Progress So Far.....

Over the last couple of days I have been tinkering away. I have been stamping out a presence on the Etsy forums and in the chat rooms and have found a number of sellers to heart - a few of which have reciprocated. I am beginning to see why the forums are such an important place to network. I have found my self getting more satisfaction out of looking at items for sale by people in the forums than by simply searching.

This leads me to my next endeavour and it is to get more online exposure -in a nutshell I feel like by asking my friends to visit my website they will feel compelled to buy something and I don't like the idea that I might be pushing my craft onto them. This is why I feel gthat I need to make more 'online' friends. I feel that these people will be more interested in what I have to offer in the area of jewelry making because it is likely that they will be visiting my sites because they have a genuine interest rather than having a look because they think thay should just because they are my friends.

I have decided that I want to begin featuring some other jewelry creators website/blogs/shops. This is mostly because I feel that it is likely that I am going to run out of material otherwise - as much as there is that I want to get done - I don't know whether I will be able to keep up with my goal of posting on this blog every couple of days with what I will have achieved.

So hopefully by my next post I will have discovered my first subject.

Over the last couple of days I have been furiously working on designing some new creations - I am beginning to get low on finished pieces. I am finding it easier of late to draw inspiration from others rather than to simply copy like I did when I first started jewelry making. So I will get back to it....

Introducing TracyLacy Trinkets!

Well, first a bit about me. I have recently (about 6 months ago) taken up jewelry making. It has become such an obsession that I now have a huge collection. I decided recently to put some of my items on Etsy to try my luck selling. Etsy has now become my new obsession! To the point that it is eating into my jewelry making time!

I have decided to write this blog in order to track the progress of my Etsy shop and my journey into online selling. I am looking in the future to maybe begin a website so I think that will also become part of my journey.

So, an update about how I'm going so far. I have managed to sell 2 items - granted they were a matching set of earring and bracelet which I sold to the same person, so I think the fact that I have had two sales could be called lucky! Here are the two items I have managed to part with:

Since then however, I have had no more. This is not getting me down because I have been reading the forums and there seems to be a lot of other sellers in my position - some who have been a seller for longer than me - who have not yet sold anything. There has been plenty for me to occupy myself with on Etsy whilst I anxiously await my next sale.

I have been scouring the forums for advice, tips and tricks. I have found a wealth of knowledge here and it has become invaluable. There seems to be no question that goes unanswered. I have also recently begun dipping my toes in the chat rooms - I think this may be a very good place to get some exposure.

Aside from this I have taken on the advice that setting up a flickr account is a good idea, and have uplaoded a couple of pictures of each of my items that I have for sale, as well as some other items that I haven't offered for sale yet. I'm hoping that this might generate some interest and allow some people who are not currently Etsy members to be exposed to my items. You never know my luck! Feel free to take a look - http://www.flickr.com/photos/tracylacytrinkets - I am happy for any new contacts!

So to round up, I have a few things in the pipeline - my plans are to do some extensive research into building a website to get exposure away from Etsy. I also need to spend some time making somemore items - my inventory is becoming a little lean! I am going to try and reach a target of listing a new item every 1-2 days. I also want to try and set up some sort of mailing list or news letter for my shop.