As this blog approaches its third birthday (celebration soon to come), I figured it was about to time to expand – enter Etsy from stage left.

This Etsy shop has been a long time coming. People kept asking me why I didn’t sell the items I made. And the fact is, I’m not very good at production. Crafting is no longer fun for me when I feel like I have to do it. Once I make something, I want to move on to the next, new and exciting thing!

So I created a shop that works for me. I want my shop to be an extension of this blog – hence the shared name. I’ll keep posting projects and tutorials here, hopefully providing you the inspiration to create wonderful things. But for those who love the idea but don’t have the time to make it themselves, they can now skip the steps and buy the final product by clicking the link at the end of the post.

The shop has been open for about a month now, and I know I still have so much to learn about Etsy. It’s a big marketplace, and I’ll admit, I haven’t found my niche. But this is what I have learned so far and am still trying to figure out.

(1) Amazon has taught us to expect free shipping. 

Now Etsy doesn’t tell you this, but I realized it after spending quite a bit of time shopping on Etsy myself. For my mom’s birthday, I found this amazing pie plate for a reasonable price, but I didn’t buy it because shipping was going to cost an additional $20. It takes away the confidence of an impulse buy. So I’m offering free shipping on all my products. And so far, my items are small/light enough to not cost that much to ship. But we’ll see how it goes with future purchases.

(2) Price point is a hard thing to figure out.

Of course, before I opened the shop, I did a little bit of research, and I found that items similar to the ones I will be selling go for several different prices. One pillow with a felt appliqué was on sale for $75, another on sale for $20. And there wasn’t much of a difference between them. So I decided to pick a price on the low end – $25. Then a friend suggested a start with an even lower price to encourage the first few sales, so I bumped the price down to $20. That same friend said she builds the Etsy fees into her prices. I like the idea but didn’t like the uneven number, so I just added 50 cents.

So to review, a felt appliqué pillow at For the Love of Felt costs $20.50. (For now, at least. You should get it while the prices are low.)

(3) Making those first few purchases are hard.

I’ll admit, when I opened my Etsy shop and posted a link on my Facebook page, I thought I would sell a good amount of items to friends and family. But instead, I sat there and watched the stats increase as 50.. 60… 90 people “viewed” my shop, but didn’t buy anything. I guess you are never a prophet in your own hometown. Though after two weeks, my sweet mother proved she is the best, and purchased a pillow! My first purchase – I was stoked. I have only made one more purchase since, and I’ll still trying to figure out how to turn my shop’s viewers into buyers. (If you read this before midnight, the entire shop is 25% off for Cyber Monday.)

I still have lots to figure out and learn about running a shop on Etsy, but I’m taking the first steps. By all means, check the shop out for yourself, and if you feel compelled, share it with others. And hopefully one day I can call this endeavor a success.