The first day of the art fair at Delicieux was disappointing but the second day was much better for all the artists involved. I sold two framed prints and a couple of unframed ones from my Doug Wellyn’s Potting Shed Prints. Debbie, the owner of the café, is intending to have a Christmas Fair throughout December with artists and craftspeople paying per day, per weekend or per week. I’ll certainly be looking at this.
Meanwhile I have a large number of Doug Wellyn prints still to sell, so last night I loaded a couple up onto Folksy.com with two more this evening. The plan is to upload a few on a regular basis. This is the first time I’ve tried to use Folksy to sell my prints. It has thrown up a few concerns already. Where are my prints? I’ve searched for ‘screen print’ and there are over 30,000 apparently. Is there any way of narrowing the search? I’m used to searching on ebay where it is easy to narrow things down. I don’t know where my prints are in the 500+ pages. Another concern is that the first few prints on the first page this evening are the same as yesterday. Is this normal?
A further concern is again based on my experience of ebay. When I list items there I am able to save a listing as a template. With Folksy it appears that you have to enter everything each time. Fortunately I saved the information section as a text document. But filling in the rest is a hassle. All my prints are the same material, same price, same postage. Have I missed something? At least it is easy to share on Twitter and Facebook with my friends and followers, some of whom may be interested, but reaching Josephine Public?
Is Etsy any easier to use? I’m thinking of using Buy Now on ebay, as I am familiar with that, but don’t want to bother setting up an Etsy account if it is no better than Folksy. Advice please!
Meanwhile please check out my Folksy shop. Any feedback gratefully received!
notes to the milkman 
Hi John, yes, Etsy is much easier than that! Never looked into Folksy, or if I did, it was a while back and it didn’t seem to have a lot of sales happening. Once you have uploaded your first item on Etsy, you can ‘copy’ that listing – it will give you the whole thing you have filled in, images and all, and you simply alter what you want to alter. It also allows you to list multiples: if you make something in a range of colours etc. you can add a feature where you can chose the colour, or whatever feature you want. Never tried that as it’s not been suitable for anything I have, but it’s a new feature they brought in and they are obviously quite pleased about it. I don’t recall how easy it has been to find my stuff, except if I search for ‘medusa print’ or something like that, can almost certainly find some of mine.
Good to hear you second day was an improvement!
It may be worth having a go with Etsy. I’ve always been put off with it being US based while Folksy is UK.
A fair point but I’ve always been put off the other ones by the fact that none of the sellers seem to have made sales in double figures! At least, that seems to be the case with MISI, been a long time since i’ve looked at Folksy, but given your experience I’m not sure i am inclined…. Quite a lot of brits on Etsy now, and the other thing is that it’s 20c to list an item – with misi it is 20p which is quite a bit more, what does it cost of Folksy, out of interest?
Hi John, hadn’t twigged that you liked my ‘Doug Wellwyn’ suggestion for a name enough to use it. He was a character I created for a pantomime I wrote thirty years ago! Glad sales improved, by the way. Interested to see Nancy’s account of Etsy.
You didn’t copyright it I hope!
Hi John, yes we had a great weekend and made plenty of sales, will definitely look into the December craft fair. Can we look forward to seeing new prints of the’pink teapot’ perhaps?
Yes we had a great weekend and made a lot of sales, will definitely look into the December craft fair for a weekend. Can we look foward to seeing new prints of the ‘pink teapot’ perhaps?
You’re just jealous you didn’t get brews in a pink teapot.
No, you’re welcome! Anne