Simply Shiny Life

Sell handmade, supplies and vintage on Artfire for $5.95 a month. And less than 2 days left to opt in.

Artfire is offering a heck of a deal to shop owners in order to fund some future improvements, pay for advertising and generally grow the site. The deal has changed as EVERYONE who opts in by midnight on 9/30 will be locked in at $5.95 a month flat fee. If you don’t sign up now this deal goes away. Forever.

There aren’t any minimum sign ups to activate the $5.95 price. The only requirement is that you open at least a basic shop (FREE) and opt in for a Pro studio by midnight 9/30. Don’t miss out.

Seriously… that’s less than 20 cents a day.

You can find all the details in this announcement:
ArtFire Group Deal – How does a Pro account for $5.95/month sound?

ArtFire Group Deal Terms, Conditions, and FAQ

Opt in the the Artfire Deal

For current Basic shop owners as well as Pros at a higher rate, this offer is too good to pass up.

Perusing the etsy forums late Friday night, I found a post describing how to update my Facebook Fan site with a more formal landing page for those that had not yet fanned the page. The directions were pretty easy, so I thought I would share them with you so that you too could update your landing page. This landing page includes a request to fan the page as well as images of my jewelry and new logo.

To see what the heck I’m talking about, visit my ShinyAdornments Facebook fan page. See the tab called “Welcome” ? For those that aren’t current fans on my page, this is the page they will initially land on.

To begin, you need to create your very own ‘Welcome’ tab. To do so, you need to install the Facebook app called FMBL Tab.  Visit  http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=4949752878 and click the link called “Add to my Page” located right below the FMBL page avatar.  Choose the fan page you want to use (should you have more than one), and then select “Add to my page”.

Return to your Fan page and click the “Edit Page” link located under your Fan Page avatar. Scroll down to FBML. It is nearly at the bottom of the list on my Edit page. Click the “Edit” link.

On the edit FBML page, enter the title you want for your new tab in the Box Title field. I used ‘Welcome’.  In order to add images, etc to your new page/tab, you’ll need to know a bit of HTML. Enter the HTML code for the page you want to add in the FBML text box.

My landing page uses three images I created using Photoshop linked to either my Facebook page or my Artfire Studio page.  All are various heights, but each is 475 pixels wide.

Here is the sample code I’ve used for my page. You can edit depending on the images and text you want to use:

<a href=http://www.facebook.com/YOUR FAN PAGE NAME GOES HERE><img src=”Your image name goes here. Needs to be hosted on flickr or photobucket, etc“></a>
<br><br>

<a href=http://www.facebook.com/YOUR FAN PAGE NAME GOES HERE><img src=”Your image name goes here. Needs to be hosted on flickr or photobucket, etc“></a><br>
<a href=”http://www.artfire.com/users/YOUR ARTFIRE STUDIO NAME GOES HERE” target=”_blank”><img src=”Your image name goes here. Needs to be hosted on flickr or photobucket, etc“><br>
</div>

Click ‘Save Changes’ once you’ve entered all the links and code you need.

To enable this Welcome tab as your new default landing page for non-fans, you will need to edit your settings again.  Click the ‘Edit Settings’ link under your Fan Page avatar again. Go to “Wall Settings” and click the “Edit” link.  In the view settings box, there will be a drop down menu for the “Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else”. Choose the FBML tab you just created and click “Save”.

You are done.

I know this one was long. Thanks for sticking with me. I’d love to see what you created. Post a link to your fanpage in the comments below.

One of my latest Collections on Artfire. This one is called Danger Will Robinson and features lots of robots, robot art and space themed items from Artfire Studio Owners. (Not that I am a geek or anything or even like this kind of stuff. ha!)

You can find artisan jewelry, unique gifts, fine art, accessories and supplies within Artfire member studios. Please click anywhere in the image below to visit Artfire and comment. BTW, did you know that Collections are featured every day on Artfire’s front page?

Well, it’s a done deal. Sign up before 10/1 and be activated at Pro Studio level at $5.95 a month. That’s 20 cents a day for all the tools and great stuff available for Artfire Sellers. But you have to sign up before 10/1 (which technically means by 9/30) because on 10/1 this great deal is over. Forever. And the monthly price for Pro Artfire sellers reverts to $15.95 a month.

Here’s the blurb from Kevin, the Director of site seo:
“The ArtFire Group Deal will be activated on 10/1/2010. All members who have signed up for the deal BEFORE 10/1/2010 will lock in their PRO rate at $5.95. Once the group deal is activated on 10/1/2010 the $5.95 rate will not be available to new sign ups. Any new members who did not sign up by 10/1/2010 for the group deal will be able to do so at a higher locked rate for the remainder of the beta exit promotion.”

What are you waiting for? If you don’t already have an Artfire Basic Shop, sign up for one. Then head to the group deal link and sign it up. On 10/1, your Basic shop will be converted to a Pro shop for $5.95 a month. Sweet.

More info available here: The Artfire Group Deal is ON

Terms and Conditions are here: Artfire Group Deal T&Cs

Opt in here

Here’s a podcast explaining too: Artfire Group Deal Podcast

Artfire is offering a heck of a deal to shop owners in order to fund some future improvements, pay for advertising and generally grow the site. It kind of operates like Groupon… a minimum number of peeps need to show interest before the deal becomes live.

Here’s a blurb from the site:
ArtFire will be exiting beta very shortly and to celebrate we’re offering, for a limited time only, the chance for up to 50,000 members to lock-in a Pro account for $5.95/month. The initial deal does have a few conditions; mainly that we need a minimum of 20,000 people to opt in at the $5.95 rate before we can give anyone this incredible rate. We want to be very clear, by opting in you are not getting a $5.95/month Pro account right away. Your information is securely stored and will not be charged unless the deal is on. If we don’t meet the minimum threshold, nobody gets a $5.95 account, your credit card isn’t charged, and your existing account and any associated subscriptions will not be affected.

Seriously… that’s less than 20 cents a day.

You can find all the details in this announcement:
ArtFire Group Deal – How does a Pro account for $5.95/month sound?

ArtFire Group Deal Terms, Conditions, and FAQ

Opt in the the Artfire Deal

For current Basic shop owners as well as Pros at a higher rate, this may be a deal too good to pass up.

Interesting blog post about etsy’s latest metrics, some historical comparisons and suggestions for continued growth. While there are some pretty obvious gaps in the assumptions (handmade, anyone?), it still makes for an interesting read.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/11/tc-teardown-etsy/

The Techcrunch post was in response to Etsy’s latest publication of their traffic and sales numbers, called the Weather Report. I copied some below. You can find the entire etsy post here.

• $25.5 million of goods were sold by our community in August, 7.1% higher than July’s $23.8 million.
• That represents 1,404,248 items sold for the month, 7.2% higher than July’s 1,309,740.
• 2,117,388 new items were listed in the month, 6.5% higher than July’s 1,988,188.
• 278,208 new members joined the Etsy community in the month, up 17,941, or 6.9%, from July.
• 777,607,777 page views were recorded on the site in August.

From my own data gathering, there are 6,731,903 items on etsy, and 239,000 sellers.

(You can find the total number of etsy items at any point in time by going to the etsy front page, changing the default setting of Handmade to ALL in the search drop down box, leaving the text box empty and clicking the  Search button. You can find the number of sellers with at least one item in their shops by going to etsy’s  front page, click the Buy link in the navigation at the top of the page, the scroll to the Sellers link in the list on this page. Today there are 11,940 pages of sellers with at least one item in their shops)

1.4M out of 6.7M available is about a 20% inventory turnover.

There are 239,000 sellers, but 278,208 joined last month. Either that means a lot of folks opened buyer shops OR lots of existing sellers are closing shops OR lots of folks opened a shop and didn’t do anything with it or some combination of the three.

Theorectically, 777M page views generated $25.5M sales. Does that mean etsy sellers have to generate 3100 pages views to generate $100 worth of sales? And what are those 777M page views anyway? What percentage of them are generated in the etsy forums? Or in chat? etc?

and finally, theoretically, if $25.5M of stuff was sold by 239,000 sellers, that’s less than $11 per shop. Now, we know not all 239,000 sellers are actually selling. I wonder what the actual average number of sales per shop really is?

Women’s Day magazine posted an article called 8 Ways to Make Money Online mentioning Artfire.com as a viable resource to sell crafts.  Also, the Today Show had a segment about the article, and the newscaster talked a bit more about Artfire at 1:18 into the video.  You can check it out here: Artfire on the Today Show.

Nice promo love for AF.

One of my latest Collections on Artfire. This one is called Yellow Sunflower and features gorgeous works from Artfire Studio Owners. You can find artisan jewelry, fine art, accessories and supplies. Please click anywhere in the image below to visit Artfire and comment. BTW, did you know that Collections will be featured on Artfire’s front page soon? YAY!!

Artbeads announces its Labor Day Sale!

Save 20% off orders $60 or more! Stock up on all the basics for the upcoming holiday season or pick up that gorgeous handpainted Russian Artist Pendant you’ve had your eye on.  Sale ends September 7, 2010, so don’t miss out.

To get a heads start on the Labor Day Sale, use this coupon code at checkout: ZZW20P-LDS