Halp! I'm drownin' in domain names.

I registered the domain name for my mom’s shop the other day (www.aseakea.com) just getting prepared to get her blog ready.

When I was doing this I had a BRIGHT IDEA.

It occured to me that Etsy sellers who don’t have any time or desire to blog can still take advantage of domain names.

How?

Register your shops name and then have the domain forward to your Etsy store.

Not only are there legal benefits to this, but there’s also a few others.

Step 1. Click the Forward Button when you're viewing the details on your new domain.

Here’s some I can think off just off the top of my head:

• You can use www.YourStoreName.com instead of www.yourstorename.etsy.com.
• Easier for your customers to remember.
• Looks more professional on your promotional and packaging material.
• You’ll lay claim to the .com before anyone else does.
• You instantly protect your trademark. If someone trademarks your stores name before you do (not likely but possible), you still get to keep the domain because it was registered beforehand.

Use the Godaddy Coupon’s here.

Step 2. Enter your Etsy Shop URL in the forwarding field. Click OK. Done!

Make sure you go to the last page for the most recent coupons so you don’t have to pay full price for your new domain registration.

Is protecting your trademark and getting the benefits of having a more professional and easy-to-remember shop address worth $7?

I like to think so. 8^)

Does it give the right message, or maybe no message at all?

Are you unintentionally killing your shops image by not even having an image?

Get Your Shop Logo

It’s not just about making your business look pretty.

Having a logo and banner for your Etsy Shop is important for brand recognition and laying down your shop’s professional image.

In a highly competitive marketplace like Etsy, having a professional “brand friendly” logo is vital.

Get ‘Er Done

There’s a wide variety of ways you can go about getting your logo done.

1. You can make a request on Etsy Alchemy.
2. You can contact your favorite Etsy graphic designer directly. Check out swiekysiggies, sandrabusta or quarterpast6. Expect to pay around $60-$90.
3. You can get a friend to do it for you or you can do it yourself. I don’t recommend this, because what comes out is usually less-than professional unless you or your friend is a graphic designer by trade.

or….

My Preferred Low-Cost, High-Value Method: Graphics Contests

The reason why I like graphic design contests over all others is you can pick and choose what you like from a wide variety of graphic designers. They bring to the table their own graphic styles and will usually come up with something you like better than what you originally had in mind.

My favorite place to run graphic design contests is on Webmaster Talk.

You’ll need 20 posts to create your thread on this forum, but it shouldn’t take you too long to rack up that many posts in the general forums as a new member.

“Unprofessional” Is Just a Nice Way of Saying Ugly

No matter which path you take, make sure your logo is good!

Ask friends and family on their opinions before you use it. This will give you a second opinion, and make sure they’re being honest!

Some Examples of Great Banners and Logos

The Aruppel logo combines curved corners with an interesting landscape.

This new bath and body shop, Flourish, not only has their sleek logo on their banner, but they are also packaging all their products with it. Branding genius at its finest! Watch out for these guys.

The Button Shop opts for a smaller banner which sets them apart from the rest. I really like the look of it also.

The Elles banner has a fashionable cutoff effect with colors that appeal to their target market.

I like blogs… a lot.

I have 16 different “niche” blogs covering topics ranging from anti-aging to fashion.

Sure, a blog for an Etsy seller is going to be a little different than a niche blog promoting affiliate marketing offers and/or making money with Adsense.

However, the basic principles for grabbing free traffic from Google and maintaining reader interest are the same.

Here’s 3 of the biggest mistakes the vast majority of Etsy sellers are making with their posts.

Want a competitive edge? Take this advice to heart.

Big Mistake #1: Not Targeting Keywords and Sending Their Hard-Earned Blog Traffic to Competitors (Seriously?)

If you want to get more relevant traffic to your blog from Google then you should target the keywords that your potential customers are searching for. Click that link for the lowdown on how to do that.

I see plenty of blogs making these kinds of blog post mistakes. These do nothing for  your stores sales or traffic and can even hurt your promotional efforts!

• Promoting competitive stores by running “features.” Sure, no problem with this as long as its maybe a cross promotion or some kind of win-win situation. Maybe you’re just doing this to be nice, and that’s cool too. But if your goal is to use your blog to get your own store more traffic, you’re definitely shooting in the wrong direction!
• Talking a lot about their life or irrelevant news events (especially political or religious topics)… Not trying to be rude, but people just don’t care (sorry). If you’re sharing your opinion on religion or politics you could even hurt your business by LOSING customers. If you really have to do this, make a separate blog.
• Other kinds of noise that shouldn’t be on your stores blog.

Some Insightful Advice for Building an Interesting Etsy Blog with A Big Following

You’ve heard of the saying, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

Blogging is the same! If you don’t have GOOD anything to blog about don’t blog at all!

I’ve seen some of the very best blogs drop 1 post every 2 weeks. This is the only blog I’ve ever seen in my life that gets a consistent 100+ comments for every post, which is pretty impressive.

But he doesn’t post every day! What’s his secret?

The posts, even though few and far between, are high quality.

Focus on quality, not quantity!

Like I mentioned before, don’t crowd your blog with noise when you don’t have anything to write, it will dissilluison your visitors – keep quality as high as possible.

Here’s a couple ideas on what to write.

• Contests your shop is having (a contest centered around blog participation through commenting is a good one!).
• Sales your shop is having.
• Announcing new items.
• Tips/Tricks your readers will find useful.
• Your comments on anything interesting/controversial (keep the topic relevant, however). Don’t fall into the easy trap of making silly posts about Etsy forum drama (read: unprofessional).

It can be really difficult building a successful blog when your main focus is on commercializing it, but keep at it and you will get traffic and you will make more sales.

Big Mistake #2: More Blogspot Blogs Than You Can Shake A Stick At

I’ve never seen so many free blog hosts in my entire life before I visited the Etsy forum. It seems like pretty much EVERYONE is on a free blog host.

*WHY?*

If you’re currently using a free blog host, switch to your own domain.

Having your own .com domain name is MUCH more professional than being on a .blogger.com hosted domain.

• Your .com looks a lot slicker on your marketing materials.
• A .com is easier for your customers to remember.
• You actually own the domain, it doesn’t belong to another company.
• You can sell it (if you wanted to sell your business in the future).
• It protects your companies trademark in a way (but doesn’t replace registering your trademark)
• Host your blog on Wordpress, you have thousands of plugins and themes to play with.

Okay, I know a lot of you will cry about the price.

But if you use my super-duper frugal coupon method its actually pretty cheap!

Go to dreamhost.com, use the MAX97 coupon code and get a years worth of hosting for $22.40 – just $.06 cents a day. This is what I did when I first started internet marketing with my first website in 2006.

Dreamhost also has “One Click Install” for Wordpress which makes installing it a breeze.

Use the latest coupon code of the month for Namecheap and you’ll get your shops name secured on your own domain for less than $9.

Just to let you know, I’m in no way affiliated with Dreamhost or Namecheap – this is just an honest tip.

Big Mistake #3: “Where’s The Pretty?”

Is your header still the default text header? Yikes!

Logos: Important for branding, does your shop have a logo?

Get the grahpic logo and header in there that promotes your stores brand. Make your blog theme pretty, but not noisy – attractive but readable.

If you’re like me and not a very technical person it’s pretty easy to hire someone to do these things for you from the DigitalPoint forums for just a few bucks. I sometimes pay theme designers to put in my header graphic and change the colors to match the graphic for around $10 to $15 bucks.

Don’t have a logo for your shop? Double yikes!

I’ll be sharing a post here in the next couple days how I had multiple logos to choose from (8-10) from many different designers all for under $50. Alternatively there’s plenty of Etsy graphic designers to choose from.

I hope this post helps you in some way.

I’ll be sharing more tips soon.

]]> http://www.etsuccess.com/the-3-biggest-mistakes-etsy-bloggers-make/feed/ 16 http://www.etsuccess.com/essential-keyword-research-for-your-etsy-blog-stop-shooting-in-the-dark/ http://www.etsuccess.com/essential-keyword-research-for-your-etsy-blog-stop-shooting-in-the-dark/#comments Sat, 16 May 2009 02:52:47 +0000 Andrew http://www.etsuccess.com/?p=12 Wouldn’t it be nice to know just how many people are searching for what tags on Etsy?

Too bad they don’t have this kind of feature!

What I consider to be the next best thing is Overture keyword research.

Warning: This is probably too advanced for some…But since keyword research is one of the very first things I do before I start a blog, I’m going to share it.

If you don’t have a blog for your shop this post is probably going to be worthless to you – stop reading this and go set up a blog ASAP! You’re missing out on the best source of traffic around.

If you do have a blog for your shop and you haven’t done any basic keyword research then you’re in for a real treat.

Doing keyword research for your Etsy blog is easy!

If you want to get tons of free traffic from search engines like Google, you’ll need to find out what keywords your customers are using when they look for the types of products you’re selling.

My favorite free keyword research tool you’ll find at Aaron Wall’s blog: SEOBook

Remember, were trying to figure out what our ideal customer is looking for – go for the most targeted keywords you can find. For me, I’m looking for people interested in jewelry made from Swarovski crystals, seaglass, beads, etc…

I’m going to focus on a couple basic keywords and see what I can come up with:

• Swarovski
• Seaglass / Sea Glass
• Beaded Jewelry
• Handmade Jewelry

The two numbers at the right will tell you how many people per day search for the keyword.

I type in “Swarovski” and get a bunch of results. The vast majority of keywords that come up are going to be junk because they are not related to what I’m selling.

The 6th listing down is “Swarovski Jewelry” and it shows anywhere from 64-80 searches PER DAY. The two numbers to the right of this term will show you how many searches a keyword has per day.

There’s many different ways you can judge how competitive a keyword is, a simple Google search will show you how many thousands of results there are which is a good general way to guage.