Off With Her Head! - Sizing Photos for Etsy

Do your thumbnails look like this? Did Marie Antoinette come for a visit? This is such a gorgeous pattern. Why not show it! Resize your photos so that your customers can see the whole image before they click on it. 

Check out the screenshot below.. If you were shopping, which would draw your eye? 

The image to the left has been edited . You don't need to go that far to make sure the whole picture comes through. I scan at 200 DPI with no borders. 

Next I resize the picture so that the longest side is 700 pixels. Then - I make a canvas that is 835 pixels square. 

You don't need to purchase a photo editing program to do this. You can use 

Here's a site that has the Top Free Photo Editing Software. 

How to Follow a Blog

How to Follow a Blog, let me count the ways.....

Mary Beth RetroMonkeys

Every blog has a way to follow it. Some easier than others. 

                                                                                                                                      

Wordpress - If you have a Wordpress account, you simply click the follow button on the top of the page. The new posts will be sent to your "reader". If you do not have a wordpress account, there will be a Follow button in the bottom right corner. A box will pop up asking for an email address that you want the posts to be sent to. Done!                                                                                                                                                 

Next is Blogger by Google. Blogger is what we use for this blog as well as for patternpatter.blogspot.com  Blogger is easy to follow whether you have a Google account or not.  

Each blog has a Members section usually to the right side of the page. 

As you can see in the image, If you have a Google account you simply click on Join this Site. You can choose to follow publicly or privately if you wish to be anonymous. If you are following privately your Google Account profile picture will not be displayed. To learn more about Public vs Private, CLICK HERE.

To follow the blog without a google account, Click on the Join this Site button. A larger box will open and display the choices of how to follow. The boxes (marked with an arrow) will expand the followers box. After you complete your sign up, you can open this to make sure that your profile is there.

Now for my personal favorite. Bloglovin! Bloglovin is a great way to consolidate all of the blogs you follow into one email! You can add any blog at all to your feed. Simply sign up at Bloglovin.com  You can sign up using your Facebook account or with an email address. Make sure to adjust the settings once you have registered! 

Many blogs have a button for bloglovin. If it does, simply click the button to add it to your feed. If there is no button on the blog you wish to follow, you can add it to bloglovin. First enter the blog you are looking for. I searched by copying the url. The one I was looking for showed up so I simply would click +Follow.  If it doesn't show up, the box on the right has Add the blog to Bloglovin.  Click that link

enter the url of the blog and click Add Blog

Bloglovin is my favorite! It gives you everything you want to see in an easy format. If you have a blog it also gives you stats for that too. 

Questions? Just ask in the comment section and I'll do my best to answer. Or - go to the help section of the site. 

  

Wikia Vintage Pattern Link Upload Tutorial

Wikia Vintage Patterns - Link Adding Tutorial

This tutorial has been edited using Windows 7 Home.

1. Search the Wikia for your pattern number, if found follow instructions below.

Be sure that your pattern is the correct picture as many patterns have duplicate numbers are are added as "A" or "B" and so on.

2. At top right is the contribute tab, click for menu, select "edit this page". Click box at top right "Minor edit", drop down and type "Add source/vendor external link", hit enter.

NOTE: For users other than Window 7 Chrome, if you have problems at this stage after hitting enter you may need to bypass the enter now step (after typing source/vendor external link) and go on to step 3.

3. At this point open your published listing up on Etsy, right click over the description for another window tab, click "Copy link address".

4. You are now ready to scroll down to Source/Vendors list, if you are the first entry, click at first dot under title, if not go to end of last entry, click and you will drop down to next line --STOP--. This is where it gets confusing but I promise to make this as painless as possible.

 Scroll up to the button with the chain link as seen here: 

5 Click the link, another window with pop up:

8. At #1, Target page or URL box, right click so that your pattern listing link will show in box, drop down to text to display box (slot) and type your shop name, how ever you want it to show up. At #3, click "to an external link" and #4 click "OK".

9. Now your name will appear at the Source/Vendor list under the pattern photo. --STOP-- This is another simple but sometimes forgotten finish:

10. Be sure to click "Publish". You will see the page change and with the new page your edits will show up in the right hand corner:

10. Now before exiting this page go to the top address bar, right click and copy for the Pattern Patter Team's backlink page!

You have now added a backlink.

Courtesy of www.etsy.com/shop/VintageNeedleFinds

Pinterest - Business Pages

Pinterest is a great way to showcase your shop! Here's a few ideas of how to make Pinterest work for you. 

Pattern Patter Team has team boards! If you do not have access to them, contact the social media leader and don't forget to provide your email address! She will send you an invitation! The team boards do have a few rules. 
#1 Post only your own listings to them
#2 The children's, crafts, etc have their own boards. Please do not post them in the Decades Boards. 

How do I get a Business Account? If you already have an account with Pinterest, you can convert to a business account. To read about how to set it up, go to:  https://help.pinterest.com/en/articles/set-your-business-account

How Can Pinterest Work for You? 
Easy! Here are a few tips that I discovered on The Guardian Website

First - Promote yourself as an expert. Post links to blog posts that you have written, create lookbooks, advertising campaigns, customer testimonials, etc.  

Next, Form a network - encourage re-pins and Pin-it's. Suggest that potential customers pin the items that they like to a board. To form a network, type in a keyword in Pinterest search. You can search Pinners, Pins, or Boards. So, for example, I searched boards for "sewing". I have other pattern sellers in my network. What I want is sewists. I look through the boards for pinners who sew. I chose a few to follow in hopes that the will follow me back. 

The third way to make Pinterst work for you is to keep it fresh and relevant. As the writer of the Guardian article, Jess Collins  states "Pins last forever so make sure you keep your content timeless and sticky so it remains of value."  So, if you are going to post Christmas items, remember that they stay there all year round unless you remove them. 

Forth
If there is a picture, there should be a pin. Any pictures on your website should become a pin. Use the Pin-it button and encourage the visitors to your site to do the same. Also, each of the Pinterest Boards should be strong enough to stand alone as a representation of your shop. 

Number Five - Rich Pins!   Rich pins are promoted Pins. They contain more information for your customers.  Jess says; "These enhanced pins are well worth their salt, showcasing more sales information, live stock and pricing and free automatic emails to anyone who has pinned a product if you amend the pricing or run an offer." 

The last way to make Pinterest work for your business is - Make sure the caption enhances the photo. Make it relevant, give them information that makes them want to visit your site. It counts toward SEO and Google search so make it good. 

I want to make sure that Jess Collins gets credit for this post. I rephrased and consolidated but Jess made it an easy interesting read. Here is Jess' info: Jess Collins is creative director at Type Communications. You can follow her on Twitter @Jess_Type

Holiday Merchandising

Holiday Merchandising Guide

by  Mary Andrews, Etsy's Merchandising team

As things ramp up for the busy holiday season here at Etsy, we’re excited to share our updated Holiday Merchandising Guide. This comprehensive report is intended to provide information and planning resources for the holidays. We recommend bookmarking the page for easy reference in the coming months.

Throughout the guide, you’ll find information around key marketing campaigns, strategies for promotion and dates to remember, as well as our forecast for holiday trends. You’ll also find an overview of popular item categories and tips for merchandising your existing products to make them appealing to holiday shoppers. While reading, think about how you can use your own artistic voice to infuse these merchandising themes throughout your shop — in your item listings, photos, shop announcements, descriptions, tags, titles, social media promotions and more.

Think Like a Shopper

One of the best strategies for holiday merchandising is to update your existing listings by getting in the mindset of the shopper. Generally speaking, shoppers are looking for gifts by type, price and recipient — or some combination of all three. To capture their attention in your item descriptions, emphasize why your item would make a great gift based on their needs and highlight examples of potential recipients in your product descriptions. Below are some tips to get you started.

Gifts by Type: Help shoppers understand how your line of products fits into their gift list by describing the types of categories they’re looking for. Holiday shopping categories typically include the following: Décor and Entertaining; Fashion; Gadgets and Games; Useful and Utilitarian; Keepsakes, Novelty and Stocking Stuffers; and Party Favors and Thank Yous.

Gifts by Price: Having a range of price points in your shop will allow you to expand your target market. Popular pricing buckets include $25 and under; $50 and under; and $100 and under, in addition to higher-priced custom and luxury items. Read 3 Ways to Refresh Your Product Line for tips on diversifying your offerings with different types of materials and modes of production to appeal to different budgets.

Gifts by Recipient: Help shoppers check off everyone on their list by describing the type of person (or groups of people) your item would make a great gift for and why. The majority of gift recipients fit into the following categories: Women, Men, Parents, Grandparents, Teens, Children, Hosts and Hostesses, Coworkers and Bosses, Extended Family, Friends, and Workforce. Take your merchandising to the next level by describing the creative persona your product would be perfect for; do you make items perfect for the fashionista, tech lover or entertainer? Play up these creative personas in your item descriptions to help shoppers visualize their perfect gift.

Check the Trend Forecast 

Take advantage of holiday gift trends by putting your creative lens and unique spin on ideas that resonate with your line of products. If you’re not interested in developing new products or following trends, think about adding props or styling elements that appeal to trend-savvy shoppers. Here are 10 holiday trends on our radar.

Mobile Accessories: With the release of the latest mobile devices, new ways to accessorize, store, travel and stay plugged into our favorite gadgets are at the top of gift lists this season.

Social Media Tie-Ins: While we’re talking tech, everyone’s upping their social game. Unique ways to capture the conversation are oh-so-of-the-moment. We’re seeing clever spins on everything from Instagram photo gifts to hashtag wall art — how will you keep it social?

Geometric Prints: We’re taking note of different plays off of geometric shapes, graphics and patterns.

Wordplay: Clever turns of phrase will be big this season, on everything from hand-lettered mugs to vintage signs.

Materials: Finishes and materials we’re taking note of this year and into 2015 include marble, agates and geodes, copper, natural wood, concrete, porcelain, stoneware, enamel, waxed canvas and wools.

Map Out Your Holiday Marketing Strategies

Once you have a good handle on your target customers and seasonal offerings, consider key shopping holidays. It can pay off to prep and list relevant product lines a few months in advance, since many press outlets start planning holiday coverage in late summer and early fall. Etsy also plans out promotions and works with media outlets in advance. Use Etsy’s Holiday Planning Calendar to create your own to-do list and deadlines. Check back on the Seller Handbook blog in the coming weeks for more information on Etsy’s holiday marketing initiatives.

Written by: Mary Andrews helps lead Etsy’s Merchandising team. She’s passionate about helping independent businesses creatively leverage their brands. When she’s not exploring the depths of Etsy for unseen treasures, you’ll find her nerding out over data, taking on a new DIY project or researching plant varieties to try growing with her husband in their urban garden.

Find the entire article here:  https://blog.etsy.com/en/2014/2014-holiday-merchandising-guide/

Shop Resources

Why your Titles and Tags are so Important!

By Cloe Cessna of Cloes Closet and Shae Willhite of Sweet Beads

The titles you give your listings is one of the most crucial parts of getting Etsy SEO right. Common sense tells us that when we want to rank for certain keywords in the search engine, we need to mention these keywords in the title. Without these keywords, Etsy would have no clue as to what our listing was about and how to rank it. The key

here, though, is not how many times this word appears in your title, but rather the order of importance.  Here’s a very important thing to remember: the first word in your listing title will weigh the heaviest and will have the biggest chance of ranking in the search results.

For example, my stats tell me that “Vogue Pattern” or “Vogue Patterns” are one of my highest search terms or keywords… so you will notice that I put it as near to the first, second or third word of my title.

Your Etsy listing title has a maximum of 140 characters, and you should use them wisely. This is why for one, you shouldn’t repeat keywords.  For your ranking, it doesn’t matter if a word appears one, two, or three times in your listing title. What does matter is the position you put it and which word is at the very beginning of your listing. Also make

sure to have your title sound like a natural sentence. It should be easy for buyers to read about your listing without having to skim through a long list of keywords.  Also, remember that people are searching by phrases now, so make sure that your title is fairly readable, and can be broken down into phrases, such as “womens shift dress”  “vintage 1960s simplicity”, because you may not be able to get a whole phrase into tags, and you have valuable real estate with your title.

Along with your listing title and tags, your description is by far one of the most important elements of your Etsy SEO. If you get your description wrong, chances are high that you’re not going to be found.  in both Etsy and Google’s search engines. The trick here is the same one that is working very well with the title: sort your words and sentences in order of importance.  Both Etsy and Google weigh heavy on the first words you mention in your description, so make sure you write about your listing using highly relevant and narrowed down words to describe it, and work your way down using more general descriptions about it. You may have a lovely story about your item and how it was inspired, but leave it for the end of your description.  When it comes to the number of times you use a keyword, your listing description does in fact have a higher chance of boosting your Etsy ranking when you use targeted keywords about three times in your

descriptions. Make sure to use natural sentences and don’t put the keywords close to each other – but mentioning a keyword you’d like to rank for in the beginning, half way through and finally at the end has been proven to improve rankings in Etsy’s search engine. Next to using your target keywords, your description should be all about describing your listing in the best way possible, giving a potential customer a good idea of what owning your piece will be like. If you were buying this item, what would you want to know?

When you want to be ranked for a certain keyword, frankly when you want to be ranked at all, you need ‘tags’. Tags are keywords that Etsy asks you to add to your listing when adding it to your shop. With these keywords, Etsy will know how to rank your items and understand more of what your listing is about. Along with your listing titles and descriptions, these tags will determine if and when you show up in the search results. Just as in your listing title, these keywords need to be chosen accurately and with care.

You have 13 tags and you should use them all! The reason why we’re making our keywords very specific, is because it’s a lot easier marketing to a highly targeted audience than to literally everybody. For this reason, you shouldn’t use very broad keywords when ‘tagging’ your listing, but terms that are narrowed down to the buyers that will have a much higher possibility of actually seeing and then buying your item. Think about it: when somebody finds you this way, your listing is exactly what they were looking for, and they had the possibility of finding you because you took care of being very precise in your keywords, instead of being buried down in a sea of immense competition.  When adding tags to your listings, take into consideration that the more precise your keyword matches the search phrase used by the Etsy shopper, the higher you will rank.  While being very specific and narrowed down to the very essence of your products is a good way to market your Etsy listings, some terms that are more broad could help you get exposure as well. Some shoppers might not even know what they are looking for when they head over to Etsy – they’re just looking around and getting ideas.

Here are some examples of broad terms to add to your keywords: 

• Moods: Anything that conveys a certain setting or mood, such as; 

‘Romantic’, ‘Happy’, ‘Quirky’, ‘Corporate’, ‘Cute'

• Colors: What color scheme could it belong to? Pastel, bright, vintage,

dark, pink, grey, black.

• Events: Is your work suitable for a certain event, such as weddings,

birthdays, anniversaries, holidays?

How to use Tumblr to Promote your Shop

Using Tumblr to Promote Your Shop

What is Tumblr?  Tumblr is a blogging and social media platform that has small groups that are focused on a specific topic. Some of the groups of interest to our team are vintage fashions, DIY, and crafts. Each group has followers communicating with each other and sharing each other’s content.

In order to promote your Etsy shop successfully on Tumblr, you need to join the communities relevant to your items and then post consistently. Here are five tips for making the most of Tumblr’s features to drive traffic to your Etsy shop.

1. Design You Page 

Tumblr offers some great, customizable templates. Select a theme that goes well with your posting formats. Make your photos pop by using a background that doesn’t distract the browser from the post.  If you don’t like the template that you chose, change it! You aren’t locked into a template. You can change it anytime. However, remember that you want to keep the focus on your posts so don’t change things around too often.

2. Your Tumblr Page Name

When you are signing up, chose your name carefully. Branding is important. If you can use your shop name, that’s great! That isn’t always possible though. Try to use keywords that are relevant as well as catchy.

         3. Be Creative - Images

When other Tumblr users follow you, your posts will show up on their Dashboards. As they scroll through the posts of all of the blogs they follow, what is going to make them pause or even click on your post?

·         If a listing has an interesting detail, post a close up of that detail. Peak some curiosity!  Sharp, colorful photos with clean backgrounds can grab someone’s attention. Photo editing can be an advantage on  a visual blog. The best size for Tumblr is 500 x 700 pixels. View the (Tumblr Etsy tag) for more photo ideas.

  

    4. Don’t Be All Business!

Look What I Made! 

         Using social media as a promotional tool is the main purpose for some of us. However, you are a human and showing your human side can be appealing to your followers. Share what you like to do, some life facts, what’s up! You can gain more followers that will take an interest in your shop if you diversify your posts. Did you make something cool? Did you cook a great dinner last night? Take a picture of it and share!

Great Hair Day

         Get personal!  Post some details about the creative process and materials, or even just a text post about how your day was. Post a picture of you! There are those days that your hair works, the make-up looks great – post one of those! Let people feel they know you. They are more likely to visit your shop if they like you.  

Remember to have fun. Discover other people with similar interests, help your team mates by promoting their posts and they can do the same for you. 

RetroMonkeys