I see endless amounts of threads in the etsy forums about promoting and it got me to thinking about my promoting style. I’d like to share with you all some things I do and have learned about promoting.

There are some promoting opportunities that are very simple and are a one time deal sort of thing, like submitting your link to a directory, but others such as facebook, indiepublic, myspace and other networking sites require a lot of upkeep. I don’t keep a schedule or anything on when to

post a bulletin or blog on myspace or when to add new pictures to my flikr account but I do try to visit one of my various networking accounts each night.

One thing I have noticed with Myspace is that people respond negatively to overkill. It is absolutely not a good idea (again, this is just my opinion!) to post 10 bulletins a day saying COME LOOK AT MY SHOP!! or to post a huge etsy mini in a new friends comment section. The bulletin thing definitely took me a while to figure out. I went through a phase of posting one or two bulletins a day and I began to notice that my friends count would drop little by little. Then it dawned on me that some people don’t have a ton of myspace “friends” so they were just seeing my bulletins over and over again and eventually it got to the point where they must have gotten fed up and “dumped” me. Which is understandable, I do it too. I don’t like to see 10 bulletins in a row twice a day from the same person. It’s obnoxious and eventually people are going to shut you out. Nowadays, I post *maybe* one bulletin every couple weeks and a new myspace blog every few weeks. I mostly just send lots of friend requests.

I tend to be labeled as “laid back” and that is the kind of promoting that I like to do. I will never send you a friend request and the moment you accept it, put a big self promoting comment on your page. It’s just not my style. Though I don’t mind it so much when others do it so long as it is a modest sized comment and it’s not a slideshow or a huge, takes-forever-to-load banner. Links and small clickable pics I’m ok with though. Anyways, back to my laid back promoting style. Some of the things that I consider promoting, others may just see as just normal business tasks (for example just adding new items to your shop) or even wasting a few minutes before dinner time (hearting an item). But I like to think of it as simple, common sense promoting. Here are the tactics that I have found get me the most noticeable results:

*Add 2-4 new items to our etsy shop every day (I have a feeling this accounts for most of our sales on Etsy. The more often you add items, the more spread-out exposure you get in the categories)

*Post in the etsy forums (though I mostly lurk!)

*Join Yahoo groups of like minded folks and post an ad on spam/ad days

*I heart lots of etsy shops and items (I obsessively look at (and browse the shops of) all our new hearts on a daily basis so I assume that there are other etsy-ers out there who do the same thing!)

*I buy lots of stuff on etsy (may not sound like promoting, but I believe it is at least a good idea to give back to the etsy community, what goes around comes around, know what I mean?)

*I put my shop link in my signature in emails and in other forums

*I blog and read/comment on other blogs (I have definitely found some great crafters this way!)

*Add a few new myspace/indiepublic/flikr friends a couple times a week and comment on friends’ pages/pictures

*I leave business cards on bulletin boards around town at places where I think our potential customers might hang out

*I buy (very) inexpensive ad space on other blogs and add my banner to plugboards

If you want to know the truth, I believe that the number one reason our sales have increased over the past few months is that we adopted this adorable golden kitty friend:

Her name is Maneki Neko and she works extremely hard beckoning sales for us night and day. I know that when sales start to get slow, it is because beckoning kitty’s battery is getting low and she needs a recharge. Once that new battery is in, it usually takes about 24 hours for the sales to start coming in again and there is almost always a “surge” of sales when she is rejuvenated. Don’t believe me? Go get one and see for yourself!

So there are a bunch of simple, free or very inexpensive ways to promote your shop. Hopefully some of you learned something new!