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| "Nib or the Amateur Photographer (Nib ou le Photographe-Amateur)" Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1895 Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art Open Access Program. |
Perhaps that title is hyperbolic because I have taken many photos of my work for my Etsy shop and have yet to make a thousand sales.
Nonetheless, the sentiment is correct. If there's anything I have learned in *gasp* TEN years of running an Etsy shop - or doing anything on social media geared at gaining attention - it's that good pictures are everything.
To do well on Etsy you really have to treat it like a full time job. I, already having a full time job and a part time job on top of that, clearly do not. And so I maybe get one or two sales a month, three or four if I'm lucky, though one of my long term goals is to start dedicating more of my time and energy to Etsy in the future and see where it takes me (perhaps into the promised land of a full time creative career? Who knows).
But, believe it or not, one or two sales a month is a vast improvement over the kinds of sales I used to see. There was a period of several years where I didn't have a sale. This was a combination of multiple factors. I wasn't good at using appropriate search terms. Etsy's internal search results rely heavily on listing recency, so if you're not listing frequently your stuff is naturally going to get buried in the search results. I wasn't spending any time promoting my Etsy shop externally, and still don't because of my limited resources. And part of it, I'm sure, is that it takes time to develop a base of repeat customers as well as followers on Etsy who help to generate views by liking items that I have listed.
But I suspect the primary culprit was my photography.
Compare:
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| Fire Opal and Lapis Necklace, current Available at coupcoup.etsy.com |
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| Crochet wire and pearl necklace, 2007 |
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| Pearl and glass bead earrings, 2007 |
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| Gemstone Earrings, current Avaialble at coupcoup.etsy.com |
The difference is striking, no? I'd analyze what makes one so superior over the other and then get into why that generates more interest in my shop but...what's that they say about a picture?
Thing is, getting good photos isn't easy. I'm still not 100% thrilled with the quality of my photos. That difficulty is a big part of why I didn't have great photos from the very beginning. First of all, you need the right technology. When I started my Etsy shop smart phones were not a thing. I remember hearing about some college friends of mine (who now both work in Silicon Valley) waiting in line for this thing called an Apple Phone and having no idea what they were talking about.
So I was taking all my product photos using an old 5 megapixel point-and-shoot camera my parents bought me as a present when I left for college circa 2004. I'd then have to load my photos into my computer via a USB cable. Photoediting software was expensive and a thing only professionals seemed to have. Eventually I downloaded Google Picasa and even that was a huge step, but it's still not great, and doesn't even compare to the photoediting apps I now have on my smartphone.
There was also the issue of getting practice and having access to an environment in which lovely photos were a possibility. The best camera in the world can't do much for you if your apartment doesn't get natural light. So moving to D.C. and suddenly finding myself in a big beautiful apartment with tons of natural light, in combination with the acquisition of a smartphone, made a huge difference. My phone camera was better than my point-and-shoot. I could edit my photos using a phone app and e-mail them to myself or upload them directly to Etsy. Even now a handful of my product photos on Etsy were taken using Instagram.
But the real game changer was my DSLR camera, which I bought used off a friend for $150. A good deal, even though I still had to shell out more money for lenses - and I was able to find affordable off-brand lenses on Amazon that work just dandy with my Nikon camera body: I use this 18-55mm zoom lens for general phtoography and love working with this 50mm prime lens for still product photos.
It's nothing that amazing, a starter DSLR really, but a DSLR is still a DSLR. It makes a particular difference when I'm photographing my tiny, delicate jewerly or trying to get up close photos of the stitching and texture of my knitted goods. It's amazing being able to switch to the lens that best fits the job.
I also bought magnifying lens filters
that I can screw on to the end of the lens and that create a closeup macro effect without having to shell out for a super expensive macro lens. We're talking $13 instead of $1300.This combination of DSLR with lens and macro filter has enabled me to get close up shots both of the gems in my jewelry and the texture of my knitted items. It's really important on both fronts because I want to feature the way the light glints off the microfaceting of my gems, while my knits are special precisely because I knit with thinner, higher quality yarns than most and pay a lot of attention to subtle texture when I choose what stitches I use for my various knit pieces.
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| See all my hand knit textile creations at coupcoup.etsy.com |
Even now I still photo edit the DSLR photos on my computer, often using Picasa. But now my editing is to do what editing is supposed to do: adjust the light levels, the white balance, crop, etc. Before the DSLR my editing was generally to mask the fact that it was a poor quality, noisy, hazy photo to begin with.
The lesson I have learned is that a creative business is a visual business, meaning that a creative business is synonymous with photos. Photography, in my opinion, is perhaps the most resource-intensive part of running my Etsy shop. Theoretically that should be the art-making which, yes, is time consuming, and yes, requires me to shell out money for materials, whereas I already have the DSLR. But the making is actually the fun part. And photography is also fun - when you're using your camera to take beautiful artistic shots of things you want to be shooting. Not so much when your back hurts from hunching over all day to get a decent close up shot of a spring clasp.
It also takes 20 shots to get one good one, and if you're relying on natural light through the window, which I am, climate conditions and timing have to be right, too. This means I can't plan photography for when I get home from work because it's too dark out, so I have to dedicate a big chunk of my weekend if I want to get decent photos. And that means that if I'm busy with other obligations for several weekends in a row my products sit unlisted until I can get around to it.
More than that, I've noted that my emphasis on better photography over the past few years has completely changed how I run my Etsy shop in general. I've moved away from one-of-a-kind items to items I can reproduce because that lets me reuse the same photos. Now, when I design an item, my first consideration is whether it will photograph well and the amount of time and energy it will take to actually snap a good photo. Will it require a model? Will I have to hunch over for an extended time in hopes of getting an image that isn't out of focus or is it something that will photograph well from 2 feet away? Can it look good just against a simple white background?
This is, I think, a large part of why the emphasis in my shop has gone from jewelry to textiles to journals. In addition to being my top selling item, the journals are highly photogenic and easy to photography quickly - maybe that's connected. Jewelry is small and delicate, and very hard to capture, particularly if you're trying to capture its luster.
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| View all my journals at coupcoup.etsy.com |
But at the same time, I can't help wondering if we're missing something now that we live in a world where Instagrammability is the number one determinant of a product's ability to sell.
Emily
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