Nowhere to hide
Hearing about other people's success, growth and stories of obstacles overcome can be quite draining and whilst researching other people's work can inspire, it can be a bit off-putting aswell.
It took me a long time to understand that I too could earn money from working at something I enjoyed and believed in. Getting it wrong, making mistakes, not being good enough are all fears that can stop you from doing anything and by putting your work up for sale on an internet site with a worldwide audience (so far I've had orders from Australia, Canada, Germany and the UK), you take a risk that it won't be a success.
In the end, I set up my Etsy shop on the spur of the moment. It asked for a shop logo - so I searched through the pictures stored on my computer and found a shortlist of what I thought were good photos, then cropped them to size and tried them out. For the name I wanted a first name and surname that wasn't my own. I've always liked the name Lily: I wrote a short story once with a character called Lily Steeple (there was a church spire in the distance from where I was sitting writing), this seemed as good a name as any - plus it didn't tie me down to selling one particular thing.
As to making mistakes, I have found that if something isn't the right standard or just isn't something people want to buy, they just won't view it. But I've come to the conclusion, and in the words of a premiership football manager, that 'there is nowhere to hide, [we] just have to improve'. It's been better just to start with something and make mistakes and then remedy them, than be deterred any more by other people's success.
To set up an Etsy shop, you can go to: http://www.etsy.com and select 'register'.
It took me a long time to understand that I too could earn money from working at something I enjoyed and believed in. Getting it wrong, making mistakes, not being good enough are all fears that can stop you from doing anything and by putting your work up for sale on an internet site with a worldwide audience (so far I've had orders from Australia, Canada, Germany and the UK), you take a risk that it won't be a success.
In the end, I set up my Etsy shop on the spur of the moment. It asked for a shop logo - so I searched through the pictures stored on my computer and found a shortlist of what I thought were good photos, then cropped them to size and tried them out. For the name I wanted a first name and surname that wasn't my own. I've always liked the name Lily: I wrote a short story once with a character called Lily Steeple (there was a church spire in the distance from where I was sitting writing), this seemed as good a name as any - plus it didn't tie me down to selling one particular thing.
As to making mistakes, I have found that if something isn't the right standard or just isn't something people want to buy, they just won't view it. But I've come to the conclusion, and in the words of a premiership football manager, that 'there is nowhere to hide, [we] just have to improve'. It's been better just to start with something and make mistakes and then remedy them, than be deterred any more by other people's success.
To set up an Etsy shop, you can go to: http://www.etsy.com and select 'register'.
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