy-related content:

At our street team meeting on the 27^th of February, we talked about different ways to make etsy easier to use for the sellers and a few of the sellers mentioned Greasemonkey, a download available for Mozilla from Etsyhacks.com.

I went home and downloaded it the next day....and then I was confused. I do admit, I'm not the most computer savvy person and generally I can figure things out with a little reading, but this stumped me. I downloaded Greasemonkey and then the manual said something about downloading scripts and this just threw me – I assumed they meant Etsy scripts – it took my husband's computer insight for me to understand that I needed to download scripts from etsyhacks.com. I thought I'd pass along what I had learned!

For anyone out there interested, Greasemonkey allows you to copy current listings, add tags more easily, upload multiple pictures and much much more – each script adds a new functionality to Etsy and it's just so great!

How To add Greasemonkey and it's scripts to make your

Etsy selling experience better:

• Using Mozilla Firefox, open this link:

www.etsyhacks.com

• When you reach the home screen, click the word Greasemonkey that is orange and underlined on the first line under the orange information box:

• This will take you to the download screen for Greasemonkey. Click on the Green “Add to Firefox” button and click yes to install the Add-On. After it is installed, click yes you'd like to restart Firefox and when it re-opens you will be routed to the “Greasemonkey” welcome screen which includes links to the Manual, Scripts, Wiki and FAQ – all important things and I suggest bookmarking at least the manual, you never know when it might come in handy!

• Now you can look in your “Tools” menu and see if Greasemonkey is in fact there:

  

• This is the part where I was a bit confused. At this point, go back to the etsyhacks page and under the label “Popular hacks” click the orange underlined See All....this will take you to a page of lovely hacks that will enhance your Etsy selling/listing experience – read about them and pick the ones you think might be helpful for you – for each one you would like to use, click “Install” which can be found on each individual hack or on the “quick install” page....

• Once you have installed your chosen scripts you can open your Etsy account and these scripts will automatically be running as long as your Greasemonkey is enabled.......you can see his smiling face at the bottom of your Firefox browser window:

• I've so far been most impressed with the “copy” item tool, the multiple picture uploading and the multiple tagging capabilities....what is your favorite hack?

Hope this has been informative and helpful....Thanks for reading!