The Frontlines

So my store has been open for more than a week now. Still no sales. :( They'll come.

I've heard that it takes about 5 months for an esty.com shop to actually pick up and start making sales. So for now I have to just keep advertising. I read some good advice in the veganetsy blog about renewing items every few days. It costs $.20 to renew, but by renewing one item, it automatically puts that item near the top when people do searches. It can then lead to other items in my store being viewed. If I renew every three days, it will only cost $2.00 a month. Which isn't all that bad. And I've already seen results from renewing one item today. I have a new heart on one of photos and the item I renewed has more views on it.

I'm also think about posting my watermarked images on various other websites like flikr and such where I can spread the visibility of my work. We'll see how that goes.

This Is No Rehearsal

So I've decided to start titleling my posts the way I used to pick a subject for emails to a friend of mine. I will choose something from whichever album I happen to be listening to like a song title, the album title, band name, lyric, etc... This title comes from Porcupine Tree's Stupid Dream.

And now for the important information. For the past few weeks, I have been working hard on preparations to open my own online store for my photography. I posted my first item on 5/19/09 and I am now open for business!!! I haven't had any sales yet, but I've had quite a few people taking a look at it thanks to my girlfriend who had her own craft store on the same site.

My store is located here: tharnphotography.etsy.com

I've put my favorite photos up there. I need to go through my older stuff now that I know how to use the editing software a little better and pick out some others to sell. One of my favorites is a black and white photo of an ironwood tree in the winter. All the leaves are missing and it has a very bleak and desolate look.

I found a place that prints photos with a metallic finish and it really enhances the photo. It sort of brings out the contrast in the shadows and highlights.

I'm also exploring etsy and joining some of the groups. I now belong to Vegan Etsy and have inquired on how to join Photographers of Etsy (POE - what a sweet acronym!!). Hopefully all this networking will generate some sales. Mary has been posting links to my photos in her tweets on twitter. She uses a website called tiny URL that takes any URL and changes it to something shorter and it hides where it leads to until you get there.

Well, that's all I have for now.