I started selling my handmade jewellery on Etsy in 2008, and found I needed to learn a lot about how to sell online, which is very different from in-person sales in several key ways. Throughout this education, I became fascinated with how search engines work. This interest wasn't entirely new to me - in my previous career in law, the head librarian of Canada's largest law library nicknamed me the "super-searcher" because I knew every advanced trick for each database.

But switching my focus from finding what I wanted, to figuring out how others could find my stuff, was a lengthy process. As I completed more intensive SEO (search engine optimization) reading and ran many tests on Etsy's search, I started sharing my knowledge with others. Once a mitochondrial disease forced me to retire from law and I decided to make my jewellery business my main income, I worried about having supplementary income and a backup plan in case jewellery was not enough. At the same time, I was receiving increasing requests from other Etsy sellers for help with Etsy search, reading Google Analytics reports, and other SEO and stats questions. Opening this shop gave me the ability to help more people without letting my bills go unpaid.

Unfortunately, I've done so well with search and stats in my jewellery business that I am usually too busy to offer other types of help now, but I do plan on continuing to offer tutorial ebooks on Etsy search, Google and keyword research.