Around the end of 2008, a new phenomenon rose on Etsy: the Etsy Guide. For prices ranging from $5 – $75 you can get, usually in pdf format, a set of instructions for how to make your Etsy shop either a)the best it can possibly be or b)a freakin’ money magnet, man! Written for the most part by individuals who are sellers on Etsy, most of these assume an alter-ego/anonymous/separate shop situation for these guides.

Are they rip-offs? Are they helpful? Are they just conglomerations of things any diligent seller could find researching Etsy forums and maybe visiting a public library?

Maybe. There’s been some controversy among the pdf-makers themselves as to “who the real deal is” and as to each others’ motivations. Notably there’s also been some off-Etsy calling out about the legitimacy of these enterprises. As far as I can tell from buying and reading these books for the most part, the information is quite different from guide to guide and often very different from what Etsy itself tells its sellers. These books are actually handmade in that the authors do make them and do the work themselves: as the author of  my own pdf book available on Etsy (on a totally different topic) I’m satisified that it does take quite a bit of work to assemble these jobbies.

To date I’ve only read over the files that I purchased, but have yet to actively apply the recommendations of these books. I have a long-term plan, and Etsy is not exactly at the core of it: when I started Etsy I was trying to make it my full-time job, and now I’m in a more zen sort of place. First of all, I’m working for me, not Etsy, and second, I’ve got a writing career I’d like to actually start having. So while I had expected by now to have applied all the mastery claimed within, I haven’t.

At the time I was buying them, I was suffering the frustration of a lot of sellers: why aren’t I getting recognition? As far as Etsy goes, I’m still not, exactly. But that’s not all a bad thing. The audience I have is a quality audience – regular purchases, reasonable expectations about how perfume works and why I can’t guarantee it will smell good on or to everyone, and while I’m not proclaimed as the trend of the month and am unlikely to ever see the front page again¹ I am able to strike a reasonable balance between my writing, my perfuming and my pursuit of the Artist’s Way.

The key to all of these guides, Etsy’s free seller handbook included, is attention. All those business tips revolve around simply letting people know you’re out there, and different ways to do it.

That’s it. That’s the secret in ALL OF THEM. Each guide has different techniques on how to do so, how to be memorable, etc. but that’s the basic jist for selling more: it’s all about the eyeballs baby. They don’t cover accounting, or supplier sourcing or craft technique: they just talk marketing insofar as marketing can be tailored within Etsy’s system. While one or two sellers propose tactics that are “Etsy illegal” or have licensing on their pdfs that are not realistic² for the most part the efforts are sincere attempts to guide interested buyers through the ins and outs of Etsy without taking up forum space. Yes, nearly all the advice might be gleaned from reading forums³ or even from spending an afternoon or two at your local library. But the files, for the most part, aren’t rip-offs. Whether or not the advice works – and I’ve let mine sit long enough that much of it might well not work anymore – it is written in a well-meant spirit. And that counts for a lot.

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1. I was front paged three times – once was a no-royalty stock photo, one was melt and pour soap I made to get rid of some synthetic jasmine and once was during a trunk show; I have not seen the front page since 2007 [↩]
2. I’ve been doing some serious thinking about reframing my own views of copyright and collaboration [↩]
3. a painful enterprise for me, I’ve had one day in the past year where I’ve found anything enjoyable about reading the forums at all [↩]

Tuning back in to this blog as I gear up for another round of picture posts and related content for your general entertainment. I’m still running stuff at the perfumery on Etsy, and while my feelings regarding Etsy are complicated, I’ve decided to try to simplify everything by just playing in my own sandbox. Once I get my toys straightened, maybe I’ll play again, but I’ve noticed that the most successful sellers all have their own sandbox-universes and carefully invite people in to play. I’m going that route.

So welcome to my sandbox. Be excellent to each other. Let’s play.

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I just wanted to let you all know today is my last day for free shipping worldwide. For you lovely international clients, I do want to give you a heads up: customs restrictions are getting enforced a lot more on both sides of the pond, and because of that, I have been hearing reports of people who still had to pay a customs charge on items marked as “gift” To my knowledge this has not happened to anyone who has ordered from me recently, but it’s best to err on the side of caution.

For those interested in the Oh So Very Perfume spray, it may be a good idea to contact me privately before ordering. Because it contains denatured alcohol I have to ship it by UPS, which always starts at $10. While I can ship it internationally via UPS, it would likely be prohibitively expensive so I’m reserving the scent for US customers only.* Your best bet may be to set up a custom order with me and add other items to that shipment to get the best value considering the expense of shipping.

You may or may not see a lot of new stuff from me in 2010; I’m focusing on my writing career, and while I will keep my Etsy shop open and always give my clients the best service I can, there’s just stuff I gotta write. I’m also growing a lot of catnip, as it’s my goal to get cats hooked on drugs. My first batch sprouted today. You’ll see more in 3-5 months.

*I have some perfume solids coming that ship internationally very easily. Hopefully this will make up the unavailability of the perfume spray.

Happy New Year, and all the best in 2010!

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Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance – Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!

I use this book as an example of what’s possible in a land free of trademarks, and where copyright has expired. Jane Austen is an odd phenomenon, wherein the 19th century and the Internet meet – and since Ms. Austen is long past such earthly concerns as royalties, others enjoy – and sometimes profit – from her legacy in the form of books like the above, or movies like Clueless and Bride and Prejudice. For fans of things more recent than Jane Austen, there are two legal roadblocks to issuing forth the products of our creative urges based on someone else’s creative urge: trademark, and the very distinct from trademark – copyright. There is also a third factor involved: intent. Whether or not you come from a pure place may not matter in the eyes of the law, but it may well matter to the thinking fellow fans that might also partake in your work.

Trademark is a tricky thing, especially when it runs into another tricky thing: fandom. For instance, I’m a Doctor Who fan. I’m an American Doctor Who fan. Funny thing about British nerds: because as a rule they’re better dressed than us US folks, they’re not too likely to have T-shirts. So what’s an all-American Doctor Who fan to do? DIY baby – that’s how we come up with stuff like T-shirts with oblique references to Weeping Angels and Bad Wolf perfume. Now BBC knows a cash cow when it has one, and if fans use the Doctor Who logo or affiliate these goodies without licensing, we are violating their international trademark. BBC gives us awesome, and they do deserve their cut. However, licensing agreements are prohibitively expensive and fans get a thrill off of passing encoded messages to each other – so instead of co-opting David Tenant’s face (or even his Converses) we instead go for turns and phrases that are recognizable to other fans as references to the show but do not adopt any image licensed and trademarked by the BBC. Thus “Weeping Angel” shirts (or even one that just says “Blink”) and Bad Wolf perfume – it is absolutely inspired by Doctor Who, but uses no image from the show in its marketing and sale.

Trademark is especially tricky in the land of perfume inspiration. Perfume names may be trademarked, but book titles may NOT be copyrighted. So if I wanted to write a book titled “Doctor Who” and used my own logo/image and it was NOT about a time traveling doctor, but about say a mystery OBGYN, BBC might try to do something but likely the lawsuit would be dismissed as frivolous. (And really, it would be a tragically stupid marketing idea so we’d all get what we deserved on that one.) Perfume recipes, like alll bath, body and food recipes can NOT be copyrighted – we have no protection for our formulas. I can make tomato sauce from a Betty Crocker cookbook and sell it as my own – the Crocker company would have no right to a cut unless I used the name Betty Crocker in the marketing. The same can happen with perfume – leaving trademark as our only, and very limited protection. It’s a delicate dance – drawing from the things we love that are also living. It’s one thing to make a perfume based on Edgar Allen Poe, but if you’re a fan of something more current – like Hello Kitty – it’s a very different situation. To refer to is fine, but to co-opt is definitely not.

Every so often you’ll see a flair-up on Etsy – there are sellers whose entire bread and butter comes from essentially trademark violation. Whether you choose to look the other way or not is up to you; I personally prefer to do a sidestep – or to look carefully at where the creation came from. If it’s “Oh, well I’ll make this because Hello Kitty is popular,” I tend to respect it far less than a place of “Because Daria is awesome.” There needs to be respect for the original creators, but also for the fans – especially in cases where fan goodies are not something readily provided by the original source.

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I thought I’d write a few fun facts and point you to a few of my other running endeavors – I adore perfumery, and it’s one among many other things that I enjoy doing.

• I also write Fat Chic plus size fashion blog.
• I am dedicated to the Artist’s Way and I keep a blog with other cluster members about my experiences.
• I am also a writer, with a focus on occult nonfiction. And I organize my local Doctor Who meetup.
• I have a “landing page” that can take you to all my projects (well, most of them.)

I hail originally from Northwest Indiana, but I consider my hometown Minneapolis. I’m an avid reader and magazine junkie, I love to cook, and if you couldn’t tell, I’m fascinated by gardening.

So hello – nice to meet you all!

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These are my personal views, and in no way approved, verified or validated by Etsy. My only association with Etsy is that I have a shop there.

For those of you running behind on your blog feeds, Maria Thomas is leaving Etsy and Rob Kalin is returning. Now that Thomas has made Etsy actually profitable (by a narrow margin, judging from her comments when she came to Minneapolis) they’re handing it back over to Kalin, who has been very quiet both as the person who stepped down and in whatever he’s been doing since his Etsy sabbatical. You can see more direct reactions in this thread, until it gets shut down – no one knows why they’re not using the admin forum for this.  If the Admin forum goes away with Rob’s return, my rage will know no bounds.

Etsy was already pretty opaque by the time I got to it in 2006, and having met the staff – and also having met Maria Thomas in person – it’s pretty obvious to me that the entire company is running on personality.  That’s a good thing when you’re starting out but it’s a bad thing when you’re going long-term, which is what’s happening with Etsy. Lots of staff member making lots of assumptions, and very few with genuine research and education to back it up – and coming from the last generation where college education made a damn bit of difference, I can tell you that the lack of curiosity/self-education going on among younger staffers is really disturbing and upsetting to me. New York is lovely, but it is in fact not the center of the universe – but from what I saw and continue to see from Etsy staffers, I don’t think they’ve figured that out yet.

I can imagine I’d be freaking out if I were an investor.

It seems backasswards to me to have Thomas get Etsy profitable (barely) and then to have her step down. “We’re making money, now let’s get in someone who wasn’t, buh-bye.” Um, what? I’m sure it’s more complicated than that – or phrased so it sounds more complicated than that. I’ve learned from many years past in corporate that ultimately, it’s always down to who likes you, not how much money you’re making. I suspect Thomas may have had to play mean-old-grownup a bit too often for anyone’s liking. But THAT is pure speculation.

I hope, truly, that they keep the structures in place that Maria set up – she’s being tossed before her very critical public would even have half a chance of seeing the results, and for a business like Etsy, results are slow because it’s online and we can’t physically see behind the scenes. Running well is about what doesn’t happen – we’ve had way less downtime, much fewer PR disasters (remember those brilliant remarks confusing the exact location and culture of Appalachia, easily corrected by looking at a Google map and by doing a bit of reading?) and it seems like some results are happening more or less on schedule. Also, Admin stickies – we had better keep them.

What this means to me as a seller

Frankly, I’m worried. Etsy hasn’t been great with serving sellers, their primary customers, and it barely protects them as is evidenced by the blogs that have cropped up pointing out resellers pretending they’re handmade.  Some steps have been made to help – hiring Ian from Etsyhacks was a brilliant move – but I get the impression that all efforts are going into getting sellers to sell handmade, not in getting people to shop handmade. Combine this with the cheap-cheap-cheaping that has been picked up by national and international press advocating Etsy as a bargain site, and Etsy’s practices have undercut the very handmade livelihoods they claim it’s their goal to support.

So why am I there still?

Simple: It’s the devil I know. And I’m making what I can of it as far as my section of Etsy is allowed to be my personal domain.

But just in case, I do have a mailing list and Facebook fan page.

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I’m closing my shop on December 1st so I can deal with the inevitable wedding flotsam. I’ve got my dress where I want it, and now we need to pin down the wedding coordinator and I have to write itineraries so people get an idea of what’s going on, where to call a cab, etc. There has to have been some generation somewhere where weddings weren’t a big freakin’ deal. As it is, I’m re-reading the Psyche and Eros myth with my mythology reading group and suddenly the people surrounding the couple are a lot more interesting to me, as I see now it’s far more than just a tale of love conquering all.

Despite all the weirdness and my sudden urge to buy a travel vest, going against all my more fashionable inclinations, I’m still trying to forge ahead with my Etsy shop. I’m even braving the waters of New Stuff with only one day to sell them.

borrowing my friend Brenda's tiara for the wedding

I had ventured into decoupage and altered art, and these very humble items are part of my offerings. I still plan to do some other upcycling-related stuff to offer when I get back. I’m buffaloed as to how I’m going to shoot some of it, though.

But if you want random items that are still functional, I’ve got this perfume bottle and spice jar available right now on Etsy:

I’m also trying to clear a few items out, residual stock that’s still good, etc. Most of it’s going in my trashion or clearance sections, so it’s a good time to go take a look!

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I managed to score a treasury – thank you, Craftopolis – and since I had a little time to kill, I got to thinking about the nature of thinking about oneself. Narcissism and humility seem like their rank opposites, dwelling on either side of a coin, but maybe it’s really a pendulum. Sometimes, you need to really, really look at yourself and make it about you – and sometimes you have to pay for those moments by really, really being outside yourself and aware of how everyone around you really works.

It was just an odd reflective moment – thus all the silver.

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One of my awesome HandmadeMN teammates included me in this treasury!

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I wish I could do more about the quality of the vid, and the frequent cameos of my awkward fingers. But hey, I got somethin’ for ya.

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