Opinions

Ok, let's make one thing clear: trying to sell anything online is a never-ending hunt for exposure. It's nice and soothing to think of the web as a marketplace with six billions potential customers browsing around. But big part of this group has no access to the Internet at all, or does not know how to use it. Some more are out because they just don't have a habit of buying online. Even more can't be taken into consideration because ..(insert any reason you can think of and multiply by whatever you want).


Now, how many websites are there? Around 200 million, according to a quick Google search. Of those, big number will try to do exactly what I'm doing - which is to sell, often items from more or less the same shelf. As I'm actively against aggesive (and bullshit-dripping) sales techniques - and I'm a minority here! - I need to cut my potential customer group even further.
Drat.


As mentioned milion times before, I'm not going to get views by 'I follow you, you follow me' strategy, because I simply don't respect it. I can't afford paid advertising. I'm not going to leave meaningless comments on every forum I stumble upon, and there's only a limited number of subjects that interest me enough to leave a thoughtful one. So, what can I do?


Well, one of the ways I found out is to subject myself to somebody else's judgement... I dug out www.plaincraft.com somewhere in Etsy forums and started to use it just to see what happens. The idea is simple - you submit your creations to the website and others may judge it. Three items a day, for two weeks, for free. Nice and easy.


The highest rating I got so far was something around 9 (out of 20). The lowest - 3.5... Hmm, how should I say it - it bloody stung! How come, my little beloved things, on which I spend HOURS and because of which I get continuous rides between elation and blackest depression roughly three hundred times a day, and somebody gives them three out of twenty??? ^%&*%&*#%!!! For few days I felt deeply offended and didn't even check Plaincraft website again.


But then I thought again. There's a saying: opinion is like ass - everybody has one. True enough. So I was rated by those guys, who simply hated my items, or were not impressed at all. Somewhere out there must exist (and the very statistics prove my point here) a group of people who will instantly fall in love with my creations, even if this group is (substantially??) smaller than the other one. That's the crowd I'm trying to reach. To find them, I need to put my name out there, just to make it possible for THEM to find ME. And if it means having to survive criticism of the other group? Well, to hell with it, after all I can't blame anyone for having ass...


So I promptly listed three new items on Plaincraft and intend to keep on doing so. And that brings me this one tiny step closer towards my goal.


Oh, if you were interested - I didn't notice any particular rush in the shop since I did that. But you never know.