But the good news is that I'm walking slowly and steadily towards the light and tomorrow at 3 PM will be the first of 3 or 4 scheduled updates for my stores! I never stopped working over the summer (can't break that flow of ideas, after all..) but the finished work just kept piling up and now it is an absolute priority to get all this work listed. Closure, and perhaps some money…what a great plan. Just as long as that light I see is not the oncoming train!
Of course not, it’s the blinding light of my computer screen! (had to move to the desktop though, my beloved Blackberry is too slow for this!)
Such a familiar and comforting sight, along with the knowledge that I’ll be sitting in front of it for a good little while ahead. Ugh… familiar to lots of you.
I’ve been trying to organize a way to make listing faster, but of course, while setting up any new system, there is a period where you are actually slower than if you weren’t trying to improve everything. Most of my stuff is one-of-a-kind, but there are certainly groups and subgroups, so I’m trying to make as many ‘generic’ draft listings as I think might be useful in Etsy’s not very user friendly draft listing folder. (You can’t rearrange them, unfortunately…) Generic listings such as ‘pod’ or ‘Complex pod’ or ‘strata bead’. These generic listings contain the basic information such as basic tags,price, materials and how, in general, this particular subgroup of pieces are made or came to be etc. Then, in theory, you just plug in the information relevant to the particular piece you are listing, plop in the photos and list! All this works because the draft folder allows you to copy your generic listing and by so doing, allows you to keep it for the next time that you have a piece in that series! I almost cried when I realized you could do this. This saves a lot of either flipping around in sold listings, searching for sold listings ( I just know I sold one sorta like last year etc.) and copying and pasting. In a lot of the generic listings I’ve assembled variants that I’ve written about the pieces concerned. SO easy to cut, rather than find and cut and paste. But it takes time and thought to organize the generic listings to my satisfaction. When I become that self-disciplined and organized person that I am so looking forward to being, you know, the one who does at least 5 listings a day come hell or high water, I know this system will work well. It’s already working well for some lines!
I’m also changing the way I store the work before it’s listed. I recently scored a hit on Kijiji and bought for practically nothing lots of those plastic cases with dividers and transparent tops so you can see through the lids without opening them. Some of them are double-sided, very neat! Thing is, I used to store all my finished work neatly and separately in plastic bags, but they sort of became invisible and I sometimes forgot what I had. Also, there was a lot of mucking about with bags while getting the work out to photograph, and then a second lot of mucking about putting it back into the bag with my sometimes arthritic hands and fingers. This works better – I have a case devoted to holding what is going to be photographed that session and then after the photo shoot it goes into a plastic jewellery bag and stays there until it’s sold. (Those tiny jewellery bags drive my hands nuts but they do present well…)
So yes, when I get through this shameful backlog of work, I probably won’t need all these cases. But it was worth the $15 to have them! Sometimes, I make work and I’m not sure about it. It’s great to have a dedicated case for work you’re brooding about. Then, after a little time, ‘tada!’ You can open up the case and see how it hits you with fresh eyes – all in one place! AND, I might add, without having to paw through those damn bags.
Back to the grind. Tomorrow, going live!
