It was almost a year ago today that we decided to focus on developing something to help independent artists and craftsmen gain exposure for the things that they make. Nothing was set in stone, but the basic concept and name. We called it Fish Indie and we chose to build it around the largest online community of independent sellers, Etsy.
We all heart Etsy, and have always been fans of its supportive community and the quality of products they create, but like anyone who has an Etsy shop will tell you, getting your products seen is the hard part.
Our solution? To build a network of great independent blogs that will carry a banner-like classified of your Etsy product. Currently that means your banner will rotate across Doodlers Anonymous and fellow blogs, Illustration Friday, Brown Paper Bag and Pikaland. We also wanted to make it incredibly simple and affordable to join, so the ad is generated automatically using your product’s url and costs less than the price of a movie ticket. We’ve been live now (by-invite only) for 4 weeks and the response has been phenomenal. You can see the ad yourself by taking a quick look into the top-right column of our site. It pulls in a different product upon every refresh.
If you sell your stuff on Etsy, here’s where you can sign-up for an exclusive invite. We are lovers of anything hand-made, hand-drawn and independently created (or crafted) and we look forward to growing the blogs that carry Fish Indie in the weeks ahead.
