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New Etsy Admin just for GM; Vacation Mode Issue Update


Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2010
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Well it’s been ages since I posted!

The good news:
Today LisaJune posted in the Etsy forums about a new Etsy employee to work just on the Etsy/Google Merchant integration (yay!)
and
she’s started a new thread for the problem that some sellers using vacation mode have had with items not being put back in to syndication when they came out of vacation mode (which appears to be a problem on Google’s end, not Etsy’s)–see here for her thread:

LisaJune’s thread in the forums for help
with vacation mode/syndication issues

The bad news:
I haven’t heard anything new about when Google will be able to get all shops syndicated. Last I heard is a forum post back in April that said Google still can’t handle all Etsy items through their new Marketplace Partners set up (here).

(((Knocks wood that all my fellow sellers will be syndicated soon!)))

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2010
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

We’ve been spoiled!

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2010

Two of our fellow Etsians have featured us in treasuries this week and I’m thrilled to share their beautiful collections with you. Thanks so much to archeress and cindylouwho2 for featuring our stained glass!

They’ve included the Medieval Sun made by me and Roswell (a friendly neighboring galaxy alien) made by my husband Dan:

Click images for a larger view

Etsy Forum goes on Spring Break!
Kicking back and enjoying the spring sunshine in the tropics…


and

It Came From Outer Space
A few of my other world favourites.


Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2010

Disappearing Syndication Link on Etsy


Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2010
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

Lots of folks have noticed the syndication link appearing & disappearing from their Etsy shop in the last day bacause of some work the admin have been doing on the site. Here’s some basic info about that:

Appearing/Disappearing Syndication Link:

  • Having the link in Your Etsy doesn’t mean you are syndicated unless you clicked it and it said your syndication is active.

  • Deactivating/activating your items won’t change the status from pending to active, it only helps once your status is active.

  • Some sellers, like myself, have had the syndication link go missing, yet we are still syndicated. If you missing the link and want to check your status, see here: Etsy has Started to Syndicate Shops

More info about syndication:

Google uses robots (spiders) to follow links from page to page (crawl the web) to index sites to use in their regular search results. ( http://www.google.com ) The majority of shoppers come through Google’s regular search.

Syndication is only for Etsy uploading our items to Google Merchant Center to get into Google’s special shopping/product search ( http://www.google.com/products ), and all shops will eventually have it (you don’t need to do anything to get it).

Etsy has been rolling it out in stages to sellers since December, see the second link for basic info about Etsy’s syndication & to find out if you are syndicated.

What is Google Base/Merchant?
http://www.gotogreatpanes.com/blog/2009/02/15/what-is-google-base

FAQs for Etsy’s Google Merchant Feed/Syndication
–includes vacation mode info!
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6492737

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2010
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

Little Known Fact about Vacation Mode & Your Etsy Shop’s Syndication


Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2010
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

Special thanks for flandersfield for sharing this important info with me so I could share it with you!

When you put your Etsy shop in vacation mode your items are removed from Etsy’s syndication feed which removes them from Google’s special Shopping/Product Search (as they should be, since Google only wants items currently available in Google Shopping).

When you bring your shop out of vacation mode your currently listed items won’t be placed back in the feed automatically. You’ll need to re-enable your current stock for upload to get them back on Google’s Shopping Search, see here for OhFaro’s quick tip to enable your items.

All items you list, renew, relist or edit will still be added automatically once you are out of vacation mode, this is just about items you had listed when you put your shop in vacation mode.

There does seem to be another small downside to going in to vacation mode besides your items being pulled from Google Shopping & the hassle of re-enabling:

When the new feed from Etsy was coexisting with the RSS feeds sellers had done themselves, items in the older feeds (RSS done by sellers) were coming up close to the top of the search results and the newer feed (Etsy’s syndication) were coming up later in the results for the very same listings. This leads me to believe that older feeds have a little more weight for better search results.

When you go in to vacation mode and come back out, you delete your old sub-account syndication feed and get a new one which might result in less-good results in Google Shopping searches.

That also means if you’ve bookmarked search results for your old author id, you’ll need to update it with your feed’s new author id when you come out of vacation mode or it won’t show you the items you currently have in Google Shopping.

Warning: There’ve been several syndicated sellers who used vacation mode and cannot get their shop back in to syndication even after re-enabling their items. Admin LisaJune has said that this is not happening to all sellers who have used vacation mode, it’s on an individual basis and that you should contact admin for help getting it fixed–here’s where you can find her post: http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6498948&page=16&#post-50567894

I am hoping it’s a temporary bug that the admin will fix, but if you’re only going to need it for a few days it may be better just to put a notice in your shop, avatar and message to buyer for now.

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2010
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

We’re featured on Celebrate Odd Etsy!

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2010
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I’m thrilled to announce that our Etsy shop has been featured on

Celebrate Odd Etsy

See the feature here:

Go To’s Stained Glass


Visit their Etsy shop:

Etsy
Buy Handmade
celebratetheodd

Image Cropping for Etsy

Bats from GoTo's Etsy shop

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2010
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

Been wondering how to get images that look good in both the gallery and list view on Etsy?

For the perfect Etsy image you need an image with a 1.25 to 1 ratio, with the important part of your image in the center left to right, leaving .125 of the left and right sides without any necessary content.

What does that mean?

A small example–because it is easy to see the ratio in small numbers:

1.25 to 1.00 ratio:
125 pixels wide by 100 pixels high

Unnecessary content area:
12.5 pixels on each side that don’t have necessary content

What does that look like?

Here’s a blue & white image that is 125 pixels wide by 100 pixels high.

Blue & White Example
+
12.5 pixels wide white bar
100.0 pixels wide blue square
_12.5 pixels wide white bar
125.0 pixels wide

The blue square portion is 100 pixels wide by 100 pixels high, centered in the image left to right. Everything in the square will be visible in gallery or list view thumbnails.

On each side of the square is a white bar that is 12.5 pixels wide–consider that the unnecessary content area. Anything that falls into those bars won’t be seen in list view thumbnails, but will show in gallery view.

In these images the areas with the dotted lines show you what will be cut off the picture in list view:


125 x 100 pixels

125 by 100

430 x 344 pixels

Click image to see at 430 x 344 pixels
430 by 344

700 x 560 pixels

Click image to see at 700 x 560 pixels
Click for 700 by 560



Your “blue square area” will always be a square based on the height of the image, and you want the blue square centered left to right.


Examples of images with this ratio: Unnecessary content area on each side:

430 wide by 344 high
(Etsy’s minimum width for images*)
43 pixels
500 wide by 400 high 50 pixels
600 wide by 480 high 60 pixels
700 wide by 560 high 70 pixels
800 wide by 640 high 80 pixels
900 wide by 720 high 90 pixels
1000 wide by 800 high
(Etsy’s maximum for the longest side of images is 1,000 pixels**)
100 pixels

*Your images will be pixelated or blurry in the listing if they are smaller than 430 pixels wide.
**Very important info about over-sized images here: Google Shopping & Large Images

The sides: To find how many pixels you need to leave without important content for other image sizes, just subtract the height from the width and divide by 2:

430 wide by 344 high:
430-344=86
86÷2=43
43 pixels on each side
1000 wide by 800 high:
1000-800=200
200÷2=100
100 pixels on each side

If your images are already cropped and don’t meet the 1.25 wide to 1 high ratio, you can edit them in your photo editor to fit by adding white space around the image to create an overall image with the right dimensions with the important part in the “blue square area”. It’s only really important for the first image in a listing since that’s the one folks will see in search results.

Need more help? Join us in this forum thread (opens in a new tab/window):

http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6489290

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2010
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

Google Shopping–Pictures Missing?


Visit our Etsy shop: GoTo
Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2010
(This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.)

Now you’re syndicated, you’ve searched Google Shopping and found your items there but you’ve got no pictures–just this graphic?


Then your pictures are most likely too big.

If you are selling on Etsy, they have made these recommendations:

Minimum: 430 pixels wide
Maximum: 800 to 1,000 pixels wide or long on the largest side

Narrower images will be pixelated/blurry in the item listing because Etsy will stretch them to fit the 430 pixel-wide space on the listing page.

Larger images are slow to load which is:

bad for folks with older computers
bad for folks with dial-up connections

and now, it’s also

bad for uploading to Google Merchant Center which provides data for Google’s Shopping/Product search.

What to do?

You can either lower the setting on your camera or use photo editing program to make them smaller. If you don’t have photo editing software, you try these two free ones:

Picasa (from what I hear it’s relatively simple)
http://picasa.google.com

GIMP (more advanced)
http://www.gimp.org/windows

Need help getting the image sizes right for cropping on Etsy?

See this post:

Image Cropping for Etsy
http://www.gotogreatpanes.com/blog/2010/04/08/image-cropping-for-etsy

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2010
(This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.)


Download Your Paypal History


Visit our Etsy shop: GoTo
Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2010
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

Looking for your Paypal fees history or sales tax you collected through Paypal? It’s all in the history download from Paypal!

To download your history:

1. Log in to your Paypal account & hover over the History link, click the Download History link from the pop up menu.



2. On the right there’s a box with links, click Customize Download Fields.

That allows you to control the information you get & how you get it. Be sure to select shipping amount, insurance amount, sales tax and any other information you need. Click save at the bottom of that page.

I like to download it all and save it for my business records.



3. Select Custom Date Range and put in the dates you need records from.

If you have hundreds of transactions during the time frame you select you may have to change the dates and download a few months at a time so the download won’t time out.



4. From the drop down File Types for Download menu select Tab Delimited.

I like the all activity version.



5. At the bottom click the “Download History” button.



6. When download box pops up click to save the file to your computer.

We have a folder where we keep all our business transactions, I save it there, some folks save items to “My Documents”, wherever you’ll be able to find it is fine. I give it a name that reflects the contents and the date range, for example my March 2010 file name will be: PP history 03 10.txt



7. Once you’ve saved the file, go to the folder on your computer where you saved it and change the file extension from .txt to .xls so that Excel can open it and will automatically put all the data in separate columns for you.

To change the extension right click on the file name and select rename, edit it then hit enter (on a Mac, use ctrl + click for the right click):

From: PP history 03 10.txt
To: PP history 03 10.xls



8. Double-click the file name to open it. All your transaction data should be there now, separated into individual columns.



To add up a column, for example, your sales tax:

9. Click once on the first sales tax collected entry–that selects that box (I’m not sure what the column header is as we can’t use Paypal to accurately collect NY sales tax so our file doesn’t have that column).



10. Hold down the shift key and then hold down the down-arrow key to highlight the cells until you reach the end of the numbers you want to add, then click the down arrow one more time, highlighting one empty box at the end of the column. It should look like this:



11. At the top of the page click the big funny looking E in the menu bar–that will “auto-sum” the column. It will put the total in the empty box you highlighted at the bottom of the column. It should look like this:



12. All added up! In this example the total was $3.75.



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Visit our Etsy shop: GoTo
Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2010

Help for Filing your Federal Income Taxes
for Your Small Business


Visit our Etsy shop: GoTo
Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2010
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

This time of year many folks seem to have questions about where different business expenses go in your annual income taxes.

Generally, you should get your answers from people in the know–that means directly from the IRS or from an accountant or tax preparer that has experience with small business taxes.

Non-official websites and forums are not a good place to get answers. You’ll never know if the person supplying the info actually has a good understanding of the laws or if they just talk a good game if you don’t go to the source.

In that vein, I offer a few official IRS website links that I have found very helpful. (Links open in a new window or tab depending on your browser settings.)

This one might be a little late for this year, but will help you get records in order for your 2010 income taxes:

Recordkeeping Info from the IRS
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=98575,00.html

For sole proprietorships (info), we report our income and expenses on the Schedule C and submit it with our 1040 to the IRS (and to the state where required).

Form 1040, Schedule C
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040sc.pdf

This is the IRS’s instructions for the Schedule C:

Instructions for the 1040 Schedule C
http://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040sc/index.html
(PDF version)

and the following one answers some of the questions for the Schedule C that the instructions for the Schedule C seem to ignore–it has saved me from many a headache:

Tax Guide for Small Business, Publication 334
(For Individuals Who Use Schedule C or C-EZ)
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p334/index.html
(PDF version: http://www.irs.gov/app/vita/globalmedia/p334.pdf)

Now don’t get overwhelmed by all this, these additional links will come in handy if you get stuck….

Some more tough topics in detail:

Business Expenses, Publication 535
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p535/index.html

Inventories—see Publication 538
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p538/index.html

Travel, Entertainment, Gift & Car Expenses, Pub 463
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p463/index.html

How To Depreciate Property, Publication 946
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p946/index.html

Business Use of Your Home, Publication 587
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p587/index.html

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Visit our Etsy shop: GoTo
Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2010

Google Analytics Set up for Etsy Shops


Visit our Etsy shop: GoTo
Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2009
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

1. Log in to Google Analytics, click the “Analytics Settings” link on the left in the orange bar. That should put you on this page:
https://www.google.com/analytics/settings

a. If you haven’t set up your account already, you’ll need to put your shop address in on the “Add Website Profile” page. Click the “Add Website Profile” link below the “Website Profiles” section.

b. Select “http://” from the drop down menu and put in your shop address, for example goto.etsy.com or gotosupplies.etsy.com

2. On that page in the darkest gray bar, in the center, you’ll see it says “Website Profiles”. Below it lists your website followed by a number that starts with UA. That is your Google Analytics Tracking ID. I’ve outlined the number location in a green square on this image, click it for a larger view:

You need to copy that tracking ID into the box on the Web Analytics page in Your Etsy, so…

3. Log in to Etsy, and on the left side of “Your Etsy” under “Shop Setup” click the link for “Web Analytics”. That should put you on this page:
http://www.etsy.com/shop_analytics.php

4. Under “Step 2: Enter Tracking ID”, put the ID you just copied in the box, be sure the UA is capitalized and click the save changes button.

Done! Google will start tracking your shop now.

Looking for more help?

Etsy’s PDF file on Google Analytics:
http://www.etsy.com/storque/media/bunker/2009/03/GoogleAnalyticsForSellers.pdf

Now that you are tracking your traffic, it’s time to improve your search engine results:

Etsy: Meta Tags
http://www.gotogreatpanes.com/blog/2009/07/21/etsy-meta-tags

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) info straight from Google:
http://www.gotogreatpanes.com/blog/2009/06/22/search-engine-optimization

This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.



Visit our Etsy shop: GoTo
Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2009