Artfire is an online marketplace for handmade products designed by artisans around the globe. Their free community is designed for artisans to buy and sell their works, while celebrating unique handmade items and designs.
I’m excited about ArtFire.com
Wanna know why?
Because even though it’s still really new (still in beta),
it’s heading in a really good direction!
They are already buying advertising online & in print magazines to bring in traffic to the site. (It’s already got almost as many hits to the front page as indiepublic.com gets per day!) They have already bought ads on the back cover of Craft Magazine! Online they are purchasing ads on online on Facebook.com, Craftster, Myspace, Mother Jones, Craft Bits, Craft Gossip and Gala Darling & more is coming.
ArtFire also has stats for shop views so you know where your customers are coming from! I know! Gasp! Faint! Right? I even took screen shots so you could see how they work.
Here is the shot individual item stats. It shows the item, the number of clicks and the urls that they are coming from.
All of these are the urls that my OFF SITE views are coming from. Yes, they are clickable. Yes they show Twitter, StumbleUpon, my Project Wonderful Ads in action, my blog posts linking to AF & whatever else I am doing to promote.
Here is a shot of the individual store front stats.
These are all the off site urls that have brought people to my
individual Art Fire store front.
There is a ONE page listing step. You can load multiple pictures at a time (up to 10!) and it is fast. I couldn’t believe how fast it was to get a few items listed. And my favorite part about their listing process is a little field were you put your ‘story behind or inspiration for making’ the item. What a neat personal touch to add!
The listing fees on ArtFire are more then reasonable. It’s just $7 a month (for the first 5000 artists) to list and sell as much as you can FOREVER. $7 a month no matter what! I signed up on that alone!
The front page is a bunch of big rotating pictures that feature every item as it lists. That means when you add something new to your site it gets big, front page exposure, front and center, to bring people into your shop!
And you know something else, something simple but at the same time something that is a very big deal to me about setting up shop on ArtFire? They have unlimited shop categories. Right now I have 3 different Etsy shops: one of destash, one for jewelry & one for everything else. I don’t want them all separated out like that but there aren’t enough shop categories (only 10) under my Etsy shops to stay organized, make it easy for my customers and keep my shops together. Three shops means 3 times the promo items purchased, 3 times the relisting fees trying to stay at the top of the categories and 3 times the time spent jumping from shop to shop answering convos. ArtFire’s unlimited shop categories will let me keep just one shop. That will not only save me time but it will also allow me to drive all my traffic on AF to just ONE shop. That’s so very good.
Anyhoo, it is new so there aren’t zillions of people using it (which is good and bad) but I am already listing and figuring it out. With the ad campaign they have started and more advertising kicking in soon, I think it’s going to be a good place to start listing!
