Being Seen is Not Enough

Back around February I started making some changes to my Etsy listings. I started adding cute little stories the the start of every listing. It was a disaster.

My traffic didn't change, the number of visitors didn't change, my Google rankings stayed about the same but my sales tanked. For the first month or so I chalked it up to being a slow time of year but then one of my usually busy months was a lot slower than usual. I took the stories out of the beginning of the listings and put them further down the page, below the descriptions. Sale bounced back almost immediately.

The lesson here is this: just being seen is not enough. What is seen has to be compelling to people. In my case while the stories were fun visitors wanted to see information on my jewelry first. Lesson learned.

This is the reason I wrote the post last week SEO and Your Customers often a listing that looks good to search engines or looks good to you as a creative person doesn't look good to customers.

So what about the stories? I have plans for those, I want to do a series of cards with illustrations on the front and the stories on the back but for now they are being retired from my shop.

Also if you are working on editing your titles and descriptions I recommend Craftopolis' Edit Express to make it go faster. Unfortunately it doesn't have a batch tag editor though.

Handling Copyright Issues

Snarky craft blog Regretsy recently targeted a seller violating copyright. This post discusses the response they got from Etsy and the frustration caused by it. The thing is that Etsy acted entirely how they have to in response to unrelated 3rd parties reporting copyright violation. In this post I'm going to discuss how to handle when you discover someone ripping off your work.


Why Etsy responded the way they did.

Picture this scenario: You are an Etsy seller with an original design. Someone else has ripped off your work. A person unfamiliar with either of you sees both and decides that YOU were the one that did the ripping off. They report you to Etsy. Now if Etsy considered this proof enough to take someone's items down you would be pretty upset wouldn't you? Of course you would. Copyright violation is a serious legal matter and if Etsy were to act on it without proof provided by the copyright holder they would be in a shaky legal position. So Etsy requires the copyright holder or their lawyer to notify them with proof that their copyright has been violated.

What should you do when someone has copied you?

Remember I am not a lawyer, this is not official legal advice just my personal opinions on what your options are. If you feel like you need a lawyer, by all means consult one, it's probably worth the money if the infringement is serious enough.

You have several options when you discover someone has copied your work. Your first step should be to contact the person copying you and ask them politely to remove the infringing items (a cease and desist letter). Make sure you give them examples of where you believe they have copied you. Many people don't understand copyright and don't realize they are breaking the law. Once contacted many people will remove the infringing items.

If after you have made a polite request and it's been ignored or rejected you're going to have to do more work to solve the problem.

In cases where a seller on an online venue is selling infringing items you should contact the site's legal department. Make sure you have documentation that shows how long you have been making or selling your items to back up your claim. An example would be records of when your first version of the item was listed or sold. Unfortunately if this is a very unethical person they may just start selling somewhere else, if this happens you could keep going after them on every website they try to sell on and make it too much trouble for them to continue selling the infringing items or get a lawyer involved to take it to the next level legally (usually suing them for infringement).

In cases where someone has used a digital copy of your photos, artwork, writing, or other creations without permission you should send a DMCA takedown notice to their hosting company or ISP (use Whois domain lookup). By law service providers must take down potentially infringing material reported to them by a DMCA takedown notice (there is a response process if the person believes they aren't infringing but that's a different subject).

If your items are being copied by a company with their own website or store things get harder. If they have ignored or rejected a cease and desist letter you really have no choice but to consult a lawyer about your options and possibly file suit.

If for any reason you feel like your business has been harmed or that the infringement has cost you money you can try to collect damages. This absolutely requires a lawyer familiar with copyright law.

When is work not covered by copyright?

Unfortunately not everything crafters do is covered by copyright. From the US Copyright Office website:

Copyright protects “original works of authorship” that are fixed in a tangible form of expression. The fixation need not be directly perceptible so long as it may be communicated with the aid of a machine or device. Copyrightable works include the following categories:
1. literary works
2. musical works, including any accompanying words
3. dramatic works, including any accompanying music
4. pantomimes and choreographic works
5. pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works
6. motion pictures and other audiovisual works
7. sound recordings
8. architectural works
These categories should be viewed broadly. For example, computer programs and most “compilations” may be registered as “literary works”; maps and architectural plans may be registered as “pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works.”

The way this is explained in a legal guide I have on craft work is that functional items are not covered by copyright only their artistic elements if they can be viewed separately from the functionality. So say you designed a fabric print and then used it to make a dress. Clothing is a functional item and the function can't be separated from the design so the dress isn't covered by copyright. On the other hand the fabric print is considered a graphic work which can be viewed separately from the function of the clothing therefore it is given copyright protection. This is one of the reasons fashion knockoffs are so easy to come by and so hard for fashion designers to put a stop to unless the fabric or other artistic element has been copied (or it infringes on trademark but that's an entirely different legal issue). Another example would be soap molded to look like a cat, the soap is functional but the sculptural form of the cat is artistic. Photos of your crafts are separate works from the craft itself and are covered by copyright of their own regardless of whether your craft item is able to be copyrighted. The website listed below for the US Copyright Office has more information on what qualifies for copyright protection. If you are uncertain whether your work qualifies for copyright protection and the website for the US Copyright Office doesn't help you should absolutely consult a copyright lawyer.

Copyright Resources
US Copyright Office
Etsy Copyright Policy
Digital Millenium Copyright Act
Sample DMCA Takedown Notice
Whois Domain Lookup
US Patent and Trademark Office


Note: After I started writing this post I was informed of an Etsy seller who had copied my designs. I contacted them via convo about it and they promptly apologized and removed the infringing items.

Video: Wholesaling and PR

This is another video from I ♥ Art Portland. Amanda Siska from Bread and Badger talks about wholesaling your products. It's an hour and twenty-four minutes long.


Level Up! Wholesale and PR from I Heart Art: Portland on Vimeo.

Get Interviewed

I'm looking for volunteers to be interviewed for the blog about how you run your business and advice you would give to other handmade business owners. Please contact me if you're interested. I hope to make this a regular feature every couple weeks.

Spontaneous Serendipity

My name is Kaelin Cordis, and I love everything to do with metal. I feel very strongly that a piece of jewelry should be personally made, reflect a unique design, and preferably an abiding beauty. I really think that every person in the world who wears jewelry should own uniquely elegant pieces of jewelry without breaking their piggy-banks!" Kaelin is Mom of two, Metalsmith, Blogger, and Artist-Owner of Kaelin Design. Her work can be found at http://kaelindesign.etsy.com

When you run a business you will find hundreds of thousands of people telling you what to do to make your business successful. They will tell you all sorts of things like "Make a business plan with a flow chart and three appendices, and your business will have more success than you can measure."

Newcomer that I once was, I thought, "Okay- no problem. Paperwork I can handle." This didn't work for me for two reasons. First, I really don't like flow charts, and I hate appendices. Okay, to be more honest, I don't like paperwork in general, and my own personal paperwork in specific. Second, just because I have a plan doesn't mean it's going to work. The great military strategist, Field Marshall Helmuth Carl Bernard von Moltke, said "No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy." The same holds true for business plans, I've found.

Ivory tower flow charts do not survive contact with real life. Go ahead, you can quote me. I won't mind.

Second piece of advice I came across was, "You just need to be organized! Then you can't help but be productive." Right brain artistic-type that I am, I do have a love for brightly colored or nicely decorative office supplies. So my files are color coded, and I have fifteen different colors of Sharpies in three different tip styles. Lots of fun, yes, prouctivity boosting, no. In fact, my lovely sculptural steel pen display cup in the shape of an Eiffel Tower actually had a layer of dust on it the last time I looked at it...

For some reason I seem to attract a wealth of unsolicited advice. Don't get me wrong- some of it's fabulous.... Most of it is not. I know I don't come across as clueless, and I don't generally go around soliciting advice, and yet, sometimes I have to wonder why I end up with all this well-intentioned flotsam given to me.

Third piece of advice I was given: "Write everything you need to do on a list, and cross it off as you get it done. This way you'll be motivated and get things done efficiently and on schedule." I wrote about my semi-nervous stress breakdown in response to that one...

So after all this well-intentioned advice, I've been seriously reviewing my so-called "action plan" for my business. What's worked for me, what hasn't, and where have I found the best response to my jewelry, and so forth. I am currently in six galleries at the moment, and I achieved that in less than a year. Two galleries came about from a very large fine art festival in which I participated last September. Two galleries came about because I was wearing my jewelry while I was otherwise shopping. Two more came about because they saw me participating in the forums on Etsy.

So looking strictly at the numbers, 67% of my gallery contracts came by Spontaneous Serendipity. In layman's parlance- without any input from me.

To be sure, I was prepared to follow up immediately on this interest. I carry boatloads of business cards with me at all times. I keep a printed wholesale catalog in my car. I always wear a piece of stunning jewelry.

But what about those contacts online? There I was, talking to people in the forums, trading information, and chit chatting about vacations, actually relaxing mind you, then- *poof*! More work than I could shake a stick at...

After the stress and utter failure of pre-planned business expansion, these kinds of results are, to me, a sign to relax. It's time to be spontaneous. To seize the moment. To not worry so much about the percentage of new visitors on my Google Analytics report!

I liken it to when I'm working on a new design. If I relax and keep myself open to spontaneous design changes, then my work flows as well- and I can create a new piece almost effortlessly. If I'm tense, or uninspired, and force the design, then my design comes out awkward and stilted. It's that simple.

I'm a small business owner in a company of one. I am bookkeeper, marketer, blog editor in chief, chief financial officer, materials co-ordinator, office manager, janitor, and... oh yeah- artist. I wear a lot of hats, and the responsibilities that I own are enough to make anyone break out in paperwork and action plans. But I love what I do. I love my work. I'm going to be spontaneous enough to allow the design that I'm producing here flow uninhibited. I have the utmost confidence that by leaving myself open to amazing, stupendous, and totally un-planned possibilities, that I will find the rewards fully beyond imagining.

Try it for yourself- what can you accomplish by letting go and following Spontaneous Serendipity?

Imminent New Year

It's that time of year again. 2009 is nearly over and 2010 will be beginning. It's time to take stock of the old year and set goals for the new.

I don't believe in New Years resolutions, they're broken so often it's become a routine joke for late night comics. Personally I think the reason they don't work is because they tend to be vague, lose weight or be more cheerful. They aren't concrete and are hard to hold on to. Instead I think you should set specific goals with a timeframe for completing them.

So take a little time to think back on what you've done with your business this year. What worked? What failed? What would you do differently?

Taking those things into consideration, what goals do you have? One of my goals is to put out an art book this year of my work. It's a really big project so I'm breaking it down into small jobs. First is to decide on the layout, what publishing I'll go with, what photos I'll need, and some other research, I want that done by the end of January.

Thought for today

My business in a way comes directly from being poor growing up. I turned to making stuff and drawing because craft supplies were cheaper than toys. You could always find craft kits at yard sales that people got and never got around to making. Fixing my toys when they broke because my parents couldn't afford to replace them. This is all well in the past, my parents worked hard and dragged us into the middle class bit by bit.

I don't say this to make anyone feel sorry for me. I'm well past feeling sorry for myself, just looking back and seeing how it affected my life. Our experiences shape our lives and sometimes we don't realize how until years later when you see something that brings it into focus.

This was all brought up by this blog post by John Scalzi: Being Poor