Archive for November, 2007
Friday · Popularity: 38% · review, sales channel
Different companies have different ways to deal with spam, we all know that, but some go to such great lengths that they keep their regular customers or visitors from being able to function properly through their system as it is setup.
After getting muted on Etsy for trying to ask a few shop owners a business question for a yahoo group we run I wanted to look into Etsy a little more and find out just what they do and how they operate.
Who is Etsy and What do They Sell
Some of you may not be to familiar with Etsy since it deals in “hand mades”, as their website says, Your Place to Buy and Sell all Things Handmade. While their tagline doesn’t always ring true to the products posted for sale on their site, they do have a very large network of handmade items for sale.
Etsy is a cross between Facebook and eBay where you can sell on a shop type setup with many of the social networking aspects setup on the site. Founded in 2005:
We are a community and a company. Click the image to the right for a view of the community, and see below for who works at Etsy Inc.
Etsy is an online marketplace for buying & selling all things handmade.
Our mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.
Our vision is to build a new economy and present a better choice:
Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade.
A quick search through their products and you will see a wide range of handmade items, but recently they have allowed the supplies that go into making those products to be sold on their website. Anything from beads, silver, and raw materials that are used to craft and create handmade products.
The Etsy Do’s and Don’ts
As with all selling and social sites, Etsy has a large, did I say large, very large list of do’s and don’ts. At least it is all on one page and you don’t have to hunt around for it like you do on some other big sales channel sites. The list includes what you should and shouldn’t do in the areas of:
Read the rest of this entry »
Tuesday · Popularity: 41% · business
What if you were told you would be given $86,400 at the start of each day. Wow, great huh. You can spend that amount each day, but at the end of the day, what ever you haven’t spent you loose.
You can’t keep any to spend it the next day, you can’t save it, you can’t invest it for later use, you can only spend it today. You get 24 hours to spend $86,400. The good news is, for now, at the start of each day you will be given another $86,400 and then it starts all over again, but, no matter what you do, that is all you get.
So, where would you spend it?
Read the rest of this entry »
Monday · Popularity: 52% · stars
I hope everyone had a wonderful week last week, it was certainly one of the more quiet weeks online since many of the U.S. blog writers were on vacation or just taking a little bit of a break.
I took a little bit of a break, on the computer anyway, and did a whole lot of outside “work” over the week, along with watching the multitude of football games that were played over the later half of the week.
Week In Review
There were several Thanksgiving day posts on various topics and I also tried to post something with a little meat to it about thinking globally, Thanksgiving is a U.S. Holiday, Think Global, which I think all of us, especially here in the U.S., should keep in mind when operating on the Internet where articles don’t see political borders.
There was still the musings on the Google PageRank, I guess that is here to stay, but there were also several news stories that came out of eBay, Overstock, and many of the online retailers in preparation for black Friday. I don’t normally star these items since they are very visible by all, but I have put some of them on the share list (see bottom left of the footer). There was still a great list of high quality articles I have listed below.
Read the rest of this entry »
Friday · Popularity: 44% · cs
Today, black Friday, starts the holiday shopping season in full swing. If you have an eCommerce store site, one thing to keep in mind when selling online is that the second your customer hits the submit order button, they expect the doorbell to ring with the delivery.
Get Your Orders Delivered Before Christmas
Knowing that the order will arrive BEFORE Christmas is the number one goal to keep those customers happy. This could be a different topic all together with analyzing how customers expectations for online shopping can create false hopes, but you can minimize the aggravation by posting a shipping schedule.
Every major shipping company you might use has a schedule posted for the last shipping day for a package to arrive before Christmas. You should make this your schedule, and post it some place prominently on your store. Some of these schedules are not quite as easy to find (like USPS) but they are all posted at this point.
To try and make it easier, all of the links below go to the carriers holiday shipping schedule.
- USPS - last day for First Class and Priority is December 20th
- UPS - December 21st, last day for Next Day Air packages to arrive on December 24th,
- FedEx - December 17th last day for FedEx Ground
- DHL - December 21st last day for Express
Remember the key dates for shipping at specific speeds. Priority Mail has a different close date than FedEx 2-day air, so not all dates are going to be the same.
Read the rest of this entry »
Thursday · Popularity: 12% · international
How far does your Internet connection reach? I am speaking mostly to those of us in the United States, but the question is a valid one for everyone. How far does your blog reach? To the ends of the political borders you live in?
To some of us here in the U.S. that might be as far as a writer might think about, but thinking that way is very limiting, and offending to some.
So, happy Thanksgiving to those readers that are in the U.S. (or that celebrate this holiday), and to everyone else, happy regular Thursday.
Write and Correspond for a Worldwide Audience
I just love seeing posts in forums and blogs that have a huge “Happy Thanksgiving” greeting as if the entire world is celebrating Thanksgiving. I really wish some of us here in the U.S. would have a little broader perspective of the world and realize that just because it is going on over here, doesn’t mean it is the same everywhere else in the world.
Read the rest of this entry »