Beth, who works on the Etsy Business Operations Team, is on the road with a slew of business trips for Etsy, and so she's meeting with Etsy sellers along the way and filling us in on her travels. Thus, we're calling it the Mega-Beth Tour, Beth's professionalism notwithstanding. Here's her latest installment...

Last weekend I headed out to Chicago for the Country Living Women’s Entrepreneurship Conference, an event attended by 600 women entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs.  Before the conference, I met up with a few Etsy sellers to hear their perspectives and get their ideas for the site.

Pictured: ButtonEnvy, thedarkcottage, Marstinia, BrianKennyChicago, Momomatic

This ambitious group got up early on a Saturday to meet me and we had a great time.  I always love meeting sellers, but my favorite part is seeing all the cool things that they make up close — or even better, works in progress.  Three of the sellers were wearing their own designs: ButtonEnvy was wearing one of her bracelet creations made from scrabble tiles (similiar to this bracelet in her shop), momomatic was wearing one of her rings, and marstinia was wearing these great pieces:

Thedarkcottage creates wood art, magnets and jewelry holders and BrianKennyChicago creates original cards and pop-ups (he showed me one of his prototypes and it is awesome.)  You can also check out BrianKennyChicago today in the virtual labs: his shop is getting critiqued.  

We discussed many, many topics, but here are some of the highlights:

Shipping – Shipping is always a hot topic when I visit sellers.  Chicago is apparently at the extreme end of challenging for shipping.   Buttonenvy mentioned, “I kiss it for luck and say please make it.”  When we got to the topic of how we can make it better, some of the suggestions were to create a how-to on how to use PayPal to ship (comment below if we need to add more to these how-tos!) and adding a store policy section for shipping.

Enhanced Profiles – The group was very interested in showing their workspaces and seeing other sellers' studios in the profile section of shops.  Another suggestion was pictures about what inspires the artist to make the items they well.  We love these ideas, too.  We are working towards making the profile section much more dynamic and customizable to help people learn more about you in the coming months.

Shop Critiques – “How in the world do you get one of those?” one person asked.  I asked the lovely Mary (who organizes shop critiques) for her advice on how to get picked.  One way is to volunteer to be critiqued by adding your name to this thread.  You can also show up during the shop critiques in the Virtual Labs. If you can't make it for a Virtual Labs Session you can also check out past Shop Critique articles. You can keep on top of what's coming up by clicking the Shop Critiques "Featured Column" on the Storque.

Alchemy – In general, the group really liked Alchemy, particularly the request a custom item button in the shops.  A few ideas popped up throughout the conversation.   The first was to charge a small fee for each request to weed out the not serious requests, a sort of mini-deposit.  If the person requesting the item accepted a bid, they could put the “deposit” toward the item. Another idea was a way to sort, by expiration or newly requested items.

Promotion – We talked a bit about how to promote your shop, including selecting business cards, joining Teams and sending free stuff or promotional material to very targeted viewers.  One person in the group had great success sending customized items to bloggers, who then wrote about her. They were all excited about our new Cooperative Advertising campaign.   

At the conference, I met many dynamic entrepreneurs, including many Etsy sellers.  A few of the sellers I met include Vintage Scraps, follow your bliss, Red Otter and eeniemeenie, who jumped out of the audience to ask me a question, proclaiming to the entire audience she is an “Etsy whore” – meaning, of course, she spends lots and lots of time buying on the site. (The audience burst into sympathetic laughter.)  Another woman I met, LeAnn aka luluology, took what she learned from the conference and went out and bought beautiful new business cards from paperandink.  Now that is action!

I was also on a panel with Heather Bailey, fabric designer and well-known blogger who did a magnificent job capturing the day on her blog.