How LaurelinJewelry got started
Introduce your Etsy shop and tell us your story. How did you begin and decide on what to sell on Etsy, and how do you create your products?
I’m Victoria. I'm a collector. In my travels, both on my own and with geologists, I collect interesting and strange things, such as rock specimens, seeds, skulls, branches, flowers, and other things. At some point, my collection got so big that I decided I had to do something. I started by making jewelry, first for myself, then thought, "It would be nice if I sold something of my making on Etsy." So, together with my husband, we decided to open the shop. Now I share my love of beauty and my love of stones with visitors to the store.
In the beginning, I just worked with the technique of electroplating objects with copper. This is a process in which pure copper is deposited on the object, which coats it and repeats its shape. Now I work with different techniques and materials. This includes creating decorative objects out of wire (suncatchers), clay molding (miniature figurines), working with thin-film materials (parts of suncatchers), electroplating, and more. I source materials both locally and from trusted vendors on online platforms, and then in my workshop, I create whatever I want. Everything in my store is exclusively created by me.
Favorite items
What are your favorite items? What makes these so special? Why do you think these items might be selling well?
Most of the items I make are one of a kind, so it is hard to track why they sell. Perhaps it's because they found someone who appreciates their beauty. Of the most recent works, I think it is the hair sticks, hair jewelry in general, and dioptase rings.
My new love is hair jewelry with the finest fairy wings. They look so simple, but they can turn anyone into a fairy, a sorceress, or a princess from a fairy tale. And then there are the suncatchers made out of wire and faceted iridescent beads. I hang them all over the house. They make every room look very bright (and the cats are very entertained by the play of the light).
Getting sales on Etsy
How long did it take for you to earn your first sale and how do you currently attract customers to your Etsy shop?
My first sale was in 2015, on July 23, about three weeks after I opened a fully stocked shop. It was a completely organic sale from Etsy since I wasn't doing any promotion at the time at all. At the moment, I put a lot of effort into telling people about me and my craft on Fediverse, Pinterest, and Instagram to drive traffic to the Etsy store. There, we share the process of creating and insights about our new products, the reviews of our clients, offer coupons, promote sales, and do general talk about various things. The main thing is to get people talking about you, not just to promote the products and collect likes. But still, most of the traffic comes from Etsy alone, about 70%.
Managing LaurelinJewelry
How do you manage your shop? Are you running solo or do you have any team members? What tools or services do you use to run your shop and how do you handle fulfillment?
It’s my five cats, my husband, and me. I take care of the physical side of the shop, and my husband takes care of almost everything else digital (taking photos, uploading listings, customer communications, etc.). And cats are responsible for providing inspiration.
To keep track of orders and customer communications, we use the built-in tools provided by Etsy.
Some of our favorite tools and apps include
DeepL Translate, DeepL Write, and Grammarly: for translating and proofreading the listing descriptions, customer communications, and anything else. Except for those three, we don’t use any other cloud or AI services for ethical and privacy reasons.
GIMP and ImageMagick are our go-to tools for processing photos for tutorials and listings; ImageMagick has an unparalleled set of image editing and scripting features that really help us when we need to process a huge batch of images.
Emacs, Vim, and LaTeX: we use these tools for handling the textual part of the tutorials. Emacs and Vim are the tools for any text editing, and LaTeX is the professional typesetting system.
CapCut and Snapseed are the tools for quick mobile photo and video editing for listings and social media.
As far as shipping and fulfillment go, we partner with a fulfillment center in the US. We pack the items, ship everything to them, and they do the rest, like packing the orders, handling them to the carriers, processing returns, etc.
The future of LaurelinJewelry
What goals do you have for your shop in the future?
I plan to add more do-it-yourself kits and related digital products so that anyone can do what I can do. We are developing detailed, multi-page instructions with detailed photos for each do-it-yourself kit. In a way, it's a transfer of knowledge and skills to some extent, and I think it is important. And besides, an object created by your own hands has more value than one you just bought.
Advice for new sellers
What’s your advice for a new seller starting an Etsy shop?
Thoroughly read the Etsy Sellers Handbook and open the shop. Find a fine blend between "what you can do," "what you like to do," and "what your customers want." Refine it with your own voice and make quality items. especially if you're an overseas seller. Ask yourself, "Why must your customers buy from you when they can make a purchase on their local market?"
On the technical side, invest in learning how to use your camera in manual mode and your image processing tool to its full extent because your listing photos must look as bright, juicy, and professional as possible. Take time to understand what SEO is, what it means on Etsy, and how to do it right.
Some sellers really get inspired by hearing numbers. Feel free to share these if you like.
Question: How much is your monthly revenue?
Answer: From $500 to $1500
Question: What is your shop’s conversion rate?
Answer: About 1%
LaurelinJewelry
Artisan copper anythings
