Product Photography and Renewing on Etsy

Tweet Another great blog linked to my Fancy Burp Cloth tutorial this weekend.  Go check out Crafts and Deals when you get a chance - there are lots of links to great projects and tutorials!

I got a lot of sewing and picture-taking done on Saturday.  I redesigned my lunch bags and made a stack for the craft fair.  What do you guys think?  On the left is the previous version, on the right is the new version.  I think the newer one looks cleaner, but I do love the contrast strap on the original.

I also made a few more crayon aprons.  Those crayon aprons confuse me - they are getting tons of views and hearts on Etsy, but they aren't selling.  I'm wondering if they're one of those things you need to see in person?  I also REALLY need to get pictures of a lot of the products being used, kind of like this picture I took for the apron set.  I think it helps to see the product being used in order for a buyer to visualize using it themselves.  I'm debating taking some pictures of the products in action to use on the Etsy store and to make into posters for the Rocky Ripple Festival.

Speaking of Etsy, I've developed a renewing/listing plan for the next month or so to see if it helps my lagging sales.  For those of you unfamiliar with Etsy, when a product is newly listed or the listing is freshly renewed, it pops to the top of search results.  The theory goes that the more you renew, the more people will see your product, which means more sales.  I was kinda on the fence about this until I read this excellent post about a very detailed renewing experiment.  It's hard to argue with that kind of results.

According to Google Analytics, I have the most visitors to my Etsy shop around 9 am and 6 pm (that first big spike in the graph is 9 am and the little spike farther to the right is 6 pm).  I'm planning on renewing an item or listing a new item every day at those times.  I'm not sure my visitor timing is all that accurate - the shop's only been open for a couple of weeks, and that front page feature probably skewed my visitor data.  Also, I typically list around 9 am anyway, so it's very possible that's why the views are high at that time.  I guess time will tell - I'll keep you all updated on how it goes.

If all goes well I'll have a huge pile of inventory for the Rocky Ripple Festival to show you later this week, but we'll see.  Our household is increasing by two kids for the weekend and I'm making a wedding cake for a friend of my mom's on Friday.

Also, we just found out Graham's allergic to peanuts.  Anybody have any good websites or books for me?  I have zero experience with food allergies so this is all new to me.  Thanks!