I always include some sort of small thank you gift to each customer along with his or her Etsy order, and lately the gift has usually been a fabric-covered magnet that I make when I’m packaging the order. I love doing this but as my orders have happily increased, it’s gotten harder and harder to include that in the process and still send out shipments in a timely manner.

So, I took to the Etsy search tool and was immediately drawn in by Button Arcade’s “Custom Goodies” offering, as well as her cute listing photo and clean shop. I quickly made the purchase and as I said, the process couldn’t have been easier.

I created the 10 designs I wanted printed for my magnets and submitted them to Kyle, she turned around a proof the very next day to show how the designs would lay out on a 1″ circle and my magnets went out in the mail the day after! I was so excited when they arrived that I ripped the package open, spilled the contents out, oohed and aahed and shot the above photo.

I hope my Etsy customers will love them as much as I do! Except for one of the designs, my intent was to  make them a collectible set of magnets that were fun and cute and, except for one, didn’t scream my company name on the face of the magnet. I used design elements from my business card and other marketing materials I’ve made. Birdzilla is from a messenger bag I made a couple of years ago, and the combo of Birdzilla exclaiming “ooh!” in a word cloud is from the stickers I include on my packaging.Similar Posts:

• Improve your product photos with a fast, free and user-friendly tool
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• Setting up the actual product to get a good representation of it from different angles
• Finding a background that I could easily set up and break down
• Finding the optimal spot in my home to take advantage of natural lighting
• Configuring the camera for the lighting conditions I’m shooting in, and finally to
• Touching up my photos to make them Etsy-ready

That ‘s a lot of different factors to tinker with, especially since time spent on stuff like this is time is time NOT spent making things that can be sold. Happily, I’ve now worked it out to a relatively pain-free photography workflow that works for almost every product that I currently make. And I think the thing that was the final breakthrough for me was using Google’s free photo organizing and editing tool, Picasa3, to prep my photos for final upload to Etsy.

If you like this before and after photo, then read on to see how you too can easily transform your poorly lit, in-need-of-cropping and otherwise dull product photos into ones that are, hopefully, much more pleasing to your prospective customer’s eye!

I’ll just assume that you either have and know the basics about importing photos into Picasa3, or will follow this link to download Picasa3 and then go through the relatively easy instructions on how to use it. Although I have and know the basics of how to use Adobe Photoshop, I use Picasa3 because it’s a lighter application that doesn’t bring my laptop speed to a miserable crawl, and it’s so quick and easy to use.

I put together a crude, soundless video (because sadly those are the only kinds of videos I know how to make) showing me using a mere five features in Picasa to transform the before photo above, into the after photo below it. Here it is, for better or for worse, followed by a written summary of what I did.

The Process
Note: I use a digital camera that allows me to set the custom white balance on it.

Not shown in the video:

• Set the custom white balance on the camera.
• Positioned product in same lighting that custom white balance was set for, and snapped away.
• Imported my photos into Picasa3, creating a new folder for the product.

Shown in the video:

1. Double-clicked to select a photo to work with.
2. Used the Crop tool in the Basic Fixes tab. I chose to keep the dimensions of the photo the same proportions as the original photo, but for Etsy you could also consider cropping the photo square.
3. Went to the Tuning tab, and used the sliders to adjust:
   • Highlights – amplifies bright spots
   • Fill Light – adds foreground light to balance photos with dark backgrounds
   • Shadows – provides additional depth or contrast by darkening shadows
4. Used the Zoom tool to take a closer look at the photo details, and repeated step 3 for more fine tuning. For me, it helps to have the actual product sitting next to me so I can make sure the colors I’m editing to are as accurate as possible, at least on my own monitor.
5. Exported the photo, making both the photo and file size smaller for web use AND adding an “eleen.com” watermark. I export my photos as 800 x 600, which makes them big enough for Etsy buyers and blog readers to take a close look at the detail of the product but small enough to make them load more quickly. The non-exported file was 4.7mb, whereas the exported file is a mere 62kb.

Other features I regularly use:

I’d say that all the other features in Picasa3 are just as easy to use as the ones above and are worth playing with to make your photo the best that it can be (without using a more high-powered tool and/or spending too much more time). Some other features I regularly use on my photos are Straighten, Sharpen and, if there’s a speck of lint I overlooked, Retouch.

That’s about it! Except maybe that I highly recommend learning Picasa’s keyboard shortcuts to help you quickly scan through and select the subset of photos you want to work with, delete the ones you don’t and move through your keepers.

More Info

For other great posts on improving product photos for your Etsy or other online shop or portfolio:

• These first two really set me off in the right direction when I first set out to work on my product photography
  • Shoot to Sell: Taking Better Photos for eBay, Etsy & Instructables by Photojojo
    
  • Photographing for Success by Etsy

• And here are some great tips from my fellow Full Time Etsy Crafters street team members!
  • A slew of tips from Mu-Yin Jewelry
  • How Do I Take My Product Photos? A Tutorial.

One of my goals this year is to bump the quality of my photos up another notch, so I would looooove to hear pointers about techniques that any of you might be using to make your photos look good too!Similar Posts:

• Figuring out how to get better product shots
• Magnetic cuteness from Button Arcade
• Promote your Etsy shop on Facebook

Thanks to years of loyal credit card usage, a few hundred dollars worth of annual membership fees, some extra bucks to transfer a few more miles in, oh and the charge to buy a few more hundred miles we needed to top it off…Jimmy and I are headed to the Land Down Unda’ and Kiwiland, baby! I mean, mate!

My Etsy shop will take a little R&R as well but will be back with a vengeance on March 11! To be notified of when I’m back in action, please take your pick from any one of these options:

• Sign up to receive an auto-notification from Etsy when I take my shop off of “vacation mode” (this signs you up for a one-time email when my shop reopens only, your email is neither stored nor shared with me by Etsy)
• Become a fan on my Facebook page to receive special offers and updates
• Follow me on Twitter
• Send me a “conversation” (i.e. message) on Etsy (requires registration on Etsy)

I kinda wish Etsy’s Vacation Mode feature wouldn’t hide all of my products, but they make it so in order to avoid buyers mistakenly making a purchase when the seller’s not able to ship within a “normal” timeframe. And since I’m not sure how easy it will be to reply to messages while we’re hopping around our travel destinations, I figured it was all for the best anyway.

BUT, if you’ve a hankering to see what people have recently bought from my shop let’s say, go on and check out my SOLD pages! And thanks to each and every one of you who’ve brought me pride and joy with each and every purchase and piece of feedback.

Have a great couple of weeks everyone!Similar Posts:

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Looking for a way to get some more exposure for my products and Etsy shop, I spent the morning creating a Facebook Page for eleen.etsy.com, complete with an Etsy Mini (a widget that displays a subset of products from my shop).

A Facebook Page is basically a profile page for your business. It’s linked to and administered from your personal Facebook page and is distinct from a Facebook Group in the sense that groups are “meant to be built around a group of people rather than an individual business or brand”, says the author of Facebook for Business: Opportunties and Limitations. Also, you can add applications to Pages but not to Groups. For another helpful comparison of Pages vs. Groups, see this article on Facebook Groups vs. Facebook Pages.

Anyway I didn’t think Facebook Page creation was the most straightforward process in the world so if you’re looking for guidance on building your own, here’s how I went about it.

But first! I present a screenshot of my new Facebook Page to all who are interested:

Tada!

Okay here goes (these instructions assume you’re logged in to your Facebook account already):

I. Create a Facebook Page for your Etsy shop

1) Go to Facebook Pages and review the description and setup instructions
You can also get there from the Home page by clicking on Advertising (in footer links at bottom of page) > Pages (2nd row of links at top of page). Thanks to Amy’s “Using Facebook to Promote Your Etsy Shop” video on YouTube’s Indie5Collective channel for pointing me in this direction.

Make note of the fact that you cannot change the name of your Facebook Page once you’ve created it. I didn’t catch that and it sucked. You have to delete and create a new page if you need to change your page name. Ah well, better now than later.

2) Go to Create a New Facebook Page, choose your category and enter your shop name
I chose Brand or Product > Online Store > and named my Page “eleen :: good stuff * hand made”.

3) Add the basic information about your shop
I uploaded my shop logo in the Picture section, filled out the Information section and created a few photo albums to start out with.

4) Add your Etsy Mini to the Page
Here’s the fun part! There are two apps that allow you to add your Etsy Mini to Facebook. One is the Etsy Shop app, which adds your Etsy Mini to your personal profile (instructions below). This app is not currently available for adding to Pages.

The My Stuff by Gigya app lets you add your Etsy Mini to your business Page (as well as to your personal profile). This is the step for adding your Etsy Mini to your business Page.

• Click on the Edit Page link in the top right corner of your page.
• Scroll to the bottom of the list of default Applications on your page.
• In the More Applications box, click the Edit (pencil) icon and choose Browse More.
• Now you’re on the Application Directory page.
• In the Search Applications field (towards top right of page), search for “My Stuff”.
• On the results page, click on My Stuff by Gigya.
• Click on the blue Add to Page button in the right column.
• Click the Add My Stuff button to confirm that you want to add this app.
• So here’s where I got confused, because from there I got a blank page.
  • If you have the little Facebook toolbar at the bottom of your browser, you can click on Page Manager > Pages > Edit Page.
  • If you don’t have that, go to your Facebook Home page and in the right column under Applications, click Page Manager > Pages > Edit Page.
• Now find the My Stuff app that you added to your Applications list, click the pencil icon and select Edit.
• Open a new browser window and go to Your Etsy. Under Promote in the left column, click Etsy Mini.
• Build your Etsy Mini. I did 4 columns, 4 rows of thumbnail sized images.
• Copy the code for the Flash version.
• Go back to your My Stuff editing window and paste the code into the Add Code box.
• Click Add to profile and be entranced by the interstitial animation.
• Go back to your Page (either using the browser back button, or navigating to it from the Page Manager). You should now see your Etsy Mini! Note: If there’s a giant green arrow, click on it to make the Flash load. Also, if for some reason it still doesn’t show, head back to your My Stuff edit page and click the Refresh Profile link.

5) If you have a blog, you can import your entries into the Notes application.
Why not?! Click edit in the Notes section, then under Notes Settings just click “Import a blog”. Instant notes!

6) Add apps as you see fit, drag the content around til you like the order, then Publish the Page
My Stuff was the only app I added to start out with, and I deleted the Video app for now since I have no content for it.

II. Update your Facebook personal profile

7) Add the Etsy Shop application to your personal profile
Etsy provides a handy Facebook app that lets you easily display up to 6 shop items on your personal profile page. You can choose to display it from either your Wall tab or your Boxes tab.

On the Wall tab, the module displays in the left column beneath your Description, Information and Friends boxes:

In the Boxes tab, the module displays in a larger format with product names. This is where I’m placing mine.

• From the Etsy Shop application page, click on Go to Application, then Allow access.
• Complete the form with your Etsy Username, the number of items you want shown (1-6) and whether you want to show items from your own Shop or from your Favorites. Click Add.
• From the next page, Click Add to Profile. Note: The Favorites from your Facebook friends will not be added your profile page.
• Choose where you want your Etsy Shop app to show up, either in your Wall and Info tab or your Boxes tab. Click Add.
• If you’re happy with the placement shown, click Keep.
• If you’d prefer a larger view of your Etsy Shop, click the pencil icon in the right corner of the box, and choose ‘Move to Boxes tab’.

III. Spread the word!
This I have only just begun to do, but here’s where I plan to start…

8) Link to your own darn page!
Maybe because it’s new and I’m  not used to it, but somehow I find it really hard to get to my own Facebook Page. So now I not only have a browser bookmark to it, I also link to it from several different places.

• On Facebook, in the Information box underneath your profile photo and description

• On Facebook, in the Posted Items box. From your Facebook Page, click the Share button. Select the Post to Profile tab and Post. Now you’ll have an item posted in your Posted Items box, which displays by default under the Boxes tab of your personal page. I’ve moved this to my Wall tab for (maybe) better visibility.
  
• In your Etsy Shop Announcement and/or Etsy Profile
  
• From your blog (see Step 10)
• In your email signature… You get the picture!

9) You fan their page, they’ll fan yours
Lots of Etsy sellers are more than willing to be a fan of your page if you become a fan theirs, and you can find lots of threads in the Etsy Forums about Facebook and Facebook pages where sellers list their links in droves. Also, don’t forget to become a fan of your own page. This will add your page to the Info tab of your personal Facebook profile.

10) Use a badge, any badge
Well actually it looks like Facebook only provides one, but it looks like this and is available, along with Facebook’s usage guidelines on Promoting your Facebook Page outside Facebook.

11) Share and share alike
Use the Share button in the right column of your page to beg and plead your friends to become fans of your page and/or ask them to ask their friends to do the same.

12) Listen to the wisdom of those who’ve gone before you
The Pages portion of the Facebook Help Center and the Facebook Pages Insider’s Guide offer plenty of paths to follow to get you (and me) started in on promoting our pages. I’m sure there are countless other fine resources as well. If you’ve had good success with yours, I’d love to hear how you did it!

III. Track and optimize
Once your page has been published for about 48 hours, you’ll get free access to metrics on “user exposure, actions, and behavior relating to your Social Ads and Facebook Page” via Facebook Insights. I haven’t seen this yet since I only just published this morning. 36 more hours! Update: Here are my stats after about 6 days of the page being live. I got work to do!

Here’s Facebook’s take on which pages will be the most successful:

The Pages with the freshest, most engaging content stand to gain the most from this new product—since each track played, video viewed, review written and event attended can generate News Feed stories that propagate through the social graph. Facebook will accelerate the rate at which unknown entities become popular, and it will also fortify the position of those who are already recognized highly among users. Whether large or small, all artists, businesses, and brands have the potential for exponential distribution through the graph if they can engage users.

So, I can see how you could end up spending a whole lotta time on this. But I can also see how it’d be well worth the effort. We’ll see how it goes!

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