Well today has certainly been a day of reckoning! After fighting the powers that be and wrestling with my own insecurities I have realized that I can be humble and take advice, especially when it is good sound advice. I have always thought of myself as open minded and able to take constructive criticism and learn by it. Today I have come to realize that I really don't like criticism of any kind.
I have a shop on the famous handmade site known as ETSY and was feeling left out as far as exposure went so I decided to take it to the ideas forum a couple of days ago, thinking, for sure, I would have thousands of fellow sellers on side. Wow, was I in for a rude awakening! I almost had my head bit off! At first, I was so offended and well, to be honest, hurt, that all I could think of doing was retaliating and while my replies were mild compared to some, it felt like all I was doing was defending myself, licking my wounds and scurrying through the posts until I found someone who agreed with, or felt sorry for me. After posting once again, in what I hoped was clearer language, it only got worse for me so I went into my shop and emptied it. Of course, I was sure that then they would realize how hurtful they were and come to their senses.
But....., this afternoon, while reading another post about succeeding on ETSY, which was very well written and had a good feeling about it, I paused and thought through all my feelings of unfairness, anger and just plain old hurt. That was when I had my epiphany. All those snarky sellers were right. It is my responsibility to promote my shop and to make my sales and I was just wasting precious time grumbling and complaining in the forums. The subject had been brought up time and time again. Nothing was going to change, because nothing needed to change except me. One of the suggestions was to twitter, another to create a blog.
Well, here I am tonight, not whining in the forums on ETSY, but taking the bull by the horns and creating my blog. While I initially removed all the items from my shop because I was angry, I decided to take the opportunity to reassess my shop, to take better photos, tackle those new projects I have been itching to get at, you know, start fresh with a new attitude. ETSY is a great venue to get your products out there, tasteful, supportive and most importantly, popular.
So, a big thank you to all those who helped me see the light, I humbly thank you and look forward to returning to ETSY in the near future, refreshed, re-made and of course, exposed!
