How to open a successful shop on Etsy

I am aware this is not the first nor the last post on the Internet to explain how to do business on Etsy. Actually, I don't think one post would be enough to answer this question properly. Nevertheless, I will try to explain some basics, in order to help anyone wishing to start a successful business on their own or simply looking for advice on how to improve. This is especially valuable to anyone who thinks they have good skill or interesting items to sell, but can't find a buyer locally. Etsy is a worldwide exhibition window and only you can put limits to it. Jobs in Spain are scarce these days, and Etsy can make you a living.

Today, 3 years on and more than a thousand sales after I ventured on this project, I have 2 shops and lots of stock to post. I have hundreds of satisfied customers and all-stars reviews, which I am really proud of.

This is the current look of my original shop on etsy.

As you may have read in my initial post about how I found the buttons, I started from scratch and was ready to spend €5 on my business. Later I learnt that if you get invited to open a shop, you can start for free. Well, €5 was not such a big sum and I must say I recovered it quite quikly, but if you do not want to risk even that little, click HERE (if the link does not work properly, email me).

Know your competition

First of all, before you decide to bother yourself and waste time on opening an on-line buiness, it is advisable to a market research into similar items on etsy. Are there many people selling the same thing? Does this thing actually sell? Does it have any special added value? What kind of customers may be interested in it?

If something doesn't exist on etsy,chances are, you have misspelled it. Otherwise, which would be very unlikely, you would have to assume that nobody sells anything like it, which could mean that IT DOESN'T SELL: But, as I said, this would be really strange. (You wouldn't believe what sort of stuff people sell on line...)

If there are too many websites selling similar items, think of the added value, or uniqueness of your products. There are lots of shops selling handmade jewellery, but not too many sell jewellery made of natural materials like seeds. There are lots of buttons out there, but not too many which are larger than 40 mm, and the bigger, the more sought after!

Also, you can see how the prices range among the competition. You shouldn't, of course, make your product way cheaper, because people may suspect it is worse quality.  But if you are the most expensive, people will prefer to buy from someone else.

It is a good idea to find a role model among shops selling similar items, one that you would like to become, say, in two years' time. It is really motivating and makes it easier to establish short-term and long-term goals.

Stock up your shop

Once you have opened the shop, you must fill it with stock! Use all the free listings, or at least 30 to begin with. If you think you do not have enough range to post 30, think of something easy to make or post and make lots of colours (like these peter pan collars), or post the same item twice if you have two, using different photos and descriptions. Also, this will give you insight to what is more attractive, which description works better etc.

Remember taht shops with just a few items will not get many visits. Or no visits at all.

Make photography your priority

While Etsy keeps repeating this all the time, giving you lots of tips, you may want to get some basics. If you are a professional photographer, you know what to do without advice. But if you are an amatuer, just like me, you will see that it takes time to learn the skill. However, in one of my previous posts I wrote a short guide for anyone who wants to take good product pictures for selling purposes.

If you follow this advice, I am sure you will be able to attract customers with your photographs.

Product titles are key

This is the most important part of SEO on Etsy. You must make it clear what your product is here, and also match the search terms you potential customers may use. To do this, you could do a research by looking for similar items on Etsy. This way you will see what search terms you yourself are using - write these down - plus, you can get an idea from the top results of how to write a successful title.

Use 3-4 word phrases, including the main keyword in each. For example:
Black leather handbag, natural leather purse, large shoulder bag

Ideally, these should be joined into longer phrases, which will make them sound more naturally, like:
Black leather handbag with long shoulder strap

Make sure you use the most important keywords at the beginning. To find out what is most sought, you can use google keyword tool. Remember to use all the synonyms here, as well as in the product description.

Also, words like "beautiful", "amazing" and "pretty" will not work. Not only because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but simply because, nobody uses these terms to search for anything. Have you youself ever looked for anything by typing 'beautiful'?

Product descriptions

This part should also start with a short description, more sentence-like, of your product. The first words are the most important. I initially made the mistake of writing: 'A lot including 7 large green buttons' at first, missing the hits for buttons. And few people look for 'a lot including'. Now I usually start with something like 'Extra large buttons' or '7 blue buttons', or 'a buttton card with'

Do not make your description too long. I doubt whether many people would read more than a few lines of it anyway. Make sure you have enlisted the most important features. I use a list, like the one below (this one is from a buckle description):

colour: dark brown
diameter: 90 mm / 3 9/16"
Suitable for 54 mm / 2 1/16" belts

Do not include all the shipping options and shop policies here. These have a specific space on your shop page. Also, if you want, you can pinpoint the most important questions in FAQ, which will be displayed right below the description, also on mobile devices.

You can also add information about the manufacturing process, care, or even the item's history if it is a vintage object. These are usually interesting to read. But do not ramble on length.

Mind, that on mobile devices, and that includes tablets too, the item description is not displayed at first sight. And few people click on "more info" (they even prefer to send a convo with a question about something they could easily read there). So, if you have some important characretistics, for example in my case, the button size, add this in 'Variations', even if there is only one size available. This will add an extra line in the details column, visible also on mobile devices. I started doing that when more and more people suddenly started asking me a lot of questions about the dimensions, although the information was already provided in product descriptions. I soon changed all listings to include this extra line of information, and guess what? I don't get these questions anymore.

Tags or Search Terms

These are for sheer SEO purposes, so make sure you do not add too many descriptive words which are not used but potential buyers. But... how to know what is used in search?

• One way to do it is to go to Stats and check all the most popular search ter
• ms over a time, and use these or similar. But you can only do that after your shop has been running for, say, a month in the very least.
• Another way is to use the google keyword tool to get some real numbers. 
• Again, you may imaginne you are looking for this item and see what you use. 
• Go to the 'Search for items or shops' field and introduce one word, for eample 'buttons' and one space. Etsy will automatically give you some hints on what you may be looking for. These are popular search terms. 
• Don't be afraid to experiment. A good idea is to use one completely unique tag out of 13 which will be unlike anything else. For example, I used klingon style for one of the buttons. Now guess what? Somebody actually used it and clicked on the buttons. You may discover a whole world of strange search terms that people use!

If you choose the right category for your product, this will add some valuable tags to your list. Look at the first four keywords, with capital letters. These were added automatically, and they are really strong.

Avoid tags like 'round buttons'. Obviously, some buttons are round, but if you someone is looking for buttons, they will just write 'buttons', unless they specifically want triangular or square ones. I did that at the beginning too, as I didn't know how to use up all the 13 tags.

One of the most important things I have learnt about the tags is that you should use two or three words instead of just one for every one of them. At the beginning I did not know that and used tags like:

'button', 'black', 'large', 'flower' etc. 

Believe me, hardly anyone visited my shop. And then I dug the Etsy blogs and in an old discussion post some suggested this to someone else. I decided to try it and BOOM! My stats sky-rocketed! Now I usually use:

'black buttons', 'large buttons', 'flower buttons', etc. 

It doesn't matter if you repeat the key word several times. Google may not like it, but it will help you gain visibility on Etsy. It is important that you understand that Etsy and Google SEO do not work the same way. It is really great to be found on Google, but even more important to get found on Etsy.

Your appearance shows you are a professional

We may not judge a book by its cover but we certainly measure the professionalism by the image a shop gives. This is why you should upload a shop logo, a background picture and a banner (I use this one for packaging slip). Ideally all of them in coordinating colous and themes. Your picture is also a sign that you are a professional - but also a human. No scam. You can use other professionals to help you out. There are thousands of designers on Etsy, specialised in Shop logos and banners. You can also have a go and try to make it yourself.
Don't worry about the background picture - you can improve it later. To start with, you can use a picture of your range, for example, clothes on pegs, I used to have a picture of several button cards, simply cropped into the measurements that Etsy required.

I was lucky, because my sister, who sometimes does graphic design, and also calligraphy, designed a logo for me. With it, I created a nice background composition, using my items.

This is the background photo of my newer shop. I used the same logo for branding purposes.

I use free software for that, like IrfanView and Inkscape. At some point I even used MS PowerPoint to put together some compositions.

Make sure you select a few nice items as featured listings, which will appear at the top of your shop. This will draw people's attention to them and plus, it will add 4 more items to your first page, which is especially important if you do not have too many items.

Add new items regularly

It is definitely a bad idea to add all your items the very first day and then just sit down and wait what happens. The Internet loves fresh content and it is insatiable. So it is best to keep feeding it regularly, but little by little. Later on you will have to renew the listings (they only live on Etsy for 4 months). This will give them new life, and it is also a good moment to revise them and change a part of the title or tags to something that works better.

New and renewed items also pop up on your fans' main sites. So do the Updates, which are pictures you can upload from the mobile Sell on Etsy App. These are also a good idea to bring your buttons to potential buyers, but you will have to install an app on your mobile or tablet. While it is convenient to have it on a device with a camera, it is best to upload quality pictures, taken with a normal camera, as they will be displayed also on computer screens.

Etsy shop updates are best when they include a picture of an item during the production process or a finished product in use, rather than just a repeated detail picture, although sometimes it is not a bad idea to post a close-up photo which is not the main product picture.  

* * * * *

Don't forget about social media, the word of mouth and some good old business cards to promote your shop. Well, how to promote the hop after it has been opened could fill one or more new posts...

I hope you have enjoyed reading this post and even more, you found it helpful. Making mistakes is normal. Learning from them is intelligent. And if you can, avoid them by reading posts like this one.

Good luck!

Casein - An Early Plastic

As I was cleaning my first group of buttons, I started discovering different materials. At the beginning I expected all the buttons to be simply made of plastic. I had no idea they could be any different. Of course, I could tell some were made of metal or mother of pearl, but the rest was just plastic to me.

These buttons smelled suspicious to me...

But then, some buttons looked different. They were lighter or made a different sound when put together in a bag. Some others had uneven surface on the back. I started researching and I learnt that there are lots of other materials in the plastic family, actually, most are early kinds of plastic, which have different properties. And thanks to this information, it is also easier to date the items as made in different decades of the 20th century.

CASEIN, or galaltih

is an early plastic, made of milk protein. Something organic and natural turned into plastic. Unfortunately not very durable. It was very popular from 1930s to 1950s, when it was replaced by more durable acrylic plastic. In Spain, casein buttons could be found even in 1960s, as the imposed embargo on foreign products made it difficult for the new technologies to get there initially.

A lot with casein buttons. These have embossed art deco pattern. 

How to tell whether it is casein or not 

To determine whether a button is made of casein, I use a damp cloth on it, leaving a bit of water to dry on the surface. While it is still a bit humid, I smell it. It usually gives out the scent of cured cheese, something very common in Spain. While smelling buttons are not the most pleasant thing in the world, I can assure you that when dry, these buttons look almost as if made of modern conventional plastic.

Another way of checking what the buttons are made of is by rubbing them vigorously. The smell is similar to when dampened, but not all casein buttons will pass this test. I personally have some buttons, which did not smell unless dampened.

There are beautiful marbled versions of casein, but also plain colours. I have embossed buttons and carved ones, small and extra large, flat and shank buttons, and some casein buckles as well.

Extra large buttons made of marbled casein. These are embossed rather than carved. These are from 1950s-1960s.

A vintage buckle made of 3 layers of casein, plain colour and with carved details. Fantastic example from art deco era!

How to handle casein items

Casein is extremely vulnerable to temperature and humidity. It should not be machine washed. Remember the old habit of removing buttons before washing a coat or a jacket? I guess it all made sense, taking into account that casein could easily be dissolved in water at a temperature higher than 50º C. Exposing it to water at whatever temperature is not a good idea either. A bit of damp cloth hasn't done any harm to them, not a quick rinse, but I would be extremely cautious when exposing it to water for any longer.

Click to see the picture in original size and you will see the cracked surface. These casein buttons have been machine washed. 

Apparently, however, casein buttons can withstand dry cleaning and ironing. The question is how much you trust your dry cleaner to follow the right procedure. There is still a risk that casein buckles or buttons may be mechanically damaged during dry cleaning. It is recommendable thus that you wrap them previously in something soft to protect against any chipping or braking. This should be done by the dry cleaner's, but I do not know any business around that does it.


If you want to see more casein buttons, just click HERE.

How to take good product photos

...and without photoshop!

Hi everybody!

Since I started my button adventure, my photogrphic skills have improved significantly. At first I had little idea of how to take attractive pictures and they would look like this:

Surprisingly, these have sold, despite the poor image quality

No wonder my shop was not very popular! I knew I had to use white background, but it would never turn out white in the pictures! I was desperate. I also hated the shadows, whch were a problem every time the button was not flat.

There are a few tricks I have learnt since then that I would like to share with you. I am a 100% amateur and believe me, you do not need to be a professional photographer to take and post good pictures.

• To start with, never use the automatic mode in your camera! It is designed to capture the largest size image with the poorest quality. And you can't fix it later! I usually go for the semi automatic, which allows me to choose several options, but still does the 'difficult stuff', like focus, automatically. 
• Overexposure helps 'bleach' the background so that it is whiter. I usually go for +1 or +1 1/3, depending on the light. However, I don't do this if I am photographing white items against black background, as in this case, the details will be 'bleached' and so, invisible. 
• To be able to take pictures without shadows, or the least possible, I made this photo box out of an empty cardboard box.

You can see my sewing machine in the background :)

I cut out the sides, leaving a narrow piece every time and pasted some tissue paper from the inside. There is also a background made of white paperboard and a white sheet of paper, which I change from time to time, as it gets dirty (that's where I place the buttons). Well, every few months really. But I like it to be snow white.

• Now there is an issue with the focus. I use auto-focus, but I love taking pictures very close up. It is great to show the tiniest details of the buttons. I am lucky because my camera, apart from the typical macro mode has supermacro, which allows taking good pictures from no distance at all (I can virtually put something on the objective and it will still capture it focused!)

The tiny carvings on this nacre button are invisible to the naked eye - they look like simple lines.

• White balance - another key word. If you do not know what it is: it establishes what the white colour is, basing on the light you are using. Lamps usually have a bit yellow light, so it adjusts the settings so that white is still white. If, on the contrary, you use the light bulb mode in day light, your pictures will be blue (like mine...) 

Different icons used in your camera for white balance. Do not use auto balance! Sunny day mode is good if you are not using a photo box. Cloudy is still not good for it, so I usually pre-establish the white (the icon in the middle of the bottom row). Shady place (the last icon) is also great, but I don't have that one in my camera! And there is the K mode, which I would not dare to use. It basically allows you to introduce whatever value manually. One day I am sure I will master it...

• Natural day light is crucial. I have tried to take pictures using lamps and adjusting the white balance accordingly, but it's no use. They will have extra shadows and extra light just where you would like not to have any! So I usually take the pictures on sunny days, close to the window.
• OK, we've got a picture which is taken with the right focus, at a right angle, no shadows, but white is not white! It is grey! Don't panic. You can make the most of your picture even so. I am using a freeware program, really small and really easy, to fix any imperfections. Also, sometimes there are microscopic fibres or other nano-stuff that you can't see with a naked eye, but the camera can. And this program allows you to correct this too. It is called IrfanView and its many options. The basic function I use is Image>Color Corrections or Shift+G. Here you can slightly change the tone of the picture to correct the white balance. I also add some contrast. the buttons look so much better!

The pictures above are actually the same photo but one is the originally taken (the blue one, of course) and the other one has been changed in IrfanView. Still not perfect, but so much better! By the way, in IrfanView you can crop the image you want, you can also rotate it, even very slightly, and so on, and so forth. So if you do not want to study the science of photoshop, go to http://www.irfanview.com/ and download a version of this freeware program. 

• Although I am in favour of white background, because this is the best way to see the product and not get distracted, I occasionally use different colour backgrounds just to make my online shop look more attractive, or when I am taking pictures of white and off-white items, in which case I usually go for black background. I usually use fabric, but sometimes also colourful paperboard for this purpose.  

• My last tip is to take a few different pictures and at different angles. I hate looking at stuff in other shops, where there are seemingly 5 pictures, but all of them are the same!! I usually take a picture from the top, then at an angle, the back of the item (which may help people see what it is made of) and one with an SD card, which helps understand the real size of the buttons. I know everybody uses coins for that purpose, but hey, the Internet is a global market, and in every country there are different coins! If I post a 1 Euro coin, folks in the US won't know how big in comparison it is. And If I use an American coin, who in Japan will know its size? SD cards, on the other hand, are the same everywhere. 

One picture, at least, has to give an idea of what the item actually is. In this case, no doubt, we can see 6 shank buttons.

If your product has got interesting details, show them off! I sometimes use the detail photo as the main picture of the item. And every time I am more convinced that it is what attracts more visits to the shop, whether they want to see what the whole product is like, or simply because the details are adorable.

Oh, one more. Do not overdo on photo size. I use a quite small size of the pictures, 1600 x 1200. It's enough for most computers and it uploads in a flash. 

Well, I hope you have enjoyed reading this post!

How to take a prong off a buckle

Most belt buckles come with a metal prong. While some antique buckles may have casein prongs, which are impossible to remove without breaking the piece, the prongs on most modern buckles are easy to remove. In my shops I do it as a standard service, but if you have bought one WITH a prong and now you have changed your mind, don't worry. It is easy to fix.

These yellow buckles originally had a metal prong
but the customer requested to have them removed.

You can do it in two different ways. Sometimes one way is better than the other.

The first technique requires a screwdriver. It has to be a small one, like a jeweller's screwdriver. Insert the tip into the space where the metal prong bends over and closes. Use the screwdriver as leverage to lift it open. Or simply turn it and it will open easily. This method is best for small buckles with thin center bar.

Look at the picture below, which explains where to insert the tip:

The other way involves using pliers, but again, you will need very small, jeweller's pliers. Otherwise you may scratch the buckle, if not destroy the brittle piece completely.

Insert one end where the prong closes around the central bar. Hold the other end of the prong. Bend it open until you can see there is enough space for the bar.

Here are a few pictures to illustrate the process.

You have to make sure there is enough space in between the pieces. If not, try with the screwdriver.

If your buckle is big and chunky, or the central bar very thick, you should go for the pliers, as the screwdriver may not be enough. On the contrary, if the prong is closed very tightly around the central bar, you will rather need a screwdriver. Also, you can combine both methods, and begin with the screwdriver and finish with the pliers.

Ready!

Also, I recommend you keep the prong. You never know, maybe one day you get a belt buckle which you really like, but without a prong. You will have a perfect one to fit!

Button Button - my first book about buttons!

When I started my button adventure, I had little idea of the immense variety of buttons, designs and materials there might be. I could date my original collection very easily, as the buttons were from an old haberdashery shop, opened circa 1958 and closed sometime between 1962 and 1963. So there is little doubt left about it. However, as I got interested in the early plastics and vegetable ivory, I decided to look for more precise information. That's how I encountered "Button Button" book.

It is not a new publication, as it was issued in 1993. As you can see, the pictures look really old, and what was new then, is already vintage today. ;) For example, 1970s buttons are referred to as modern.

It promises to answer some very important questions: What's it made from? Is it old? and What's is worth? Well, I would be wary of saying that the book address properly these issues. It does provide help when it comes to identifying the material. However, little is said about early plastics! You can admire incredible button in the pictures, but the explanation is scarce.

Bakelite buttons - really nice pieces, showing the variety of colours and style. However, no guide to Bakelite identification.

Glass buttons shanks - there is a guide to the terms and shapes, but very little information as to when each type of shank was used. So little help  with my antique buttons...

The best part of the purchase was acquiring new vocabulary about the buttons, which soon became useful as I started buying buttons and needed to be able to describe them precisely (like, silver buttons made of glass are called silver lustre). So in the end it was a fairly good introduction, though I had to dig the Internet for more specific information.

So, in other words, I'm still looking for the Button Bible...
_________________________________________________________________________
Title: Button Button · · Identification and Price Guide
Author: Peggy Ann Osbourne
Published: 1993
ISBN: 0-88740-464-2

How to machine sew a button

Although it may not seem this way, machine-sewing buttons to your garment is not only easier, faster, but also stronger. One day I had virtually five minutes to go, and just discovered that a button was missing from a coat. I found the spare one attached to the label on the lining, but I had no time to look for the needle and sew it. I decided to use the machine. It took me less than a minute (OK, I admit that I had the right thread on the machine).


I will show you how to sew a button using your sewing machine it in a few steps.

1. First you will need a special presser foot, like the one in the picture above. Make sure the holes are right underneath and lower the presser foot.

2. Set the stitch length to 0.

3. The most important part is to adjust the width ofyoour stitching to the distance between the holes in the button. You should check manually if the needle lands in the holes, otherwise, you will surely break the needle and perhaps damage the button  as well.

4. Start sewing. If there are 4 holes, you will need two rounds.

5. Leave the thread a bit longer, than usual. You will need it to secure the button by pulling the thread to the wrong side, so that it drags the other end. When both are on the same side, tie them together and snip the excess.

OK, these were just decorative buttons. If you need buttons to actually fastene, and your fabric is thick, you will need to place a needle between the holes, just like when you hand-sew a button.

Pity you can't do the same with shank buttons...

Lobster craze

Have you heard of the Lobster Dress?

It was originally created in 1937 by Elsa Schiaprelli in collaboration with Salvador Dali, which can only give you an idea of the atmosphere in which it was designed (maybe some mayonnaise?). Initially it was meant to be a sundress, the length just below the knee, and with two lobsters crawling on the silky fabric among parsley leaves.

oops, I've just accidentally stepped on an octopus!

The final version looks far less frivolous, but is nevertheless impressive. It was very successful, perhaps in part thanks to Wallis Simpson, who was a great fan of the design, and was considered by many a fashion icon of her times.

Perhaps it would be too much to reproduce the dress as a whole, but even in 1930s there was a craze for the lobster design. And you could make your own version by adding just a few accessories. The one below is just one example of such detail, that can instantly turn any white dress into lobster dress.
It is authentic from 1930s, really huge piece!

To read more about the Lobster dress design and its history go to The Velvet Highway, who made a fantastic reproduction of the original dress!