You've perhaps been to my shop (seen above). I adore it. It's my baby, a website that has been a labor of love over the last nine and a half years. Within the last three years I've migrated to a new platform, using Shopify for the site, and I couldn't be happier. I love, love Shopify. (Highly recommend)
Although my first love is my shop, I've quietly been reopening my Etsy store over the last month.
I used to do a lot of business on the site but I found managing the Etsy store and my main shop ridiculously hard after Oscar was born. Two different order systems, two different ways of communicating with buyers (the etsy convo system vs. traditional e-mail) A few order mishaps happened, and that was enough to make me realize something had to change. I chose to focus my energy on my main shop, PennyPaperCo.com where I could brand the site as much as I wanted, and, have more design control.
However, it always nagged me that I had left a pretty valuable tool for promoting my work - Etsy always was so good to me as a seller. My mind was battling the two - should I have one shop, or, could I realistically run two? Apart from running two, was it weird to have two different shops? Then Etsy started the Affiliate program and as a blogger got a different perspective .... I saw the work that Etsy was putting in to promoting their sellers. I saw that they were making amazing investments, and cared about the shops and getting as much exposure for the shops as possible. So with that new window into a different side of things, made me stop contemplating. This past Christmas I opened my shop back up pretty quietly - testing the waters to how it would work. A few orders came in and it seemed manageable, as long as I didn't offer custom products in the shop. I have a great order system in place for custom orders on my main store, so I'm keeping what is working and just offering my "ready to ship" prints on Etsy. This will hopefully eliminate any issues of order errors as I experience due to running two shops simultaneously.
Sometimes as a business owner you have to go with the flow, and do things - see if they work - and if not, modify it.
Alongside updating the Etsy shop, I've been working on my personal site more - I haven't really publicized it, but if you bought any of my artwork in any stores you would have seen a link to my portfolio site LindsayStephenson.com. I have neglected the site for years, but when my art started to show up in retail stores, I had a focus and decided to use the site for branding. Can I tell you - one of the HARDEST things as a creative is to design your own website, and, write your bio. Gives me hives. Over the last few weeks I've been focusing on that site - the photography, even a quick little video that features some of my art. For this website I use SquareSpace and I love them as well.
I've also done some videos for the shop (like this one on the framing page, and this one on the brooch product page) I think video adds an element that shows a product better, so I'm trying to find ways of incorporating it more. It helps I have a producer for a husband, who offers me tips & tricks on what to do. (Thank you Aubrey) I've been buying stock music, which adds up, but allows me to find the perfect piece of music and it gives me the rights to use it for things like, advertising on my blog, website, youtube etc.
Anyhow, thanks for letting me blabber on. This is just what has been occupying my time - product photo shoots, site designs, videos - I'm pretty lucky to have this as my job!
xo Lindsay
LindsayStephenson.com --------> Platform, SquareSpace
PennyPaperCo.com ----------------> Platform, Shopify / Designers who helped set it up; DesignLab
This post contains affiliate links.
0 comments:
Post a Comment