Freelance Consultant Blog

Watch those Dos and Don’ts or Get Muted on Etsy

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:

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Tags channel, customer service, etsy · Comments (3)

Thanksgiving is a U.S. Holiday, Think Global

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.

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Tags customer service, holiday · Comments (1)

Why Your Business Should Always Answer Email

Tuesday · Popularity: 41% · business, cs 

Are you running a business? Then you should answer your email. Period. There was a recent article post called, Treat Your Blog like a Business, where Ben made some very good points about how you should run your blog. I want take that a little step farther and state the obvious. You should treat your business like a business, and one of those steps is to answer your email, in a professional manner no less.

This will probably not be the most popular post in the world, after all, we all get to much email, and some we just don’t want to mess with. I am speaking about the necessity of answering your email if you are in business, but this includes those who run a small home based business, or someone that sells their services online as well, large or small.

If you are online just purely for personal reasons then, answer it, delete, do whatever you want, but I think this applies to personal accounts as well if you want to be successful online. It seems to be common place now to not answer your email. It is the easiest means of communication to ignore, and takes a lot of time.

So if you want to stand out among the others, respond to those emails.

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Tags customer service, email · Comments (2)