Okay now that that is out of the way...
Make it your new years resolution to get your own website up and running. Stop depending on Etsy and other craft sites. Just like free lance writers found out the hard way; never put all of your eggs in one basket. (so sick of that saying but its true)
If Etsy got a wild hair tomorrow and shut your store down (it happens!) What back up do you have? Have you been marketing yourself and your arts and crafts or have you really been marketing Etsy and then yourself?
Random Pony Picture
It takes time to get a new website going but its well worth it. Think about all the time you spend marketing your Etsy store and think about why you should be doing it for yourself.
Web hosting is so reasonable and with paypal etc you can easily add paypal buttons, shopping carts etc.
Etsy, Artfire etc are good tools, but they should just be a marketing strategy for you own website.
Take a look at Yahoo hosting, Yahoo stores (more expensive)Intuit simple store etc. All are reasonable and easy to build.
Okay some have a website but it links directly to Etsy. Which is better than nothing; but you still need to make your website a stand alone site. The goal of any site is to keep people there; not lead them to another site.
When you do this (link to Etsy) remember you are also linking them to a million other sellers. Especially if someone has never seen Etsy and you send them there; they could get to looking about and totally click off your store.
I will give an example I learned the hard way. I have a pony website where I sell ponies. Years ago I put links to other pony farms on my website to get links built. Stupid stupid stupid!!! What was I thinking? At the time it was all the rage to add links to build your google rating.
What I found out is I lost a lot of sales by sending people directly to my competition. Its a mistake I never made again. While I adore many other pony farms, I work too hard marketing my website and ponies just to link to other farms and basically advertise for them for free.
Remember once you send them off your site to Etsy, its anyone's guess whether they will buy from you or go to another seller. Very risky.
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