Search results (full) for: "vacation edit mode"

The Etsy Seller Handbook: All Our How-To's About Selling

2009-12-03T15:45:00-05:00

Sellers!

Below you'll find a handy index of all the useful how-to's about selling on Etsy. We're calling it the Seller Handbook, and we first posted it on The Storque in September of 2007. We add every new how-to's for sellers to this index and bumping up the post when we do. In this way it's a living document.

You can also search the Storque tags for "Seller Handbook" for a chronological list of all our published how-to's related to Selling.

Your Shop 101: How-To's for Getting Started on Etsy
Start with this one: Etsy Success for Beginner Sellers!
Please also see the Setting Up Shop Help Guide, Selling Dos and Don'ts, Selling FAQs, Listing an Item Help Guide, Etsy Guide to SEO.

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Photography How-To's

[image by CarolinaCottage]

Etsy International How-To's (plus How-To's translated into foreign languages)

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Alchemy and Custom/Reserved Listing How-To's

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Shipping How-To's

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Advertising How-To's
Please also see the Showcase Help Guide.

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Business and Pricing How-To's

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Promoting & Marketing How-To's

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Craft Show & Events How-To's

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Gallery Go-getter Series

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Social Networking, Blogging, Podcasting & Video-making How-To's

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Handmade Code (Third Party Applications from the Etsy Developer Community)

"Etsy Addict" iPhone Application
Craft Cult (a site that let's you track your hearts and where you've been featured, plus more)
ColorMatch from 26OliveStreet (a tool that suggests items that fit along your color palette)
EtsyHacks (a suite of tools for sellers — "Copy Listing" is particularly handy)
Morecloth (an application that lets you browse fabric on Etsy by color)
Sellit.com (a service that helps you spread the word about your shop)
Soopsee (an easy-to-use website building service that enables you to feed in your Etsy shop, blog, etc.)
Tag Finder Tool from Craftweasel.com (one of this developer's many applications the Tag Finder gives sellers insights into what tags might be appropriate for their items)

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Legal Info for Artists

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Tagging How-To's

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Team Tips Handbook

See all the how-to's relating to Teams, groups of sellers who self-organize by location or craft.

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All about Etsy & Site Features

We have to close comments here because the page is taking too long to load! So if you have additional tips, please post in this Forum thread.

If you'd like to write a how-to for the Seller Handbook, pitch to the Storque editors.

Tech Updates: Share Your Favorites

2009-07-01T18:30:00-05:00

Today we rolled out a number of improvements to Etsy's popular Favorites feature. These enhancements are designed to make Etsy Favorites more usable, visible and sharable.

Use 'em

Sold items can now be added to your Favorites. Sometimes you just aren’t quick enough, and an item you want is sold out by the time you see it. You can still add it to your Favorites. Views and hearts now continue to accumulate on items even after they’ve been sold.
Tip: Convo the seller to see if they can make another item for you or if they're planning to list another.

No more grey boxes to delete. Many Etsy community members have complained in the past about the clutter of anonymous grey items in their Favorites with the text “Listing expired or removed.” This would occur when an item expired, was being edited, or belonged to a shop in Vacation Mode. These grey boxes are no more. Here’s what happens now:

When an item you’ve hearted expires, it will be removed from your Favorites.
When an item you’ve hearted is being edited by the seller, it will not appear in your Favorites while the editing is in progress. When the editing is complete, the item will return to the spot you had it in your Favorites.
When an item you’ve hearted goes into Vacation Mode, it will remain in your Favorites — you will just be unable to purchase the item until the seller returns from vacation.

See 'em

A “heart counter” has been added to item pages. You can now see the number of hearts for any item, active or sold, along with views in the new “stats” section on the lower right of item pages.
Tip: If an item gets blogged about and then sells, it can still show off its street cred with more and more hearts and views.

Show off your Favorites on your Etsy Profile. You now have the option to display the last six items you added to your Favorites on your Etsy Profile page! These items will be displayed below the "Favorite Materials" section of your Profile. To turn this feature on, sign in to Etsy and proceed to Your Etsy > Public Profile. Check the checkbox at the bottom of the page next to “Favorite Items” and click "Save Changes" to start showing the world the cool stuff you find!

Share 'em

Don’t keep your Favorites to yourself! (Unless you want to.) Now when you sign in to Etsy and proceed to Your Etsy > Favorites, you will see a link for a new Share widget on the upper right. Pop this open for options to share your list of Favorites with your friends or with the world. With this widget you can easily share your collection of Favorites on Twitter or Facebook, embed them on your blog, or copy and paste the web address for your public Favorites page.
Happy hearting!

P.S. If you would like to receive breaking, vital Etsy news as it happens — delivered straight to your email inbox — then sign up for Etsy News Alerts emails. Read more about it here. Expect this as an Etsy Alert email in your inbox if you already subscribe to the list.

You can also get an RSS feed of all TechUpdates here.

Notes from Etsy's Canadian Meet Up

2009-05-06T10:12:00-05:00

Sara, Chad and I had a fantastic trip up to Canada this past weekend and had the pleasure of meeting with Etsy sellers, buyers and friends in both Toronto and Montreal! We're Etsy Admin for Product, Engineering, and International, respectively, and we learned a lot from our travels North.

Though Air Canada added a wrinkle to our travel plans we did finally get up to Toronto in time to meet with about 45-50 people, most of whom are pictured below.

After we gave a brief introduction, we opened up the floor to questions and suggestions. We heard a range of good ideas for tools such as batch editing, taking orders while in vacation mode (to be processed after vacation) and the ever popular local pick-up. We also talked a bit about how to strengthen the relationship with the maker through expanded profiles, video and having links such as "follow me on Twitter" (about 1/3 of the the attendees have Twitter accounts). Chad and Sara took copious notes. Some of the requests, such as rearranging items in your shop and more clearly stating USD next to prices, are slated for release soon. Our host Karyn, a current Etsy buyer and owner of The Workroom, where we held the event, was kind enough to publish this blog post about the event. And minouette also did a great write up on the Trans-Canada Etsy Team blog.

It was a quick stop in Toronto as we were on the 8am flight to Montreal to meet another group of 40-45 people at Headquarters Galerie & Boutique, where our host Angie set us up.

The format was the same and there was a lot of energy in the room — must have been that extra bit of sleep we allowed by moving the start time to 11am :) There were loads of ideas, including getting the word out to more buyers (we noted a number of suggestions on this front), making it easier to search within the listings in your shop, improving communication tools for Teams, and a comment about accents not showing up in Shop Local. Note: We're looking at many changes to Shop Local, but for now it's best to eliminate accents from your profile location (in other words, type Montreal with no accent over the e, to ensure you're found in the Shop Local feature).

Special thanks to MileEndSoapandCandle who gave us this totally cool custom Etsy candle. I'm not sure she knew that Etsy was turning four this June but we'll be sure to put it on our cake!

The Q Team also had a nice showing with the eight members below in attendance.

Team members from left to right, back row: Mezzo, JulieWebb, GiftedDesigns (member coordinator), nellyvansee. Front row: KatjaDesign, LunarWorkshop (Q Team leader), juliejongleuese, Suza.

The Q Team's stated goal is "to promote the work of crafters and artists living and working in Quebec and to support one another in taking our business to the next level." From their enthusiasm I'd say they're living up to it!

Overall, I can't say enough good things about the people, the cities and Canada in general. We had a great visit and look forward to my the adventure North!

Please add photo notes with your names to the Flickr photos!

Cheers,

Liz, a.k.a. muka

Tech Update: Vacation Mode for Sellers now live!

2008-09-23T15:30:00-05:00

We're thrilled to announce today that we've just launched two new helpful tools for Etsy sellers to manage their shops: Vacation Mode and Batch Deactivate. These features provide different solutions for sellers to quickly and temporarily "close" a shop or make certain items inactive when they will be away from Etsy for an extended time. Read on to learn all about how to use these new tools in your Etsy shop.

When in Vacation Mode, items in a seller's shop cannot be purchased. The seller's shop will appear empty, with a special vacation announcement. The seller's items can still be viewed via a direct item link (if they are linked from an outside blog for example), and can still be Hearted (added to favorites), but will not appear in site searches or the Category Browser. Buyers can sign up to be notified via email when the seller returns from Vacation Mode.

How it works:

Your personal Vacation Mode settings:

From "Your Etsy" click on "Vacation Mode" under Shop Setup.
The Vacation Mode page has prompts for a vacation announcement, Convo auto-response, and on/off switch.
Enter your desired announcement message and Convo auto-response about being on vacation.
Leave the on/off radio buttons set to "off" if you are just setting up the process at this point and click "Save."

Turning Vacation Mode on and off:

When you are ready to go on vacation, click on Vacation Mode from Your Etsy and set it to "on" and save.
Your shop will now be in Vacation Mode and will function differently:
- Your Shop Announcement has been replaced with your Vacation Announcement.
- Items no longer appear in your shop.
- Any Convos sent to you will get an auto-reply.
- On your Shop page, Potential buyers will see a field where they can opt into having Etsy notify them when the seller returns from vacation. Their email addresses will be kept private.
- On all of your listing pages, a banner appears across the top announcing that the shop is temporarily closed and the "Add to cart" button has been replaced with a greyed-out "on vacation" notice.
- Your items no longer appear in Gift Guides, searches, Category Browser, flash apps such as Pounce, Colors, Shop Local, or Geolocator.

Once you return and are ready to turn off Vacation Mode and reopen your shop, log in and select Vacation Mode from Your Etsy.
Set vacation mode to "Off" and click "Save."
Your shop is now back to normal and your vacation messages are saved for future use.
Any buyers who signed up for an email notification will be sent an email from you alerting them your items are again available for purchase and the email notification list will be reset for future use.

Batch Deactivate:

Along with the new Vacation Mode feature, we have added an additional feature for deactivating (sometimes called placing in "edit mode") and reactivating multiple items at once. With this batch activate/deactivate feature, you can temporarily remove some listings from your shop so that they cannot be seen or purchased. Deactivated listings are not visible to buyers in the seller's shop. Listings also become inactive when you edit them.

How it works:

Log in and go to Your Etsy to see a list of your items currently for sale; you will see a checkbox next to each item.
Select the items you wish to deactivate and at the bottom of the page, click the button to deactivate the selected items and click submit.
You will see a notice at the top of the page telling you the selected items are now inactive, with a link to the list of inactive items.
When you are ready to place your items for sale in your shop again, go to Your Etsy > Inactive Listings and click the check box next to the ones you want to reactivate; then hit the Activate button.

FAQs

Q. Why would I use Vacation Mode for my shop?
A. This would be a great tool for sellers going on an extended vacation or for other occasions when they will not be able to check in regularly on their shops.

Q. How do I put my shop on hold while I am sick or on vacation?
A. To put your shop in Vacation Mode, go to Your Etsy > Vacation Mode. Enter a brief message to replace your normal shop announcement while you are away. You can also write an auto-reply message for your Conversations that will be sent to anyone who sends you a Convo during that time. Your items will be removed from view in your public shop, but will still appear in Favorites.

When you're ready to go on vacation, set Vacation Mode to "On Vacation" and click the red "Save Changes" button.

Q. When should I use batch deactivate instead of Vacation Mode?
A. Sellers may prefer using this option when they only need to remove select items from their shop for a special event, but do not want to take the rest of the items from their shop out of the regular Etsy search. Using the Vacation Mode feature will automatically temporarily remove all listings from your shop.

Q. How do I return from Vacation Mode?
A. Go to Your Etsy > Vacation Mode and set Vacation Mode to "Off", then click the red "Save Changes" button.

Q. When I turn off Vacation Mode or reactivate my deactivated items, will they reappear in the Gift Guides if they were in a Guide before?
A. No, the items will not reappear in the Gift Guides once returning from Vacation Mode or deactivation.

Q. Can I still work on my shop while away and set to Vacation Mode?
A. No, while set on Vacation Mode, you will not be able to do the following: create a new listing, edit a listing, or renew a listing.

Q. What will my listings look like when I am in Vacation Mode?
A. When your shop is in Vacation Mode, your items will not appear in your shop. But if someone has bookmarked or Hearted (favorited) a listing or reaches it from a link on an outside source like a blog, they will still be able to view the listing page. We'll show a notice at the top that you are away. The green "Add to Cart" button will be grayed-out until you return from Vacation Mode.

While in Vacation Mode your items will not appear in search, Gift Guides or the other shopping tools (such as the Geolocator).

Q. Will Vacation Mode automatically turn off?
A. No, you will need to manually turn Vacation mode on and off, even if your shop announcement says you will be back on a certain date.

Q. I'm a buyer. What happens if I sign up to be notified when a seller returns?
A. When a seller is away, a form will appear on their shop homepage letting you sign up for email notification when they return. When the seller’s shop opens back up, we’ll send a short message to the email address on your account. The message will come from Etsy, and will only be sent once.

Q. As a seller, can I see which buyers have signed up to be notified when I return? Can I customize the message they get?
A. In order to respect shoppers' privacy, we do not allow sellers to see which buyers have signed up for notifications. When you return from Vacation Mode, we'll send them a note to let them know you are back. The short message will come from Etsy and is not customizable. If a buyer would like to get in touch with the seller, the buyer can still send the seller a Convo even if the shop is in Vacation Mode.

Q. Will putting my items in vacation mode change the expiration date on them?
A. No. Just like when your item is inactive, the expiration date stays the same.

Q. Can I use the Conversation auto-reply feature without putting my shop in Vacation Mode?
A. At this time, no; auto-reply is only available for shops in Vacation Mode.

Q. Do I have to use Vacation Mode, or can I just post a note in my shop and/or listings that I'm away like I did in the past?
A. Ultimately, it's up to you as a seller to decide which strategy is best for your shop. Posting a notice and keeping your items active while you're away for a short time might be a viable solution for some sellers. Others may decide that they do not want to risk delayed communication or order fulfillment for customers and choose to use Vacation Mode or Batch Edit Mode. It's up to you; we're happy to provide multiple solutions so sellers can choose the best solution to suit their needs.

Q. Can I use the Conversation auto-reply feature without putting my shop in Vacation Mode?
A. At this time, no; auto-reply is only available for shops in Vacation Mode.

Q. Do I have to use Vacation Mode, or can I just post a note in my shop and/or listings that I'm away like I did in the past?
A. Ultimately, it's up to you as a shop owner to decide which strategy is best for your shop. Posting a notice and keeping your items active while you're away for a short time might be a viable solution for some sellers. Others may decide that they do not want to risk delayed communication or order fulfillment for customers and choose to use Vacation Mode or Batch Deactivate. It's up to you; we're happy to provide multiple solutions so sellers can choose the best solution to suit their needs.

As always, we welcome your discussions, constructive feedback and suggestions for improvement with this new Vacation Mode feature. Please use this Forum thread for discussion. We'll close commenting here so that we can consolidate discussion in one place.

Hope you are as excited about this feature as we are!

Etsy News Alert: 4 Month Listing Extensions for Vintage and Commercial Supply Sellers

2008-06-29T19:38:00-05:00

Update:
Please get your items in the proper categories!

Original post from June 23:
Back in February when Etsy announced upcoming changes to the way search would work, we made a promise to our Vintage and Commercial Supply sellers that we would extend the life of their item listings by four months, for free.

The search changes took effect May 5, and we are now ready to honor our promise. We intend to start rolling out the additional four months beginning on June 30, 2008.

The four month free extension will apply only to Vintage and Commercial Supplies sellers.

Here's the Plan for the Four Month Extension:

Only properly tagged listings will get the four month extension, so this is a great opportunity to make sure your Vintage and Commercial Supplies items are properly categorized. In other words, make sure the top tag is "Vintage" or "Supplies." In the case of Supplies, items should also be tagged with "Commercial."
On June 30, Etsy will capture a snapshot of all Vintage and Commercial Supplies listings on the site.
Immediately thereafter, we will begin rolling out a free four month extension on all of these listings.
The rollout will take approximately 30-45 days from June 30.
We will keep you updated on the progress and will announce when the process is complete.
After the process is completed, if you have any questions or concerns about specific listings, contact support@etsy.com. Please include the following words in the subject of your email: "4 month extension." This will help us target your questions and get back to you more quickly.

FAQs:
Q. What items are eligible?
A. Vintage and Commercial Supplies are eligible. Handmade supplies are not eligible, since these were not affected by the May 5th changes to Etsy’s search function.

Q. What if my Vintage and/or Commercial Supplies listings are inactive/in edit mode on June 30?
A. Many sellers put their listings in "edit mode" when they are going on vacation or otherwise don't want their listings to be active. Have no fear! If these listings are properly tagged, they will make it on the list, even if they are in edit mode. Here is more info about inactive listings and edit mode.

Q. My Vintage or Commercial Supplies listing expired before Etsy finalized the list of items eligible for the extension. How do I get included in this?
A. If you want to receive four free months, renew your items before June 30, the date of Etsy will take the snapshot. Here's how to renew.

Q. What happens if my listings expire during the window between the June 30 snapshot and their spot in the 30-45 day run?
A. We are prioritizing the roll-out of the extensions such that the listings nearest to their expiration dates will be extended first. If you notice a problem after we announce the completion, email support@etsy.com. Please include the following words in the subject of your email: "4 month extension." This will help us target your questions and get back to you more quickly.

Q. What if my items are in incorrectly tagged (and in the incorrect categories) at the time of the snapshot?
A. That's why we're giving you a week's heads up! You must have your items properly categorized by June 30, 2008. If you have extenuating circumstances, email support@etsy.com and describe the details of your situation. Please include the following words in the subject of your email: "4 month extension."

Q. I think I did everything right, but I can't find my listings!
A. If you see inconsistencies in your shop or disappearing listings, first take a look at the Inactive and Expired listings in your shop. (These links only go to your shop if you're logged in so you don’t have to worry that others will see in your shop!). If you still think there’s something wrong with your shop, contact support@etsy.com.

Q. What are the dates of eligibility?
A. Any Vintage or Commercial Supplies listings that are active or inactive (but not expired) on June 30, 2008.

We're closing the commenting on this post so we can get all your general questions and comments in one forum thread.

If you have questions or concerns you'd like to keep private please email support@etsy.com.

We thank you for being patient while we researched the best solution for implementing this gift and above all else, we hope you enjoy!

Want the vital, breaking headlines from the Etsy News section of the Storque — delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for the Etsy News Email Alerts by clicking on the envelope here or on the Etsy homepage. Read more about the Etsy News Alerts here.

Customer Care: Edit Mode Tip

2007-09-06T06:36:00-05:00

We often get this question:

How do I hide an item in my shop without deleting it? I don't want people to buy it because I have a customer waiting for it, or I am going on vacation and want to be sure that customers absolutely don't buy anything.

Here's what you should do:

Your Etsy> Currently for Sale Items> Edit> Don't click on "Finish" on the last page of the listing, rather, click on "Your Etsy" instead.

This will put your item into an "edit mode." When you are ready to have them show again, go to your Inactive Listings and click on "Finish." There will be no new charge for the listing.