First...congrats to Marybaker12 who won our giveaway from The Sweetest Giveaway!
Please contact me asap!!
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Heartsy.
Please contact me asap!!
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Heartsy.
It's just like Groupon, only it's just for small shops featuring handmade items
So basically, Groupon for Etsy.
Steep discounts on homemade goods.
If you're a shop owner, and unfamiliar with Heartsy, here's how it works.
First, you submit your shop (with your absolute best 4 photos) for a feature.
The Heartsy "community" then votes (for 48 hours) on whether or not
they would be interested purchasing vouchers for your shop.
As long as you get 1 vote, Heartsy will then review your shop and products and let you know
(usually within 2 weeks) if they feel like your shop would be a good match.
Once they've accepted you, they recommend a discount for you,
a date for your feature, and you're set!
Your feature runs for 48 hours.
The people at Heartsy are super easy to work with, and the process is relatively painless.
If you're a shopper, you simply create an account on Heartsy and then keep an eye out for amazing deals! You also have the option of being a "VIP" member, which gives you a larger discount plus deals that the typical Heartsy member doesn't receive. The VIP membership is $10.00/month.
I don't remember where I first heard about Heartsy (probably in an Etsy team thread somewhere), but I signed up as soon as I could. I submitted my shop, sent Facebook notices and Tweets asking for votes, and within 48 hours, I had a generous number of votes for my shop. Two weeks later, I received an email from Heartsy saying that they wanted to feature my shop.
WOOT WOOT!!!
I was beyond excited!
The deal shoppers got from my shop was a $23.00 voucher for $10.00.
It was only open to VIPS
(had it been open to everybody, VIPS would have received a $33.00 voucher for $10.00)
I received $9.00 for each voucher sold (meaning Heartsy only got $1.00/voucher).
My feature was over New Years Eve/Day.
A weekend.
A holiday weekend to boot.
I only sold14 vouchers, for a total of $126.00.
But - I had over 1200 shop views in 1 day,
and since then, my shop has exploded...with multiple orders almost every single day.
I will totally do it again.
Even though it was a crazy rush of orders and conversations with customers,
it was worth it.
A hundred times over.
For me, anyway.
I know other shop owners haven't had the best experience.
A couple of things I did learn?
1. Stock up ahead of time. I'm talking a huge stock pile!
2. Stock up mostly on the cheapest goods in your store.
3. Have all packaging assembled and ready to go.
4. Have somebody around to give you an extra hand (or two).
5. Try to get a feature that is not on a weekend.
I don't know about anybody else, but I know my Etsy shop is D-E-A-D over the weekend.
6. Try to steer away from a feature over a holiday too.
Who's online shopping when there's partying to be done?
4 comments:
I did Heartsy back in July and had a great experience, too! I got slammed by voucher orders, though, and got pretty overwhelmed for a couple of weeks, but the exposure was totally worth it. :-)
Thanks for sharing. I would like to join Heartsy too once I've finished stocking up handmade items in my store. I didn't understand the purpose of Heartsy until seeing your post. This is a good description: "It's just like Groupon"
Wow, congratulations on the sales:) Great writeup about Heartsy, thank you:)
Thank you for sharing! I was accepted but was debating on if I wanted to do it. I'm glad you had much success!
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