Hunting for Treasure

The Treasury an exciting and much used feature within the Etsy Community. Introduced in August of 2006, the Treasury gave community members an opportunity to to act as a curator by personally handpicking 12 of their favorite items and posting the grouping for others to view. Each collection is based on a theme that ties all the featured artwork together for an effective display. These individual lists remain active for 2 days, often soliciting comments from viewers and potential buyers who, with one click, are taken to the featured item in the artist’s store. The best of the best of these member-curated collections are occasionally promoted to the front page of Etsy, making this a valuable promotional tool.

Many artists who belong to an Etsy Street Team will create a treasury to highlight and promote the artwork of their fellow team members. It’s always exciting to get an email from the creator of a treasury announcing that one of my items has been featured. But not all curators contact those whose art they have featured.

I just learned of a site, Craftopolis, that allows an Etsy Artist to search through all the treasuries to find any of their items that are currently being featured. To my surprise, when I entered my shop’s name, ByCoco, under the “Treasure Hunt” tab, it told me that I was a featured artist and gave me the link to the treasury. What a thrill.

On that same site, an artist can perform a gift guide search to see if they are featured in one of Etsy’s popular gift guides. Alas, just as I expected, none of my items are currently featured in a gift guide. But that won’t stop me from returning to Craftopolis every day or two to check again.

Checking for Etsy shop hearts on Craft Cult or checking to see if I’ve been featured in a treasury or gift guide on Craftopolis, may not be the most productive use of my time, but it’s fun. And we all need to mix a little fun in with the task of promoting our shops and selling our wares. So, if you haven’t already tried using Craft Cult and Craftopolis, I suggest you try them both and let me know what you think.