Etsy - If You Craft, You Need to Be on It

Etsy...Have you heard of it? If you're familiar with this megahouse crafting website, when you tell others about it, you end up saying the name twice and almost always spelling it. "Etsy, yeah..... Etsy. E-t-s-y. It's basically an E-bay for crafts."

And that's what it is - a cross between Amazon and Ebay where small, large, and growing businesses list their handmade items or supplies. You can buy everything from peacock feather earrings to gorgeous handsewn t-shirts to edgy calendars. Whatever you want to buy, Etsy has it, and it's handmade.

Every Etsy seller has their own dowmain name and personal store. (My username is jjcrochet and my etsy website is http://www.jjcrochet.etsy.com/.) Anyone can sign up for their own Etsy shop. Etsy's fees are also extremely cheap:

• free to join/ set up a store
• $.20 to list an item for 6 months
• 3.5% fee when you sell an item

My experience with Etsy has been nothing but positive; having my Etsy store has increased my sales ten-fold. Like any ambitious, up-and-coming crafter, I purchased a domain name when I first opened my small crochet business. Even after heavily promoting and trying to generate traffic to my website through paid advertisements, I just wasn't getting the type of resonse I wanted. Finally, after a few unsuccessful months of trying to make a business on my own domain, I decided to take the plunge and opened my own Etsy shop in December 2005.

After those first few months, I realized that Etsy would be the new home of all JJCrochet products. I canceled my domain and hosting package and moved all my items into my Etsy store. While there's not a lot of freedom as far as design options and layout of your store, as a busy college student trying to run a business between classes and late night studying sessions, I was happy I didn't have to spend hours trying to write my own HTML code.

Through a simple 5-step process, you type descriptions, upload pictures, and select keywords that relate to your item. It is so easy - follow the template to upload items then organize your store and group your items by section and they're ready for sale.

The main reason Etsy is such a success and has over 3,000 new users join each day, is that it's more than just a website - it's a community. Etsy just isn't a place for people to come, upload their items and wait for sales. The Etsy team has made it so much more than that. There are forums, personal swaps, and chat rooms where you can connect with craftsters and fellow entrepreneurs all over the world. It's as much of a buyer-friendly as it is a seller-friendly website. Sellers and buyers alike are what make up the core of Etsy; it's the community that makes Etsy the great site that it is today.

If you're a crafter looking for a way to generate exposure to a large market and wanting to do so with minimal effort, try Etsy....you won't be disappointed.