I am totally in agreement with you. I was also thinking that someone on etsy needs to offer this as a service.

I've decided for myself that I simply can't do it all. I am doing some and slowly it is starting to pick up for me (although offline). I've had 2 people find me that are local and asked me to do craft shows before Christmas by searching local on Etsy. Here's what I do (and this is all I do because I have 2 small kids and 2 part-time jobs):

- I created a facebook fan page and invited all my friends to join
- I also post my new items in a photo album on my personal facebook account and sometimes ask people to kindly leave me feedback. This has generated a lot of sales!
- I have my facebook fan page link directly to my twitter feed and all my posts in one place get done in 2 places
- I searched for twitter accounts of people who are my target audience and started following them - a lot of them are following me in return.

That's it. And I'm starting to get sales this way.

I hope this helps you a bit!
Celine

Sharon, do you do etsy full time or part?  I work full time, so etsy is only part time for me and it can be very overwhelming.  I wrote a blog post about it.. you should check it out... http://etsydlist.blogspot.com/ .  The key is to go at your own pace.  Think of one thing at a time, learn about it and implement and then go on to the next.  I only do a blog and this board, and very rarely do I twitter, but I have an account.  I'm still doing ok with sales, not great by any means, but seriously... most of my sales are coming from people doing searches on etsy, or from google.  I would recommend that you set up your google analystics (I'm blogging about that this weekend) and see where your traffic is coming from, what key words people are using when they end up on your site.  It's really helpful.  Just remember, one thing at a time.. the world is not ending tomorrow.  You have time.

Welcome to my world. All I want to do is make jewelry. I can't believe how much time I spend on everything else. I am all over the place and getting nowhere. I don't twitter or face book.  Thanks to my husband my items are now being downloaded to google. I spent hours trying to do that and got nowhere. I seems like I list something and then run to the forums to beg people to look, never mind buy.   I came across etsyhacks today. Supposedly it helps you do things easier. Who knows what thing but people seem to love it. My husband will look into that next. I'll let you know if it looks promising.
Good luck to all.
Rose

When I opened shop in September - about 3 weeks ago - I went gung ho with the Twitter and FB stuff. I do believe to a certain degree that these things can be useful. But I'm not convinced it's worth the time some people insist you spend on it. I don't believe I'm hitting my target market with it and I'm not sure how to reach them on my super tight budget.

I do have Google Analytics set up - and Google Base, but I'm not paying much attention to them at the moment. I'm hoping next week I can reboot. 

I work a full time job plus do all of my Etsy promoting. It can be very time consuming. I just try to plan my week by making a schedule and sticking to it. You may want to alot certain times for promoting. Maybe 30 minutes each morning during the week. Then allow an hour each weekend day. If you don't allow yourself a schedule you may put it off or not do it at all. Then you do get lost in the sea of Etsy listings. I think promoting full time for others would be a fun career...Definitley more exciting than my day job;)