As many can see on my blog, I am slowly changing the name to Purple Cottage Quilts. Well, I will always be the Quilting Ranny because my grands call me Ranny and I quilt, but sooner or later, I will convert over to a dot com just because I truly feel that the people in the deep big black hole known at Google do NOT give one shakes of a rats tail about anyone of us who blog or use their products.
Be honest, I am not the only person that has had issues with blogger and can't get a response from Google. They are very much like Facebook, they will do what they want, when they want and please don't bother asking them for help, because they are going to have you check out a useless frequently asked questions page that DOESN'T help at all.
With that said, I have been contemplating the pros and cons (read this as can I afford it) of Zibbet Premium versus the basics. A few weeks back Zibbet offered all its shop owners a chance for a 45 day free trial of Premium and I accepted to see if it would really give my shop more exposure. So far, I would have to say no it does not.
I am just confused as to what the premium $79 per year cost is supposed to do for me? Does anyone have a premium Zibbet shop and if so how is it going? I have made 2 sales with just my basic shop and never received any type of feedback from the customers. :(
So, I can put my items on sale (I can do that anyway by just lowering the price), I can have a larger shop front (is that worth $79 a year)? I can offer gift certificates and other little things, but since listing my shop premium I haven't seen anything special come my way, no increased traffic or sales, so I am wondering if anyone else has experience with the Premium shop and what they think?
Now Etsy is a bit better because you pay nothing for membership, twenty cents for 4 months of a listing and 3.5% of the sale cost if it sells. So if I list a quilt for $40 my total cost if sold would be in the neighborhood of $3 by the time I paid Etsy and PayPal.
I have done business with shops from both Etsy and Zibbet and most recently purchased a wonderful shaving mug and brush for hubby for his birthday, but I had to go through many shops to find the perfect one and I love that, but sometimes I wonder if shop owners find the cost in the long run worth it?
I have sold 2 quilts this past week just by listing them on a local shop we have in our area on Facebook with no listing costs, no fee's when it sells, all cash money in my pocket. It takes awhile sometimes like the one quilt I sold today had been listed for over 2 months, but the one I sold 2 weeks ago was on the site for less than 24 hours.
So to all my wonderful readers, bloggers, quilters, crafters, etc. If you own one or more of these shops, let me know if you think the cost is worth it in the long run. I know that $79 is less than $7 a month, however if I am NOT selling anything is it worth the cost to try to drum up business?
Give me your thoughts, I always enjoy hearing anothers point of view!
2 comments:
I don't have a Zibbet, and so far I've been so-so with etsys. I get favorited pretty often but not any recent sales (though this could be that I really need to add products to my shop) If/when I do this soon, if it doesn't work out, I will probably just retire etsy overall. we'll see. I don't know if that helps at all - but for right now it's worth it for me. :)
I've had a Zibbet shop since July 2011. I started with the free account and then upgraded to the premium $9.95 monthly in January 2012. Honestly, there have been no increase in sales, views, etc.
In fact, I've only sold 4 items on Zibbet in that one year time frame. It's kind of ironic to note that all four sales were when I had the free account.
I'm no longer on Etsy at this time, but when I sold on Etsy I had over 1,064 sales in the two years I was there. But I was paying much more in fees than $9.95monthly due to all the listing and renewing. It's one of the reasons I left Etsy. Those .20 fees, showcases, etc. added up quickly. And once they changed to relevancy my shop seemed to fall off the Etsy map!
In summary, Etsy has much more traffic than Zibbet and the other handmade sites. But you can get caught in a vicious cycle of renewing to stay on top in the searches.
Zibbet has a low monthly cost but does that really matter if no one sees your products?
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