Guest Blogger - MyCraftAssistant

Are you an Etsy shop and looking for tips on how to grow your small business?  Be sure to read this post!

Michele Gallagher is an avid crafter and lover of all things handmade. She has run several successful Etsy shops and wants to help other crafters have the same great experience she has had on Etsy. In 2009 her line of children’s jewelry was picked up by Nordstrom’s after her shop was “discovered” by a buyer from the department store.  In 2010 she opened a new shop with her line of women’s jewelry to test out her Etsy selling formula. After making over 500 sales in the first year she was confident that she could help other crafters have successful shops too.

In April 2011 Michele Gallagher launched MyCraftAssistant.com a service dedicated to helping fellow artisans grow and manage their Etsy shops.  In just one year she has assisted over 65 crafters in setting up new shops, optimizing their existing shops for search engines and for the Etsy Relevancy search, marketing and promoting their shops and much, much more. 

"The biggest mistake I see people make" says Michele, "is that their listings are not set up for the Etsy Relevancy search. Shop owners are missing out on a lot of traffic from potential customers by not focusing on this key element of their shop." She suggests you take the time to research keywords and phrases that are relevant to your items and make sure they are prevalent in your titles and tags.  If you’re unsure of how to research keywords and effectively use them in your listings, Michele has developed a great e-book that walks you through exactly how to do it. Information on the e-book can be found here:http://www.mycraftassistant.com/services/e-books/

Also, many Etsy sellers have Twitter and Facebook accounts for their business but don’t fully understand how to use it to promote their items.  Michele suggests that you engage with customers, and provide usefully information…don’t just send out links to your items and hope that people click on them. For example, if you sell jewelry, tweet tips on how to properly clean your jewelry, suggestions on how to store your jewelry to keep it from tangling, new trends, the season’s hottest colors or even information on how to build a handmade jewelry box. When you tweet information that people can use they naturally get interested in what you do and they will visit your profile and will see the link to your Etsy shop. It is OK to tweet links to your shop once in a while, but try not to do it more than 25% of the time. 

For information on the services My Craft Assistant offers or to schedule some time to work with Michele directly, visit her website:  http://www.mycraftassistant.com/ .  To get more tips like the ones above, follow Michele on Twitter @CraftAssistant and Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com/MyCraftAssistant