The Mardi Gras Experiment

I attempted something new this year for Mardi Gras. I did a "blitz" on Etsy, focusing my jewelry making on Mardi Gras items leading up to the holiday. I even tried fancy new pictures for my Mardi Gras items. All in all, I listed 37 (holy shit) jewelry items specifically related to Mardi Gras, and sold 5 of them. Almost all were memory wire bracelets. I listed the first of the series on January 13, and the last on February 21.


For the first time, I bought advertising. I bought one week of time on Craft Cult. That didn't seem to be too helpful. I spent $15 on the advertising, and during the week my ad ran I had one sale, and didn't see my traffic increase much, if at all. I would consider that part of my Mardi Gras Experiment a failure.

I feel like I tagged, photographed and described my items well because my Mardi Gras items were featured in no fewer than 18 treasuries! That was sort of amazing! I was super excited about all the neat treasuries I was included in.

The highlight of my Mardi Gras experiment was getting one of my bracelets featured in the daily Etsy newsletter on Mardi Gras! That was so exciting! I normally get 10-20 hits a day at my shop (sad, right?) but on that day I got over 400!! The next day it was an all-time second high of 93. LOL.

So all in all, I wouldn't do a holiday blitz like this again. I will instead focus on making few really excellent holiday items, doing a few different styles of photos to appeal to more treasury curators, and not buy advertising. I think experimenting with photography styles and doing holiday theme items is definitely something to keep up, but it might have been overkill before! I doubt I will sell many of my Mardi Gras bracelets before next Mardi Gras season. Oh well!