So, that was an exhaustive experiment that netted me zip, zero, zilch. To the tune of $35/month for ten months...
Not sure where I am going to go from here. Weebly was an absolute bust. I didn't have Google do a crawl until a few months ago, but that never worked either (very confusing) and I think partly because my fauxshowart.com URL was still somehow tied to my Etsy account when I was using Etsy Pattern (which was also a major fail).
So here I sit, trying to figure out my next move. I have considered offering items for sale through Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. Much more casual, no middleman, but there would be a trust issue buying from an independent seller. I'm just so tired of Etsy and their constant money grab.
I guess my next look will be at the more art-related sites, Aftcray, Artfire, and the like.
Fast-forward to July 2019...
....I didn't care for Aftcray, Artfire, etc. Perhaps it was because at the time I had over 300 items in my Etsy shop and even though there was a good importing tool, it would have taken centuries to get it all set up and readjusted.
So I'm still only on Etsy, but I have done something different. I pretty much let all of my items expire and I currently only have about 40 listed (few are of shrink plastic, more on that later). I know I have probably covered this in an earlier post, but three years ago, during the summer months, I was grossing $250/week at my little shop. Life was good. Then Etsy re-vamped their Etsy Search, and sales plummeted in May of 2017. They never did recover. From there it has gotten only worse and let's face it, when little money is coming in, the drive to spend all of those hours taking photographs, editing photographs, measuring each piece of jewelry, and writing out listings, loses its polish. I have more fun just making them, but then I look over and have a HUGE pile of finished items, none of them listed. Argh!
I am also on to new things. I am currently burying myself with recycled tin and cardboard jewelry. I absolutely love working with these mediums, almost as much as my beloved shrink plastic. There is more to it than the shrink plastic because I have to prepare the used tin metal and cardboard before I can even use them, they need to be cut up, sanded, textured, cut out, I then have to apply faux lithographs (a whole other involved step, a secret method, so don't ask...sorry!), and/or decide how I wish to further cut up a piece of recycled tin for use as-is without lithography. It's a much bigger undertaking, but the good part is, the applied images are pretty much water repellant, and the jewelry is metal, which is more sturdy than the shrink plastic.
Also, the quality of shrink plastic is horrible. Yes, I'll come across pockets of good stuff, then it goes bad and I'm on the search again. It's funny. I have amassed an absolutely enormous hoard of good plastic (at least 2000 sheets of it) not to mention about another 1000 sheets of both gold and silver (no longer made). I use it when it strikes my fancy, but I have zero intentions of further replacing it. Until a quality supplier comes along and stays, this woman is done searching.
