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All About Etsy FAQ: Welcome to the Community Hub

2009-10-09T16:00:00-05:00

Today we're excited to unveil your new Community Hub!

There's a lot going on in the Etsy community on any given day — at any given moment. This page is designed to gather together the main streams of activity so you can see the latest at a glance. You can participate in any way you want. We hope you'll join us!

The Community Hub is linked in the main Etsy top navigation bar found on every page on our site — just click on Community. If you want to bookmark it, use this url: http://community.etsy.com

From the Community Hub you can:

get quick updates about goings-on
access the Forums and Chat (there's also a "From the Forums" feed with some of the latest topics)
pop into the Virtual Labs for real-time, interactive events
reach the Teams pages on Etsy, where groups of members self-organize
jump to The Storque, Etsy's blog, where we post content ranging from shopping to seller how-to's
check out the Resources pages for helpful tools and graphics
join in community shopping polls with the Voter

Social networking has taken off in the Etsy community, so we're streaming in our Twitter feed. We're also providing you with the links to our other social networking pages, such as Facebook, and our media feeds, such as YouTube, Flickr, and iTunes (coming soon). There's much to explore, so dive in!

For upcoming events, check out the calendar embedded on the page.

Stay tuned for more improvements to some of these pages. We'd love to hear your feedback, so please share your thoughts in the comments below.

UPDATE: Due to some limitations we had to remove the top links from the new Community Hub (e.g. Cart, Sign In, Favorites, Conversations, etc.). If you are Signed In to Etsy when you visit the Community Hub you will still be Signed In even without the top links. We understand that this is a confusing experience and longer term we hope to find a solution to improve this. In the meantime, you can always go to www.etsy.com to view your top links.

Read more posts in the All about Etsy FAQ Series | Visit the Community Hub

Keep it Weird: Theremin Pumpkin Has Me Excited for Halloween

2009-08-21T10:30:00-05:00

This just in: The Geekery Category is infiltrating the wholesome handmade pumpkin patch and seeding weirdness. SymetriColour has mystically transformed this benign plastic toy into a creepy electronic jack-o-lantern with flashing eyes and creaking theremin sounds, sure to scare away those pesky trick-or-treaters. Halloween for audio-hackers never looked (and sounded) so good.

I don't know about you, but I'm totally excited for Halloween on Etsy. It's time for creepy cute — my favorite! Post me some links to strange Halloween items in the comments below.

Keep it Weird, Etsy! | Halloween Preview Guide

Do You Make Videos or Animation? Hurry Up and Submit to the Handmade Moment Video Contest!
Deadline August 31 — More Info & Celeb Judges

Etsy Day Takes Over The World

2009-04-28T13:50:00-05:00

A few weeks ago, Etsy artist Susan Schumann, aka schugirl, suggested that all Etsy members unite to collectively promote Etsy on April 24th (you can read more about it here). From videos on Youtube to four-legged billboards in France, Etsy members helped spread the gospel near and far. Thank you, schugirl, for your incredible effort and enthusiasm for Etsy.

We know many of you are curious about the impact of Etsy Day on Etsy’s site last Friday. Before we get into numbers, we want to emphasize that an organized effort like Etsy Day will undoubtedly have an impact well beyond one day. YouTube videos, blog entries, and other viral content live in perpetuity on the Web and will be viewed time and again. It is only over a longer period of time that we can begin to truly evaluate the lasting impact of an effort like Etsy Day.

And, we should also put our analytical comments in context. According to our internal metrics (Google Analytics), Etsy attracts about 7-8 million unique visitors per month and around 500 million page views per month. Like other reasonably large sites, Etsy receives a good deal of traffic from search engines (organic and paid), as well as from direct connections to the site (folks typing in www.etsy.com or having it bookmarked).

Etsy Day did not materially impact search engine or direct traffic to Etsy, so our overall traffic last Friday was not much different than most Fridays. However, we did see this day of Etsy-love push the needle on Twitter.

There, Etsians proved strength in numbers could be leveraged in awesome ways. Tweets about Etsy Day placed the hashtag #etsyday among the top trending positions on Twitter, where it remained most of Friday. During its highest point, #etsyday was the most frequently used terms on Twitter—we observed it being used over 500 times an hour! Traffic referred to Etsy from Twitter was up nearly 40% last Friday.

All this tweeting caught the attention of Geoffrey Fowler of the Wall Street Journal Digits blog, who wrote a little post about the phenomenon Friday evening.

Equally exciting, the exposure from Etsy Day helped us land a much coveted position on Twitter's "suggested user" list as a Twitter feed one should follow. (Note: You'll only see us if you don't already follow @Etsy.) Check out all of the suggested Twitter users at http://twitter.com/invitations/suggestions.

We want to thank all who took time out of their day to participate in this extraordinary event. This is guerilla/grassroots marketing at its best.

Finally, special kudos to schugirl who came up with this great idea.

Find more Etsy Community Projects | Learn about Twitter

Eco-friendly Gift Wrapping with JunoArt

2008-12-22T13:00:00-05:00

JunoArt made this how-to and posted it on her Youtube channel! We figured it might come in handy as you're wrapping up presents.

"Here are some ideas for getting your holiday gifts out in a cheap, recyclable way. Great ideas for working with kids, or just saving a few dollars this holiday season."

Watch Etsy's how-to videos and check out these how-to projects too!

If you've a video you'd like us to post on the blog, post in the comments below.

Your Handmade Stories: Chocolate and Steel

2008-09-15T15:15:00-05:00

The Etsy Video team at the Storque is always excited when sellers create their own videos, whether it be a portrait, promo or studio visit. Bre Pettis recently produced a wonderful series called Getting Started in Video to help newbies take the leap. Last week Christine Street of chocolateandsteel sent me this excellent promotional video she and her husband Dave created for their shop. I asked her a few questions about why she decided to make a video, how she did it, what she learned from the experience, and what tips she has for other people considering making a video. Here are her responses:

I decided to make a video because I'm looking for new and inexpensive ways to market my shop. I'm very fortunate that my husband, Dave, is an aspiring filmmaker and was really excited to work on this project with me. I recently took the leap to full-time self-employment so budgets are a real concern for me: Not just in business, but in my personal life as well. This project seemed like a great thing to do for many reasons. First, it couldn't hurt my business. Second, it could help my business. And third, it gave us a fun project to work on instead of spending lots of money going out to dinner or museums (although we did film a lot of it outside the LACMA).

First I told Dave about the feel I was going for. I wanted it to be casual, whimsical and have a fantasy element. He came up with the original concept and we brainstormed from there. It was a lot of back and forth of me saying "I would never say that" and him saying, "That's cheesy." Finally the concept and dialog were complete and now came all the fun stuff. My mom babysat our 2 year old one weekend and we first had a "craft day" to make all the props. Then the next day we filmed it.

I learned that lighting is super important. Either morning around 10 or afternoons around 4 have the best, most flattering light. Natural light is the best, as I'm sure everyone knows. Also, I think the music is really important because it helps set the mood for the video, but it shouldn't be too loud and the center of focus.

I think a great way to do this is to get your friends involved. If you are a creative person, most likely so are your friends. One of my friends helped edit the video with Dave, and another friend who is a musician created the music for us. The great thing about getting other people involved is that they too help spread the word because they are proud of their work.

We really wanted to do something that was unique and had a storytelling feel. Many of my jewelry pieces were created from a story that I came up with first and then drew the illustrations for. I wanted to extend that concept of story to this video as well. We are going to do some more videos about some individual pieces also. So look soon for Lady Bird Incognito to be transformed from Jackie O to a bird lady — this one should be really cool!

Oh, I forgot to mention that our total expenditures on this was $12.50. That covered the tulips ($7.50) and the Styrofoam ($5) for the trees. The cottage was made from a cardboard box, the curtains were catalog pages folded, the window pane was chopsticks and I had the wooden rose bead for the door knob. Just thought it would be of interest for people who are not looking to spend a lot of money!

Don't forget to subscribe to their Youtube channel (and the Etsy Youtube channel too!). Post in the comments if you have a video you'd like to share. You can always convo one of the Storque team too! (Tara aka weirdwolf, BrePettis, and Eric B aka objecked will help you out.)

Making Handmade Musical Instruments

2008-09-12T16:42:00-05:00

You don't need a lot of cash to make music. The folks in these videos all made their own instruments and are sharing them with the world through video. Check the related items for some fantastic handmade musical instruments on Etsy. If you know of a great handmade music video or item on Etsy, share the links in the comments!

What do you get when cross an oil can with a banjo? The canjo!

Wow, it's an upright bass made of cardboard and it sounds pretty good!

I've always wanted to make a cigar box guitar. This one sounds amazing!

Dennis Havlena makes all sorts of instruments and shares them in this video.

Electric Junk Guitar Workshop from ranjit on Vimeo.

Inspired? On October 14th, you can take the guitar making class at Etsy Labs featured in the above video.

Also if you haven't seen the Etsy Handmade Portrait about Armor Guitars, check it out.

The Indie 5 Collective: A Video Collaboration

2008-08-29T14:55:00-05:00

Ali, Amy, and Julia have created their own YouTube channel called the Indie 5 Collective, and together they independently create videos!

They are posting helpful videos for Etsy sellers, such as this one about how to use social networking site Facebook to promote your Etsy shop. Sometimes the videos are just downright hilarious.

Ali broke it down and gave me the scoop on her collaborative project.

"A few months ago, I began making videos to promote my Etsy shop at Buttonhead.etsy.com. Each time I posted a new video, I received such a positive response from the community, and I started to realize the full potential for using video as a way to share knowledge and resources. Inspired by the many cool vlogging and artist collaboration channels on YouTube, I established the Indie 5 channel. We are an Etsy artist video collaboration show airing 5 days/week on YouTube. The channel is designed to highlight the crafting community, provide instruction and information to indiepreneuers, feature outstanding artists, and promote the ‘buy indie’ lifestyle.

We would very much like to expand our group of contributors, so we are now accepting video submissions. If anyone is interested in learning more on how to get involved, you can check us out.
The first week of the Indie 5 show brought us about 100 new subscribers and a ton of enthusiasm from the community. We really hope that everyone sees the show, gets involved, subscribes to the channel, and starts making their own videos."

Looking to make your own videos? Check out the Getting Started in Video series!

100 Videos on Youtube

2008-06-25T13:27:00-05:00

Etsy has been making videos for just a smidge over a year. We upload to a few video sharing sites and we've been uploading to blip.tv for longer, but with the latest video about Betty Turbo, we've hit 100 videos on our Youtube channel!

Here's the first one uploaded to Youtube.

Check them all out and make sure to hit Youtube's yellow subscribe button!

If you want to get all our videos in iTunes, you can subscribe in iTunes and get them all downloaded instamagically there too!

P.S.
All of the related items below have a Youtube url in their items descriptions and you can copy and paste into your browser.

Learning How to Make a Rag Rug: a How-To

2008-06-05T18:11:00-05:00

I love rag rugs. I grew up with a beautiful rag rug carpet that had been made out of a variety of red, brown and black wool rags. I've been daydreaming of getting a one just like that, but there just are not that many big rag rugs out there for sale in the world.

In researching rag rugs, I found this great six part series on Youtube that shows how easily these can be made.

Rag rugs are great because they're usually pretty thick, so they are really comfortable to sit on, do stretches or just lay on while watching a movie. They just feel really nice to walk on, too.

Consider making your own rag rug, and if you get hooked, I'd love to see more of these for sale on Etsy!

Tech Updates: Multi-Media Section of the Storque Launches

2008-01-09T17:15:00-05:00

Give a big welcome to the latest and snazziest addition to the Storque! We've added a section called Multi-Media where you can get directly to our latest video content without having to search through articles. The Multi-Media section is a chronological list of videos; each of these videos can also be found embedded within Storque articles. They're listed most recent at the top, down the line to older videos.

You can find this Multi-Media section in light green right under the pink ETC and the other sections of the Storque navigation. You can also click on the thumbnail to the very bottom right of the Storque frontpage.

If you want to search for a specific video, search for "video" and another tag. For example, search for: video packaging. The search results will return articles with embedded videos that have been tagged with the word packaging. At this point, you cannot search just within the Multi-Media section (in other words, get search results as video sans article). Hopefully that will come into being sometime soon!

We hope you enjoy the videos and get involved! You can upload your videos to Youtube or blip or other hosting site and let us know about them by using the pitch form (make sure to include the link to your video when you fill out the form). Right now we have a call out for your Handmade Stories: see this post for more info.

Submit your Crafty Videos to Todd Oldham on Youtube!

2007-12-11T13:05:00-05:00

We've been talking to the cool folks over at Youtube's How-to/Style category about Etsy and about online video (pssst! They totally love Etsy). They passed along this joint call for videos with Todd Oldham, which could get you crafty Etsians featured on Youtube. We just wanted to pass on the info to you Etsy sellers who've been waiting for the perfect opportunity to make a video.

There's a DIY Holiday Extravaganza going on on Youtube right now. Todd Oldham has a video on the homepage requesting HowTo videos from the community. He's asking people to show him their favorite craft projects that can be given as gifts or make great decorations for the holidays. He's going to choose the most exciting 12 and put them on the home page when he's the guest editor in a couple of weeks.

Buyers — can also get involved! The Storque put out a call for videos for WHY I BUY HANDMADE. This project is running with the BuyHandmade Pledge and we want to get these on Youtube too. Jelene just did a video as a seller. It's fun and easy!

Etsy Featured on Blip.TV

2007-11-28T07:06:00-05:00

The Storque was psyched to hear that Etsy's videos are being featured on the front page of Blip.TV! Check out our segment on the Gotham Girls Roller Derby in their "Hot Episodes" section and watch for the Storque icon in the "Featured Shows" rotation. We'll be posting more How-Tos, Studio Tours and more in the coming months, so keep checking in! In the meantime, make sure to catch up on all of Etsy's videos at Etsy.Blip.TV or in The Storque.

Also, remember to send us your videos for our on-going Handmade documentary project. The Storque is collecting videos (and photos!) in conjuction with the Buy Handmade Pledge. Our project has two veins: one for sellers, called "My Handmade Story," and one for buyers, named "Why I Buy Handmade." Any Etsian is free to participate by making a short video that expresses these ideas. We'll be watching and uploading the next set of videos on December 1st, so trot yourself over to the mailbox soon!

To read more about the project and our guidelines, click here. For more information on the Buy Handmade Pledge and how you can contribute during the holidays, go to BuyHandmade.org.