Sunday, October 10, 2010

Setting up Shop on Etsy

Now that I've completed the sconces, I figure it's time I set up shop on Etsy. There is certainly an overabundance of advice for newcomers to the online craft world, and it would be easy to get stuck in an endless loop of reading the available information. Taking my usual approach, I just plunged in and registered on Etsy as OutOfWoods, which matches my email address and Twitter account and is close enough to the name of this blog. I also set up a matching PayPal business account to accept payments and have been perusing Etsy to get some ideas about how my page should look.

I am also looking into shipping options. I ordered a Flat Rate shipping kit from the Postal Service to see if that will work for me. The Postal Service provides free shipping boxes for this method and each box size has a fixed postage charge. The fixed charge would allow me to charge the same postage to all customers, but the free boxes only come in a few sizes that may not be appropriate for the items I will be shipping. My other option would be to get a postal scale, some packing materials, and charge according to weight and shipping zone.

None of this is as enjoyable as actually creating the items I want to sell, but I can't see any way to avoid the details. I think things will be easier to handle if I concentrate on one consideration at a time, so I will be settling on a shipping method first. Once that is done, I can tackle shop design, etc.

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