Indecision 2008 , should I stay or should I go?

Borrowing from the Daily Show, the year has started with a whole lot of indecision for me regarding Saltygal. I didn't start the business for any single reason , it was a way to keep busy, make a little money and feed my fashion and fabric obsession.
Etsy made it easy for me to have online storefront. I opened one up and made a sale the first day. I was hooked. When I started taking custom orders through Alchemy I stretched myself creatively, my business grew and I could be as busy as I wanted.
I didn't have a business plan but I made adjustments adding some inexpensive items and gaining wholesale accounts.
Now I'm at a point where I need to decide what direction I want my business to go in. Etsy has grown so large that getting any business from within the site is difficult. Alchemy is a distant memory. They have added a gift guide at the top of every page. In one click, it takes buyers out of my shop to a guide where the Etsy administration hand picks items to feature. All through the Christmas season I looked through the guides hoping one of my sleeves would be featured but they were not . I bought on site ads but never garnered any sales. My (Etsy) sales were down 75% over the previous December
When two new laptop bag crafters from Europe joined, Etsy ran features on them both and placed their bags in the gift guides. Another seller makes and sells hundreds of laptop bags, bags she does not make She lists 10-12 items a day and frequently sells as many. If I don't list or relist at least 3 sleeves a day they are buried beneath the others within minutes. Paying for on site ads didn't work and I can't spend my day at the computer trying to snag a treasury or smoozing on the forums hoping other sellers will check out my shop.
Since I'm not getting customers from within Etsy , I need to go off site. I'm not sure it makes sense to do this, it's like leading them to my competitor's door. I don't mind competing on a level field, but it doesn't seem that way anymore. I know I'm not the only seller having these problems. The forums are filled with sellers complaining about the influx of mass produced or imported items. The vintage and supply categories are Etsy's top sellers Should I stay or should I go? Should I switch to vintage and sell off all the stuff I've been collecting ?

ready to ship

ready to ship
Originally uploaded by Saltygal.

I just finished my first reorder from the new account. Everything that could go wrong did and I thought I'd never get it done. I know how long it will take to make things. I figure that out when I price my items, but that is in an ideal world. I don't live in an ideal world. I will add another 20% on to my time estimate next time. I have three custom orders to finish tomorrow and then I am going to spend the rest of the week in my garden.We had warm weather for almost a week then 3 days of rain and now everything is just jumping out of the ground.I love spring! The etsy shop has been sadly neglected. I am so discouraged by the copy cats, the resellers and the manufactures selling their so called "handmade" items, it's just not fun anymore.

I'm in!

I have no idea how it happened but I can now access my blog again. First through flickr now the right way ! Hurrah! So to catch up ... I've been busy still mainly sewing. The warm winter has made it possible for me to continue working in my basement without having to stoke up the wood burning stove to keep cool. A small portable radiator found at the recycle center is very efficient and much cheaper to run than burning wood in our old stove. Our basement is insulated very well. My Hawaiian plants - banana,taro and sweet potato spend the winter there and it is only a lack of sunlight that gives the any stress.
My Etsy shop plods along . V2 is not what it was cracked up to be , and while it has some cool features, finding anything is like searching for a needle in a haystack. The search engine is primitive beyond belief. The influx of new vendors has lead to widespread abuse by resellers, importers and people who think they can list anything they like as long as they call it vintage. They are under staffed and over worked. There are people who have found a way to exploit the system, but without considerable effort on my part to bring business directly to my store, I am not gaining new business. In fact my views have dropped considerably. I took advantage of their first joint advertising campaign in December. It was to be on BoingBoing the blog that has brought me more business than any other source. I asked for 3 days in early December. I ended up with the 19,20 and 21st of December and in 3 days sold 4 items all to non paying buyers . I've never had a non paying buyer before. The new shopping cart system also has it's problems but I think they are one thing that can and will be fixed . I'm not so sure about the other problems.
So marketing was taking up so much of my time that I didn't have enough left to create new things and fell back on making the same old same old to keep the shop filled. Of course there are things I will always make and sell, but my idea notebook has grown dusty.
So this year I will focus on making new things. The best thing about etsy is that it's cheap to sell there. I can clean out my scrap bag once a month and make a batch of headbands and put them there and throw in all my prototypes but this year my main focus will be making new things, perfecting techniques and taking things from notebook to finished product on my own time.