I've been posting more of my designs at my www.wispychic.com site and it has been wonderful. Lately I've become aware of a whole other group of shoppers for wedding and bridal gowns and thought I needed to find them...or they found me. In my flailing about after closing my etsy shops -which may or may not be a long term thing- I decided to focus on my websites. This is important since I only have so many hours a day.
On etsy I spent hours trying to rank in etsy's search so I could be found by buyers there. But etsy search is tremendously fickle. I'd be found for a few weeks and into the craters of the moon the next day. I couldn't combine that with designing, photographing, creating gowns, marketing, doings social sites like Facebook and Twitter and have a life. Also, etsy brought in manufacturers, mostly from China and countries where the worker is paid poorly and lives in poverty - basically sweatshops. Not only do I not want to compete with those sellers, I can't !! The costs of a gown are way low and often the buyers find that the sellers have disappeared with their money and have no way to get it back. I would hate that as a bride buying for a wedding.. and it affects the reputation of the site. So I decided to work on my own site and do all that work for myself instead. I don't have the 'walk-in' type traffic I had at etsy, but I hope to keep myself afloat :)
One thing I decided to do was try free websites like storenvy.com and tictail.com. Both of these offer a great, low maintenance site that doesn't have the bells and whistles of a full blown website or a venue like etsy, but has good people behind the scenes developing the company and making it possible to have multiple free websites. There are some restrictions....like only one shipping rate per country. But I want to have all my designs in one spot so buyers can buy a wedding dress and perhaps a little jacket or shirt for the honeymoon. Alas, that doesn't seem to be possible right now. I got a site at supadupa.me and I love it. Right now the second free site is bringing it down in search...so I hope to keep it, but it may need to have wholly different inventory....sigh.
But just in case anyone is listening.....you can find me at my main paid site www.wispychic.com and my free site www.styletantrum.tictail.com. Both have my wedding designs, but the full collection is at my paid site - plus shirts and odds and ends of fashion. Of course...that could change tomorrow...so check both :)
