Seller Resources: Unanimous Craft

UglyBaby

Story by UglyBaby

Published on Apr 24, 2010 in Seller Handbook

Photo by UglyBaby

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If you’re running an indie business, Rosalie Gale, a.k.a. UglyBaby, wants to tell you all about her site, Unanimous Craft. Rosalie is a waterproof shower art maker, stand-up comedian and blogger who is currently obsessed with German board games, Bikram yoga and embroidery. In her spare time she runs an experiment in trading for art and odd objects called bARTer Sauce and is on the leadership team for the Seattle area Etsy Team: EtsyRAIN (she also built their Team website). For some reason she thought it would be a good idea to add another project to her list – and thus, Unanimous Craft was born.

 


Tell us about your project. How can sellers use it?
Unanimous Craft is a taggable, searchable index of indie business resources. Users can submit resources, vote on which are the most useful and curate lists of resources with similar themes.

I was inspired to create Unanimous Craft after seeing several Etsy Forum posts with lists and lists of resources. These Etsians were trying to help others by sharing information, but they needed a great way to organize it all. I spent the last year of my life creating Unanimous Craft so our community could have a tool to get organized and share information.

I launched the website one month ago with about 100 resources outlined in the book Handmade Nation by Faythe Levine and Courtney Heimerl. Since then, the community and I have been adding resources on a daily basis.

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Is it just for Etsy sellers or crafters? How many people are using it right now?
Unanimous Craft is for anyone who is currently running or thinking about setting up a small business. It does lean toward crafty/art/DIY businesses, but there are tons of resources that are helpful for small business in general.

As the site grows, the community will decide what the purpose of the site is. Maybe someone will add 500 tutorials and it will become a database filled with how-to’s. Maybe someone gets a wild idea that inspires them to add a bazillion brick-and-mortar stores that buy handmade items wholesale. It’s really up to the users to decide what content is valuable enough to add to the database.

In the past month, Unanimous Craft has received over 4,000 unique visitors. 300 have become registered members and 28 have signed up for Premium Memberships. Most visitors stay on the site for an average of 6 minutes looking at 5-6 resources per visit. Our Facebook page has over 1000 fans and about 350 people are following our tweets as of this moment.

Where do we go to find it? What’s the URL, etc.?
You can find us on the main website, unanimouscraft.com, Facebook and Twitter.

How does one use it?
Step One: Become a Member

Step Two: Add Resources

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Step Three: Rate Resources

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Step Four: Curate Lists of Resources

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Are there any costs or further opportunities/ways to get involved?
Unanimous Craft is totally free to use. As an anonymous user, you can view all of the resources, updates and lists. As a member (which is also free) you can submit resources, rate resources and curate lists of resources.

Premium Memberships are also available. Some benefits of Premium Membership include:

  • A robust user profile that links to all your shops and social networking sites
  • One Premium Member profile is shown randomly on the home page and changes each time the page is refreshed
  • An image with a link to their profile on the Premium Members page
  • Advertising discounts on Unanimous Craft
  • Tweets and Facebook updates with news about Premium Members
  • Automatically entered in a monthly drawing for a free ad on Unanimous Craft

Premium Memberships can be purchased for three different lengths on time:
1 year: $60 ($5/month)
6 months: $48 ($8/month)
1 month at a time for $10/month.
Advertising is also available on Unanimous Craft.

How can people get in touch with you if they have questions?
Users can contact me at info@unanimouscraft.com or fill out the contact form on the website.

What’s the most rewarding part of your project?
The immediate response to the resources I have been posting on the site, Facebook and Twitter has been overwhelming. I love it when someone — especially someone who has been in the craft business a while — says, “I found X number of really useful things on your site today.” That has to be my favorite part: finding out that the tool I made is actually helping people. Heck yes.

Anything else you’d like to add?
I really like potatoes. Really. A lot.

Have you used Unanimous Craft? Tell us the most useful resource you found or contributed in the comments below!

The Seller Handbook | Handmade Code Posts | Rosalie’s bARTer Sauce Post

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