Fondelifair - Ireland's first online craft community & marketplace

Fondelifair.com is a new website dedicated to Arts and Crafts. Fondelifair is a Social Community, a Blog Host and Marketplace.

Creator and Founder of Fondelifair, Alice, explains, "People blog about crafts, people sell their crafts online, people talk on forums about their crafts. But there is no site that lets you do all of this in the one place, this is why I developed Fondelifair".

Fondelifair features an interactive web community that offers a variety of hand-made, unique, speciality items for shoppers who are looking for quality and originality. Fondelifair is also a platform for art enthusiasts and hobbyists to share information about upcoming art exhibits, craft fairs, and art & craft classes through the Fondelifair Blog and Events Calendar.

Whatever your passion, Fondelifair will facilitate you in meeting others who share your passion. From complete beginners to the more experienced, whether you’re looking for tips on how to improve your technique or ideas for new projects, Fondelifair is sure to please.

As well as Fondelifair being a social network where you can blog and share tips on the forums you can also sell your wares in your own store with a variety of quirky and cool store themes to choose from. Fondelifair caters for all tastes! So all in all it’s a handy way to trade from the comfort of your own home, or test trade and see if your products sell.

Fondelifair has over twenty five listed Guilds from Knitting to Wood Craft and Card Making to Doll Making, so whatever it is you’re into you’ll meet lots of like minded individuals on Fondelifair. As well as all of this if you currently already have a blog and you would like Fondelifair to host your blog that's no problem either.

The Crafts Council of Ireland and Craft Northern Ireland have designated 2011 as Year of Craft. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Crafts Council of Ireland and will be celebrated through a diverse rang of dynamic events and programmes to showcase the very best of craft made on the island of Ireland, so there’s never been a better time to dust down the sewing machines, dig out the old acrylics and have a go at some home made card making - maybe even make earn some income out of your former passion before we all lost the run of ourselves. Let’s get back to basics, revive some semblance of a cottage industry in your own home and preserve our craft skills - and do you know something? We’ll all feel better for it …working for ourselves.

Fondelifair is free to join the community and for a basic blog, but if you would like more features on your blog, including a store, there is an Elite Membership which is €25 per year.

Fondelifair is due to launch on May 30th, so we are offering a FREE Elite membership until May 22nd by emailing info@fondelifair.com with your Fondelifair username and blog URL.

Selling on Etsy

This is Ruth from Nice Day Designs, I originally posted a shortened version of the following article on my blog last week and it started some discussion, Purls thought it might be a pertinent read for the team since we are all in the same boat.

At the start of January I decided I was going to rejuvenate my Etsy shop, I've been selling there for 2 years, but I was never able to get sales moving consistantly. I started putting items in it other than my pocket mirrors, things like brooches, buttons rings and earrings. I love that my mirrors and badges sell well, but I wanted my items to reflect more of the crafts that I make. I spent time on improving my photos, as we all know quality pictures are key to selling on etsy and I've noticed the general quality of images has really improved since I started. I went to Maplin and bought a table top studio designed for taking quality images of small items. It's great as I can take pictures at night and not worry about lighting, which really frees up my schedule. I also thought about making my pictures more dynamic in an effort to get into more treasuries. I also took note of things like views and page visits on craftopolis , and even took out a one week ad. I shared more of my items on facebook, which is also linked to my twitter account. On top of that I've started blogging again which I'm sure helped a little too.

The results being that for February I double my etsy sales from an average taken for the previous few months, which is pretty good going since they were over xmas. I think a lot of that was down to the facebook badge I designed for Valentines, it was really popular and brought a lot of traffic to my shop. I also more than doubled the amount of unique visitors for the month.

For those of you starting out I don't want this article to come across as moany, I know I was baffled when reading in the forums why people were only giving out about 1 sale per week when I would have been delighted by that. Now that I'm a few years down the line I understand where they were coming from. I'm now doing this full time and I need to be more mercenary at how I divide up my work time. Even though I love etsy, and the community, the question needs to be asked 'does etsy pay me?'.

At the end of all this I'm still unsure if it's worth the effort, as these takings are still only a small portion compared with what I sell at the market. But I suppose in these 'interesting' times we are in at the moment the idea is to take whatever I can get, mush it all together and hopefully at the end it amounts to an income! It's satisfying to be able to make something at home, and within a half an hour I've taken photos and listed it online, ready for the open market. At the end of the day I want Etsy to be part of my business and I can't see myself closing my shops, but it's good now and then to take off the rose tinted glasses and really look at the reality.

How do the rest of you feel who are working/selling on etsy?

Search Your Own Shop. A Handy Tip for Etsy Sellers

Happy New Year! Anne-Marie from byAmor here with a handy hint for Etsy sellers.

Those of you who buy on Etsy are probably well familiar with the search 'this shop' function.
But it is also something you can put to surprising good use in your own shop, especially if you have a lot, or a growing number, of items listed.



You will find this search mode in the top bar when you go into the public home page of your shop (not in ‘Your Esty’, which is only seen by you.) It wont be much use to you yet if you only have one page of items but the more you fill your shop, the more this simple search can become your friend. I'd like to share a few ways to utilise it.

Straight after the holidays the first thing I did was make sure I had nothing still tagged as Black Friday or Cyber Monday. These were sales I took part in until 14th December. In the box next to 'this shop' I typed in ‘Cyber Monday Etsy’ and hit the search button. Although I thought I’d removed all such tags after the sales, up cropped several items. Oops. Some urgent editting required there.




I decided to keep some items on special offer and add a few more. I made a new shop section titled ‘January Sale’ for them and amended each listing. Afterwards, another quick search for ‘sale’ within my shop reassured me I hadn’t forgotten to move any from their old section. The correct number of items came up, corresponding with the items now in this new section.

Such cross checking isn't a bad thing to do from time to time. When listing something new it isn't that difficult to forget to put the item into a section. A few months back I suspected I was missing an item from the bookmark section. A quick search for the term 'bookmark' helped me dig out the stray one and put it in its rightful place.



From time to time I use this search mode to check the balance in my shop. For example, On Monday I did a search for ‘men’ in my shop....read that as you will ;-)....and learned that I now had only two lonesome items tagged 'men' across my shop. Time for me to rebuild my stock of keychains and bookmarks, or perhaps develop a whole new line for the boys.



A shop search is also helpful when pondering what colours to use in your next project. On Monday this week, a quick search for each colour showed I had, for example, 25 items tagged with black, 5 purple and only 1 white. That helped me decide what to make next; a white beach glass pendant, which by the way, I made in a unisex design so I could tag for ‘men’ too.

Another great use for this search is when linking within your listings. I’m no techy expert, but I understand that linking to other items within your listing descriptions is supposed to help your SEO (or ‘googleability’ as I call it.)



More to the point, it entices buyers to go deeper into the shop. For example, when listing some Connemara marble earrings, I will add in a link to the matching necklace, or to the Connemara marble section of my shop, or maybe the general earrings section. Stats gleaned via Google Analytics lead me to conclude that it is working as people are not bouncing straight out of my shop. However, sometimes I like to link to the less obvious. This is where the shop search comes in handy.

For example, at the bottom of a description for a large, chunky pendant, buyers might like to take a look at other large pieces I have listed. A quick in-shop search in a second browser for the term ‘big’ drums up several statement pieces crossing 3 or 4 sections of my shop. I copy the URL for this search from the very top and paste it at the bottom of my listing. Two sentences long, It's a little clunky looking, but it serves the purpose, making it easier for the buyer to find something they like (I hope!)



Alternatively, I could include a link to all my listings found in the same stone or same matching colour or whatever seems to be a logical step for the buyer. For example, when listing the unisex seaglass pendant, I included a link to items for men. I don't have a section for men so a link to this search is almost like gaining an extra shop section, albeit within a listing.

Once you put yourself into the mind of a shopper, you can discover all sorts of possibilities for linking. However, less is more. If you include more than one or two such links, it becomes confusing and could be off-putting.

These are just some of the ways you can utilise this versatile search function. Obviously, the more you fill up your shop, the more invaluable it can become. I can’t wait to discover new ways to employ it. If you have any ideas, please do post them below.