We at The Storque think that tinaseamonster's series on marketing your Etsy shop (originally published in September of 2007) is an invaluable resource for sellers. Therefore, we're reposting it as part of the Shop Makeover Series. Have you thought about your marketing recently? If not, have a gander at this helpful article!

I have recently fallen in love with a new craft (of sorts). I think of it when I am not doing it, I do it when I am not thinking about it. It is loads of fun and super rad and makes me think in new ways every day. What is it?

Marketing my Etsy shop.

Yep, it has become my new passion. Talking to my fellow shop owners and reading the forums, I know that not everyone has embraced this part of the indie craft experience like I have. So, I am going to share what I have learned.

What follows here is the first piece of a series. Let’s go!

Is your shop ready?

Before you even think about marketing your shop, make sure it is ready! This is all about branding. The best thing about Etsy is that it's a tool for everyone to have their own little brand. I truly believe that we should treat our shop as our personal brand. Rather than making it an informal dumping ground for the four things that we made in art class once, we need to put some thought into it.

Now, you may be wondering: what is a brand?

From Wikipedia: “A brand often includes a logo, fonts, color schemes, symbols, and sound, which may be developed to represent implicit values, ideas, and even personality.”

Your brand can be you, you on too much caffeine, components of you, or something completely new. Creating your brand can be the most fun and challenging part of this. For your Etsy shop, the main components of your brand will be your User Name, the Avatar and your Shop Banner. Create your own little world. Don’t just toss up a bunch of stuff that doesn’t explain who you and your brand are. Have a vision for your brand and follow through with it.

Odds are you already have picked your user name, but if you haven’t, make sure you remember that it will be your shop name. Name recognition is super important when creating not only your Etsy shop, but also your brand. No one is going to remember “lisa523designs” or something like that. Pick something original and interesting that people will want to talk about!

Avatars! Create a memorable avatar. The avatar is your face on Etsy and is often the first thing a customer will see from you. I find that the best avatars are one of three types.

1. Faces. I love to see your face in your avatar. If you are your brand, then this is totally the right way to go. I love to see the person behind the craft.  A rad example of this is ashleyg. I love her avatar because she is this real person looking straight at me. She seems nice and genuine and maybe even a little shy?
2. Item avatar. Make sure your avatar is an item that you actually have for sale in your shop and it is a good photo with a light background. An example of this is blockpartypress.
3. Brand identity. I feel strongly about not changing your avatar too much, except for when you are switching between a series of avatars that are on a theme or that reinforce your brand identity. Kateblack’s series of avatars are cool, because I can always tell they are hers. They just kinda scream “bad-ass.”

Try to stay away from avatars of your pets or your children. There are far too many of these on Etsy and they tend to all blend together. No one loves your dog or child as much as you do and that is the way it should be!

Shop banner, announcement and featured items are the parts of your shop that you should experiment with most. Create a new banner when you launch a new product line and rotate your featured items: most importantly, remember your brand identity during this and try to present a simple shop homepage.

There are a million other things that you can do get your shop ready for customers. Taking good action photos of your items, writing amazingly interesting descriptions, and providing international shipping options are all important. Two important notes on this: First, if you sell clothing, put the size as the first word in your product title. Makes sense, huh? Second, think globally. And if you tell people you will ship to the world, you will sell to the world.

When your shop is ready, the real fun begins! In the next installment, I write about marketing on the Etsy site.

Tina Seamonster blogs her life and craft at www.ilikeseamonsters.com. She is a guest blogger at The Crafty Bastards Blog, where portions of this article originally appeared.