During my trip to the US, I met the loveliest fellow Etsy’ers. Amongst them were Elles Lanfer and Saskia de Winter. Both Dutchies, living abroad in California.
(sigh… California!)

Saskia had just delivered a baby (three weeks old!) when I met her. And still she took the time to see me and share her advice on being successful on Etsy!

From all the inspiring conversations I had, I gathered the following Etsy tips:

• Say goodbye to the fear of being commercial. Try to identify with Etsy buyers, investigate what they are looking for and adjust your listings to this knowledge
• People tend to look for gifts when cruising Etsy. Make products, not only prints!
• Popular products are products that tell a story, for instance about your city or country
• Work on your photography skills, good product photography makes all the difference (still working on this one…)
• Get over your wedding allergies (thankfully this intimate wedding did the job)! Weddings pay the bills!
• Make sure your shop looks full, have a large array of products ready for people to choose from, but still retain a simple (visually quiet) and cohesive look overall
• Be open to customizing, and tell your crowd about this option!
• And then for a good-old-sneaky-commercial-thinking-bastard-trick: use Statsy Clockbot for regular relisting to get more views

All this resulted in me deleting all my old stuff from my shop and putting in new prints, but also my first product: Dutch Dwellings, or “Hollandse Huisjes”. You can now buy five varieties of little Dutch houses, each representing another Dutch city (Leiden, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Volendam and Lutjebroek). More versions to come!

And guess what… they have been blogged about already! I am so proud.
As well as very happy that there are people out there that are doing a much better job at product photography than I am…!

(the Dutch Dwellings, or Hollandse Huisjes, are for sale at my Etsy shop: ellenvesters.etsy.com).

Oh Marie:

Enter my Attic:

 Mintstudio Creations:

Zilverblauw: