Listing a new product is the last article in my series about setting up an ArtFire.com studio. Your item image, description and title are extremely important to the success of your studio. You need to make sure that your potential customers can find your items and that they'll be compelled to purchase after seeing your stellar images. Mandatory and optional fields on the list product template help make that happen.
So log into your account, select MyArtFire, it's time to stock your studio shelves with product! On the right-hand side of the page under Manage My Artisan Studio > My Studio, select List a New Product. While there are many fields to fill in on this page, only a few are mandatory.
Title: Your title should be rich with keywords describing your product. For example, if you sell a Santa Clause themed sweatshirt, a title like "Ho Ho Ho" is cute and would make a great display sign in a brick and mortar shop but it won't drive traffic to your item. Much better would be Christmas Santa Sweatshirt.
Price and Accept Offers: Enter the price for the item. You should have already done your research to see what comparable items are selling for in other studios. Like to barter? Select the Yes radio button and you and your customer can dicker back and forth on the selling price.
I'm not sure about the usefulness of the Accept Offers option. It might be a big waste of your time if you get potential customers presenting ludicrously low bids. You are a professional business owner, do you feel accepting a lower price than listed is appropriate? Something to think about.
Add Images For Your Product: Basic studios can upload up to four images. The angles and views you upload are predicated upon what you're selling. Anything with detail front and back should have an image for both sides uploaded. A close-up and wide image will be good for items such as clothes or furniture. It's also a good idea to show a packed image of the item if you take the time to place the item in gift-quality wrapping paper or box.
ArtFire automatically resizes your image for you (crops to a square), the image size has to be under 2MB and can't be smaller than 150px by 150px. They also recommend 72 dpi rather than the print ad and brochure standard of 300 dpi.
There is a ArtFire Fire Guide Help Video - Uploading Images brief tutorial on the subject. The images shown in the Fire Guide were shot with a Kodak Z760 Zoom digital camera using a light box and editing software.
Adding Shipping Rates for Your Item: You can use a shipping profile that you've already configured. The link to set up shipping profiles is in the left-hand navigation area under Selling > Shipping Profiles. Give the shipping method a Profile Name, select the country you're shipping to from the drop-down list and enter in a dollar amount for the Primary and Secondary Shipping costs. Secondary shipping reflects how much extra you charge for multiple item orders. You can also just manually add it on this page without setting up shipping profiles.
Product Description: Make this keyword rich as well while still giving your customer a cohesive description of what they are buying. Color, sizes, dimensions are some classifiers you enter in this text box. Many studios also include care instructions and shipping policies in the product description.
The product description has to be at least 25 characters and not more than 8500 characters. That's a lot of characters! More than enough to allow you to really sell this product.
Product Category: From the drop-down list select your category: Handmade / Fine Arts, Design / Media or Supplies / Vintage. This will bring up an array of arts / crafts categories. Select the appropriate one, then select a Sub Category from the second list that appears. Depending on which Sub Category you select, you may be prompted to select a Sub Sub Category.
Materials Used and Tags: These two fields are yet another way to drive traffic to your item. Enter the appropriate materials used and relevant keywords as tags.
Google Base Options: Another way to market your item. If your items meets the Google base criteria and you'd like ArtFire to automatically submit your item to Google Base, select the Yes radio button.
Primary Color: Also used to drive traffic to your item by sending customers your way that search by color.. ArtFire will select a color for you based upon the images you upload. If you don't think the selection is representative of your image, you can change it on this page.
Save Product: Review the information you've entered for each field. Fix any spelling or grammatical errors. I highly recommend entering any text into a word processing program first and running it through spell check before copying and pasting it to your product description field. When you are happy, click SAVE PRODUCT.
Editing Products: It's very easy to edit any products in your studio. In MyArtFire select Manage My Artisan Studio > My Studio > View My Listings. Your active products will appear. In the right-hand side box, select Edit Product.
Viola! There's your original item entry page. Make any needed changes. You can over-write any images by using the browse button. When you're done, Save Product.
