Queen for a Day!

from RequiresPostage on Etsy

There is A LOT of behind the scenes work that goes into making the Promotional Frenzy Team the amazingly successful team, and family, that it is. One of our teammates does a vital part of that work, without ever asking for help, or promoting herself. She adds OUR items to the team pinterest account, and not only never adds her own, but also doesn't join our lists very often. Because she doesn't join our lists, we often forget to give her the promotion and love that she so deserves!

Today, we ask that you click on her items, heart them, repin them, and tweet them, to show her how much we love Kathleen, of Ugly Duckling Beads.

FloraTopia Handmade Lampwork Beads

RePin: http://pinterest.com/pin/5840674489203633/
ReTweet: https://twitter.com/Turtle13Jewelry/status/316685147527344129

Yellow Flower and 2 leaf set

RePin: http://pinterest.com/pin/5840674489203489/
ReTweet: https://twitter.com/Turtle13Jewelry/status/316681129329565696

Wired Leaves and Flowers Bracelet

RePin: http://pinterest.com/pin/5840674489203670/
ReTweet: https://twitter.com/Turtle13Jewelry/status/316686682235740161

Wisteria Purple Trumpet Flower Necklace

RePin: http://pinterest.com/pin/5840674489203733/
ReTweet: https://twitter.com/Turtle13Jewelry/status/316689581477076993

Digital Images, Flowers

RePin: http://pinterest.com/pin/5840674489203696/
ReTweet: https://twitter.com/Turtle13Jewelry/status/316687836105543680

THANK YOU KATHLEEN!!!!!

brought to you by Turtle of TurtleXIII.etsy.com

March Trend Challenge

The Promotional Frenzy Team wants to help online small businesses sell their products through smart marketing. One way you can really help the visibility of your shop is by keeping up with current trends. If your shop has items each month that people are looking for, and you tag them appropriately you should get good traffic just from listing and tagging items with current trends!

With that in mind we will be giving Challenges to help Inspire and Motivate you to keep your shop current. For this challenge, there is a list below of trends to watch for this Spring. Your challenge:  Make 1 NEW item for your shop inspired by something in the list below.

Once you have made a piece, list it in your shop, tag it with the trend keywords and then POST YOUR NEW ITEM in the Comments of this blog!  

We would really love it if you would add to your description of your listing, "Inspired by The Promo Frenzy Trend Challenge: http://promofrenzyteam.blogspot.com "

With links to your items on our blog and links in your item listings to our blog we should all receive valuable back-links for our shops and wonderful exposure!

 You have to post a link to the comments of this blog NO LATER THAN MARCH 27th Midnight (eastern/etsy time). We will pick a winner at random (using random.org ) from the links posted in the comments.  The winner will be announced and given a feature on the blog in April.

*** PRIZES  ****

 

The random winner will receive a blog feature here on this blog.

** PLUS **  The winner's items will be BLASTED via Tweet bombs to over 40,000 twitter followers.

https://twitter.com/billyguest

https://twitter.com/galla15

We will set up tweet bombs and RT the items to our networks!   We will also Pin to our Team Pinterest Account the winning items!  http://pinterest.com/etsypromofrenzy/

 ****** LIMIT OF 2 ENTRIES ******

WE ENCOURAGE you to make treasuries based on these trends, and include the people who post links in this blog!  Tag: Promofrenzy for extra exposure!!  You can feel free to post the treasuries in a comment here too!

TRENDS

Bright Colors for a Pop

Florals

Polka Dots

Geometric shapes/patterns 

Emerald Green

Reclaimed Materials (Earth Day theme)

Personalized Mother's Day Gifts

Easter Themed

Have fun and get creating!!!

Optimizing Tags and Titles for Relevancy Searches

Photo by CatnipStudioToo

Getting found in Etsy searches can be a frustrating experience for many sellers. If you have great items but just aren't getting views from Etsy, then it might be time to take a look at your tags and titles.

The default search method on Etsy is a relevancy search, meaning that Etsy looks at a variety of factors to determine how to rank items. While no one knows the exact algorithm that the powers that be at Etsy use to determine relevancy, they have given us some hints. We know that titles and tags are the two factors that are definitely at play that we, as sellers, have direct control over. Recency is another element of relevancy and there is evidence that views and hearts are factored in as well. Item attributes are not currently taken into account, but Etsy says they will be soon, so you might want to go ahead and start filling those out for new items.

First of all, let's take a look at how to improve titles for relevancy searches. Etsy weights words in your title according to their place in the title. Thus, the words at the beginning of the title are more important for searches than those at the end. So it's a good idea to get the most important words as close to the beginning as possible while still making sense. A good exercise is to try to think of three words that your potential customers might type into search if they were looking for your item. Let's take a look at these earrings from my shop.

The main attributes of these earrings are that they're stud or post earrings, they have birds on them, and they're green and pink. I think that people looking for earrings with a design like this would be more interested in the fact that they have birds on them than the colors. I also think the style of earring backing is important, so I started the title with Bird Stud Earrings. How did I decide between using stud or post? I went to the Seller Opportunity Tools prototype and went to compare idea to see which would be better. The tool has some definite limitations, but it's great for figuring out which broad term to use. I still wanted to include post earring in the title as well as the colors, so the next bit reads Green Post Earrings. Since it's springtime (or almost) and these really fit nicely into the spring theme, I decided to make the last part Pink Spring Jewelry.

Now let's look at the tags for the same pair of earrings. Since I brainstormed about the important attributes for the title, I had a good idea for some tags. Tags work best when they're short phrases that are exact matches for what someone is searching. For instance, if someone searches for pink bird earrings then a listing with that exact phrase is going to appear ahead of one with each word as a separate tag (of course, there are other factors in relevancy, but let's assume all other things are equal here). Of course, you can't know exactly what every potential customer is going to search for, but you can make some educated guesses about likely searches. Don't forget that your categories are already tags, so you don't need to repeat them by themselves. However, repeating them in phrases can be very useful. My earrings are categorized as jewelry, earrings, post. First of all, repeat the first few words of you title as a tag or at least as much as can fit if the words are long. So Bird Stud Earrings are one tag for me. Then I went with bird earrings, stud earrings, post earrings, green post earrings, pink earrings, and pink bird earrings.

Seasonal or holiday related tags are very useful, so keep in mind what holidays are coming up as well. I added spring earrings and mothers day earrings to my list. Since earrings are also jewelry, I replaced earrings with jewelry for a few tags - spring jewelry and bird jewelry. I decided to use one tag to call them accessories, so I used spring accessories. I had one tag left, so I used it for my shop name, Haus of Ariella. You don't need to do that for every item, but it's good to have at least one or two items that are tagged with your shop just in case someone doesn't realize that there's a separate search for shops. 

Always use all 13 tags! Every tag is an opportunity for people to find your item, so take advantage of that. If you get stuck or can't decide which tag is better, the Seller Opportunity Tools prototype  can be useful for coming up with ideas for tags as well, especially the find inspiration tool. Using team names can be helpful for difficult listings as well, but please only use team tags of teams that you are actually a member of.

Tags and titles are not an exact science, so experiment! Vary them for each listing, even if the items are almost identical. And don't forget to check your shop stats to see what search terms people are using to find you. It's also a good idea to keep your shop fresh and relevant by changing tags and sometimes titles to fit current or upcoming seasons and holidays.

One very useful tool I've found for quickly editing titles and tags is Betsi. Betsi Lite is free, but it doesn't let you edit tags. However, I've been so happy with the paid version that I think it's worth every penny (currently about $72AUD for the entire year). If you want to give it a test drive, you can get the trial version for 7 days or 20 actions, whichever comes first. It also lets you bulk edit far more than titles and tags, so it's also really useful for updating descriptions, processing times, sections, etc.

Made by BlueGrin, this App is available on Etsy

Aquamarine - March Birthstone

Aquamarine is a blue-green stone that comes from Colombia and Brazil. It has been called "Water of the Sea", because of its color. The aquamarine is the stone of sailors, believing it would be protection for them on water. Folklore says the aquamarine will protect against gossip.

Photography Print - Seabreeze

If you were born between March 21 - April 20, your astrological sign is Aries. "The ram" is the Latin translation. Aries likes to lead and a good challenge. Aries goes through life with confidence and a enthusiastic outlook on everything. They can lack patience and often don't finish what they start.  Pisces are born from February 19 to March 20.

Pink and Turquoise Ribbon Necklace

Aquamarine is most powerful as a meditation stone, as it brings a great peace and serenity. This is the stone to help you be in touch with your spiritual being. This stone is used in deep meditations.

Healing properties of Aquamarine:

• Aquamarine is often associated with the thymus gland*. 
• It is very soothing worn as a necklace. 
• Healers use it to help reduce fluid retention. 
• It has been used to calm the nerves.

Aquamarine Swarovski Crystal Earrings

The Romans used the aquamarine for diseases of the stomach, and believed it could cure liver and throat troubles.

Hand Painted Starfish - Beach Decor

It is believed Aquamarine has these special properties:

• To bring love, affection and harmony to the wearer. 
• To bring happiness for those whose job is related to the sea. 
• If used by sailors the gemstones would guide them against evil spirits, help them overcome any storm and bring safety on their journeys. 
• Helps people to quell anger and provides emotional balance. 
• To purify water and grant it special healing powers. 

Jewelry Pendant Necklace

Aquamarine is a variety of beryl, (beryl means bluish-green color in Greek) which is in the same gemstone family as emerald and morganite. Though aquamarine and emerald belong to the same family, they are different. They are both beryllium aluminum silicates. Emerald is colored by trace amounts of chromium and and/or vanadium, aquamarine is colored by iron. Even though emerald and beryl have essentially the same specific gravity and refractive index, emerald tends to be hazy and included, while aquamarine typically has excellent transparency and clarity.

Fused Dichronic Glass Ashtray Aqua 

When buying aquamarine, be careful not to confuse it with blue topaz which is a far less valuable mineral (topaz and beryl are two different minerals). 

Blue Wooden Flower Box

*The thymus gland is an organ in the upper chest cavity that processes lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell that fights infections in the body. It is located directly just below the throat, behind the sternum. 

Written by Linda Blatchford