Day 317

I haven't talked much about my Etsy shop mainly because there really wasn't much to say. For the longest time, I didn't sell anything. But finally a few days ago, I made my first sale. Someone bought my R2D2 crayon which is funny cuz it's probably my least favorite one. I'm kind of nervous about what they say when/if they write a review. I hope they like it. R2 wasn't perfect which is why I'm not a fan of it but hopefully the customer isn't as picky as I am.

While I've just had one sale so far, it seems like people like what they see. They're just not willing to pay for it. I've priced most of my crayons at $25. Some more complex ones are $30, some simpler ones are $20. If I were a customer, I think $30 is a little high. $20 sounds reasonable if I really liked the crayon. $25 might be a stretch. I know if I lower the price, more would sell. However, each crayon takes two hours or longer to do so I would like to get at least $10 an hour for my work. If I lower the price, I'd be hitting minimum wage territory. Then there's the fact that the well known crayon carving artist charges $250 for one crayon so my ego can't allow myself to go down any lower. 

Each item in my shop has been viewed about 100 to 200 times. My items have been favorited 120 times which means the item is noted in a person's profile so they can see it later or share it with other people. Fifty-five people have favorited my shop which means they get updated whenever I post a new item. So the ratio of views to followers is pretty good especially compared to Tumblr. My most popular item is the Game of Thrones set which has over 1000 views and 40 favorites. Unfortunately, it's also the most expensive so I don't know if it'll ever get sold. 

I've also been hit with a copyright infringement warning for my Futurama crayons and those listings had to be taken down. I don't disagree with the infringement but I was surprised that it happened since copyright infringement is all over Etsy. Apparently some companies care more than others. A search for Futurama stuff on Etsy comes up with 200 items compared to 4000 for the Simpsons so I guess some Futurama person patrols the site every now and then and tells Etsy to shut things down. I understand but I am disappointed. Hopefully it doesn't happen again or Etsy might shut down my whole shop for being a repeat offender. Though it's not like I'm making big bucks or anything.