wrapping up the Iowa Arts Festival

The Iowa Arts Festival was this past weekend, and it was awesome!  It rained while we were setting up on Saturday, but the weather during the rest of the festival was great.  The crowds were steady both days, as were my sales!  The only slow period that I had was the first hour on Sunday.  I barely sat down the rest of the festival because I constantly had people in my booth.  My sales way exceeded my expectations.  People who didn't buy still had positive feedback.  I got a lot of compliments about my designs, particularly my button designs.  In general, people were very friendly.  I've always said that people in Iowa are friendlier than anywhere else I've lived.  The crowds at the festival definitely lived up to that.

All in all, it was a very uplifting experience.  I have been pretty frustrated with Etsy sales during the majority of 2010.  I have done a lot this entire past school year to increase my advertising through my Facebook fan page, Twitter, and this blog.  It takes a lot of time and energy, and I don't feel like it's paid off for the most part.  I've had only one sale directly through Twitter and one directly through the Etsy forums.  It doesn't help that Etsy continues to be more competitive.  I got lots of Twitter followers who are brand new Etsy sellers with less than 10 items in their shops, already spamming people 5-10 times per day with self-promotion.  For all that Etsy is an encouraging environment, it is also a very competitive one.  If I don't list something or post something somewhere for even a couple days, I start losing followers.  I got worn out by the level of self-promotion that is necessary to stay on top.  It was great to have two days at the festival with tons of positive feedback and steady sales.

Digressing a little bit here: The best part of Etsy has been the continued support of my EBW and EtsyBlogger team mates.  I really appreciate all of you who regularly comment here.  That's been the biggest thing that's kept me going with the whole online selling process.

I am not ready to quit by any means, but I am reconsidering what I want to do with my Etsy shop.  I sold a lot of items that are listed there at the festival, so for now, I've deactivated all items that I just sold or had previously listed as "made to order."  I'm still in the process of figuring out what I want to continue to list as "made to order" and if there are any other changes that I want to make to my shop.  For now, I will list my new items that didn't sell at the festival, remake the designs that I want to, and not hurry too much with figuring out what I'm going to do with the rest of the items.  There are other projects that I want to work on this summer such as editing and posting pictures from this school year, making cards, making cork board coasters, and picking up counted cross-stitch again.  I love working on jewelry, but it is far from my only creative interest.  I don't want to get hung up on all of my Etsy stuff and not work on anything else

I am still interested in starting a mailing list this summer as well as working on writing a couple patterns for my designs, both of which I hope will also generate more interest in my Etsy shop.  I gave out lots of business cards at the festival and gave out 15% off coupons for my Etsy shop to everyone who purchased something from me.  I hope that those efforts will generate more interest, too.  If anyone has any other ideas, please let me know!  I'm always open to suggestions.

Finishing up with the festival: The person who helped me set up both days was supposed to take a couple pictures of me with my booth, but I didn't end up in either picture.  So here are some of the pictures that I took during the second day of the festival.

It was pretty windy off and on the second day so I didn't put up the tent walls and I pinned or taped everything and used all of my paperweights.

I set up my tables almost exactly like I did during my test run.  As you can see, by this point in the weekend, a lot of my button magnets and several pendants had already sold!

There are a few things that I might do differently in the future, but overall, I was pretty happy with the set up.

Green was definitely a popular color choice throughout the weekend.  I sold all of my green button earring studs.  Here are two of the pairs that I sold.

Among other items, I also sold my green leafy earrings.

I finished a new pendant today and spent about two hours with buttons, arranging new bracelets, earrings, and magnets.  I'll start listing new items again on Etsy tomorrow.