The Spotted Sparrow

ArtFire Radio is a weekly podcast from ArtFire CEO, John Jacobs and COO, Tony Ford. They provide best practices and tips for promoting your business and your handmade brand.


I've listened to the show several times and have found it to be a great resource. John and Tony don't limit their discussions to just ArtFire, but rather how you can improve your business as a whole, using any and all resources and selling venues available. An archive of all the shows is available on Inside Handmade.

Can you hear the Autumn breeze blowing through the trees? This set of 4 handmade greeting cards features oak silhouettes in pretty Autumn colors. The cards are also available separately.

I printed the silhouettes directly onto pages from a vintage German encyclopedia (published in 1906). I then mounted the printed book pages onto cream, 300 gsm (140 lb), FSC certified paper.

Happy Labor Day to everyone in the US. I thought this summery card would be perfect to celebrate the last unofficial day of summer. Enjoy your long weekend and picnics!

The card available on:
Etsy (USD)
DaWanda (EUR)
ArtFire (multiple currencies)

ArtFire just keeps getting better and better. They have introduced an ArtFire Kiosk application for Facebook.


It integrates your ArtFire store with your Facebook Fan page or Profile page. Customers can make purchases directly from your Facebook page without having to sign up for an ArtFire account. Any changes you make to your ArtFire store will be automatically updated on your kiosk. Pretty cool, huh?

Come take a look at my Facebook page to see the ArtFire Kiosk in action.

{image via ArtFire}

Materialised is a one woman business run by Julia Laing from her home studio in Scotland. She's been sewing and knitting since primary school but also loves to paint and is an art college graduate. Her main focus is on purses and small wearable accessories.

Silver Soul Design is a fellow member of the ArtFire European Guild. She lives on the east coast of Ireland and started creating her own jewelry designs about 3 years ago. She works with a variety of materials - sterling silver chain, Swarovski crystals, wire crochet, freshwater pearls, and antiqued brass and copper.

So, you're on Twitter and want to have your own customized background for your profile page. How do you make one? It's easier than you might think and I'm going to give you a template to make it even easier. All you need is some sort of image editing program. If you don't have one, I recommend checking out GIMP, which is free to download and use.

The first thing you need to do is decide what resolution to use as this affects how your background is displayed to viewers. I originally made my Twitter background for a 1280 x 960 resolution. I tested it out and it looked fine.


However, when I viewed the background in a 1024 x 768 resolution, the left column was cut off. You can see how important screen resolution is!


If you're making a Twitter background to help brand and market your website or online shop, take a look at your Google Analytics and see what the most common screen resolutions are (visitors --> browser capabilities --> screen resolutions). About half of computer users have a screen resolution of 1024 x 768, so that is always a safe bet. I ultimately chose to go with that resolution.

To make things easy for you, I made a 1024 x 768 template from my Twitter background experiments. You can download it and use it as a guideline for making your own Twitter background. Be aware that if you put any text or graphics to the right of the black line in the header, they will be cut off by the Twitter logo.


Once you've edited the template to your liking, you need to upload it to your Twitter account. Go to your Twitter account and click on Settings in the top, left corner. Click on the Design tab and then Change background image. Make sure that the tile background box is NOT checked and upload your file.

If you're not already, come follow me on Twitter. I'd love to see what you all come up with!

Cracked Moon makes a variety of original art ranging from oil pastel drawings to mixed media paintings to altered dolls. I have fallen in love with her altered dolls. They are the perfect mix of creepy and beautiful.


Want to be featured? Join us in the Spotted Sparrow Flickr group.

Malfie has some great vintage finds in their ArtFire shop. Wow, these books bring back some memories! I used to beg my mom for a new Little Golden Book every time we went to the store. These were my two favorites:

Moonstone is the fearless leader of our ArtFire Europe Guild, which, as you probably guessed, is a group of artisans in Europe. She lives in Belgium, where she makes and sells jewelry. Here are some of my favorite pieces from her shop.


howlith necklace


round and round we go again...


ebony and palmwood

The tags are handmade (of course!) and environmentally friendly.



I cut, stamped, and inked each one on my beat up table that you see in my tutorials each Tuesday.



They are made from cream, 300 gsm (super thick), FSC certified paper. FSC certified means that the paper is made from well-managed forests, controlled sources, and recycled wood or fiber.



Available in the following online shops:
Etsy (USD)
DaWanda (EUR)
ArtFire (multiple currencies)

Have you seen the new Rapid Cart widget to the right of my blog? That is a brand new feature on Art Fire. This little widget allows customers to purchase your wares directly, without being redirected to another website or requiring them to create an account anywhere. Pretty cool, huh? Best of all, you can put the widget on just about any website, turning it into a mini store. I've also been told by the Art Fire Marketing staff that they working on having the widget display prices in local currency, making it even easier for customers outside of the US to make purchases. Yay!

Do you have an Art Fire seller account? If you don't, now is the time to sign up. Instead of charging listing and selling fees, Art Fire charges a monthly membership fee. The normal charge is $20 a month, but they are offering a limited number of accounts for only $7 a month. That is less than my monthly Etsy bill! If you sign up now, you'll get to keep that discounted price for life.

REGISTER ON ART FIRE

It seems like there is an overload of online handmade marketplaces lately. We all know Etsy and DaWanda, but now there's Shop Handmade, ArtFire, Folksy, 1000 Markets, Coriandr, and probably loads more that I haven't heard of. Not to mention individual seller websites! How does one decide where to sell?

Personally, I have had the most success on DaWanda. I read in DaWanda's literature that most of their page views come from Germany, which definitely works in my favor. I can list my items in German, which means German customers are more likely to find me. I can also offer inexpensive and fast shipping to customers within Germany.

I have also had some success on Etsy, but not nearly equal to that on DaWanda. There are so many people selling there that it is hard for potential customers to find you. Many sellers relist their items to keep them at the top of the search results, but my sales there aren't enough to justify spending the extra money to do that. Another thing working against me on Etsy is shipping costs. It costs me about €6 ($8) to ship to the US. Not many people would want to pay that for a few cards, myself included! I will continue to list on Etsy, especially since they have recently added Google Analytics functionality, but most of my efforts will be concentrated on DaWanda.

I'm also currently selling on ArtFire. I love what they are going for - no selling fees, artisan guilds, and built-in analytics. So far, the views have been low and I haven't had any sales. I will probably only update listings every other month or so, but I really hope the site takes off.

I'm also working on my own personal website with shopping cart. This is my ultimate goal as it allows me complete control over analytics, currencies, design, advertising, etc.

I tried Shop Handmade, but didn't care for their seller interface. I do like that they donate proceeds to environmental causes, but because of the lack of views/sales, I decided that it was not worth the effort.

As a seller, it is crucial to figure out which selling venues are the most beneficial to you. It can take hours and hours setting up a shop at some of these venues, only to find out it wasn't worth the time and effort. What are your thoughts on this handmade overload? Where do you sell? Where have you had success? What factors do you measure when deciding if a selling venue is worth your time and effort?