Blog moved

This blog can now be found at http://mutedseller.com/

So, You Want to Make Money While You Sleep

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, you can make money while you sleep. It is easy. All you have to do is Join a site like Etsy or eBay or start your own web site, list something to sell, go to bed and wake to an inbox full of orders.

If only it were that easy.

The first thing you have to do is decide what you are going to make. If things go good, you will make a lot of them. So pick something you enjoy making.

Then you must decide if there is a big enough market for your creation. Maybe you can't live without a left handed moustache mug, but how many others share your desires?

OK, so there is a market for your mugs.  How many other sellers are there? Will you get lost in a sea of eleventy million  other mugs?

So, you feel the market is not saturated and there is a place for you. Good.

So make your mugs, list them and head off to bed, dreaming of becoming the next mug magnate.

Slow down, cowpoke.

Would you buy a mug you have not seen?  It is time to get out your camera and take some pictures. Not any old every day snapshot type pictures.  Good clear pictures that show the details.

How does anyone know you have magnificent manly mugs for sale? It is now time to put on your marketing and promotion hat.  You will need to title, describe and tag your mugs so they can be found by search engines. This is known as SEO - Search Engine Optimization.  There are many free on line guides to help with this.

Don't forget, you will want to be paid.  You will need to set up a PayPal account or some kind of manner of accepting credit/debit cards.

And when you do get a sale, how are you going to get it do the customer? Have all your shipping options researched ahead of time.

Oh and customers like variety. Put your mug making hat back on and head back to the shop.

I am not even going to try to discuss record keeping right now. But you will need to know, if you sell something the state and local governments consider you a bona fide business. You may think you are just making a little spare cash from a hobby.  Unfortunately, their definition trumps yours.

Enough for this today.

I have a loaf of bread about ready to come out of the oven.

Word of Mouth

Let your customers be your best advocates. I just out an order for 2 pipes out in the mailbox. They are for a gentleman in Japan. A friend of his gifted him one of my corncob pipes. Apparently that gave him the confidence to order 2 briar  pipes.

Satisfy your customers, and they will be more effective at spreading the word than a bunch of high priced ads.

Attention Newer Etsy Sellers

Today's post is mainly addressed to newer sellers of handmade products. I know nothing of the challenges facing vintage and supply sellers.

The Etsy forums are full of negativity and disillusionment.  Maybe you are thinking, "Did I make a huge mistake in opening my shop here rather than elsewhere?"

The short answer is "No, you did not."

The thought of starting your own website to sell your wares is daunting. I suspect if that was our only avenue, many of us would not have started.

We found Etsy, a place that would handle the "under the hood" stuff for us, leaving us free to create and sell. The fact is, depending on your level of effort, you can become a successful on line retailer with Etsy.

Notice I said depending on your level of effort. When I signed up, Etsy did not promise me I would achieve any guaranteed results. They have been upfront that we are responsible for developing our own traffic. They do not, nor should they, have a way to drive traffic to an individual shop.

It is an excellent gateway to on line commerce. The resources available to us are valuable. The information in the Seller's Handbook, forums and teams is invaluable. As such, it is a great place to start, maybe even stay for the long haul.

But, you are responsible for your own success. It is not as easy as "List it and it will sell" . By opening an Etsy shop, you have given yourself 2 jobs. Your craft and marketing.

It takes time to build a business. And lots of hard work. If you are committed to building your business, it will be very rewarding. A question often asked in the forums is "How long to get consistent sales?" There is no pat answer.

This is crock pot cooking, not microwave cookin.

Good luck.

I am Now a Twit

I have just set up a Twitter account in case ya"ll need another way to waste time.
https://twitter.com/DouglasGErwin

No Causes For Me

I was asked to start a petition drive about the changes at Etsy. Below is my reply.
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I will not be heading any petition drive. Cat makes a good point about the name calling, even though I think thin skinned petty little tyrant is an accurate description of Rob White.

I do not do causes. I got in trouble because Etsy screwed up and may have lost many of us sales. There is no way to know how many. I spoke out strongly about how they conducted the experiment. I asked questions, got nothing but canned responses and re-asked the same questions. There is just so much "We value you and we promise to get back to you sometime." you can take. Even the private convos with admins assigned to "handle" me just kept shoveling the same old BS.

It came to a head that Friday night when Rob took down an innocuous little thread, "It's Friday night, do you know where your experiment is". The only way I could interpret that was he was sending me a message. "I am unaccountable to you. I can take you down anytime for any reason." He could not give a reason for removing that post and closing the thread. Since I thought they might use that as the infamous 3rd strike, I made my mind up to go out with a bang. Even if I had left his description out, I would have been punished for questioning an admin decision in public.

Several times since, many people have asked similar questions about mutings, intimidation, and Etsy's total disregard for the sellers. And ya'll have received the same BS answers I did. 

Voice your opinions up there all you want. They will only respond to what they want to. Hard and uncomfortable questions will be ignored. Yes, they say they listen and and make changes based on our input.

How's the new feedback situation working out for you?

About Those Phone Interviews

As stated yesterday, one of my friends took part in a 1 1/2 hour phone talk with an Etsy admin.

The first thing she made clear, was that she would be able to share the results with her teams and friends.

The admin responded to her concern about resellers by saying Etsy does not want them either, but many items are actually handmade in countries where supplies are cheaper.   Sounded kind of like a typical Etsy non-answer to me.

As far as I can tell, she got no response on the muting issue.

The biggest point she tried to make is that the sellers are not Etsy's enemies, but their customers.  We expect to be treated with respect and professionalism. And that the suggestions made in the forums needed to be taken seriously. That changes should be better thought out as to how they would affect the sellers.

 On the issue of professionalism, she suggested it would be a good idea for Etsy admins to present themselves more professionally. Seriously, would you willingly trust your business to someone who looks like Rob White's avatar.

She thinks she brought up the issue of testing too. But it was a long conversation and she could not remember everything.

Overall, she was of the opinion that Etsy knew it had troubles, had made mistakes and did not know how to correct them. The admin she spoke with did tell her that all she could do is report this up the line, she had no power to implement or promise changes.

My take is that was a pulse and temperature check of the community.  totally unneeded.  If they would read the forums with an open mind, they would learn what we think and feel.  In the little over a year and a half on Etsy, I have noticed the forums taking on a more and more increasing pessimism about how such a good idea is heading off the rails.

I believe these interviews are taking place until the 15th.  maybe we willl have more feed back on them.

The "Good Old Days" of Etsy Are Gone

As I understand it, in the beginning, a shop was one person responsible for everything. Design, purchasing supplies, making the products, promoting & marketing,  shipping. Though I do have to believe that there probably was some undisclosed cases of family members pitching in.

A few sellers became very successful,  and in order to grow needed to add staff to assist them. And I salute the sellers who worked themselves into this position.

Etsy then had to make a decision, embrace the successful sellers by changing the rules, or forcing them out. Well, to my mind, Etsy would have been foolish to force them out. After all, these successful sellers were generating a high level of fees.

So in typical Etsy fashion, they changed the rules without thinking things through clearly. In their naive idealism, they thought everyone would play by the rules,  no matter how ambiguous those rules were.

The loopholes in the new rules were big enough to sail a Chinese cargo container ship through. It is now inundated with resellers of cheap mass produced trinkets. Then, rather than admitting they had made mistakes, they changed definitions, silenced dissent and in general tried to cover their butts. Their previous experience in the "everybody is special" society gave them no tools to use when suddenly they were faced with the fact their actions had consequences for which they were accountable.

I wish I had the answer to get Etsy back to its original vision (well, without the changing the world mumbo jumbo), while still embracing the sellers who became so successful.

But a good start would be to let an adult into the room.

As with anything I post here, you are free to tweet, copy,  post on a billboard,  whatever.

Lost 5 Pounds With 3rd World Diet

In the past 7 days I have lost 5 pounds.

I start every day with a breakfast of oatmeal or Cheerios and a slice of home made rye/whole wheat toast.

Around noon I'll eat an orange while I am doing a one mile walk. And a few minutes of upper body work with a pair of 10 lb dumbbells.

Late afternoon, I stop for supper. No special food, just whatever I have. But as a rule, there is very little meat compared to the amount of rice and vegetables. I almost always have a bowl of premium ice cream or sherbet for dessert.  Then another mile walk and weights.

After I finish my morning and pot of coffee, I drink plenty of ice water the rest of the day.

In the evening if I get a bad case of the munchies, I eat an apple.

The name is inspired by my Dad. He lost a lot of weight one time. My aunt asked him how he had done it. He said, "You hear how have the world goes to bed hungry every night? Well, I am in that half. I don't eat anything after supper.

Phone Interviews

It seems some that some of the phone interviews start today. It will be enlightening to see what comes out of them.

I am having a hard time believing they have had a sudden epiphany and are going to try to correct course.

Some of the posts about it give some clue.  I am especially curious about the questions about the forums.

Hopefully, some of the participants will be willing to share their experience with us.

Since I am unable to post in the main Etsy forums, some Etsy friends have suggested I start a blog in case ya'll wanted to keep up with what his cranky old fart is thinking. Feel free to comment. But remember this blog is public and searchable.  While I doubt Etsy will expend any of their resources to track me down, just keep that in mind if you post here.

This blog will be mainly rambling thought of a pipe making old codger. Also known as a COF