Happy Sabbath. I know that I am feeling extra grateful for the Sabbath right now as things have been rather crazy around here. Our house is sold and we have to find a new home within the next few days, but it seems like as soon as our house sold the market dried up. It is a very discouraging situation, but we are determined to put our trust in God as we lift our voice in prayer and pleading to Him multiple times a day.
During this time of stress it is a great blessing to be able to put aside the stress of house hunting and simply commune with God. How wonderful it is to have a day where the stress of this life can be laid aside for a few hours, yet still able to lift up our petitions to His compassionate ear.
May you find rest from your burdens this Sabbath day and know the pleasure of laying all your cares and worries upon Him.
Ten months into my Etsy journey and I have made 19 hard earned sales. For months at a time it seems like there is an unwritten rule that I can only make 1 sale a month, no matter how many visitors come to my shop. Then, thankfully, there is a month like this one, where I get a slight boost and make 3 sales, and then back to crickets for weeks.
So, after listening to some You Tube videos, I have been trying to work on improving SEO and making a few changes to some of my pictures that I felt could use a better background. I still have a long way to go to make the needed improvements. But one lesson that I quickly learned, thanks in part to some mistakes that I have made in the past on KDP, is that the saying leave well enough alone or if its not broke, don’t fix it, is a very important saying for your Etsy shop.
If a listing is doing well, don’t tamper with it. After making a couple of changes to a listing that was doing fairly well, and experiencing a sudden slow down (you think I would have learned my lesson from KDP), I heard some very valuable advice from an Etsy youtuber. If you want to see if you can improve it, and there is another category that it can go under, make a copy, change the first picture, and make one or two tweaks so you know if the changes you made improved your listing or hurt it. Kind of like an A B testing at the optometrist office where the doctor ask if you see better with A or B or they are both about the same.
For now, since I do not get many sales, if my listing recently had a sale or two, I leave well enough alone and give that listing a chance. That way I do not sabotage a listing that might have taken off, but thanks to my tweaking instead ends up sinking like a lead balloon. Instead, if I want to make changes, I will see if I can add it to another category and make a change or two and hope and pray that at last one of my listing will take off and I can stop spending months wondering who wrote the invisible rule that I can only get 1 sale a month even if if it is only for$2
Happy Sabbath everyone. My family and I have been busy the past few weeks trying to sell our house and look for another one. Between that and a bunch of doctor’s appointments we have had quite a few low sleep nights. Thankfully last night we were able to go to bed early for the first time in over a month. It is amazing what a blessing a good night’s sleep can be.
Since I felt a bit more rested this Sabbath, I thought that I would take the time to share a fun Bible word scramble based upon Joel 1:11. I hope that you enjoy it.
It has been seven months since I opened my shop on Etsy and I am excited to say that just this week I made my 14th sale! It might not sound like much, but considering the craziness of this year, where there was a time I was afraid that I might lose not only my centurion grandmother but my mother and dog too, my iron repeatedly dropped so low that I had to have 6 iron infusions, and thanks to the financial impact of my father’s death and the rise in cost of living we have had to make the tough choice to put our house for sell, 14 sales is a very big deal.
As I look back at these first seven months on Etsy, I wish that I could say that I had learned the secret to writing a high converting description or made great strives in understanding SEO. It would be nice if at this early mile marker I could lean back and share the secret to creating eye catching product photos and videos. But seven months in and a whole lot of you tube videos and I am just as confused as ever. To a great degree I still feel like I am wearing a blind fold, have been spun around in a chair a hundred times, and am blindly trying to hit a dartboard in a 5000 square foot room. And then wonder why I miss the mark far more than I hit it.
Alas, my major take away from the first 7 months is that if I ever hope to make a success of my Etsy endeavor, is that the very first skill that I am going to have to learn is not SEO, illustration, or photography, but patience and endurance. While learning to create eye catching illustrations and heart catching product descriptions are important, having those skills will mean nothing if I give up five feet into the race.
It would be great if I would wake up tomorrow to find that I had become one of those overnight Etsy success stories. I would love to wake up and find out that my next step attempt at leveling up my shop by adding drop shipping had worked, and that my puzzle and notebook designs were such a hit that I had made a dozen, then a hundred, and by the end of a week a thousand orders. I would love nothing better than to wake up tomorrow and find out that I had sold so many digital packs on Etsy that I could call social security and tell them that I no longer needed SSI.
But sadly, that is just a dream. The overnight wonder is the exception, not the rule. And even though I work as hard as my chronically ill body will allow, giving my body’s version of 100 percent, the likely hood that I will be able to close my eyes and wake up to discover that overnight my dreams had come true is sadly nothing more than a pleasant dream. Worse yet, even though I push myself to the point of breaking, because of my body’s weakened state, 100 percent for me probably is the equivalent of a healthy persons 40 percent.
Whether I like it or not, if I want to be successful I am going to have become far more patient and persevering. The road between me and a life altering successful Etsy shop is going to be a long one. Much longer than it is for the healthy and more financially mobile. At every turn I am going to have to contend with the battle to learn how to stand out on Etsy, but how to deal with the barrage of obstacles created by episodes of eye closing migraines, overwhelming exhaustion from low iron, and days of being so pain ridden that even copying and pasting a few lines feels like a marathon of torture.
If I want to win this race, and I do, I am not only going to have to endure the frustration of views and clicks that bring nothing, where a whole month passes with only one $2 sale to reward my hard work, but the agony of wanting to move ahead and build up my shop inventory, but having to wait for a whole week or two to pass until I can get a much needed iron infusion so I can have the energy to do more than stare blankly at my screen.
On days where it feels like all hope is lost, where it seems like all the forces of misery are against me, and nothing I do ever works, I will have to find a way to muster up the courage to count the few steps towards my goal that I have made, and gather the courage to focus on my dream and trust that in the long run if I patiently persevere, the morning will come when I will realize that my long night of dreaming is over, as thankfully, my years of working and dreaming have become a reality.
If you are looking for some fun brain games, check out my Etsy shop where you will find a growing list of fun brain games and ctivities like this mind stimulating collection of word games and mazes.
And now you will also find cute puzzles and journals like this adorable schnauzer themed Happy Day Dream puzzle that comes in multiple sizes as well as a matching Happy Day Dream journal.
reflectionsaboutlifedotcom 