What does your business expect from Etsy? Do you think of them as your marketing department, whose job is to bring you viable leads? Do you think of them as a paid salesperson who is actively shaking the money tree to bring in revenue? Do you think of them as an advocate for your business? If you expect any of…
Category: Business Operations
Business Strategy Basics
Introduction: I write a lot about business strategy and that it’s important, but I just realized that I really haven’t shared my definition of it. To understand the term “strategy”, it helps to realize that the term is a shortened way to refer to your business’ “strategic plan,” so whenever I say “strategy” you can replace it with “plan” or…
The Goal Post
It’s that time of year again. Everyone has set their New Year’s goals to lose weight, make more money, and be a better person…. but I’m guessing very few people have thought about HOW. I usually recommend against basing goals on outcomes. The best goals are process-oriented and are based on what you are committing to DO. You have zero…
Seven Tips for Time Management in a Handmade Business
One of the problems that growing businesses often have, especially ones with a single person in them, is getting it all done. Whether your business has one person or 500 people, the product needs to get made, the accounting needs to be done, and marketing campaigns need to be put together and released, new products need to be designed, and…
Reading your Etsy Stats Part 3: Extras
If you haven’t already, you might want to check out the first two parts of this series. In the first part, I covered the basic terminology of eCommerce stats. In the second part, I talked about which statistics were the most important to keep an eye on. If you’re not sick of reading about stats just yet, I’ll just give…
Reading your Etsy Stats Part 2: The Statistics That Matter
Why Statistics Matter If you are new to business statistics, it would be a good idea to read Part 1 of this series, which defines many of the terms used. Before we dig into the stats any further, let me address a critical question: Q: Why do my statistics matter? A: They give you two things: Raw information about how…
Reading your Etsy Stats Part 1: Terminology
Etsy gives you a dashboard full of statistics to help you understand what is going on with your shop. The thing to keep in mind is that they only give you raw data. It’s up to you to analyze it to know what it actually says. The most important thing to remember is that business data tells a story over…
Business-athalon
You often hear the expression, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” When we’re talking about running a business, the difference is way more than that. Business requires you to excel in several unrelated activities. It’s more like a triathlon, which requires different skill and equipment to swim, bike, and then run…. but business has a lot more than three tasks.…
One Step at a Time
There are so many tasks to do in a business, it’s hard to know which one to do next. You see all kinds of articles telling you which advertising platform to use or which eCommerce host is the best… but to a new business it’s kind of like talking to a brand new triathlete about which $12,000 triathlon bike they…
Keeping up with the Joneses
Get Your News Delivered to You Did you ever meet someone who just always seems to know what’s going on? They know about new product announcements, what company just got bought out, which website just announced new features, and which new books are worth getting. You’ve already got enough going on, so how could you possibly research all this stuff?…