Renew, Renew, Renew

For quite a few days, until I run out of steam, I'll be posting tips for Etsy sellers. A little background on me, and then we'll get going.

I opened my Etsy shop on 1/7/09, and I've learned a lot, mostly trial and error. I'm 70, and I live on the East side of Vegas, in a senior mobile home community. I've worked my entire adult life. The first 30 years, in bookkeeping and minor accounting; the next 35 years in writing and editing. I know, I know, the math doesn't add up but that's because I was working them both for a few years while getting ready to dive into full time writing/editing. My general profile is on my Etsy shop.

Etsy vendors depend on folks finding them. One of the best ways is to be at the top of the many search venues Etsy provides. I spend a lot of time on Etsy Forums (I'll post about Forums ASAP), and saw many posts encouraging Etsy shops to renew their items often. They said that this brought the shop up higher in search engine searches. My budget is limited, and I knew that renewing meant another $.20 per item fee for each renewal. Because of that, I dragged my heels for a long while.

Two days ago, I added two widgets to my blog, and one was a slideshow of my shop (I'll post about widgets, too, ASAP). I wanted the slideshow to show the items in a better order. I noticed that the widget always started with the most recently renewed. My first slideshow was showing about 5 items of the same type (just different colors) in a row. Overkill, for sure. I could just see blog browsers with eyes glazed over. Aha! Renew!

I went into my shop and renewed four items that were each entirely different from each other, to provide variety at the start of the slideshow.

Today, I saw an unexpected result of that renewal. I happened to be exploring, trying to find out which items were "hot" on Etsy. I went to Buy, then scrolled down to the various venues. One was Shop Local. I clicked on that, just to see how far down I was, and amazingly, I was the second shop of only two listed! Anybody, at least today, who clicks Buy Local, and puts in Las Vegas, NV, will see, first, CarolynsJewelry, and next, EvelynMayfield.

Why did I get this lucky? Because that venue lists the 2 most recently updated shops in the search area! Her shop and mine were the only two shops in our area that had updated in the past 24 hours. Does that tell you something?

You can bet I will be renewing at least one item a day. I figured that $.20 a day is $6 a month. For those on an even tighter budget, try renewing once a week. That's less than a buck a month.

For those who do not know how to renew: Go to your Etsy shop. Across the top of the page, go to Your Account, and Currently for Sale. Then, pick the item you wish to renew, check the box to the left, and scroll down to the bottom and hit renew, and in the next window, "renew" again. That's it.

Good luck.