Thursday, April 8, 2010

Dipping my toes in the Artfire Pond

I've had an artfire account for a while, but had never listed anything.  I was a little fearful of overextending myself.  With all the craziness at etsy, the sort of elitism there, and the hugeness of it, I thought maybe I should feel out the artfire waters.

From an aesthetic standpoint I would say there's no competition.  Etsy has their look down, and artfire is floundering a little.  A lot of their banners are pretty cheesy, but in a way I kind of like this.  I feel like it makes them more approachable.  Where etsy has recently come to seem to be all about the bottom line, artfire is trying to be about people.  I know it's a business strategy and a way to make money, but I think I like it better than etsy's approach.

Artfire also has free listings, although you have to pay a monthly fee to get all the available privileges.  The free listings is why I finally decided, WHY NOT?

I'm still getting used to the site, but I'm having trouble finding anything.  I keep trying to get back to pages, and not being able to find them again.  I'm thinking that this may only be a problem for sellers though.  Buying seems to be a little simpler.  I do really like the listings though.  Since it's all on one page it's way faster than waiting for etsy's servers to catch up each time you go to the next section.. 

I'm not ready to endorse artfire yet.  I'm not even ready to pay for the pro-version, but I'm thinking that I might be soon.


No pressure, but if you're thinking about joining artfire anyway, here's my referral link
Register on ArtFire.com
No point not putting it out there, right?

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

Good Morning! I have awarded you a Sunshine Award! I have not commented a lot but I do read your blog often. Good luck with Art Fire!

Follow this link:
http://seawillowherbs.blogspot.com/2010/04/sunshine-blog-award.html

Sara of Sell Handmade Crafts Online said...

Thank you for adding your creative voice to the ArtFire community. We have lots of helpful fire mentors in our forums. If you want more info on how to make all of the tools on ArtFire work for you, please visit our help guides forum.

http://www.artfire.com/modules.php?name=forums&op=view_category&cid=8

Best Regards,
Tony
COO, Artfire.com