The Summer Slow Down

"ZOMG!  My stats have dropped way down, I haven't had a sale in days, what is Etsy trying to do to me?!?"

If you've been in the Etsy forums at all...pretty much ever...you've probably seen posts like this crop up--people freaking out (or just expressing mild concern) that their stats are dropping, and looking for some kind of explanation.  I thought that'd make for an interested blog post.

First of all, welcome to the wonderful world of retail.  There are ebbs and flows in every retail business--sometimes you'll be up, sometimes you'll be down, and sometimes you'll break even.  There are a thousand reasons why things start to slow down this time of year, or any time of year really.

There are no major American "gifting" holidays between Father's Day and Grandparents Day.  A whole string of big gifting holidays are clumped right together month after month for the first half of the year.  If you want to get technical, there's really a major (American) holiday every single month from September through June (for future reference: Grandparent's Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving (inc. Black Friday and Cyber Monday), Christmas, New Years, Valentines Day, St Patty's day, Easter, Mother's Day, Graduation, Prom, Father's Day...)  Let's face it, for like 10 months out of the year, we're spoiled rotten with built in holidays and themes to make, market and promote around.

There are lots of smaller occasions scattered around, but when we're talking retail, these are the ones that seem to drive the most traffic in the months and weeks before.  So keeping that in mind, if you don't have items relevant to these gifting holidays, your traffic is probably going to take a hit.  No one cares if you sell ladies underwear when they're shopping for Father's Day (well, maybe someone does...) so naturally, you'll see a drop in traffic.


 A myriad of other reasons could be affecting your traffic as well.  The weather's getting nice; school's wrapping up; people are spending their disposable income on vacation planning, not buying stuff; you haven't tweaked your SEO-type stuff for awhile; you haven't listed anything new in awhile, you aren't doing any promotion off-Etsy...the list is really endless.

If you're doing everything you know to do, and not seeing results, that doesn't mean that Etsy is screwing with you.  Yes, Etsy is constantly running live experiments, and we all know change is hard.  But while these experiments most definitely impact those being included (a small percentage we're told), they simply can't be held accountable for a wide spread slow down.  That's just not logical.

So if things are slowing down, and you're frustrated, take a break.  Use your new found free time to create new things, read a book, lounge in the sun, enjoy not being chained to Etsy.  And for those of you relying on Etsy for your income, I can fully empathize with the stress the summer slow down must cause.  My best advice--do what you can, but remember, ultimately it's out of your hands, and freaking out about it isn't going to help anyone.  Make a note of when the slow down started, and try to plan for it next year.  Keep plugging along, things will pick up again soon.  (I hope :\)

In the meantime...if you're really bored because your stats fell off a cliff and are showing no signs of life, here's a recipe for some super awesome "cheesecake" stuffed strawberries.  They're sugar and fat free, unless you drizzle them with chocolate, so feel free to indulge a little.


Ingredients:
8oz fat free cream cheese
Lite Cool Whip
1 box Jello sugar free, fat free vanilla pudding mix
1 cup low fat/skim milk
Strawberries.  Lots of strawberries.

Instructions:

• Let cream cheese soften a bit on the counter or in your mixing bowl.  

• Using a handheld or stand mixer set on low speed, mix up the cream cheese and milk.  You should have mostly liquid in your bowl, with maybe a few chunks of cream cheese hanging about.

• Add the pudding mix, and blend for 2-5 minutes, until things start to thicken up.  Don't forget to scrape the bowl down to make sure all of the pudding mix gets incorporated, or you'll end up with a grainy filling.

• Add about a quarter of the container of thawed Cool Whip and mix until just incorporated.

• Gently fold in 1/3 to 1/2 of remaining Cool Whip.

• Transfer "cheesecake" filling to a Ziploc bag.  Let the mixture hang out in the fridge while you prep the strawberries.

Photo credit: Onceamomalwaysacook.blogspot.com

• Hull the strawberries.  I use a small paring knife and gently cut out the centers of each berry, being careful not to pierce the sides.  You can cut off a small portion of the tip so your berries stand up right, but they taste just as good if you don't.
• Be sure to remove enough of the hull to create a pocket that goes the length of the berry, so you get a bit of cheesecake in every bite

•   Once you've finished hulling the strawberries, grab your bag of filling from the fridge, clip off a small piece of the corner, and use the Ziploc bag to pipe the filling into the pockets you created. 

• You could stop here and enjoy these little bites of deliciousness (that just happen to be sugar and fat free) or you could melt some dark chocolate chips and drizzle a fair amount over your strawberries, making them completely wonderful Chocolate Covered Cheesecake Filled Strawberries

Random, unattributed web photo.  Because mine were gone before I could snap a pic or 2.  They're that good...

Tune in next week for some information on branding, and for a link to a special guest blog post I wrote for my favorite Etsy team :)

Oh, and just a little shameless promotion (*grins*) Be sure to stop by my Etsy shop and check out all the New Arrivals I'm adding.  There's some really cool stuff coming soon!

Happy Sales!