Updated Etsymom Guidelines

Etsymom Street Team and Etsymom Yahoogroup Group Guidelines

As I'm sure you all know, the multitude of posts are hard to organize here on the Yahoo forums.  In response, we five group moderators have decided to ask everyone to

• stop posting promotional "please look at my shop" and "please buy from me" type messages.   Since there are so many posts in our group, making lots of people feel overwhelmed, we want to use the Yahoo forum to focus on discussing promotion of the Etsymom group, Etsy as a whole, business issues and tips, etc.,  instead of individual promotion.  
  
• We do feel the group is about our mutual promotion, and we strongly encourage everyone to put shop, blog, and flickr addresses in all of your message signatures and to fill out your Yahoo bios with your links.  That way, you can indirectly promote yourself by making positive contributions to the group so that people want to click on your signature links.  
  
• We also encourage everyone to promote themselves, and each other, in the daily Etsymom threads in the Promo forums on Etsy...and in our Etsymom Flickr group, by posting pictures of your items there. So, for the moment, we will be deleting threads that are solely aimed at promoting individual shops or items.  Thank you for understanding!  If you would like to discuss this, please email Ann [one of our Mods] at  annsheppard at mac.com.

We've seen a lot of abuse of the Etsymom tag and non-members posting in the daily Etsymom forum.  In order to help people identify Etsymom members, we are asking for a few changes.

• In the yahoogroup, we'd like users to set up a profile that is identical to your Etsy shop name.  Many other Etsy yahoogroups require this.  That way your username is immediately idenfiable with your Etsy shop.  Don't know how to set up a new Yahoo profile?  Email kassmiles at hotmail.com
  All new members are now required to sign up with their Etsy shop name.  Existing members are asked to change over in this coming week.
  
• On Etsy, we'd like members to list their street team membership either in their shop announcement or shop profile.  See my own shop announcement at http://knitsteel.etsy.com where I write that I'm a proud member of Etsymom and WIST.    It's simple and unobtrusive.  It does not detract from the shop presentation.
  If Etsymom mods can't easily identify your shop as a member shop, we'll ask you to stop posting in the forum thread, or stop promoting that shop in the forum thread, until changes are made.

Thanks so much for your continued cooperation.  The group has grown quickly!  We want to do all we can to streamline the group messages and make it easy to identify the group members. 

Etsymom Email list (yahoogroup) update

This is a reminder from the Moderators. We are deleting promotional emails on the Etsymom yahoogroup. If one goes out before we get to delete it, please do not respond on the list. Please see the new guidelines for details http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Etsymom/message/2752

We would love to see all promotions, sales, etc... on the daily promo threads on Etsy. The links are posted every morning on your group messages. If you choose not to receive messages, please check the group on yahoo every morning for a link to the daily promo thread.
Thank you.
-Kirsten
http://knitsteel.etsy.com
http://knitsteel.blogspot.com

Etsymom Banners! and Promo opportunities

PlainJaneDesignz has generously created a banner for Etsymom, working with a huge committee and going through 4 or more designs. Visit her blog or Etsy shop and thank her!

The banner style looks like this

and the square style looks like this and is perfect for a sidebar image.

If you are an Etsymom Street Team member you can download these to your own computer from the Yahoogroups files, in the Etsymom blogring photos folder.

The idea behind using the banners on our own blogs or websites is to help promote each other. We want to send people to Etsy. Of course we want them to buy from our own shops, but when we don't have everything the buyer wants, then we want them to look for other Etsymoms first. Consider adding a note with your banner about using Etsymom in the search terms. For example, if someone searches for Etsymom Blacksmith, well they just might come up with me!

Please contact PlainJaneDesigns directly if you want to use the banner for anything other than on your own blog or Etsy store. As the artist, she still owns the copyright, so you can't make items to sell with the logo without her permission or use the logo in any other way without her permission.

Another Etsymom, Autumn Daisy, is creating a scrolling list of Etsymom stores that can be added to blogs or websites. You can see a sample of it at her own blog. If you want to be added email her directly with your exact Etsy shop url and the name of your Etsy shop. I won't post her email address here, to avoid extra spam. How do you email her? Well, please visit the exact message at the Etsymom Yahoogroup. It's at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Etsymom/message/1804

You will have to be logged in to yahoogroups in order to view it.

I almost forgot to mention Uniquecommodities who has created several cute Etsymom totes up for sale in her shop.

Go Team! Let's work together on promoting each other.