Etsy Treasuries, what about Ruby Lane?

Everywhere I look, on social media, be it Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Google+, I see Etsy Treasuries. Lots and lots and lots of them. Are they effective? They must be, or else they wouldn't be so popular. I find myself looking at many of them, and clicking on to see the information on particular items. How do they work? I'm not exactly sure, but it seems that someone decides to do a "board" and include various items for sale on Etsy. It could be a topic, like vases, or a color, like silver or blue, or a time period. Perhaps it's kitchen items. Whatever.....On RL, we are largely dependent on RL staff for promotion of our items, on FB, Pinterest, Twitter and G+. Yes, they +1 us on G+ and share. Pinterest boards are strictly what they want to post, same with Twitter. Why can't we on RL work out something to do Treasuries like they do on Etsy? I don't like to post things non stop, on any of these social media sites, just about things I have, it's not only boring, it looks too self promoting. I often post things that other shops have, that I think will appeal to my followers on these sites. Why can't we do something similar to what Etsy is doing? Get us out there more, various treasures, it seems like if we worked together, we could do something that seems to work well for Etsy. I'm willing to work on it, quite a bit, if we can figure out how to do it.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Graceful Antiques on September 6, 2012 at 7:05pm

I mostly always pin Ruby Lane items and build boards that I consider like a Treasury. I had 2 shops at Etsy once upon a time so I know how to build what I consider the same thing.

It would be nice though to have a concerted effort from RL but sticky IMHO to not be seen as one big shop. It would have to be done right.

Permalink Reply by Live Oak Antiques on September 6, 2012 at 8:47pm

This sounds like a great idea!

Permalink Reply by Marni Bakst on September 7, 2012 at 2:22am

That sounds like a great idea Dexter.

Permalink Reply by WhimsicalVintage on September 7, 2012 at 6:47am

As an old Etsyian who is gradually letting go:) with my move to RL...I can say this...

The treasuries are great and I still do them for the Etsy Vintage Village Team but the same principle can be applied using Pinterest with Ruby Lane. Create a pinterest board of your "curated" RL faves and link it everywhere. I do have an RL Fave board that I haven't really pinned with the same "style" that I would use in the treasury system - I love the "curation" part of the treasury...but now that you've brought this up, I think I will set it up that way.

Over the years, the treasuries have changed and now it requires so much promoting within the Etsy groups to even get your treasury noticed... and if you want a shot on the front page, you can't include one of your own items. In the old days, you had to wait for a treasury to expire and a slot to open up before you could try to get yours in...it was like a race..you would sit there with your finger on the button and just as one expired, if you didn't type quick...you were out!lol

As most treasury promotion is started within the groups on Etsy and then promoted out from there, it would be more difficult to implement on RL since they don't have the same kind of forum format (thankfully, in my opinion)....but as I said, I do believe it could be done via Pinterest and even with the RL pinterest page using a specific board for strictly RL "treasury" boards that they would pick from RL sellers treasury boards...

Permalink Reply by CheriShops - Admin on September 7, 2012 at 7:17am

I think Etsy Treasuries work so well because Etsy themselves have them hosted right there on the Etsy website! So themed items are featured, and draw people in to look, and frequently result in sales...right there on the marketplace.

JMHO

Permalink Reply by WhimsicalVintage on September 7, 2012 at 8:42am

I respectfully disagree on this...after 6 years, 2012 sales and many treasury inclusions (from all four shops at one point), I can tell you that the sale/treasury correlation is a handful at best, at least for me. Do people add your items to their favorites, yes but do they actually buy them...not as often as one would think. How do I know this? I track everything on my Etsy site (even before stats on Etsy existed). I ask my customers how they found my shop, I always look at their profile and favorites, if not private and a million other little things that I used to have to piece together - pre stats- to see where my business was coming from.

CheriShops - Admin said:

I think Etsy Treasuries work so well because Etsy themselves have them hosted right there on the Etsy website! So themed items are featured, and draw people in to look, and frequently result in sales...right there on the marketplace.

JMHO

Permalink Reply by CheriShops - Admin on September 7, 2012 at 9:29am

I think you missed my point Pam...it was that Etsy treasuries are on site...not somewhere else.

I have had a fair number of sales from treasury features in the four years I have been on Etsy ( tho my Etsy shop was in hidden mode for almost 2 of those & during my RL exclusive time) And even if direct sales don't result, increased traffic does, and so always the chance someone will browse a shop more and so favorite or buy...ie it increases exposure, at least according to my stats.

I guess, as always, things work differently for each of us. Personally, I don't think Etsy would give the space and PR to treasuries if they weren't of value

again JMHO

Permalink Reply by Jan Story on September 7, 2012 at 10:15am

I think it's a good idea - I've noticed an uptick in sales, at least on eBay if not RL, since I started pinning items to Pinterest so the exposure seems to be working. Etsy isn't the only site with a curation feature: Bonanza has "hand picked lists" that feature on the main page, and I think some other sites let you do this as well. Not only does it get more eyes on your items, but being able to do this would also engage visitors with the site to a greater degree, and this is important for sales as well. I certainly hope RL is already looking into doing this because of the time it will take to design and implement.

Permalink Reply by The Old Grey Mare on September 7, 2012 at 11:08am

Okay, Live Oak, Jan and Marni, that's four of us interested, a small start, but a start and I didn't expect something to happen overnight. I'm going to post this somewhere else, see if I can recruit more people. Pinterest is a possibility, of course, I may play around with that this weekend, come up with a theme. Then all I need to do is figure out how to share the Pinterest board on other sites, shouldn't be too difficult. Except on Facebook, where I don't have a business page. We can post on the RL page, and on a number of other FB pages, along with G+ and Twitter. We can all put our thinking caps on and make it happen. No form of promotion is guaranteed to sell, but it can't hurt to get our things out there, the more people who see what we have, the more people we reach, the better our chances. And I stand by my opinion that it must work, or Etsy wouldn't continue to do it. Just think about the Monthly Finds on RL ~ very often things that are in the email sell. And I've been watching the other emails that RL sends out, like the one about old Fire King ~ that's a "themed" page, and some of the items I clicked on were sale pending. They have their entire email list as a target base, but we can still reach a lot of people. If we have enough people, it shouldn't put an undue burden on anyone, it needs to be fun, while helping us sell.

Permalink Reply by WhimsicalVintage on September 7, 2012 at 11:17am

Didn't miss it Cheri and I agree that it's fun and engaging...I just don't feel that leads to the same number of direct sales. I agree that it brings traffic to the site, which is always a bonus.

Permalink Reply by The Old Grey Mare on September 7, 2012 at 4:24pm

Thank you Sandy ~ Graceful ~ for the idea of Pinterest. It works well, I tried it out today, I can do a themed "treasury" of RL items and post it to G+, FB and Twitter. So it looks like the actual making of one will be a piece of cake. Now all we need is something to call it and come up with themes and do them.

Permalink Reply by Graceful Antiques on September 7, 2012 at 4:31pm

I love doing themes. This is my Fall one currently.

http://pinterest.com/gracefulshops/autumn-or-fall-colors/