Simply Shiny Life

Browsing the Artfire forums today, someone reminded me that Artfire sellers can use Craftopolis to track traffic to both their etsy shops as well as their Artfire shops. Your Artfire shop will need to be added to your Google Analytics  account. After you add your user name, then simply change the highlighted shop in the drop down list available from the default of your etsy shop to your Artfire Studio (see the image below)

Crunching some visitor numbers, I discovered an interesting tidbit. Etsy’s overall traffic is much much bigger than Artfires. We all know that. But what about traffic to individual shops?

According to the Compete data I quoted in the previous blog post (Where to sell handmade online: Ranked by Traffic) unique visitors each month at etsy total about 5.8MM visits for 257,320 seller shops with at least 1 item in them. This equates to about 22.5 unique views per shop, on average.  Artfire’s overall unique traffic is 434k for 30k or so shops. This equates to about 14.5 unique views per shop.  So, although Etsy’s overall traffic is more than 10 times that of Artfire, the traffic that really counts to sellers, meaning the actual traffic to their shops, is nearly 65% that of etsy’s. Not too shabby.

Carry on.

One of my latest Collections on Artfire. This one is called Caribbean Vacation and features soothing beachy colored items. It’s about time for me to visit the Caribbean again and these colors really put me in the beach and sun and drinks with umbrella mood.”

You can find artisan jewelry, unique gifts, vintage, 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 curated by Artfire Studio owners are featured every day on Artfire’s front page?

One of my latest Collections on Artfire. This one is called Vintage Finds and features some really fabulous vintage items for sale from Artfire Studio Owners. Two items that were featured have already sold, which tells me that Artfire is becoming a pretty good venue for vintage items too.

You can find artisan jewelry, unique gifts, vintage, 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?

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.

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

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!!

Artfire is testing its new ‘Collections’ functionality. Artfire Studio owners will have the ability to curate groups of items from different Artfire Studios to display trends, themes, colors or other groupings of the Seller’s choice.

I’ve been playing around a bit this week and created several Collections of some truly gorgeous Artfire creations. As of today, the Collections tool is only available for testing to the Artfire Maven group. But, Artfire hopes to roll it out to everyone very soon.

Here are some I’ve curated:

http://www.artfire.com/modules.php?name=collections

You can see my entire list of curated Collections by using the Search box on the left hand side of the page, choose Advanced Search and then enter shinyadornments in the Curator text box.

Pretty nifty.

Resellers, the definition of resellers and discussion around how to handle them has been a hot topic on two of the larger ‘handmade’ seller sites this week: etsy and artfire. I’ve tried to keep up with the discussions, which have been vitriolic at times. It’s clear there is a LOT of angst over site admin handling or lack of handling of this particular issue.

Sellers are peeved, well, more than peeved truly, at the number of shops that are allowed to continue to sell items that are NOT made by the shop owner, have been identified as purchased from a known wholesale site for pennies on the dollar, and are being labeled as handmade and sold at a premium to unsuspecting buyers. Buyers choose to patronize these sites because of the site’s self proclaimed focus on the artisan and handmade, enabling the buyer to shop and support artisan sellers.

In addition, because of the apparent randomness by which site admin close some obvious reseller shops and not others, questions have been raised, and, well, raised again and again:

What defines a reseller? Why aren’t the identified reseller shops closed down? Why aren’t the written terms of service being enforced by the site? Why does it seem as though some admin don’t truly understand the written site TOS? Why are some shops treated differently than others in this respect? Do the site owners TRULY understand the impact this dilution has on the handmade marketplace identifier? (As mentioned in this post http://shinyadornments.com/simplyshiny/2010/07/new-certified-handmade-artisan-process-from-artfire/ ) Should the site’s tag line be replaced with something more along the lines of a global marketplace as it isn’t a truly handmade vision anymore?

Artfire has been discussing this topic with some of it’s sellers to try to figure out the next step. I think it is a good idea to discuss now, as the site is still relatively small. Otherwise, it will acquire the issues Etsy is currently facing as the reseller issue there is one that is large and has pretty firmly entrenched itself over time.

One of the difficulties for these handmade sites is to determine a process that will weed out as many resellers as possible, while not initiating steps that may harm a truly legitimate artisan that has been falsely identified as a reseller. These shops are seller’s livelihoods, so it is important that the action taken can’t irreparably harm a seller if it is taken in error.

As I think about long term strategies to define an artisan marketplace, and the proliferation of the reseller studios, I’ve come up with a potential list of Artfire To Dos: (Granted, my proposed list of next steps certainly doesn’t identify all scenarios or potential issues, but I’d like to see it as a first step. )

1. Continue to certify vetted sellers with Handmade icons. Add certified Vintage icons for Vintage shops at a later date. It’s not perfect (as discussed in my previous post) but it is a good visual differentiator and a good start.

2. Ensure that the process for flagging and removing individual items continues and works as it originally did.

3. Continue to not embrace traditional resellers and make these shops adhere to the Artfire terms of service and Item Decision Tree (http://www.artfire.com/modules.php?name=Terms_Of_Use)

4. Recognize that it will be impossible to keep 100% of the resellers that decide to set up an Artfire Studio from actually doing so AND resellers won’t be honest about correctly categorizing the items that they sell, initiate the following actions.

a. Implement additional screening questions during the Studio creation phase (Do you make the item yourself? Do you purchase it from another artisan? Do you have creation help? Etc) to properly align a Studio with the correct category.
b. Implement a whole shop flagging tool that can be used to report obvious reseller shops to Artfire Admin
c. Implement a Commercial goods category
d. When an entire shop is flagged for reselling, bump that shop into the newly created Commercial category
e. Commercial shops are live, but aren’t included in site search, featured on the FP or in campaign emails, etc
f. The Commercial category is ONLY used for bumped shops. It isn’t a category that can be used to set up a new Artfire Studio.

5. Reiterate to legitimate Artfire sellers that the Certified label is embraced by Artfire, and certified / Pro shops gain a plethora of additional tools to use in their selling efforts.

6. Loudly and frequently announce to Buyers that Artfire cares about the buyer’s experience and recognizes that some buyers truly desire the ability to patronize an artisan mom & pop’s shop vs the big box store. Ensure that Buyers recognize what the Certified label means in a readily accessible format throughout their entire Artfire browsing and buying experience.

To be clear, I am absolutely NOT advocating allowing resellers to be part of these sites. I am suggesting these things to deal with the ones that will invariably slip through the protocols.

What else do we need to consider? What did I miss?

This is a long post. I appreciate that you stayed with me until the end.

(BTW, if you are interested in reading the VERY long thread about this topic,  and etsy admin responses,  you can find it here: http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6579548&page=1 )