Melinda Steffy

This morning Melinda Steffy came to speak to us in the lecture. She started with showing her some of her recent artwork, which consisted of themes of mythology, alchemy, family history, and memory and loss. She also has a job as an in-house designer at a music school as her day job, but about a quarter of her yearly income comes from her online vending on the website Etsy, which she talked about for the remainder of the lecture.

Selling online has some advantages, such as the ability to reach a global audience, the customer may browse all items easily, written descriptions add additional infomation that a customer in a store would not get, the ability to work when it is convienient for you, and less money is commissioned and more money goes dircetly to you. Etsy is currently the "go-to" website when people are looking for handmade items. Esty's goal is to reconnect makers with buyers through the internet and to allow people to make a living making things. It's not a very good website to sell fine art, whereas supply vendors usually do the best bussiness.

Melinda has two stores on Etsy, one called Fabrik, in which she sells reusable produce bags, and one for jewelry, Julre. She currently has strong sales; she had started with just the people she knows, and now the majority of her customers are new.

She gave us some tips on how to seel things on this website. The first thing to do is to decide what to sell. It should be functional, decorative, and unique. In other words, it should be something that you can't find in a department store. It should also be something you can make in multiples and something that you enjoy making, keeping in mind the profir margin for your time and materials.

Melinda also stressed the importance of presentation. The photos of your items should be clear, eyecatching, and descriptive. Images make the sales. the description of an item should also be clever, useful, and as descriptive as possible. This is the sales pitch.

It's also important to also be active on the website in order to maintain visiblility. Melinda does this by relisting or listing a new item every day. Moreover, in order to get repeat customers and to stress the handmade aspect of the product, Melinda suggested that the item should be shipped in one or two days, packaged craefully and attarctively, and include a handwritten note.

Now if I ever want to sell anything on Esty, I know exactly how to go about it.