The key point of being able to work at home and support our family, is keeping our product where people can see it. We need to make sure that as many people as possible see our products every day, because we know that only a small percentage of them will actually buy.
Today we have begun looking even deeper into how to go about marketing our Etsy shop, and optimizing it for search engines so that more people will actually find us. Even coming from the tech world, this is no simple task. There are lots of little tricks that aren't really obvious to anyone who hasn't looked into it or done it before. But many of them that I've discovered so far really are no-brainers when you really think about what you're trying to achieve and the tools that you have available to do it. I haven't purchased any guides like this yet, but it will probably be my next step. We have begun looking for people who have done this, and are living proof that their methods work for shops like ours on Etsy. There are several guides like this available, so you might want to look for one that relates specifically to what you're selling. This one seems to be more general in nature.
I know. It's Christmas Eve and I should be enjoying it rather than working. But if there's one thing that working for yourself teaches you, it's that work never truly stops. We work when we get an email. My wife and I both have iPhones and we both get our shop emails delivered to us constantly. There is no real time off. Sure we're not actually working 24/7, but we work when it presents itself. The best analogy is like being on-call 24/7. This does have some distinct advantages to the straight 9-5 that most people have to deal with though. Just like any on-call job, you tend to have more freedom of movement, and often times you go for long stretches of time without absolutely needing to do anything. We often get to decide when and even where we are actually going to work. Other than the graphic design and production parts of our job, we can do our work from pretty much anywhere that we can get decent internet access. Because of this, we have a fairly flexible schedule in a lot of ways. At the same time though, we are also tied to our work 24/7 whether we're actually working or not. I actually have three email accounts set up on my phone, and when it vibrates to let me know that I have an email, it's hard not to wonder if it's work or personal. I'm checking it constantly. I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but it's the way it is. So while my wife is baking holiday goodies, I'm working on fine-tuning our marketing strategies.
I've spent a portion of my day trying to figure out how to draw more people in. I've been tweaking little things like our Etsy shop title, and page names on our own domain. I've added a feed of our most recent items to the side bar on this blog so that more people will see them (assuming anyone other than myself will actually read this). But that's where all of this optimization should eventually lead. The whole idea behind it is to start a following here that will draw people in. Sure I don't want this to be entirely a marketing tool, but that is part of the reason for starting this blog. I still have a laundry list of things to do to tie all of these spaces together. Linking from the shop to the domain and this blog. Listing this blog on our Facebook page. All of these things will supposedly work in our favor and draw more people to our shop, which in turn will make it easier for my wife and I to spend more time with our son, and less time worrying about money. That really is the bottom line. If we know that we have a process set in motion that will bring us a steady stream of customers, then we know we will have a dependable income. So far we've been doing pretty well, but it takes a lot of work to manually advertise on Etsy, and this is the majority of the advertising that we currently do. If we can replace that system with one that is more automated, and less time intensive for us, then we can turn that extra time into family time.
While it may seem like I'm wasting valuable family time right now, by working on Christmas Eve, what I'm really trying to do is give my family a lasting gift. With any luck the little bit of time that I have put in today will pay off down the road. The best part is that I am actually writing this post with my son on my lap, and (for the most part) he's perfectly happy about it. :-)
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