Cool Diversions VS. Improving Your Shop Statistics

Say you have an hour to kill and you are looking for something to do. I have two options for you. I've discovered a few cool diversions this week and I've also come across a few ways to improve your Etsy shop stats. I'll leave it up to you to decide how to spend your time but I think they are all worthwhile. Above are a few Word Clouds from the site Wordle.net. For the first one I entered the words by hand and hit randomize until I got a configuration I liked. The second one I entered the URL of my blog and it created one from my tags and commonly used words. Pretty cool, huh.

I also came across a very cool new on-line magazine this week called VivaLaModa. Here is a description from their website:



"VivaLaModa is a bi-monthly magazine created to show the greatest and coolest fashionable and hand made things that we can find. But we don’t want to talk only about fashion or beautiful stuff we find. This magazine will also host articles about green products, toys, decoration, product reviews and many more things.
We want to support indie designers and crafters who make things with their own hands (not to forget we also love vintage!), and give readers information about the handmade world."

They are on their second issue and I am seriously impressed with the look and layout. The pictures are gorgeous with lush layouts. I will definitely be watching this site for future issues. How cool would it be to get a scarf featured in it in the future?

Now for the business. I found a few little tips this week that I thought were worth passing on. Simply Shiny Adornments always has useful and easy to understand posts with tips on improving your shop. Earlier this week she explained the importance of your item names in google search. The post was titled Etsy item titles: Are yours configured the best way for Google?

I learned that you should use consistent keywords in your title and first line of your description. For example this scarf was originally just titled Lush Fields Scarf. After I applied her tips it became Lush Fields - Handmade Teal Green Fashion Scarf. I don't know if it will help my items to come up higher in Google Search but it certainly can't hurt.

I also finally figured out how to add my items to Google Base. This is the database of items that Google includes in their Shopping Search, which is different from the regular Google Search. I had tried to do it once before but failed. I followed the tips on Go To Great Panes Website and it was much easier than I thought it was going to be. She has step by step directions that even I could follow here. I checked it this morning and the entire shop was now searchable on Google Shopping so that was exciting. It looks like I will have to update it in a month to stay active but with her directions I think I can handle it.

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