I have 6 sales!!!

Well, I am finally starting to make some sales from Etsy after all this work and I am so happy. It has taken forever to figure out how to get my shop looking good. I had to totally change my photography style. Unfortunately because the typical icon display in Etsy is so small, my gold fabric background just wasn't working. I switched out to photographing against a simple deerskin and the results were much more dramatic. Here are some examples of the old and new style. This is actually a burgundy mask in one picture and a purple in the other, but it shows the background difference

I also had to really learn my camera to actually make decent pictures. Of course the first thing I really learned about my camera was that it didn't really want to do, what I wanted it to do (grrr). I figured out how to use the white balance function which helped a lot to make the color true to life, as well as how to bracket automatically, and shoot with a delayed timer so that my hand wouldn't shake the camera when I pressed the button. I'm starting to be really happy with the results.

Anyway, so I have been trying to promote my shop heavily, and keep looking for more ways to get out there. I was having nothing really happening at all until this week/weekend when I finally started selling and have sold 4 more masks and some earrings on top of the first mask sale before Halloween. I definitely feel validated now, and really believe this is going to work if I can just keep growing it.

I'm going to have to raise my prices though because they really are too low. I have been ordering work from other successful mask makers on line, and it has been really interesting to see the pieces as they come in. It has actually made me feel really good in general, because it has validated that my work is good quality. However they are charging half again, to twice what I am for most of their stuff. I decided that Christmas would be my changeover and that I would add $10 to the price of all the masks.

Anyway, probably better get back to bed. Tomorrow will be a big day of learning how to ship something internationally.

Hope everyone has a great day.