Buy & Sell Handmade Crafts, Jewelry, Quilts, Soaps & Greeting Cards, Custom Homemade Products Online - Made It Myself

Buy & Sell Handmade Crafts, Jewelry, Quilts, Soaps & Greeting Cards, Custom Homemade Products Online - Made It Myself

Made it Myself is one of those great venues where you can sell your handmade items, yet, somehow I missed the boat on this one! I am kicking myself now. Initially, I had posted 5-6 items on there, and then just sat back. Other than joining the Made it Myself on Ning site, I did little to no marketing for this venue. Ugh! Now, I checked it out today just to see if there had been changes, improvements, etc. AND WOW! There really has! Here are just a few of the benefits I see of MIM-
1. Its free! Really free.
2. You can list unlimited items
3. there is a huge image of your banner at your individualized URL,
4. you can add the badge that links directly to YOUR shop, not the marketplace in general
5.  Recently listed items are posted on the FRONT page- so you can stay up there until the amount of new items listed by others  pushes you off - but, depending upon your listing time, this could be a few days and so you are getting FRONT page exposure for free!
6.  For a super low fee of .49 you can have your item listed on the front page for the duration of your listing - that seems like a fair investment if you consider Etsy charges 7.00 for their Showcase!
7.  Now here is something truly unique- you can set your listing as Negotiable, and buyers can make offers, you can wheel and deal, make trades, etc.  And all of this is tracked, goes through your payment service, so there is a record of your agreement.  You can even issue a coupon.  How is that for customer relations?
8.  You can "link" with Made it Myself by adding their banner to your blog, site, etc.  and in return they will post a small banner of yours.  Now this appears to be a first come first serve, and it is not a neverending time frame that your banner is posted.  I assume that you are posted for a short duration (week- month) which has its benefits.  The reason this is a positive is because when a shopper checks out the link page, they are not overwhelmed with thousands of banners.  Instead there are about 12, so that is appealing and functional for a shopper.  When you are lost in a crowd of 100, what are the real chances someone is going to pick you link?
9.  finally, the community and forums is great!  These are not pages and pages of entries that you muddle through like on some of the bigger marketplaces- You can go to the forum that posts the topic you need (sales, marketing, glitches, etc) and see your post immediately.  Because it is not thousands of entries, others respond back really quick.  I found the forum and community page the easiest to use of any of the marketplaces thus far!

So, I am jumping on ship, and getting my Made it Myself Store up and running!  Thats another thing, your URL is easy to remember- for example-
http://www.madeitmyself.com/user/mommytyme.aspx




One drawback that I was concerned about is traffic?  How much is there?  But, as with any site, blog, etc.  YOU have to promote it.  You cant just sit back and hope people find you.  One tip I will share is, whenever tagging an item- always add the NAME of your shop as a tag, this will move you up in the ranks.  Second, post your MIM shop link everywhere so that linkbacks raise your rank (for example, when commenting on a blog, instead of using your google name or yahoo name, do the open ID choice / or other choice and sign in with your shop name and URL)  this offers tons of linkbacks.  In fact, you should comment on blogs  often to increase the linkbacks.  Oh, one more tip- if you have shops on variety of marketplaces like Etsy, winkelf, Artfire, etc  GIVE  THEM ALL THE SAME NAME-this increases you ranks, too!

So, how many of  your readers sell on MIM?  What do you think?   Any more tips on driving traffic to your MIM shop?