Have you heard about the Etsy Voter? It's a fun part of Etsy where people can vote on their favorite Etsy items. In this installment of the All About Etsy FAQ Series, I'll answer some frequently asked questions about how this site feature works and how you can get involved, whether you're a shopper or a seller. The more people who get involved, the more fun it is!

FAQs

What is the Voter?
The Voter is an interactive tool built by our Flash guru Jared Tarbell. It allows people to vote on Etsy items, and at the end of the voting period, we can all see which items come out on top. Because it's such a neat tool, we're using it every week for informal, fun polls. The Voter can be used as a way to see which items resonate with the Etsy community. Ultimately, it's a way for shoppers to find some wonderful, fresh items.

The Voter is located at www.etsy.com/voter.php. When you go there, you'll see themed groupings of polls — the voting has closed for some, but you can still click in to see how the results turned out and how many people voted.

Who gets to vote?
Anyone! You just have to be registered and signed into Etsy in order to cast a vote. We encourage everyone to get involved in voting! After you place your vote, you can see the running tally of which items are in the lead.

How do I find out about rounds of voting and the winners?
Click on the "Voting" Featured Column on the left hand navigation of Etsy's blog, The Storque. Every Monday, we announce the winner and ask for nominations for the following week's vote. Every Tuesday we put up the call for votes for the current round.

Can I purchase an item from the Voter? Will that remove the item from the Voter and mess things up?
It won't mess things up! Absolutely, you can buy items from the Voter. (That's our not-so-secret mission, in fact!) Purchasing an item you see in the Voter will not remove the item from the application.

How do items get included in a round of voting?
When the top favorite is announced on Monday in a Storque post, we include a call for nominations for the next round. You may nominate one of your own items or any item that you think fits the described theme. Simply paste a link to the item page in the comments of the post.

We cannot include all the nominated items! The Voter performs best with about 45 or less items (60 at max). If your item did not get into a vote and you're feeling discouraged, it could just be that we didn't have the space. You may also want to take another look at your item photography and double check to make sure your item is not breaking any rules and is tagged properly. Here are some tips in the Seller Handbook.

How do Admin decide the weekly themes?
We plan our themes according to the Editorial calendar for our blog, which in turn is integrated with the Merchandising themes. Feel free to suggest ideas in the comments of the posts.

How do I know if one of my items has been included in a vote?
Etsy Admin try to convo each seller individually, but sometimes we're just too swamped with work! We're aware that we need a better way to notify sellers when their items are featured.

My item is included. Now what do I do?
Congratulations! You've been nominated for this week's round of Voting. Please spread the word about your nominations (Twitter, blog, paste the link in your Shop announcement, etc.) and get folks to vote. You should be proud!

What happens after the top favorite is announced?
For our informal weekly votes, the goal is to help shoppers find some great items and to help sellers make some sales or get their products noticed. We use the Voter to share the love (and some fame and glory)!

When the voting closes on Mondays, we will shortly thereafter feature the top favorite on Etsy's blog, The Storque. Etsy Admin use this Voter tool as a way to find a top favorite to feature on our blog, in the Members' Choice Gift Guide (or other Gift Guide if there's a specific one that fits the theme), and perhaps on the Etsy home page. We may include some of the runners up in the curated areas of our site. 

If you are a runner up, we cannot promise that your item will be featured in these places — as some items sell or expire, some sellers may already be featured in the Gift Guides, some items may be inappropriate for the curated areas of the site, or we may discover a slight rule infringement preventing us from putting it in the spotlight. Sometimes our tools can be wonky and we have to do things manually (especially when items sell), so let us know if you think there's been a human error. We will do our best to include as many of the runners up as possible.

As a general rule of thumb, if you're a runner up and you've made a sale from the Voter or being in the Related Items in the Storque post, we consider that accomplishing the goal of this exercise!

My item featured in the Voter sold and the sold listing is still in the Voter. Can you replace it with another listing so I can have a fresh item in the running?
Because sold items remain in the running, we cannot replace them in the Voter with new listings once voting has started. Even if it's an identical listing, our tool does not have the capacity to swap out the item id number and retain the votes.

If your item hasn't sold, you can replace the main image of your item and ask us to "refresh," if you want to re-photograph your listing to make it more visually compelling. (Just convo Vanessa).

Wait a second, I thought my item was in the Voter, but it's just in the related items of the Storque post. What gives?
If your item is featured in the Related Items or main image of the Storque announcement, but not in the Voter, don't despair!   We apologize if you got excited when you saw your item and thought it would be in the vote. Being in the Storque Related Items is actually really good exposure too. We need to illustrate our posts with eye-catching product, but we cannot repeat items in both the post where we call for votes and the Voter. (This was pointed out as potentially "swaying the votes.")

How come I've never heard of this site feature? Where is the Voter linked on Etsy?
Funny you should ask...We added the link to the Voter to the Community Hub in October 2009. Click on "Voting" under the Featured Columns on the left navigation of The Storque to find the latest post.

The items below are some of our previous top picks!

All about Etsy FAQ Series | Seller Handbook | Help on Etsy

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