Etsy Bulk Listing Editors - Hive is live!

I've been on Etsy from 2007, and although the listing process has come a long way - there is still a lot of automation to be desired if you have a lot of listings in your shop. I was so happy the day I discovered the now defunct Betsi Lite, a free bulk editor for Etsy listings.  Finally, I could bulk edit descriptions, titles, pricing and more!

Sadly, a few months ago I got an email from Etsy saying they were no longer supporting Betsi. Booooo. Sure enough, right after the service went down I found a typo in my listings (ouch!).  Clicking on each listing and manually changing it was not something I was ready to sign up for, so I shopped around for alternatives.

I tried ShopShaper, which worked well enough. However, I found it a little too easy to push changes live, resulting in my accidentally inserting some text twice.  I had to go back and manually change my listings to remove it, so I decided to keep looking.

I took a brief look at Zetsy, but I didn't find its interface friendly and after a few minutes of confused clicking, I moved on. Now frustrated that I was sinking my morning into finding a replacement for Betsi, which was working fine.

This is my "google face."
Bored, sad, and wondering what life would be like
if the internet and I had never met. 

Finally I stumbled upon Hive, which went live today.  I've signed up and played around with the editor, and it all seems very smooth and easy to use.  So far I've only changed some pricing, soon I'll play around with the text editors soon and update this review with my thoughts.

Have you tried Hive or any other bulk listing editors for Etsy? I would love to hear your experience. 

Does your Etsy shop need a website?

I operate this blog without revealing my identity, because I want to be open and honest about my success and failures as an online seller.  Maybe someday I'll come out of the closet, but for now I'm too chicken. Well, more embarrassed really.  Sure, my main (not the mini startup) Etsy shop should make 80-90k this year, but I've had some epic business fails.

This one was the most epic.

Ok, it's the time for the Truth friends.  I'm facing the facts, and finally coming to terms with having wasted, and I mean wasted, so so so much money on websites to go along with my Etsy shops in the past eight years.

Just last year, I spent 3k building the most elaborate website I've ever built.  After years of using every site out there (think Shopify, Big Cartel, Squarespace, Weebly and others) and spending around $200 a month supporting my sites, I was convinced that the reason my website wasn't as successful as my Etsy shop was that I needed something more elaborate than these sites could offer.  To top it off, my Etsy shop was doing so well, it just had to follow that my website should do well too! Right?

Me getting ready to make my website.

Image by @phil-are-go

Most of my products are customizable, so I found a developer that could create a site for me with a product customizer.  Customers would be able to preview their items before they purchased - it was going to be amazing!  The demo looked great. I passed it around to my design friends and they all told me it was going to be a smashing success.  I was patting myself on the back for finding a genius developer who was willing to work with me for so little.

A few months later, and after a TON of hard work, my site was ready to launch.  I wanted to "announce" the launch of my amazing new website in style.  Surely, once everyone knew about it, the money would start pouring in.  In a few weeks of insanity, I spent over 8k on ads and sponsored posts on the biggest blogs in my industry.  This was a fraction of what my etsy shop makes in a year, and if my website did only half as good as my Etsy shop I could kiss my string of day jobs goodbye.

So launch day came.  And then my ads went live.  And then... that's about it.  There was a small bump in traffic, and a handful of sales.  The new eleven thousand dollar website didn't drive any more sales than the old $29 a month site.

The crazy thing about the site, which is still live, and making only about $150 a month, is that on the outside, it looks very successful.  It's so fancy, and has such fancy features that I get several inquiries a month from people asking if I am "hiring."  This is a good take away, your favorite Etsy seller might have a jaw-droppingly beautiful website, but it may/may not be generating any income to speak of.

So, should your Etsy shop have a website too? 

1.  Take a moment to journal about about why you want a website. Is it because a seller you admire has one? Is it because it will help you feel like your business is "legitimate?"  Write it all out.

2.  Ask yourself if you have the time to manage a website.  After initial setup, expect to spend at least as much time managing your site as you do your etsy shop.

3. Figure out how you plan to drive traffic to your site. The BIG overlooked advantage to Etsy is that they will drive traffic to your shop's door. Last month, Etsy provided me with 40,000 product views.  My site, which had extensive advertising running, had 2,500 views - around 6% as much traffic.  Visitors also convert worse than on Etsy, so in the end my site only makes about 2% of what my etsy shop makes.

4. Start with the cheapest, freest option you can find.  If you decide you do want to have a website to go with your etsy shop, there are low cost options that offer automatic imports of your Etsy products like, Shopify, Squarespace, Weebly    See if you even enjoy creating/managing a site. You could also try starting with a blog instead of a website, using a free service like Blogger.

5. Wait until you "outgrow" your cheap & cheerful website before making changes.  This was my big mistake.  When my smaller sites didn't generate much income, I thought I needed to change things.  Wait until your site is generating enough traffic and views to justify spending more money on it. If you are having success in your online shop, that's the time to double down.  My biggest mistakes all involve doubling down on failure (see: relationships).

"You don't have a job and you live in your 

band's practice space? Tell me more."

I would love to hear about your experiences creating websites to go with your Etsy shops.  Do you find it worthwhile? Does your site generate income? If you have a site that does better than your etsy shop I would love to interview you!

How to make your own fonts

I recently completed my first font, lucky lady. I'm not going to release it for sale since it's my freshman effort, but I was surprised by how easy (and inexpensive) it was to give font making a go.  Here's how I did it.

Online tutorials are magical

On one of my long tangled internet journeys I stumbled upon this great tutorial by Tyler Finck.  It goes over the basic features of Glyphs Mini, a program available for Mac users in the app store.  Glyphs Mini offers a free 30 day trial, so there was no barrier to downloading it and giving it a whirl.

Tyler's tutorial covered all the questions I had.  After a few watches while using the program along side the video, I felt jazzed up about creating a font to call my own.

Start with inspiration

Like most of my endeavors, my design journey started at my local free book store (see: libraries).  I checked out "An Elegant Hand" by William E. Henning, since I knew I wanted to make something like an engravers script.  I found myself drawn to samples from Joseph Galterio and George Gaskell among others.

I had also always wanted a font similar to Burgess that worked well in programs like Word or Pages. Those types of programs don't necessarily support the contextual alternates and ligatures that make pro fonts so pretty, which has always struck me as a shame.

I love books like An Elegant Hand that are compendiums of older out of print journals.  Buying originals of items like these is very costly, and although many journals can be found in PDF form scattered across the internet, nothing beats a real book.  The free bookstore wins again!

Hunker down for the long haul

I decided to create my font in illustrator, because Illustrator in my jam.  You can also create your font directly in Glyphs Mini. 

** It may be worth noting I taught my self to use Illustrator this same way almost ten years ago.  I got the Adobe "Classroom in a book" from the library, a free 30 day trial, and went to town.  You can learn almost any technical skill this way, completely for free. **

Anyway!  Grab some coffee and find a comfy spot. I didn't find creating a font hard, but it was time consuming.  Since I'm part-crazy, I decided to start with a complex script font, which I don't recommend, because at times I thought my eyes were going to fall out from staring so hard at my screen. My next font will be decidedly simpler. 

You've got nothing to loose

This project met all of my requirements for trying something new:

1. It has to be free to try, and less than $100 to finish.

2. After trying it, I still wanted to learn more. (In the end, I paid $44.99 for Glyphs Mini.)

3. It was enjoyable.  While some might suffer through their font to get to the end product, I enjoyed the process. It was calming in its own complicated way. 

I don't think I'm going to become a full-time type designer anytime soon, but I don't think this is the last font I'll make.  So what type of font should I design next?  What type of font are you going to make?  I can't wait to see it!

What I'm reading - Nicely Said by Nicole Fenton

I first become aquatinted with Nicloe Fenton when I heard her speak at a recent Nearly Impossible Conference in NYC.  I enjoyed her speech so much that I downloaded her book, Nicely Said, to my Kindle that evening and devoured it.  

If you've ever struggled with writing product descriptions, blog posts, or marketing copy for your online shop - this is the book for you.  Nicole's plain english and writing exercises will hold your hand through figuring out your brand voice and tone.  

My favorite things about Nicely Said? 

1. The abundance of not only examples of good writing, but bad ones as well.  I saw a lot of myself in some of the bad examples - yikes!  I'm not perfect yet, but I'm definitely on my way, thanks to reading, and re-reading this book. 

2. The emphasis on the Truth. There is an abundance of spammy "marketing tips" out there. Ask the internet how to make a landing page that converts, and chances are you'll find advice that leans on deceptive copy and overinflated hype to trick customers into converting.  Nicely Said pushes you to trim not-exactly-true hype from your writing, and stick with the facts.  Chances are, if you have a good product, the truth is all you need. 

3. It's a resource you will keep using. I find myself often re-reading sections when I'm struggling with copy.  Recently, I was torn between labeling the saved design section of this site as "my saved designs" or "your saved designs," and I found myself flipping through this book for advice. 

If you have a small business and you run your own website, Nicely Said is definitely a book to keep within arms reach. 

You can buy Nicely Said directly from Nicole Fenton here.