My tips for shopping on Etsy

There are a lot of great things to be found on Etsy, so here are my coupla tips for shopping there.

(PS. If you're not sure what Etsy is, it's an umbrella company set up for individual people to sell their handmade wares in. Ebay is auction. Etsy is shop - love that. Don't like auctions much. Etsy is handmade, and supplies to make handmade, only. It's cool)

1. Go there, look around, get a feel for the place.

2. Search for something you like.

Up the top there's a search engine. If you're looking for "tickets" for example, make sure you click Supplies on the drop down menu to the left of the search bar bit. No use looking for bakers twine to purchase in the Handmade section. Make sense? I did this and then realised I was a nong.

3. Shop around!

There's lots of people selling lots of stuff on there, so shop around to get the best price. It takes time, but it's worth it in the end. The good thing is you can buy in bulk, or just buy little bits. I love just buying little bits. Gotta watch the postage too, of course.

4. On that, the postage is generally pretty good. If you buy a bit of bakers twine and some tickets from the same person, you may only pay a couple of bucks in shipping. It's quite reasonable like that.

5. When they say "convo me" - they're talking about having a conversation. Like Ebay, you communicate through the site (rather than personal email), so it can be monitored and kept above board. When you register you will probably find out more about that. It's no big deal, you just learn as you go. These sites are pretty easy to work out.

6. You pay by Paypal. It rocks. It's easy.

And I don't think you even need a Paypal account to pay by Paypal. They (the seller or anyone you want to send money to) sends you a Paypal invoice and you can pay by credit card or log in to pay through your Paypal account. I'm not totally sure on that, but I'm pretty sure I've seen them say that somewhere.

7. You know how you just want to buy something and then you end up having buyers' remorse because you spent way too much?

Go to Etsy!

You can satisfy that need to buy and get a few (very cool) things for a very reasonable price. It also takes time to sift around to find what you want sometimes, which can be good for the hip pocket. Not as much spending in the two hours you're on the computer! Anyone, anyone?

You might get some vintage sheet music, bakers twine, stick pins and little tags (maybe from a couple of different people) - all for under $20 (or less) depending on what you buy. It's pretty good like that.

Okay, that's it for now.

Enjoy your shopping!

(If you dare)

:o)