Tag Archives: marketing

How are Customers Finding You on Etsy? – Interpreting & Utilizing Your Etsy Shop Stats, part 5

etsy statsHi there! Welcome to our fifth and final article in this Marketing Magic series on effective ways to use and interpret your Etsy shop stats. I hope you’ve found this helpful thus far! Here are the links to the previous articles for a recap:

In Test #3, we discussed analyzing the various sources that generate traffic to your Etsy shop. On a similar note, today we’ll discuss traffic sources from within Etsy.com that lead viewers to your shop. So we’re not talking about people doing a Google search, we’re talking about people that are either already browsing Etsy.com or already somewhere in your Etsy shop.

#4. Review Your Traffic Sources FROM ETSY

The Thought Process 

Once a viewer finds your shop or listing, however they found it, you want to keep them there (by “there” I mean within your shop) as long as possible. Think about if you owned a brick & mortar shop. Customers would come in and browse, see an item they like, possibly add it to their cart, move on and see another item they liked, and keep browsing on and on. Your internet shop is different. They might land on a listing page from a Google or Etsy search and never see the rest of your shop other than that one listing. It’s up to you to help them browse.

The longer a viewer spends browsing your listings, the likelier you will be to make a sale, or at least get some items favorited. There are several things you can do to keep a viewer browsing within your shop, and you can use your Etsy shop stats to monitor your progress.

The Testing Procedure 

Once again, filter to a weekly or monthly view of your stats. Check out the other box below your graph, titled “traffic sources on Etsy”. This is basically giving you a drilldown of the “etsy.com” number listed under the “traffic sources” box to the left. Examine where your inner-Etsy views are coming from. Possible traffic sources from within Etsy can include the following:

    • Your Shop – when a viewer clicks on a listing from the home page of your shop
    • Your Listings – when a viewer clicks on a link (to another listing, to your shop home page, to a category section, etc.) from a link within another one of your listings
      etsy titanium earrings

      turquoise rosette titanium studs in my shop – see how etsy automatically adds some links to other listings in my shop

      traffic to etsy shop

      • Search – a viewer searches for something from the Etsy.com home page
      • Search within your shop – a viewer searches for something from the search bar on your Etsy shop page
      • Other possible traffic sources include the Etsy home page (score!), treasuries, favorites, convos, Etsy’s browse sections, teams, or another shop’s listing.

Questions to Ask Yourself Now 

      • Where is most of my inner-Etsy traffic coming from?
      • Do I have a substantial amount of views coming from within my shop, like from listings and shop sections?
      • Are there steps I can take to increase the links and connectivity within my shop to increase a viewer’s browse time?
      • Are there steps I can take to increase my page ranking in Etsy search results?
      • Have treasuries and my participation in Etsy teams or forums been a good way to drive traffic to my shop?
      • What can I do to increase my chances of being featured in treasuries and on the Etsy front page?

Lessons Learned

Unless you were featured on the front page, you want most of your traffic to be coming from Your Shop and Your Listings. Yes, search traffic from Etsy.com is great, that means your tags are doing their job. However, lots of views from your shop, listings, and section pages means that people are sticking around after they found you via search or whatever other method. It means they like your shop!

To boost these views, make sure your listings have helpful links included in them. You can link to other relevant listings or categories. Here are some examples of effective listing linking:

      • “If you like this style of ____ check out my other _____ here.”
      • “Check out my entire line of _______s or my shop section of _____ here.”
      • “If you’d like this _____ but in another color/size, see my _______ here.”
      • “Back to our shop here _______”
      • “Check out the _______ that matches this listing.”
etsy links

another example from my turquoise rose studs listing – see all the links to other places in my shop that I have sloppily circled

The idea is to think like your target customer and provide them little links and breadcrumbs to other parts of your shop that will make their lives easier and increase your chances of making a sale. The good news is that these days, Etsy does a pretty good job of adding a lot of links for you already. On each listing page, they will automatically add links to other listings in that same section, a link to convo you, and a link to your about page.

Don’t forget to monitor your progress after you’ve tweaked your listing links and any other keyword or tagging work. Check your traffic stats on at least a monthly basis to see if your views from Etsy searches or inner-shop browsing has paid off!

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We hope you’ve enjoyed our series on how to analyze and interpret your Etsy shop stats! We’ve discussed just some of the many processes you can perform to effectively utilize and analyze your Etsy Shop Stats. After running through these tests, remember to continue checking your stats to see if your efforts have improved your traffic. Our goal is to get more people to your shop and increase your sales. Happy selling!

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Where’s Your Traffic Coming From? – Interpreting & Utilizing Your Etsy Shop Stats, part 4

how to use your etsy statsOur latest series of Marketing Magic articles discusses how to analyze your Etsy Shop Stats to help increase your views and boost sales. Read the intro to the series here to get started. You can currently read about test #1, reviewing your keywords, and test #2, sorting your superstar listings from the duds.

We’re now moving on to test #3, reviewing the sources that lead traffic to your Etsy shop.

#3. Review Your Traffic Sources

The Thought Process

How are viewers and potential customers finding you? Are they searching for a keyword or phrase on Etsy or Google that eventually brings them to you? Are they clicking on a pin on Pinterest, or were they reading a blog article about your product? There are so many ways customers can find you; it’s essential to monitor how viewers are and are not finding your products. This is especially true if you are participating in any sort of marketing campaign, like using a Facebook business page, participating in a giveaway, or pinning your items. You want to know if you are using your time effectively or wasting energy.

 The Testing Procedure

Let’s take some time to check the traffic sources listed on our Etsy shop stats page to see how viewers are finding you. Once again, filter to a monthly or weekly view and check out the “traffic sources” box just below the graph. This box lists all the places that your views are coming from.

lazy owl boutique

“Etsy.com” means traffic that came from “within” Etsy, via search or other internal Etsy links. Note that these views are further broken down in the box to the right, “Traffic Sources on Etsy”.

Direct traffic generally means someone who typed in your Etsy shop URL, clicked on a bookmark, or clicked on a link in an email or on their phone.

This box will include third party search engines (like Google or Yahoo), Pinterest, Facebook, blog URLS, and other social media sites as sources as well if they are applicable. You also might see traffic from Google Product Listing Ads that Etsy has placed on your shop’s behalf.

 Questions to Ask Yourself Now

While looking at your list of traffic sources, think about the following questions:

  • Did I perform any marketing or promoting efforts this month to generate traffic to my shop? Do I see an increase in views from a previous month due to this?
  • How much traffic do I see resulting from my social media sites (like from Facebook, Pinterest, your tweets, etc.)?
  • What social media outlet seems to be working the best for me this month and bringing in the most traffic?
  • Do I have any traffic coming from an unexpected source, like a blog or site I didn’t know about? You’ll want to be sure to check these sources out, if anything, to say thank you!
  • How much direct traffic do I have? This is potentially from people with your business card or who have heard about you via word of mouth.
  • Did I buy any online advertising space this month? If so, how much traffic am I seeing from this?
  • What social media sites or other sources seem to be missing from my list this month?

Lessons Learned

This analysis helps you determine whether your marketing and promotion efforts are effective. It can also help you decide where to allocate your precious time. For example, is Pinterest bringing in twice as much traffic as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram? then spend more time pinning.

This test is also helpful if you compare your results and traffic sources to past time periods. If you’ve ramped up your Facebook marketing efforts or started a new blog, you can see whether traffic from those sites are increasing over time.

This process can also be particularly educational if done following a specific marketing effort on your part. For instance…

  • Did you just do a craft show and hand out lots of business cards? Monitor to see if handing out all those cards helped increase your direct traffic.
  • Are you selling on a group deals site or participating in a giveaway on a blog? Monitor to see if you’re getting traffic from that source to make your participation worthwhile.
  • Did you just write a blog article about your product or brand, or start a new blog recently? Keep an eye on your traffic to see if your new work is affecting traffic.

This analysis will tell you what’s working, and you can obviously capitalize on that. But don’t forget to look for what sources are missing from your list. Are you tweeting all the time and not seeing any incoming traffic from Twitter? Then you may need to reallocate your time or adjust your Twitter marketing plan to be more effective. Did you pay for ad space or participate in a giveaway and see hardly any incoming traffic from that? Now you’re armed with more info before participating in something similar next time.

How are your traffic numbers for Etsy.com and Google/Yahoo/Bing searches? Monitor these stats over time to see if you’re doing well with SEO/keyword tagging or if it’s time to adjust and boost your page rankings.

The general idea behind this test is two-fold: 1) You are learning how to use your time wisely. Spend your marketing time on the venues that are driving the most of your traffic. 2) You want people to find your shop and products from a healthy mix of searches and links around the interwebs. You need lots of both types of traffic to be truly successful. We recommend a site like IFTTT.com to set up automated processes on your social media outlets to help increase traffic from these sources.

Check back soon for our fourth test with your Etsy shop stats. We hope you’re enjoying this series! What questions do you have about reading and analyzing your Etsy shop stats?

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Sorting the Superstars from the Duds – Interpreting & Utilizing Your Etsy Shop Stats, part 3

Our latest series of Marketing Magic articles discusses how to analyze your Etsy Shop Stats to help increase your views and boost sales. Read the intro to the series here to get started. Test #1, reviewing your keywords, was discussed here last week.

This week, we’re discussing another easy analysis you can perform while looking at your Etsy shop stats.

help with etsy stats#2. Separate Your Super Star Listings from the Duds

The Thought Process 

Your shop’s listings are your selling points. Whether you have a ton or only a few listings, you’ve probably noticed over time that some listings seem to be getting a lot of views and favorites, while others are barely seen. The discrepancy could be caused by many things; maybe you’re selling a mixture of more popular (and thus more viewed) and less popular (and less viewed) items. That makes sense and probably applies to you to some degree. However, it could also be due to some other factors.

The Testing Procedure 

Again, I suggest looking at your stats in chunks of at least 1 month’s time (like “last month”’s view for example) for this analysis. After filtering your dates to this view, scroll down to your “pages viewed” area. check out your top 2 or 3 viewed items (that are not pages or categories), we’ll call these your superstar listings…along with your least viewed 2 or 3 items (you will have to click to the very last page), or your duds.

You can click on the listing’s link in your stats and get individual stats for just that item, but it’s also helpful to look at the actual listing so you can view the keyword tags, title, and description you used.

Open the listing pages and the individual stat pages for your superstar listings and your duds, and get ready to do some thorough examination.

Questions to Ask Yourself 

What do your superstar items have in common? Try to think of every possibility, especially beyond the obvious ones (like they’re all Halloween-related and it’s October). Here are some starters:

      • Do they all have great photographs on pristine white backgrounds?
      • Do they all use the same keywords or tags?
      • Were they all renewed that month?
      • Did they all get traffic from a similar source, like treasuries, Twitter, or a recent ad campaign?
      • Did they get more views from within your shop or from keyword searches (this tells you if someone spotted it whilst already in your shop or came directly to it after searching on Etsy)?
pyrite nugget wire wrap ring

This was my superstar listing last month. Great clean and clear photo, good tag and title usage, and being featured in a handful of treasuries helped make this listing popular.

Now for those dud listings. What’s wrong with these guys? More questions to ponder regarding your least viewed items:

      • Is it my pictures? Could I use better, more appealing photographs?
      • Should I refine or retool my listing title and keyword tags to make it more searchable and SEO-friendly? Maybe your product is awesome, but people just aren’t finding it.
      • Should I refine the item’s description to make it more appealing to my viewer? Does my description answer the most common questions a buyer might have? This might not really affect your views (since someone would click on the item before even seeing the description), but it can’t hurt!
      • Could it be a problem with the item’s price? Does it seem too cheap or too expensive at first glance?
      • Does this item not fit in with the rest of my shop’s inventory?
      • Is this a seasonal item that I should think about not renewing until the right time of year?

Lessons Learned 

Note what you learned from this exercise. Are certain keywords or tags really popular right now? Maybe you could apply these to more of your listings. Do listings with a certain look or feel seem to be doing better? If you figure out some secret ingredient that seems to be boosting your superstar listings, try to incorporate it throughout the rest of your shop. Or maybe you need to be making more items that are similar to your superstars!

Take time also to analyze what sources are bringing the views in for your superstars. Are they being found from keyword searches, from links within your Etsy shop, or from a social media blast? Take note of what you’ve been doing that’s working and what’s missing.

There are also probably some steps you can take to improve your dud listings’ chances of being found and seen. At the very least, you have little to lose by sprucing up their tags, titles, or photos to breathe a little new life into them. However, if you notice some of the same listings showing up in the dud section each time you perform this test, you might consider not renewing them next time to save yourself a few cents.

Periodically monitoring your superstar and dud listings for patterns is just another way of using your Etsy shop stats to boost your views and sales. Come back soon for test #3, and don’t forget to read back on test #1, reviewing your keywords, if you missed it last week. Also, check out our step-by-step guide on how to easily download your Etsy sales spreadsheet!

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Are You Using the Right Keywords? Interpreting & Utilizing Your Etsy Shop Stats, part 2

free marketing tips for creative small businessesOur latest series of Marketing Magic articles discusses how to analyze your Etsy Shop Stats to help increase your views and boost sales. Read the intro to the series here to get started.

Let’s move on now to a few quick and simple tests or processes you can perform every so often while checking out your shop stats. I try to give you some procedures to perform and things to think about that might not be as blatantly obvious as just glancing at your stats chart every few weeks.

#1. Review Your Most Popular Keywordshow to use your etsy stats tutorial

The Thought Process 

Most of your listings are probably found via search, whether on Etsy or another search engine like Google. Using smart keywords, tags, titles, and descriptions and making your shop SEO-friendly will go a long way in boosting your search page rank and thus your views. A thorough review of the keywords section of your stats will help you spot weaknesses and opportunites in your listings’ tags.

The Testing Procedure 

To make things more manageable and effective, I suggest looking at your stats in chunks of at least 1 month’s time (like “last month”’s view for example) for this analysis. Take a look at your top 10 or so keywords in the “Keywords” box in your shop stats. It might even be helpful to start a spreadsheet or Word file where you make note of which keywords seem to be drawing in the most traffic over time.

Questions to Ask Yourself

  • What are my most effective keywords? Which keywords are showing up time after time?
  • Can I apply these popular keywords to more of my listings?
  • Do I have any keywords or phrases showing up here that I’m not already using as listing tags?
  • Do I have any keywords or phrases showing up that I’m not using in my titles or the beginning paragraph of my descriptions?
  • Are there any tags I’m using a lot in my listings that are rarely showing up here?

Lessons Learned

First, make sure that all applicable listings have your most popular keywords and phrases as a tag, part of the title, and somewhere in the first few sentences of your description. This ensures max SEO-ability. When I talk about tags, I mean those 13 special words you enter in the tag section when you create a listing. Tags influence where and how your items show up in an Etsy search. Good keyword usage in your title and description helps you for offsite searches, like on Google.

Second, see what keywords might be listed in your top 10 that you aren’t already using as a tag. Start using these more often in your tags, titles, and descriptions.

Finally, look at this as a sort of round-about way to figure out what tags and keywords are not working. Sometimes, using keywords that are too “generic” can be a waste of important tag space. You will likely show up on results page 100 for the keyword “purse”, but you might show up on page 2 of “leather crossbody purse”. Being more specific will also bring you viewers that are more likely to buy your product, since it’s exactly what they are looking for.

mint green bag by freshandpoppy on etsy

Don’t be afraid to experiment with your tags and keyword usage, especially if you are just starting out. If you have two similar listings and you’re debating how to tag them, you can use them as a testing ground. For example, if I have two pairs of crystal earrings, I might use “estate sale” type tags on one, and bridal & wedding-related tags on the other, to see which type of keywords are being searched more often.

Paying attention to your keyword stats will help you improve your listings and boost your views. Tune in for our next Marketing Magic segment for test #2 on how to effectively analyze your Etsy shop stats.

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Marketing Magic – Interpreting & Utilizing Your Etsy Shop Stats, an intro

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In this Marketing Magic segment, we’ll discuss how you can easily utilize your Etsy stats to fine-tune your keyword and tag usage and thus boost your views, favorites, and hopefully sales.

If you have an Etsy shop, you have a wealth of easily accessible and free data at your fingertips…your Etsy Shop Stats! Maybe you are a stat-junkie like myself (I check them multiple times a day), or maybe you are like, “What the heck are my shop stats”?

how to use your etsy shop stats

You can access your shop stats either via the drop down menu, as shown here (please ignore the 46 items in my cart, I’m a virtual hoarder you see) or on the left side bar under “Stats” if you are already in your shop view. A summarized version is also now available on your shop dashboard.

You can view your stats in a variety of ways…daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or any specific set of dates…all on a handy line graph. There’s one set of datapoints that represents your shop (shown in blue) and another for your listings (shown in purple).

Your stats will include numbers for views, favorites, orders, and revenue (sales dollars, excluding shipping). There’s also a map tab that will show you where your viewers and customers are coming from geographically.

This is a lot of info to digest! If used correctly, your Etsy stats can be a great tool. There is a lot of data that can be mined from just this one page of info. On a broad scale, this data tells you what you’re doing right and what’s not working. We can find clues to make listing titles, descriptions, tags, and keywords more effective. Your Etsy stats can also help you refine your marketing and promoting efforts.

Over the next few Marketing Magic posts, I’m going to suggest a few quick and relatively painless processes you can do every so often that will help you take full advantage of the great information hidden within this data. In the meantime (if you haven’t already), I encourage you to start checking your Shop Stats regularly and get familiar with the info available to you.

UPDATE links to the rest of this series:

How do you use your Etsy Shop Stats? What questions do you have about them?

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Using Google Analytics & Adding Google Analytics to your Etsy site

marketing for small businesses

Before we really delve into methods of marketing and spreading the word about your shop, let’s take a look at one of the sources you can utilize to evaluate the success of your future marketing efforts: Google Analytics. It’s a good idea to set up (or revisit your existing) Google Analytics account now, so that once you begin trying different marketing techniques, you can see if they’re making a difference.

Google Analytics (GA) is a metrics-tracking tool that gives the owner of a URL all sorts of interesting information about their site’s visitors, views, and more. Signing up for GA is 100% free! To link your Etsy shop URL to Google Analytics, keep the following tips in mind:

  • Use your etsy shop’s main web address, http:// shopname .etsy. com (without the spaces), as the account name or default URL. Google will automatically capture the activity on both your shop page itself and all the little sub-pages for each of your listings.
  • Once you’re done with set up, GA should take you to your “Account Overview” page. Click the “Tracking Info” tab to find your Tracking ID. You can copy and paste this ID on Etsy to link the two accounts. You do NOT need to worry about pasting any HTML or javascript info to link your shop to your GA. That’s for non-Etsy stuff.
  • On the Etsy side, click “Your Shop” in the upper right corner, then scroll down and click “Options”, then click the “Web Analytics” tab. You can paste your GA tracking ID into the “Web Analytics” box here. It make take up to 24 hours for your GA account to begin working.
  • Check out the Etsy help page for more detailed info.

Now the fun begins! Your default GA landing page gives you a brief overview of the audience of your Etsy shop over the last month. If you scroll down, you’ll see a bunch of nifty percentages and even a pie chart of your repeat vs. new visitors. Hover your mouse over any of the stats to get a definition of that item.

To get more specific detail, check out the side bar on the left side of your screen. It could take you hours to examine all the juicy info under each of these items! Under “Audience”, you can find out what countries your visitors are visiting from, how many pages on your shop they’re checking out, and how long each visitor stays on your site on average.

“Traffic Sources” will tell you how people are finding your shop – via search terms, directly, or from other websites. You can even compare which source is giving you the highest rate of new visitors or which visitors spend the most time browsing your shop. This info helps you determine where your marketing time is most well spent; for example, I might notice that I’m getting lots of visitors from my Wanelo page, but those visitors spent an average of 50 seconds on my site and my bounce rate is in the 90s. Sounds like it’s not really worth my time to market there, and I might chose a source that has visitors with longer visitation lengths and lower bounce rates.

My favorite part of GA is the “Real Time” page. This page actually tells you how many visitors are currently on your page, where they’re coming from, and what they’re looking at during this very minute. You might think it’s a little creepy to cyber-spy on shoppers, but this is your chance to get some immediate feedback on how people are interacting with your shop! Next time you’re bored, go visit your Real Time page and watch what your next Etsy visitor does!

This is just barely skimming the iceberg of everything GA offers. The important part is to get set up and familiar with your stats as they are right now. It’s a good idea to record your current bounce rate and pages per visit. After you begin to put new marketing or advertising measures in place, GA will help you determine the effectiveness of your efforts! So get accustomed to your metrics now, and let’s work on getting them to improve!

Are you a stats junkie like me? Are you excited or intimidated by Google Analytics?

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Crafting a Business 101: Marketing Magic

marketing for small businessesSince it’s the beginning of the year, we’re rolling out all our newest series for Crafting a Business 101. Last week we debuted Creative Accounting, and today we’re revealing Marketing Magic!

The term “marketing” might seem very specific or conversely very vague to you. Or maybe you think that if you have no marketing background you can’t do it. To me, marketing involves all the many ways a potential customer can find out about your business. In the most obvious sense, marketing is advertising, but if you look at marketing like I do, then marketing relates to all the following:

  • Advertising (duh, I already said that)
  • Social media and networking (twitter, facebook, Etsy forums, teams, etc.)
  • Blogging
  • Printed materials
  • Your brand and your logo
  • The look and feel of your shop/website
  • Product photography
  • Listing tags, titles, and descriptions
  • SEO
  • Offline word-of-mouth
  • Customer service
  • Defining your target audience
  • Utilizing key stats to your advantage

Some of these things might not immediately fall under the marketing umbrella in your opinion. I like to look at it this way – if I’m working on bettering the appearance or appeal of my products, brand, or logo; improving my tags, SEO rankings, or product photos; spreading the word about my business via whatever method; or even just researching and learning about ways to increase my business efficiencies or better connect to my target customer, then I am marketing. It’s anything that either a) let’s someone find out my business or product exists, or b) encourages a potential or existing customer to make a purchase. That’s what marketing means to me!

If you haven’t already, take some time to look over the Creating a Business Plan series from last year. Several components of the creative business plan relate to marketing your business, including #2, Where can people find my product?, #4, Who will buy my product?, #7, How do I differentiate my product from the competition?, and #8, How do I successfully reach my target customer?

Through this series, we’ll discuss all the many ways you can make marketing magic for your business. As a creative small business owner, you’re probably working on a small (or non-existent) marketing budget. Luckily for us, we work in an age where there are hundreds of free marketing opportunities at our fingertips! So get excited because it’s time to improve your marketing!

What marketing tactics do you swear by? What marketing concepts do you think I left off the list above?

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Planning for Positivity in 2013

crafting a business 101

Last post of 2012! We’re running out of time to think about our goals for the new year. Like we’ve talked about before here, here and here, it’s time to brainstorm and put in writing a set of measurable, specific goals for your creative business to strive for in 2013.

Here are some guidelines to consider when brainstorming goals for your creative business:

  • Don’t set yourself up for failure. Examine what you achieved in 2012. What were your sales, revenue, and profit-levels like this year? What are some realistic goals for 2013? Your goals should require some challenge and “stretch”, but still be attainable with a bit of hard work.
  • Your goals should be specific and measurable. Don’t just say “I want to increase sales”. Come up with an actual benchmark dollar amount (like “I want to make $5000 in sales.” or “I want to average $2000 in sales per month.”). Giving yourself specific benchmarks will increase your motivation to reach them. Plus, they make it easier to measure whether you were successful or not.
  • Your goals should have deadlines in order to hold yourself accountable. If you’re like me, you work better (and harder!) under a deadline.
  • Think about the path to achieving each goal you set from every angle. I want to increase profit. To do that, I can work on increasing sales revenue and decreasing expenses and overhead.
  • Sometimes it’s about quality and not quantity. One of my goals for Lazy Owl is to increase my sales numbers, but if I make a whole lot of $10 sales, I’m not really boosting my bottom line as much as if I made more $40 sales. Thus, my goals also include increasing items sold per order and to offer more higher-priced popular items.
  • All your goals don’t need to be about sales numbers or dollar amounts. Maybe you need to keep better track of your sales and expenses for tax records. That can be a goal, with a specific measurement of updating your records at least once a week. You might also think about increasing your fan base numbers on your facebook page or other business-related websites. There are many other business areas you can think about improving that indirectly increase sales and profits.

Here’s a basic two-page worksheet to record your 2013 goals on. Feel free to print and include in your creative business binder. There’s a space at the top to include your business name. I split the worksheet into four categories of business goals, and each table has space for you to write your specific goal, how you will measure your success, and that goal’s deadline.

2013 Goal Worksheet pg 1

Your goals should be very specific to your business needs, but to get the wheels turning, here are some examples of goals:

  • Sales goals:
    • Increase sales revenue
    • Increase number of sales
    • Increase sales on particular venues (Etsy, bigcartel, own website, offline, craft show, local, etc.)
    • Increase average revenue per order
    • Increase orders of multiple items
    • Begin selling in X amount of boutiques or shops
    • Participate in X number of craft shows
  • Financial goals:
    • Increase profit (net income = sales revenue less expenses)
    • Decrease expenses
    • Keep better inventory records
    • Consistently track expenses, sales, inventory, supplies, etc.
    • Improve records for tax purposes
    • Improve pricing formula
    • Boost profit margin
  • Marketing goals:
    • Increase facebook fans or twitter followers
    • Increase Etsy views, hearts, etc.
    • Increase blog/website/e-newsletter subscribers or views
    • Increase number of blog posts/facebook posts/tweets each week or month
    • Develop your own website/blog/e-newsletter/direct mailing list
    • Make the frontpage of Etsy X times
    • Get published in a print or e-magainze
    • Guest post on other blogs
    • Participate more in Etsy teams or other forums
    • Make X amount of Etsy treasuries
    • Get featured on a specific relevant website
    • Leave business materials in X amount of local businesses
  • Other Business Goals:
    • List X amount of new items on Etsy each week/month
    • Develop X amount of new product lines this year
    • Revamp your logo, brand, website, shop, etc.
    • Redesign or develop your business cards, custom catalog, etc.
    • Learn more about specific business topics, like SEO, HTML, product photography, bookkeeping, etc.
    • Complete your creative business plan.

    Write your goals down and keep them in a visible place. Throughout the year, you should take some time once a month or at least once a quarter to review your goals, determine your progress, and adjust as necessary. Seeing your goals will give you the kick in the pants you might need every now and then to get back on track.

I hope this helped you to begin thinking about planning for next year. I wish you, your loved ones, and your creative business success and happiness in 2013! See you next year yall!

What are some of your most important goals for your creative business in 2013?

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