The following is what Wikipedia says:
Etsy is an e-commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items, supplies, as well as unique factory-manufactured items under Etsy's new guidelines, released in October 2013. These items cover a wide range, including art, photography, clothing, jewelry, food, bath and beauty products, quilts, knick-knacks, and toys. Many sellers also sell craft supplies such as beads, wire and jewelry-making tools. All vintage items must be at least 20 years old.
OK, so here is a page with what appears to be handmade items but now what?
I am NOT an expert on Etsy.com by any means, but I have discovered a few things and decided to share on here what I've learned along the way and what I continue to learn.
~From the start~
When you open Etsy.com you will notice it's pretty easy to navigate. The search box should be your best friend! It will help narrow your search considerably. But with this said the search also works off what the seller has added as a tag.
For example the following is a Superman Glycerin Cupcake Soap that I have listed.
As a seller I try to think of things the buyer would search for. The tags I have added to this are Birthday Favor, Party Favor, Spiderman, Spider Man, Superhero, Marvel Comics, Soap Favor, Kids Soap, Children, Fun Soap, Boy Soap. Etsy also automatically searches by title of item as well as the section the seller added to. So this one will also have tags of Bath & Beauty, Soap, and Glycerin. Which is the main section and sub sections.
~Listing~
This particular listing (listing is what each item is called on the seller side because you are "listing" them to sell) says ******Custom Order***** in the title. This means I will custom make this item for the buyer but this particular item is not pre-made. A lot of sellers do custom orders and you might see this a lot. Don't shy away from them. It's a good thing if you like things made just for you! For example: I have this Spiderman figure but I will let you pick the style, colors, and fragrance and it will still be the same price. Custom Order are a way for sellers to still show their products to purchase but not waste their materials on a color or fragrance people might not want to buy.
~ What's in a listing?~
So now you have opened the listing and see the details of the product. Below the pictures you will find 3 tabs. Item Details which is self explanatory. Read over the entire tab as there might be something important about the product. The next tab you will see stars. If you click this tab you will see comments from people who have purchased from this seller and ratings based on 5 stars.
~Shipping~
The next tab is VERY IMPORTANT. It is the Shipping & Policies. Make sure you read this entire tab. You will see how much it costs to have it shipped to you as well as Exchange/Return Policies and any other store policies the seller might have. Mine also tells you HOW to purchase the item.
One question you might have is, "Why does it say Cost and With Another Item?"
This line is the shipping cost, which is the first amount (Cost) and the With Another Item is the cost of shipping if you buy another product FROM THIS STORE ONLY. That part is very important. Say you picked my Spiderman Glycerin Cupcake Soap and had that in your check out but you also bought some Spiderman birthday invitations from another seller. You would pay me $2.50 for shipping and the other seller what they have for their shipping cost. This is because we, as sellers, have to package your product and ship it to you. If you think of it as a big craft show and you walk from booth to booth you are not going to pay for my product in another sellers booth.
~How do you buy something?~
Purchasing the item is easy. Click the green bar in the section next to the picture. It is below the title, cost and materials. If the seller filled out their profile it will also tell where it ships from. For example mine ship from Blackwater, MO.
After you click the green Add to Cart button you can proceed to checkout or you can continue shopping. Later, in a seperate blog post, I will explain in detail about the Checkout process but for now I will just say you need a credit card, a Pay Pal account or an Etsy gift card.
~Favorites~
You don't want to purchase this item now but you want to find it easily for later? That's easy too!
Below the green Add to Cart button and in the next section you will see a gray heart button that says Favorite. Click this, the heart will turn read and it will be added to your favorites. I will explain more in detail about this section at a later date as well.
The button next to this that has lines and Add To with a drop down arrow is where you can add it to a certain group of favorites you have made. Again, more on this later but pretty self explanatory.
~Tweet It, Pin It~
Below this is Tweet or Pin It. By clicking Tweet you can Tweet it to your Twitter account. By clicking Pin It, you can pin it to one of your Pinterest boards.
~Sellers other items~
Below this is a section of other items this seller has in their shop. All the way to the bottom of the page is the seller's profile picture and a link to learn more about them and their shop. This is usually where the seller shares personal information or how they got started. Below that is the tags I told you about earlier.
~Etsy Bar~
At the very top of the page is the same bar you saw when you first opened Etsy. That will always be there and I will talk about each one on a later post. But I do want you to know if you ever want to go back to the start of Etsy you can click the red Etsy box. That is just like a home key. Oh I almost forgot another good feature. Below this main bar you will see the sellers profile picture, shop name and right under that is another one of those grey heart boxes. Click this one and you can favorite the entire shop and not just one item.
~Feature items and Seller's Shop~
Beside the seller profile picture and the Favorite Shop button you will see 4 product pictures. These are "Feature" products the seller has listed. They are things the seller wants to make sure every buyer will see when on their store page. And next to that is a box with a number and Items. The number is how many products the seller has in their store. You can click this box to open up a page to show all of their products. If they have more than one page you will see the page numbers listed at the bottom. You click on the arrow buttons or the page number to switch pages.
This was just a quick overview of Etsy.com. I hope it helped in some way. Please feel free to ask questions. I will do my best to answer it for you. If you have any tips or comments leave those as well!
Crystal :)
Ways to see my products or contact me
No comments:
Post a Comment