Magickal Realism

I scored another treasury - and this is what I did with it this time! Please give these sellers some much deserved exposure by giving the treasury a click and a comment.

Or sometimes, less politely phrased, “So what?”

Here’s what:

This evening, I scored the above treasury- Solstice Stocking Stuffers for the Pagan impared. This makes the third treasury I’ve scored, ever, and since I’m on a “what the hell, I’ll do a mitzvah” streak I’m probably going to make a few more. I have yet to identify a personal benefit in making treasuries¹,  although there’s some benefit to being in one - on Etsy exposure. I’m frankly mystified as to the benefit of “Treasury West” a hidden-link treasury that only die-hard Etsians seem to know about, and less so whom follow it. Typical Etsy shoppers will never, ever see treasury west and why Etsy has continued to run it so long after its testing phase is a mystery to me.

So, if I wait for hours to pounce on a treasury even though it will do little to drive traffic to my shop, why do I do it? Well, here’s a few reasons:

The most important aspect of treasury building? It allows you a positive way to network within Etsy, especially now that the spam rule has been lifted involving telling people they’re in treasuries. So while the benefits of creating a treasury aren’t overt, they do exist.  Goodwill can often go where currency stops.

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1. while it is true that my name and a shop link is at the top of said treasury, few if any treasury visitors will ever actually click that link through to my shop unless they’ve already been. [↩]
2. my chances of my perfumes actually being on the front page ever again are slim, alas. In my quest to make my perfume salable I have also rendered it un-frontpageable under the current regime. [↩]

I just wanted to give a shout to some Etsy vintage sellers out there, because so much of my craft show display comes from seeking out vintage and surplus items, most notably the three-tier petit-for tray I use to display my salts and scrubs and an old ammo box that doubles as storage AND display.

Since a raised platform and multiple levels tends to be really beneficial to sellers, I thought I’d fish through Etsy Vintage and find a few favorites among their tray options for other crafters out there:

This seashell petit for tray is gorgeous, and the silver background will make it outstanding for bright colored jewelery items.

Also a great way to raise the level of your goods, and the reflective surface can draw the eye.

This reminds me of my giant martini glass - you can house small items that might otherwise be missed in this.

And this? Possibly my favorite - if you’re going for a “sunny and chipper” look, this is the way to go!

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Scoring a Treasury on Etsy is akin to scoring current-season Manolo Blahnics in the clearance bin at Barney’s on the day after US Thanksgiving. It can happen, but unless you’re a veteran of a type war unique to Etsy, it doesn’t very often. That said, I must have tripped a land mine or something this morning, because lookie what I got:

Believe me, it’s much prettier and more visible on the actual page.

So, since this small miracle happened, allow me to elucidate why getting in a treasury or scoring one matters.

1. Anything that gets you positive Etsy exposure off your Etsy site is good news.

2. A Treasury essentially nominates you for the front page. The front page listings are always pulled from the treasury pages these days, and they change every hour. If someone has included your item in a treasury, they are saying that you are front page worthy.

3. The more hits an individual treasury gets, the more likely it is to appear on a front page.

So what does this mean to you, especially if you’re in one or you root for someone who made one?

It means it’s time to tag team. If you’re in a treasury or if you make one, it’s a good idea to promote it.

How?

1. For treasury owners, we’re now allowed to convo people who are in treasuries and let them know. The spam edict has been lifted (do NOT try to take advantage of this and sell something while you’re at it.)

2. For treasury featured and for owners, the process is the same:

Twitter it

Myspace bulletin it

Add a screenshot to your flickr and to related flickr groups.

Add a note to your facebook profile.

Post it on your blog and/or livejournal.

Ask friends to click, or to retweet, or to reblog.

If it makes the front page - 1. GET A SCREENSHOT and 2. Make a big deal all over again. The front page is a very big deal.

And of course, you can do some promos on Etsy - search for treasury threads, and blog threads after you blog about it. Make sure you post. Etsy keeps you to grassroots marketing, and grassroots really is what makes it all happen.

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Image by Sterin via Flickr

I’ve done a lot of trading on Etsy - my first year, when I was toddling through the birthing stages of my new business, trading got me through the holidays. My family loved it. It was definitely a top 10 hit year for me.

I also learned a lot of good things about trading, and by sticking to these rules, I’ve limited disappointment.

A few things to know before you get started:

1. There is no central trading post for Etsy traders. There’s an interminably long and confusing list on Etsy forums that I skip - Etsy is too large, the list is too long, and many people fall off of it too easily. Even attempted thread restarts don’t work. There is a group called Esty-Traders on yahoo that is very slow, and once in awhile someone will throw up a thread in the promos forum.

2. If you trade on Etsy, Etsy rules requires you to “purchase” thought Etsy. To simply delete your listing is viewed as fee avoidance.

3. Traded items are taxable - when you trade you should record the income and outgo value in your books as though a purchase was actually made.

So, knowing that, the way to conduct a trade on Etsy:

1. Search tags and check profiles. People who like trading usually indicate they do in their shop.

2. Expect some of your trading convos to be ignored. Some sellers see trading as “not business” and put their priority on customers paying in cash.

3. You will only get a trade when you have something the person you’re trading with needs or wants.  For instance, a lot of traders want to trade earrings, but I don’t have pierced ears and I’m not about to wear clips. That would be a no trade.

4. Some traders are open to higher-value trades, if they really value what you have to offer.

This is extremely important:

5. Treat your trade partner with the same respect with which you treat a customer, because that person IS a customer. Money went into the materials both of you used, as did time, as does postage. Use the feedback system and honor the transaction in an equally timely manner.

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Magickal Realism will be at the Nokomis craft fair thiscoming Saturday from 9 am to 2 pm. Take a look at my shop - if there’s something you’d like to pre-order for pickup, send me a convo or leave me a message here!

I can only imagine what Julie and her husband went through getting their gorgeous late 19th-century home ready for the Etsy MN Fall boutique last week. It’s a brave thing, inviting tons of strangers into your home to buy and sell - it makes me think old-school merchants were brave people, braver than me, certainly! Julie and family pulled it off beautifully, and the woman never stopped working over the course of the day to make it the best experience possible for everyone. A few of us at the show were jokingly referring to her as “the blur.” One moment, there, the next wooshing by in a flurry of preparatory awesomeness.

I also got a chance to meet some other fantastic sellers, and the walkthrough was nice - given our super simple publicity plan of mailing out postcards and using our personal promotion resources, I have to say this came out very, very well.

Among the many fabulous people present - and please, send me a comment if I left you out! were:
Julie Meyer
Cayenepeppy
TheCozyCorsetCuff
JoyaVerde
ELBfoto.com
Sweet Gracie’s
Magickal Realism
Green Squirrel Creative
Just Another Day Designs
Golden Sage

Image via CrunchBase

Why I love it:

I love Twitter. To me it’s the perfect web socialization tool: I don’t have to stop in the middle of whatever I’m writing to respond to a chat (or have that horrible jump when yahoo shrieks “Uh oh!” at me) and it allows me to call attention to my daily work while paying attention to the daily projects of people who interest me for a broad variety of reasons. I can also easily communicate with another person free of excess concern about disrupting them - on Twitter, you expect and accept a delayed response even while you’re enjoying it’s remarkable immediacy.

Why others may object to it:

While some users have already fallen into the trap of the spam can, doing @replies calling attention to all sorts of crap of no interest to the reader, most are easily blocked and thus ignored.  And twitter was not intended for marketing, but social networking which of course makes marketers drool because of direct and legitimate contact. Even so, once the buzzwords are cleared away and it’s down to you and the screen before you, you’re stuck with this: what on earth do you have to say that’s 140 characters or less that someone else has any reason to care about?

The point is, you don’t. Nobody does, really. When you post to Twitter, you are issuing your voice into a giant conversation and sooner or later someone will hear you and what you say, however trivial you may find it, will resonate with that person. That person may even reply back, and now, a conversation has begun!

How I use it:

Twitter, for me, is a work-from-home salvation. It allows me to maintain tenuous social contact without interrupting my work flow. I can also post - just once, not repeatedly usually - single blog posts I’ve written for the day. I can post items listed in my Etsy shop (not more than three per hour because then you run into the annoying zone.) Above all, I can see what other people are talking about. It really does make me feel less lonely. I can ask questions and have them answered. I’ve made real, person-to-person connections with the individuals on my twitter, and sometimes the banality of the lives of others is comforting to me, it reminds me that there are normal people out in the world doing their best to live their lives as I am.

It is not just a marketing tool. Its social networking, because of its abbreviation, connects you in a way that is less spy-like and in some ways more tangible than even private emailing. I am grateful for this quality.

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Image via Wikipedia

It’s well established I’m a bootstrap/shoestring seller. I have no business debt, and I refuse all business credit. For me, this works: perfuming is a supplement to my life, and while I love doing it, I am facing the ever-present possibility of change. As technology and science advance, I may have to change what I do or how I do it.

Because bath and body is such a densely competitive business, I also have to strive to stand apart from other people who purvey the same goods. Some of this is motif, and because buyers become used to certain looks and approaches in their motifs, my variation sometimes is and sometimes isn’t memorable - it depends on the psyche of the person looking, how well my imagination is working and sometimes purely on hitting zeitgeist, otherwise known as the jackpot. I don’t get the purchases made out of simple practicality and cute-appeal as do other sellers; this is because I am opting to be different, and still learning ways to appeal to people.

I realize people need to be able to smell my goods, and need to know what’s in them. They also need to know why my stuff is different from the last dozen perfumes and bath salts they smelled. After all, when people don’t know what to do with their lives, they either make soap and spa products, write a children’s book or buy a sports car. So I have to make it clear in a visual way that my stuff is not just more of this. Buyers need to have expectations met, and yet, they need to know more about why I deserve their support - and even then, not everyone will or should support me.

While I work out the right balance of being different and being conventional, I have had to adjust my own expectations. I can’t afford to do big craft shows, just the small ones. And those small craft shows are as unpredictable as any other. So rather than going in to make money, I have a slightly different set of expectations.

My goals at a small show are as follows:

1. Recover the booth fee.

2. Get a serious commitment to my email list.

3. Educate my visitors about who I am and what I do.

I do not push for purchases, or offer BOGOs. Instead, I let people get to know me. I consider these shows part of my advertising budget - not part of my income generating activity. I am much more practiced at online marketing, so these adventures are a way of paying my dues. To me, it’s all about being present - I’m not a big corporation, so I don’t need to make continuously more money, and I’m a writer, so I don’t see this as the only thing I do. My business can grow slowly. So a craft fair where I don’t make much? Sure, it’s not great, but it’s OK. I can deal, because I’m still learning and always will be.

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The Minnesota Etsy Fall Boutique is next week - stop by for goodies made by local artisans.

Magickal Realism will be there, and we will have available the following stock:
2008 MN Etsy Street Team Fall Boutique
See something you like? Contact me privately and I can set one aside for you. See something in my Etsy shop you want? I can have that ready for you to pick up at the show!

Magickal Realism Inventory

Roll-on Fragrances
Autumn $18
Coffee Wonderful $22
Lemon Pop $22
Zombie Repellent $19

Men’s Fragrances
Dragon $24
Eugene’s Unbirthday $28
Geek Boy $24
Woodsman $20

Room Fragrances

Oil Burners
Midnight Oil $5
Room for Possibility $5
Spiked Grandpa $5

Sprays
Blowing Sunshine $10
Den of Sin $10
Crooked Broomstick Smudge Spray $10

Incenses
Incinerates $5

Scrubs
Lavender and Spikenard Olive Oil Scrub $5

Bath Salts
Dip Me in Chocolate $4
Lavender $4
Lurid $4
Patchouli $4