Advertising

Advertising is something I've always struggled with. I just never know what will work and what is worth the money and what isn't. Small ads don't seem to bring in any traffic, while large ads can be rather pricey.

I recently decided to try a rather pricey ad. After advertising on The Knot for the last year with little to no results, I decided it was time to invest that money elsewhere. I was contacted by Bliss Quarterly, a local magazine, to advertise to local brides. The package included a 1/2 page ad, email marketing, a list of brides who attended the two spring shows as well as advertising on their site.

The magazine was handed out to each bride who attended the two spring shows and is available at some local stores in the area as well. The second show was last weekend, so I'm still waiting to see how this pans out. Once I have the bride list, I will be able to contact the brides directly.

Time will tell whether I do this ad in the fall, but I will say that I am very happy with the company so far. They were great to work with in creating my ad and I feel you really get a lot for your advertising dollars. This whole package was $350.

Have you done any advertising lately? What have you found that does/doesn't work?

A Paper Proposal

I was recently contacted by the website A Paper Proposal to let me know that one of my wedding couples had their wedding featured on their site. And I was lucky enough to be mentioned as a vendor and have a photo of my guest book featured in one of the photos!

Not only was that part really cool, Sarah, the owner of the site also offered me a free month of advertising! I love when sites offer a chance to try out their advertising first. It gives you the chance to see what type of traffic you'll get and see if you want to continue service with them. I was even able to try out the upgraded vendor listing which allowed me to add 8 photos along with my logo and business information.

 

I'm only 6 days in and I've already seen some traffic. I'll be sure to let you know how the month goes and my thoughts on the site.

Search Ads - Week Two Review

Last week I did a review about Etsy's new Search Ads. You can read about it HERE.

Today I'll give a review about how the second week went.

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This week was even more discouraging than last week. This week I had a total of 36 Views and only 2 Favorites compared to last week's 42 Views and 5 Favorites. Not really worth $10 if you ask me!

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But here is what I did learn...

My most views came from my scrapbooks. Photo Albums and Albums were my highest viewed keywords. And my Custom Birthday Album and Custom Bare Chipboard Album were my two highest viewed listings.

My Engraved Guestbooks and Wood Greeting Cards weren't far behind, so that makes me happy as well.

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This has made me take another look at my tags and titles. The keywords that didn't get any views will be reviewed and revised.

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In the end, I won't be renewing my ads for another week, but might give the ads another try after the first of the year...who knows. I do think there are better ways to spend advertising money. And this got my mind thinking that if I'm willing to spend $10 on search ads...why not spend it on other forms of advertising. So this was a good learning experience, but not one I'll be doing again soon.

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What did you learn from search ads? Will you continue your ads?

Search Ads on Etsy

On September 28th, Etsy rolled out a new program called Search Ads. What this does is allow Etsy sellers to buy ad space. It is based on keywords in your titles/tags/etc. and you pay per impression. An impression is how many times your ad appears on the top row of Etsy search results. I thought I would give you the run down of my first week using Etsy's search ads. I kept track of my results on a daily basis trying to check the stats at about the same time each day (or night rather). Here are my results: *Day 1: Cost: 66 cents Impressions: 580 Views: 5 Favorites: 0 Sales: 0 *Day 2: Cost: $1.44 Impressions: 1,207 Views: 10 Favorites: 0 Sales: 0 *Day 3: Cost: $2.22 Impressions: 1,818 Views: 13 Favorites: 0 Sales: 0 *Days 4-5: Cost: $3.85 Impressions: 3,170 Views: 30 Favorites: 4 Sales: 0 *Day 6: Cost: $4.54 Impressions: 3,777 Views: 38 Favorites: 5 Sales: 0 *Day 7: Cost: $4.65 Impressions: 3,879 Views: 41 Favorites: 5 Sales: 0 End results (at 6:30 am): Cost: $4.71 Impressions: 3,943 Views: 42 Favorites: 5 Sales: 0 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~What I find interesting, is that in that same time period, I had 1,336 Views, 54 Favorites and 13 Orders.~ I have decided to give Search Ads one more week. I had my spending limit at $5 and I will be keeping it the same for this week as well. I suppose if one of those favorites turns into a sale, it was worth my $5. But if at the end of my second week I still haven't seen any results, I'll stick with using that money to advertise in a different way :)

Did you participate in the Search Ads on Etsy? I'd love to have your share your results with us! And stop back next week to see how week two went...fingers crossed!

Advertising/Marketing/Branding

I've been looking at different ways to advertise my shop and get my web address on all of my products. That way when I sell a product, it's like a little business card goes with every item :) Without my address right on the product, people may forget where they purchased the item and could easily lose my business card. Plus, if they give the item as a gift (which happens with my items quite often) they most likely won't pass along my business card. Here are some ways that I add my etsy addy to my products: *Stickers on the backs of my albums *Engrave my address on the backs of picture frames, plaques and other wood items *On any packaging I make, like my magnets shown below *At the least, I add a hang tag to items I'm not able to engrave on or add a sticker too. Like my wine glasses or champagne flutes Branding is also important when advertising your business. All of my tags (except my hang tags, which I still need to update!) match my business cards. They also match my blog and my etsy banner. I used to have my magnets on a large jelly roll pan for display. I recently decided to put my magnets in sets and add a card with them for advertising. Now my magnets have a little built in business card with them and they match all of my other cards and web sites. The stickers on the backs of my albums also match my business cards :) Put your web address and other information anywhere you can! Get your name out there! But remember to do this tactfully. Don't ever let your info take away from the product or distract from your product.

Sponsorship

Have you ever considered adding sponsorship links on your blog? Does your blog have a good number of followers, visitors and commentors? Paid sponsorship is a great way to help other artists as well as bring in a little revenue for yourself :) Paige at Final Clothes Out and Little White Chapel has started adding sponsorship spots to her blog and I think it's a great idea! Her readership has really taken off in the last several months and she has decided her blog is ready for paid advertising! Her rates are extremely affordable at $5-7/month depending on the size you would like. You can get all the details HERE. And the best thing is, she has been so nice to offer one month free to all Etsy Blog Team members!!! I jumped at the chance for free advertising! I can't wait to see how the first month goes and I'm sure I'll be signing up for additional months as well! My blog has gotten quite a few new followers lately and my daily visitors have risen as well. I'm not quite ready for paid sponsor links yet, but I'll love this idea for when my blog is ready! How about you?

FREE Advertising!!!

Yup, that's right...FREE!

Tim at Everyday Living is giving away free advertising to Etsy shop owners. Read all about it here.

And check out my feature here!!!

Tim was nice enough to choose me as his first feature! How exciting! A special thanks to Tim for showing off my albums :)

Now...what are you waiting for...go check this out!