Yay! My First Etsy Front Page Feature!



As seen on the Etsy Front Page, March 7, 2011!

I was down visiting my mom for a few days, and absently checked my email one afternoon.  As soon as I saw that I had an email from Statsy Featurator, I started yelling "OH MY GOD!" - I had finally made the Etsy Front Page! I had missed seeing it there myself by a mere hour, but thankfully, I was able to get the screenshot from CraftCult. 
For those of you who don't know - the Etsy Front Page is (currently) the collection of 12 items on http://www.etsy.com/ that every visitor to the site sees. It's usually a cohesive group of items with the same theme, color, hot trend, etc.  The Front Page collections are pulled from member-curated treasuries, which any Etsy user can create. Right now, there are 475,000 active treasuries on Etsy.  The folks that run Etsy, called the Etsy Admin, will select one particularly beautiful treasury to put on their front page, and the collection changes every hour.  The chance that a treasury you create, or a treasury that you are featured in, will actually make the Front Page is very, very small (except in the case a few, ok a lot, of Etsy Admin's favorite sellers.  These folks can hit the Front Page several times a day.  It's not fair.  But I won't go there, because for rest of us sellers, its an unexpected honor!).  Thus, if you are lucky enough to be featured, its a huge deal.  It's usually a screaming, jumping up and down, and texting your other Etsy friends kind of occasion - at least it was with me! 

Screen Shot! Courtesy of http://www.craftcult.com/

The funny thing?  I wasn't even going to list the St. Patrick's Day coasters that were featured.  They were one of those items that you initially create in your head, and when you actually make the item, it just wasn't what you had pictured.  I wasn't happy with them, but decided to photograph them anyway.  When they ended up photographing well, I decided to list them - and I've very glad I did! 

For those wondering what kind of exposure you really get being on the Front Page for just one hour - my item views for the featured coasters went up 2500% over the previous day's views.  Yes, you read that right - twenty five hundred percent.  I had a record -setting day for shop visitors - the most I've had in the entire (almost) year that I've been open.   Did the item sell?  No, but it did receive several hearts, as did my shop in general, which can definitely translate into sales later on. 

I hope this is the first of many Front Page features!