So, it’s been just over four weeks since I set up shop at Folksy.com (read my initial thoughts here). Bet you’re wondering how it’s all going?
Well, the first thing to say is how impressed I am at the changes the Folksy team have made in such a short time. They’ve been very attentive to everyone’s complaints and requests and have transformed the site. Bugs I’ve submitted have been fixed quickly and with a personal response from a real live human. This sort of thing really makes a difference and I think everyone who’s been offering suggestions feels like they’re being considered an important part of building Folksy. A lot of companies really understimate just how important this is, but if you’re relying on your users to promote the site then you need to listen to them and keep them involved and informed. I hope this continues once things get bigger.
From a sales point of view, my time at Folksy has been much more successful that I expected. I joined up to have a poke around and see if I could help with promoting something I thought was worthwhile. Listing fees I was prepared to consider as advertising.
How wrong I was! In four weeks I’ve sold 6 things and have 30 people who favourited me. Compare that with the 7 sales and 119 fans I’ve gained in 5 months at Etsy. Obviously neither are going to make me a millionaire but considering I don’t really promote either of these shops, and that they only have a small range of my products available, it’s a pretty good result from Folksy. The Folksy sales are even sweeter thanks to being commission free duting beta and not having to compete with hundreds of thousands of other sellers -if you leave your shop alone for a week, your items aren’t buried in the depths of the categories. I’ve also made a purchase (of Alistair’s new zine, yay) and found it all works pretty smoothly on the other end too.
I definitely plan to step up my promotion and product range on Folksy over the next few months and I hope you’ll come over and see how we’re all getting on. If you’re a UK seller you really should be giving it some thought.
