Simply Shiny Life

I’VE BEEN TAGGED !!!

Nicole Campanella from the Beadwright has tagged me.  What’s tagging you ask? I guess I’d describe it as a sort of internet spin the bottle. Remember, when you were a wiggly and hormone filled junior high school kid? Spin the bottle and you either had to kiss the person directly across from you or reveal a deep dark secret. Ok, so while the kissing choice is probably more fun, the internet doesn’t lend itself to doing so very easily. (No comments from the peanut gallery about cyber fun and games. )

So, here is how tagging works:

1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog. 4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Seven facts about Kristy:
1. I’ve eaten squirrel. Yum, tastes like chicken. VERY tough chicken.
2. Tattoos hurt worse than childbirth. Really.
3. I love sushi, but never tried it until I moved to a landlocked state.
4. I am very good at hanging wallpaper. And prefer the kind that needs to be pasted.
5. I will never willingly have gray hair.
6. Craig Ferguson is my favorite late night show host. He ROCKS late night. Conan blech.
7. Sometime I feed my son cheerios for dinner. Shhhh don’t tell.

I’ve tagged these 7 great blogs. Be sure to check them out to see their responses.

http://dashery.blogspot.com/  Dashery Jewelry
http://www.mbell34etsy.blogspot.com/  Michelle’s Jewelry Creations
http://www.beaderjojo.blogspot.com/   Unique You
http://silvercanyons.blogspot.com/  Silver Canyons
http://livngoodjewelry.blogspot.com/  Liv’n Good Jewelry
http://www.michondesign.com/jewelry-blog/  Michon Jewelry

Happy Reading!

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I admit it: I am not the greatest at utilizing color in interesting ways in my jewelry designs. Actually, this inability bleeds into my home decorating and web design as well. But, no worries as the internet provides a PLETHORA of helpful tools for those as color challenged as I am.

First, have you checked out colour lovers? http://www.colourlovers.com/ I LOVE this site and use it quite a bit to try color combinations I might not have otherwise. In fact, I used it to select the color palette on my new website too. Its called “Invisible Pebble”. One word of warning…make sure you set some sort of alarm when you decide to visit the site. It is REALLY easy to spend hours surfing the palette choices without even realizing it. Don’t ask me how I know that.

My second favorite color tool is Color Blender at
http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/color-blend/ 
It is a nifty little tool that provides the color numbers for shades between two colors you pick. You can choose one or several iterations between the two colors you have chosen. The tool also gives the user the option to receive results in RGB or Hex. Very handy when editing your web site or blog and need JUST the right shade to accent a post header or font.  Experiment with a very dark first color, like #003333 and then use white as your second color #FFFFFF, and then choose 6 midpoints and click Blend. Cool huh?

What are you favorite online color tools?

So, I’ve also set up a twitter account. What’s twitter you ask? Its kind of like mini-blogging… or blogging for an extremely fast paced world. LOL Twitter allows users to post short 140 character burst messages and to follow other’s posts as well. BTW, twitter posts are called Tweets. Just so ya know.

Check out this link for more info.

And here I am http://twitter.com/shinyadornments. Follow me.

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I’ve met many very very talented artists on etsy in the teams that I belong. I’ll be highlighting some of them in the coming weeks on my blog.

Today’s etsy artist profile belongs to Susan of Elbit Enterprises,  a talented fellow Artisan Bead Team member.

Etsy shop name: Elbit Enterprises

Name: Susan Logue (I usually go by my nickname of Meri, though)

Where else can we find you and your work?
My website: http://elflingcreations.com
“Eventually I may end up changing my Etsy shop name to match my website, but I haven’t gotten around to that yet. The word “Elbit” comes from a role play character I had years ago who was a half elf/half hobbit, and the “Elfling” comes from the same thing. My nickname of “Meri Greenleaf” also came from that same roleplay character, then the name just kind of stuck.

Blog: http://merigreenleaf.blogspot.com/

Location: Exton, PA (suburb of Philly)

What are your jewelry beginnings? Where did you start and how did you progress to work you are creating today?
I started making jewelry when I was a kid, using plastic beads and elastic string to make jewelry for my sister and mom. Unfortunately, I took a break from jewelry as I got older, and only picked it up again a few years ago, so I’m not nearly as advanced with it as I’d like to one day be. One of my friends taught me how to make chainmaille last year, and I’ve also been experimenting with making beads out of polymer clay and crocheting beads onto hemp and yarn, so I haven’t really “progressed” as much as “am trying everything”, lol.

What are your favorite materials?
Glass beads, shells, wood beads, jump rings, wire, polymer clay, hemp… I’ll work with pretty much anything!

What inspires you?
Nature, fantasy, literature, and Renfaires. I know those last three sound strange, but they’re three of my greatest loves.

How do you describe your design style?
I’m not sure if I have a “style”, but I love to make things that are unique and would look good with a costume.

What artists have influenced you, and how?
I love fantasy artwork, and often try to make jewelry that looks like something a pirate or an elf would wear. (I totally blame my dad for getting me into the whole fantasy thing by reading me Lord of the Rings when I was six.) And I have to say, my fellow ABST team members always give me the inspiration to do my best, because I see what beautiful things they come up with, and I don’t want mine to be lacking.

What advice would you give to an artist just starting out?
Not to give up, no matter what. You might get discouraged in the beginning when what you try to make doesn’t match what’s in your head, but eventually you will get it.

How do you spend time when you are NOT creating?
I’m rarely ever not creating- I mean, as well as making jewelry, I crochet, spin, paint, draw, sew, and sculpt, so my hands are always busy. When I do take a break, though, I’m usually doing street team things (I’m in six and am the leader for one of them), or I’m reading, playing video games, playing Dungeons and Dragons, teaching myself Old English, or playing with my cat (or, more often, am serving as a bed for the cat).

You can see lots of Meri’s photos in her flickr account here

Stay tuned in upcoming weeks for more talented etsy artist profiles from my JET and ABS team members.

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Jewelry designers on etsy have been complaining about the lack of views and search issues for their jewelry items for several months now to no avail. Etsy has said that significant changes to the search technology are not going to occur until after the holidays.

Some etsy jewelry artisans are wondering if etsy is actively trying to boot jewelry designers from the site via attrition. I honestly don’t think that is the case. 

I don’t think etsy is actively targeting jewelry shop owners. I just think the underlying search methodology is bad and was never written to support such large volumes in a single category. Have you looked at etsy item category volumes lately? (See below). The jewelry and supplies categories make up nearly 40% of etsy’s current listing volume. 40%!! I’ve heard from papergoods artists how saturated and competitive their category is…and their volume is only about 20% of the jewelry category.

Etsy’s search technology works good enough, I guess for items in smaller categories, but was just never meant for indexing that many items in one category. Seems like a really easy short term solution might be to separate the jewelry category into several smaller categories. ?

Anyway, I’m off now to brush up on my knitting skills.

Category              Number of items   % of total item
                                                            listing volume
Jewelry                   653,401                         26.7%
Supplies                  315,234                         12.9%
Art                          272,839                         11.1%
Vintage                  149,401                           6.1%
Children                147,196                            6.0%
Accessories           143,362                           5.9%
Papergoods           120,954                           4.9%
Purses                    86,351                             3.5%
Clothing                  79,291                              3.2%
Housewares           65,266                              2.7%
Glass                    40,887                              1.7%
Bath/Beauty          38,844                              1.6%
Everything else      34,366                              1.4%
Knitting                  34,101                               1.4%
Crochet                   32,693                               1.3%
Ceramics                 27,982                               1.1%
Toys                         27,367                               1.1%
Holidays                   26,366                               1.1%
Weddings                 19,543                               0.8%
Needlecraft              18,825                               0.8%
Pets                        18,236                                0.7%
Patterns                    17,582                                0.7%
Books                         15,185                                0.6%
Woodworking           14,945                                0.6%
Geekery                    12,929                                0.5%
Candles                      12,259                               0.5%
Quilts                         10,994                               0.4%
Plants&Edibles         6,170                                0.3%
Furniture                  2,663                                0.1%
Dolls/Miniatures      2,401                                0.1%
Music                         1,920                                0.1%
TOTAL                            2,449,553

It is interesting to see that the top three categories, jewelry, supplies (!!), and art make up over half of etsy’s volume.  As limited statistics exist regarding sales data, it would be nice to know what percentage of overall sales occur in these top three categories.

Finally, seeing this data is a very good reminder for shop owners to step up their own advertising efforts. If we want customers in our shops, we need to drive them there via our own efforts. We should also be questioning the value of etsy as a shop host. If the traffic to one’s shop is primarily generated via your own efforts, and the buying base of customers that we thought we had purchased access to isn’t real, should we have shops on our own sites and forgo etsy all together?

What do you think?

I am sharing this with etsy sellers and other artisans as a cautionary tale.  Many of us have spoken about setting up shop on other artisan selling sites. Before plunking down your hard earned moola on Ruby Lane, you might want to investigate them a bit more. Please solicit feedback from other etsy sellers that have closed their shops on Ruby Lane recently. Make sure you understand, exactly, what kind of customer support and shop advertising you purchase for your $35 or more monthly fee.

And so, without further adieu, here is my Ruby Lane Artisan Jewelry shop owner tale….

According to the Ruby Lane (RL) website it is “an online venue that hosts a community of hundreds of individually-owned shops from around the world.” Its a bit more pricey than etsy, but they supposedly advertise in more places and do offer some functionality for shop owners that etsy does not. RL includes ‘lanes’ for antiques, collectibles, fine arts and jewelry. Regarding the supposed advertising, what I found was that RL heavily advertises its antiques, but not much else. RL does offer to reimburse up to 40% of the shop owner’s off site advertising fees -  as long as the ads are pre-approved AND link to your RL shop.  RL also allows shop owners to contribute articles to their blog. In theory, this sounds good, right?

I wanted to take advantage of the advertising reimbursement program, so I submitted my request and received notification that my advertisement medium was preapproved. I paid for my advertisement and submitted my invoice according to RL’s stated reimbursement process.  After not receiving a return email message, I followed up several times, with no reponse nor reimbursement. Around this same period, I also submitted an article for the RL blog. My submission was received by a Ruby Lane staff member who stated that she wanted to use my article, and would follow up with me.  She didn’t.

A couple of weeks ago, RL updated the site to include an artisan jewelry ‘lane’. There was an issue with the way the site navigation worked following this change, so I contacted Ruby Lane’s Live Support.  The Live Support Rep stated that the navigation worked correctly. It didn’t. Still doesn’t.

So, I tried submitting the navigation issue via an email that included all the pertinent links to Ruby Lane site help. Additionally, based on RL’s previous non-responsiveness, I also emailed the info to two other Ruby Lane shop owners that I know, asking them to submit the same error. I thought that if more than one shop owner contacted them about the navigation error, perhaps RL would deem the change important to us and fix it.  (See the details in the email below…)

> Hi
> I noticed a small discrepancy that may keep buyers from finding
> our artisan jewelry.
>
> If you visit the Ruby Lane home page http://www.rubylane.com/ and click the SHOP
> icon, located in the upper left corner of the page, you will be brought to a SHOP WITH
> RUBY LANE page, http://www.rubylane.com/info/shop.html
>
> You will notice in the left navigation links for
> Shop
> Antiques
> Collectibles
> Fine Arts
> Jewelry
>
> And then a bunch of links for the different lanes under Shop Directory. A new visitor
> looking to browse Jewelry items might not notice all those links, but would probably just > click on the JEWELRY link located at the top of the list.
>
> Clicking JEWELRY brings the visitor to
> http://www.rubylane.com/jewelry.html, which ONLY lists Antique and Vintage
> Jewelry, no artisan. Not good for those of us that are in the Artisan Jewelry lane.
>
> Can you add ARTISAN as a category on this page
> http://www.rubylane.com/jewelry.html ? Or else point the JEWELRY link on the shop.html page to a more generic jewelry search page?
>
> The way the JEWELRY link works today, it appears that Artisan Jewelry is not part of > the site. And many browsers may not notice the additional lane link to the Artisan
> Shops.
>
> Thanks!
> Kristy

Guess what, Ruby Lane didn’t think the navigation issue was very important. It still hasn’t been corrected. Below, is RL’s response to me. (SAME DAY! WOW! That’s a first!) I’ve edited slightly to remove my email message above which was quoted in their response.

Hello Kristy,
The information you offered about links on the Shop page was passed along to appropriate technical staff yesterday morning after Customer Support received an email about it identical to your own from a different shop owner and the issue they reported had been investigated.

We note that you contacted several shop owners and sent them the same email you sent to us, along with this request:
===============
My Email Message Quoted here in RL’s response
===============
This activity on your part had the direct effect of making it necessary for multiple members of Ruby Lane staff to spend time investigating the issue relayed about the page, including contacting other staff about it and answering email from the shops you contacted. Realistically, this time could have been better spent. Had only one member of staff checked the issue mentioned and answered questions about it just one time this would have freed time for our other staff and allowed quicker responses by them to other non-artisan shop owners’ issues and concerns.

We understand that you are a shop owner who is fairly new to Ruby Lane. Perhaps you are not familiar with voiced concerns being taken seriously or perhaps in reporting issues of this nature on other sites you are more familiar with receiving no satisfactory response, at all.

Please keep in mind going forward that we do always carefully consider shop owner’s concerns. Every email of this nature received is important to us. We ask shop owners to refrain from asking the same question more than once, as this does not help to speed the investigation or response process along.

There are a very large number of shops currently on the site. We would appreciate if you kept in mind going forward that the Ruby Lane staff is a small professional team. We manage the site day in and day out, while at the same time planning and adding new features, programs and tools – all at a cost that everyone can afford. In the future if you have a concern about a site feature or notice a problem we would of course want you to contact us to let us know. But do offer us the advance courtesy of assuming we might be willing to acknowledge and address it, and refrain from attempting to encourage multiple email submissions to our staff about the same issue from other shops, as though you already know that we will not.

Thanks in advance for your future consideration in this regard.

Respectfully,
Name withheld to protect the less than stellar customer support person
Ruby Lane Customer Support

Um, all righty then.  So, my response…………..

Good afternoon “Name withheld to protect the less than stellar customer support person,”

While I appreciate that “every email of this nature received is important to us. We ask shop owners to refrain from asking the same question more than once, as this does not help to speed the investigation or response process along.”, my experience thus far with Ruby Lane customer service has not proved this statement.

To date, I’ve sent 4 messages requesting reimbursement for a previously approved ad as well as two to follow up on a previous message to submit an article for your blog. No response as of yet for the reimbursement requests, which started the end of August
and were approved earlier than that. And, after a preliminary response from your staff that they would like to use the article, nothing when I followed up. And that was weeks ago.

When you say ‘perhaps you are not familiar with voiced concerns being taken seriously” I haven’t experienced that yet, so you are right, I am not familiar.

So, based on my previous experiences with follow through, I thought that contacting 2 other shop owners in which I had a relationship might speed along the process.

Me

You know, I’d almost expect a response like that from a relatively new site, like etsy. But this is a company that has been online since 1998. 10 years!

I’ve closed my RL shop. I’m not spending my dollars with a company that shows so little respect for those that pay their bills.  And, was the navigation link updated? Nope. If you visit their home page and click the Shop link, the link for Jewelry on the subsequent page STILL only lists antique and vintage jewelry. Nice. Not exactly “planning and adding new features, programs and tools” for its artisan jewelry shop owners are they?

If you have made it this far, I thank you for reading.

UPDATE 1: I’ve received several messages from former shop owners with similar and MUCH MUCH worse tales about Ruby Lane. Caveat emptor everyone.

UPDATE 2: The saga continues here http://shinyadornments.com/simplyshiny/2008/10/ruby-lane-a-former-shop-owners-saga-continues/

ruby lane warning problems bad service for shop owners

Entrecard is used to increase traffic to your blog. Period. I’ve been using it for a month or so and, well, so far so good. My increased surfing to drop cards has resulted in my finding some new regular blog reading stops;  as well as some new places for Project Wonderful ads. For more information about what it is and how to use it, visit this link

Here are the September entrecard top droppers on my blog.
THANK YOU! YOU ROCK!

How is Bradley?

Luxor

My gypsygoods

Designing Hilary

Scraps of Mind

PaulsHealthBlog.com

Alteredevents

Mommieshome.net

time2cre8

Babette’s Definitely Maybe!

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