Feature Friday - Wendy Caesar

Wendy Caesar is a single parent of a 17 year-old girl.  She works full-time and is very active preaching and teaching in the community. She told me she has at least three shops, but she mostly promotes Tiflo Gifts and More.   She has had the Etsy shop for a few years, but has only been really active with it since January 2011.

How did you get started?  
I love making jewelry and was involve in it 16 years ago, after my daughter was born I took a very long break a 16 year break so I just got back into making jewelry.

How are your sales going?
What I notice since I started is that my jewelry sells very fast at home shows but comparing that to being on the website it is quite difficult to get a sale.  I get comments all the time about how beautiful my jewelry looks and people even says you should have no problem selling your jewelry.  That is the frustrating part is the waiting for the online sale.

How did you come up with the name of your shop?
The name Tiflo was a combination of a favorite puppy I had when I was pregnant with my daughter and the part of my daughter name.

This bracelet is one of my favorites from Wendy's shop.  It is reasonably priced and absolutely gorgeous.  She will even ship it for FREE!  I can't believe she hasn't sold it already. 

Here is my advice - take it for what it's worth:

• Write more about your product in the product description area.  I know it's hard, but try to create a background story or something really descriptive that will captive the potential buyer.
• Use all 14 of your possible tags.  You used 10 for this one.  Other possibilities include leafy, floral, cotton candy (to describe the pink color), swirled, delicate.... 
• Jewelry is a tough category, so you have to work hard to stand out. Adding more descriptive terms will help.  Think of who would wear the item.  Does it appeal to people who like earthy things, goth, Victorian, bold colors? Is it elegant, dainty, chunky, wild, unique, simple, funky, playful?  
• Don't be afraid to look around at other jewelry listings to get some ideas on how to write descriptions or think of new tags.  I'm always having to push myself to think outside the box when listing new items and I still fall short. I wrote about the creative use of tagging in an earlier post.

Selling online can be tough because of all the competition. Everything Etsy posted this great article about 20 Tips for Selling on Etsy.  I think Wendy has already done well with photography and pricing, things that most people struggle with in the beginning. With a little help, I think Wendy will get her first online sale really soon.  If it makes you feel any better, I've only had one sale so far in 2011.  Maybe my other readers will have some advice for you, too.