This post first appeared on Regretsy on August 10, 2011.
If you have a shop on Etsy, then you’re already familiar with their sophisticated method of promoting sellers. I like to call it, Get Your Friends to Buy Your Shit. I don’t know what Etsy calls it, but it’s probably something like, Locally Sourced Commerce Incentivizationizing™.
Of course, you don’t get to be the 53rd biggest web site in the United States by taking your customers for granted (that’s just a lucky bonus). And that’s why Etsy also offers their favorite sellers two exceptional promotional opportunities:
• Etsy’s Handmade Portraits: hoary, desaturated YouTube videos of women with oversized glasses riding bikes and talking about yarn
• Etys’s front page: the mecca for all scrambling handcrafters who use their disability benefits to buy pony beads
With so few real opportunities for exposure, the front page has become a coveted piece of real estate. Not only does it get you much needed publicity, it’s also the only time Etsy acknowledges your existence. Apart from collecting your listing fees.
Needless to say, Etsy takes the curation of this page very seriously. And by seriously, I mean “let’s put that up there because it’s yellow.”
Here then, are a few selections recently chosen for Etsy’s front page. Think of this as a teaching moment. If you’ve never had a piece on the front page, study this work carefully, and compare it against your own.
And then you can pour yourself a drink with your bloody, burned, stained fingers.
What a fantastic tale! I wonder if I can get it on Kindle.
By the way, I hear they’re making this into a major motion picture starring Helen Mirren as the button.
Five bottles of Pepsi, delivered to your door for $75. Awesome! I think BevMo had a sale like this in 2031.
$32. For a plastic shark. Plus $15 shipping. Because it ships from Switzerland. Which means you’re going to have to go to the post office and fill out customs forms. For a toy shark. Because you’re an idiot.
It has come to our attention that the artwork you are currently displaying is in violation of our copyright. We demand that the finger painting on your refrigerator entitled “Momy” (sic) be removed by end of business day, or we will pursue our claim to the full extent of the law.
Sometimes, when I’m really stressed out, I like to look at my wall decal and remind myself to take a nice deep breathe.
Isn’t that so French? It’s from Le Road Rash collection™. It reminds me of the time I had my wisdom teeth extracted and drooled all over my sham. ça vaut le coup!
Okay, all kidding aside, I can see why this made the front page. Of everything here, this is may be the most nuanced and carefully crafted. It has an interesting textural quality – a playful and unexpected juxtaposition of soft and sharp, cool and hot, smooth and rough. I would actually wear this.
Nah, I’m fucking with you. It’s a piece of shit.
