FWIW, this suggests that you’re doing a good job of driving traffic to your Etsy shop (congrats!) but your SEO needs improvement in order for your products to be found in search.
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Got it! Suppose for the $30/mnth just to have a shop, they function a bit differently! But good option for lots of shops! Love it there are many options/venues!
As of now, monthly fees are waived until the end of 2019.
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Oh, yeah, they keep extending that–on the Etsy forum it was mentioned thru '18, and now thru '19… Something to consider for sure!
Just my opinion, but I would point out that while the glowforge might be least-effort for producing those items, there is no “least-effort” for selling them. At least not in any sort of volume. Imo, wholesale is the least-effort way to sell, because you essentially only have to find one customer for one thing. But there’s less profit and more pressure, so that’s a trade-off. Direct sales is a ton of effort, no matter how you go about doing it. Online store, in person, on social media, whatever. Only a unicorn is going to throw something out there and get good, steady sales. It just doesn’t happen for nearly everyone.
The making is the easy part, with or without a glowforge. Selling is the hard part.
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Probably could use some but my SEO on my other website drove a lot of google traffic to it so I think I’m ok at it.
It could just be that my products are not things people search for on etsy but like them when they actually see them
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Occasionally (I am not really doing this as a JOB) I think about prices and I usually get to this part of the thinking.
To get your worth really depends on what you made.
Take earrings or necklaces for example. If a really complex or new looking design, it may take 4 or 5 hours to get a working model and usually have a couple of variations. So maybe 4 new slightly different designs.
That time will be repaid, because you will probably sell eight, ten, or more and all the effort was in design time, since minimum resources and laser time once the design is finalized…
Big Plus → All people have to do is wear them and you are advertising. Boom.
Then a big money item like one-off personal signage (non-business type). No way you can do a specialized sign for $10 - $15 if it took you several hours to design and want to feel like your time was worth anything. The only advertising now is if someone invites another person into their house.
So while business signs may be a niche market, personal one-off signs are less than that. One and only’s.
(I have had 2 exceptions to this, but that is not the norm).
So WHAT you are making may well be the driving force on how and where your advertising is most beneficial.
You mentioned community-focused groups. WHERE do they congregate and come together? Would fliers there help you or come off as too cheesy?
Show and tell is always great advertising. If you know the group is large, giving a ‘freebie’ to one member could be a huge plus if it generates many sales of something you already have designed and finalized.
The earring//necklace strategy on a larger scale item.
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SEO for google and SEO for Etsy are two completely different animals. Etsy recently gave their search system a pretty dramatic overhaul, which in turn changed SEO practices there (ugh). This may be some of why you’re seeing less traffic from Etsy search.
At the end of the day, I think it’s probably better to drive your own traffic than to be dependent on Etsy search. Though in a perfect world you want a bit of both.
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well that is a pain… Oh well though I guess that is a con to etsy to add then. Because I don’t like to jump through hoops to get noticed on a service that I am paying a pretty decent percentage to be on
Yep, it’s a PITA. They roll out changes and upgrades a couple/few(?) times a year, so sellers must constantly learn new things. They’re usually small-ish tweaks that are easy enough to learn. Sometimes it’s a bit trickier - and more time consuming - to adapt to their changes.
On the one hand, I’m glad that they continue to upgrade and improve. OTOH, I’d rather spend my time making products than learning their platform-specific nuances.
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Kickstarter is also a great way to start. It lets you focus on a couple of products and gives you a reason to talk about your new project in the short-term. Then, you have a great mailing list to build your business with.
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FWIW, it’s the same with even the big search engines - like Google.
True story. It all requires ongoing learning.
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Oh, what the heck would you know about crowdsourcing???
Sheesh…
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I’m in a quandary trying to pick between Shopify and Wix eCommerce. I’m leaning toward Shopify, but I saw a posting that said that when templates are updated, users have to rebuild their stores. Seems odd. May have been someone who was incorrect.
I run a Wordpress WooCommerce store for SailZing.com and used to run product management for a major retailer’s eCommerce, but when you have to manage it yourself… The WooCommerce system is powerful, but I have to manage updates and payment gateway issues. Don’t want that for my laser biz. Shopify seems to have great support and has great integrations.
I can’t say yes or no, but I can say I haven’t had an issue with that after a year. I imagine if there is an issue, it’s if you are injecting custom code (they use something called liquid). I’ve done a little bit of custom code and haven’t broken anything yet. 
With Shopify, you can use your own merchant processing/gateway, but they charge a fee for doing it. I can get merchant processing for really cheap (through brother in laws company), but for what Shopify charges to use your own processor, it comes out more expensive than using the Shopify processing.
The integrations are really nice - but you have to be really careful to not make your site cost a lot of money every month. Most of the integrations charge on a monthly basis opposed to a one-time purchase.
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Hi @jbmanning5. Good info. The user made a comment along the lines that after each forced theme update, they had to rebuild their whole site. I’m assuming that doesn’t include item management.
Does Shopify make it possible to have multiple home page-like landing pages with their own portions of the catalog?
I used Shopify for a brief stretch as a test and loved their inventory and item management and was amazed at how helpful they were with marketing assistance. I now have two Shopify POS card capture devices and two Square ones. So, I’m ok with using them as a processor. I use Braintree Payments for my WooCommerce processing.
My Wordpress setup is:
WP Engine for managed hosting - cha ching, but they really take care of managing security and Wordpress/PHP… platform updates.
WooCommerce Plugin - free
Payment Plugins - one-time fee available. Manages the Braintree Payments interfacing.
Braintree Payments (a PayPal company) - Payment processor
My Time - I do spend a lot of time managing updates, testing them…
This config works great, but I’m looking to avoid that level of infrastructure management for this site.
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You’re several layers of understanding above me, and all I can wonder is how much time to you spend ‘shopkeeping’ and how much time ‘making’ ?
I was once described by a fellow craftsman as ‘one of the best craftsman he knew, and the worst business man’.
I still find the description flattering !
John 
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Just looking at your diagram, it shouldn’t be difficult.
Basically, you have an item database - all of your items.
Those can be organized into collections (automatically with tags).
I basically did what you’re talking about to display puzzles by state (https://wimberleypuzzlecompany.com/pages/jigsaw-puzzles-by-state) but it took a little bit of custom code (that I actually found from a Shopify blog post). It took about 5 minutes to get it up and running. I organize everything into collections using tags, and then have a custom page template that I created using their code that can organize just the state collections.
Your set up would be pretty similar, I would think.
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But how to start ?
I feel the need (though not till my first show next year), but it’s unknown territory to me.
Good book, or site with ‘brain dead’ instructions/tutoring ?
John