After you’ve created your ArtFire account, your next step is to manage your studio. Ever open a brick and mortar craft shop? The concept online is not very different. You want your ArtFire studio to be a visually appealing place for your online shoppers that is easy to navigate and clearly spells out all your shop policies.
Log into your ArtFire account. On the right-hand side of the My ArtFire screen that appears, you'll see eight setup options under Manage My Artisan Studio > My Studio. Each option under My Studio contains an ArtFire driven template. Below I provide a brief explanation of each setup option:
1. View My Listings
Once you have listed items to sell, you’ll be able to manage them from this page.2. List a New Product
This is your one-stop location to add items to your studio. Everything you want to tell your customer about the items you're selling is handled here. You’ll need a title, description and price for your item. Artfire also encourages you to tell the back-story about your item and describe materials you used to create it. It’s also good customer relations to provide instructions on how the items should be cleaned or cared for.
The Basic studio is allowed to upload four images on this page. This is also where you set shipping charges and enter tags. ArtFire tags are the equivalent of keywords.3. My Sold Items
This is where you'll be able to manage your sold items.4. Edit My Studio
This option allows you to design your studio. Not all of the options are available for the Basic customer. For instance, under the Basic plan, you have to use the preset color scheme rather than customize it for your studio. And only Verified members can use the Featured Gallery.
See the Help Guide at the bottom of the list? It is a fantastic resource when you work through this template.
5. My Stats
Powered by Google, use this option to optimize your item listings using the right keywords and phrases to have high ranking with the search engines. After all, if you customer can’t find you they can’t buy from you.
6. Edit Bio/Intro
Here’s where you enter your studio announcement, bio and shop policies. You also are able to customize your vacation mode display between hiding all your products until you return from vacation and having your products visible with a message stating you’re on vacation and when you’ll be back to process orders.
One additional handy option is the ability to do a universal price reduction on all active items. So if you want to clear out your studio by lowering your prices, you don’t have to go through and discount each one individually. However, this is a universal change so unless you want a price reduction across the board with all products, don’t use this option.
7. Market Hub
This option allows you to associate eight other online marketing tools with your ArtFire.com studio. Just a few of the selections are your own hosted website, Facebook, Twitter and Etsy. If you don’t have a presence at any of these other sites, don’t enter an address and the associated icon will be a dead link on your shop page (the icon will still appear but it won’t be a clickable link).
