A new venture

After reading a very interesting business blog the other day I have opened an e-commerce website. The site uses PayPal and there is no need to sign up to be able to buy from my shop.

I am still maintaining the name 'bstudio' for this new shop.

The article on the blog touched on two subjects, advertising and branding and made some very valid points if you maintain a shop on a marketplace website. Their opinion was that if you have a shop somewhere like Etsy or Artfire and someone buys from you, if they were asked where they bought the item from they will say 'I bought it on Etsy/Artfire' not 'I bought it from bstudio'. The site gets the credit not your shop.

So to spend your money on advertising and have your buyer directed to sites like these where they visit your shop but can also wander off and look at your competitors is not the best way to spend your advertising dollars.

This was the conclusion I was starting to come to this past week just before I read this timely article. My shop has been accepted for inclusion on the poppytalk handmade site for the next 6 months. I'm going to be paying for this opportunity and felt that as much as I like Etsy, if they aren't going to pay for their own advertising but rely on their shop owners to bring in the customers, I would rather bring them to my site only.

In the past few months Etsy has created too many ways for a potential buyer to get distracted and they are having major problems with their search function which is probably frustrating a lot of buyers.

I will maintain my shop there and use it for the social-networking they are so heavily leaning towards and when I spend money on advertising it will be for my own site. I know this isn't the ultimate step of having a true stand alone website but I'm getting there. It's all an experiment and I'll see how it works out in the next six months.

Hope you come and see my lovely new shop!