In which I continue to address long-standing issues.

I need better online marketing.

I stayed up too late trying to optimize the descriptions on my pins (pinterest) from my etsy shop, because the etsy search has been failing me. I used to search "tablet weaving" or a derivative term, and my items would come up at the top and all throughout the search results. Now, only a few of my items are found, and  they are pretty far down on the list. What happened? Do I need to change my tags? There is more weaving on the site than before, but that shouldn't completely prevent my pieces from being found.

My etsy shop has been eternally frustrating. I'm terrible at marketing. I try to learn, but apparently that's not going so well. And I don't exactly make enough money to pay someone to do it for me.

I can definitely improve what I am doing. I post new listings on my Faire Sisters facebook page, which automatically posts to my Faire Sisters twitter account. Then I repost to my personal facebook and twitter accounts. I also post new listings on Pinterest. To improve, I should create a more steady stream of posts by posting extant listings after they've been up for a while. I sometimes post listings  that are going to expire in the next 1-2 weeks, but that hasn't actually garnered sales. Holding discounts hasn't garnered sales either. Neither has having a coupon code on my business cards.

I don't do blogging marketing, which I know can be useful--it seems to work well for Marie. I am really bad at blogging about stuff I make, or really, documenting in any way, like progress photos. Remember my former "What I Made This Month" posts? And how I stopped doing them because it was too much for me to keep track of?

I don't want this blog to draw traffic from strangers, which means I'd have to make a specific Faire Sisters blog. How can I force myself to do blogging more? I rarely even do personal blogging anymore, or read others' blogs. And I think a big part of marketing blogging is having a blogosphere of other crafters, which means I'd have to find some and... participate.

And then there's monetizing blogs. Does that help? Does it draw traffic, or is it just monies by itself? (I can't imagine it bringing much money.) I hate going to craft/food blogs that have constant pop-ups and huge ads in the middle of the post. (No I don't want to subscribe to your stupid newsletter! I haven't even read the post yet!)

Yvette was helping me with marketing at some point (4 years ago, holy crap), and one of her big strategies was for me to build a craft blog. But it's bloody stressful. I can't go in and do SCA-style documentation for every historical piece I make. And I hate explaining things. I really do.

But the point is that I can use all the marketing strategies I can get, and unfortunately that means doing a lot of uncomfortable things. So I guess I'm going to make a Faire Sisters blog.

Side thought: I've been thinking about changing the brand name for a long time because Faire Sisters is pretty lame and I have to explain how it's spelled every time. Is it too late for that, though? Will I lose followers/customers? I can't think up a good alternative anyway...