Teach Soap

Is anyone other than myself planning on opening shop Friday on craftcafe. Co? I'm really excited to see how it pans out. I figure for 30 bucks a year, no listing fees and no profit taken was a pretty good bet. I've never sold online other than my own site. How do you all feel about sites like this? Or etsy? Or any of the others?

Craft Cafe is hosted on GoDaddy instead of their own servers. It's not a US based site. Their pricing seems unique and for handmade alone, it is a good deal but my problem is there are so many new or small craft venues now. I know of at least five that are similar to this one. How many people actually find them and bother to sign up if they find it? What good is a good deal if no one finds you?

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

I have an Etsy shop. I'm pretty new there - opened my shop 2 months ago. So far I've had a slow trickle of sales, but I suppose it's better than nothing. I think of it as an advertising venue rather than a "shop" if that makes sense. You really have to do a lot more internet marketing than I was expecting. If you're already marketing your website (that has a "store") then I don't really see the point in going with any of these other types of sites. For me, it makes sense because I don't have a website that people can buy things off of.

As soon as my girls' party is over on Saturday, I'm planning to post some ads on craigslist. We'll see how that goes!

There's a bunch of threads on the Etsy forums right now regarding low traffic and slow sales. I think it's partially the economy, partially the time of year. But again, I'm new to this, so I'd be interested in hearing from people who have had their show for years!

If you have a Facebook page set up for your soaps you can open a shop there for free as well. Could give you decent exposure if you are a social networker.

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Laura<3

I'm opening a shop at Craft Cafe as well. I'm a market/fair seller, but in the last year I've had many customers ask me for my site. So, I'll mostly be using it as a place for my customers to find me in between markets.

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Genny

The only thing is that if people do a web search for handmade soap, handmade body butter, etc., most likely Etsy is going to be the first link that pops up and most people never go past the first page of search results, let alone the first couple of links. I've never heard of Craft Cafe.

When I start selling, other than my own website, I will only sell on Etsy and maybe on ArtFire - I've seen a few people who seem to do well there and I think I remember seeing a couple of B&B sellers there.

Craftcafe is hosted on their own servers and is a US based site. It's http://craftcafe.co, not craftcafe.com. They have over 450 businesses going to open with them on their grand opening on the 22nd.

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Genny

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

And if people type in the address manually, they will automatically end it with .com

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The Soapinatrix! *whip-crack*
- Posting the trials and tribulations of my Soaping Journey!

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Genny

I figure its worth a shot for the price, everyone's been talking about how slow its been. Right now I'm playing mad soaping scientist for the time being, for when things pick up in the fall.

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Four Seasons Fine Handcrafted Soaps
& Specialties, Inc.
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