Are you lost or incomplete?

So my Etsy shop has been in existence for nearly a year. When I started, I wasn't sure if anyone would actually want to buy anything I made. I was lucky to be rewarded with a couple of sales right away, which in Etsyland is pretty rare - some people wait months for that exciting first sale.

Depending on how active I've been each month - making new jewelry and magnets, renewing items so they pop up higher in search results, re-taking photos until I'm happy with them, I've had varying levels of success. There are a few months where I sold nothing at all, and a few months where I've had 2-3 sales. Given that this is a serious hobby, and not my actual source of income, I've been fine with that. My goal is to consistently get one sale per week.

In July, that didn't quite happen. I sold one pair of earrings the entire month. Kind of disappointing, but my crazy work schedule prevented me from dwelling on it too much.

In the meantime, because we ditched our home phone and I got a new cell phone (yay iPhone!), I realized both Spike and Peanut needed new ID tags for their collars. So armed with my metal stamping skillz, I made a couple of tags for the pups.

I was quite pleased with how they turned out, so I posted a new listing in my shop for a custom pet ID tag last weekend:



Of course, I'm always excited when I add new stuff to my shop, but the reality is that the world doesn't flock there to buy tons of them right away.

The Etsy message boards are filled with people lamenting about their lack of sales, and there are tons of posts about being very slow. So I wasn't expecting much for August.

And then suddenly my shop exploded in a flurry of activity. I've sold several magnet sets and I've sold three of those pet tags in the past week. For me, that's total craziness. And to top it all off, my friend Alice bought four pieces of jewelry from me today (yay Alice!).

I am thrilled! It means I have even more reason to make new items! It also brings me precariously close to averaging 1 sale per week for the past year. Way, way closer than I thought I'd be. Woot!

So a big THANK YOU to all of my lovely customers, whether you're a stranger, friend or family. Thanks for all of your encouragement and validation (you like me! you really like me!) because I really *love* this low-tech, making stuff with my own two hands, kinda thing. It keeps me sane and gets me to do something else besides work all the time. Yay for all of you.