Since I often don’t have much to say here, I’ve decided to spice things up by featuring a fellow Etsy artist each week. There are so many wonderful, beautiful, and bizarre things on Etsy that you simply must see. I know I haven’t seen a even bit of what’s out there, and I’m hoping to find plenty more things to buy throughout this process.

What each feature will be:

Each feature will be one post on this blog and a blurb in my mailing list. It’ll start with a short introduction by me, basically consisting of my favorite items in the shop and a bunch of other compliments. Then, as applicable, I’ll have a few questions to ask the selected seller. Of course, you can expect lots of pictures of items.

Once I get a few weeks into this, I’d love to do treasury lists with the selected sellers’ items.

Those who wish can offer a discount or sale to those who come from here to make purchases. If a sale is offered, I can send out the sale code to my promos mailing list.

Possible interview questions:

1. Introduce yourself (name, location, favorite books/movies/bands/colors etc.)
2. How/when/why did you start your craft?
3. How did you come up with your shop’s name/concept?
4. What makes your work unique?
5. What special thing do you do for your customers?
6. What’s your favorite item in your shop? Most under-appreciated item? Item you’re most proud of?
7. Holiday themed items (if a holiday is coming up)?
8. Suggestions for Etsy/other sellers/the world at large?
9. Your one or two favorite Etsy shops?
10. More questions personalized for the shop and seller.

I’ll give sellers a bunch of questions to pick from, or you can write your own. I think 5-8 questions should be enough for anyone to deal with!

Help out:

This effort depends on people visiting the features, so let’s share links. Let me know if you have a blog and will link to my features, and I’ll link back to you at the bottom of each feature post. This enables us to draw traffic so that more people will visit the featured sections!

To link to my featured artists section, please use http://purplepapaya.net/news/category/spotlight/

I hope to have a cute button for you all to use coming soon.

How to sign up:

To sign up for consideration, please visit the Etsy forums and post in the dedicated thread. Everyone who has at least one page of items in his or her shop is welcome.

Feel free to comment (no registration required) with thoughts and suggestions!

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 31st, 2006 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Spotlight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.