Selling Venues Series: Tell Me More : Crobbies

The front page has a basic sidebar with categories, a large featured items display and a sidebar with newly listed items. Your items show up almost immediately…I managed to get a screen shot with all three of my items plus a fellow etsybloggers cool new green heart pendant. Go Stormy Designs! (click pic to enlarge)

Sign up was simple, as was filling out the profile. Once you are signed up there is a My Account page for your profile and general settings. This is also where you find your seller and buyer account info. I initially thought there was no direct way to get to my shop page…until looked in the upper right corner. Next to a heart is a little house…click that and it will take you right to your shop.

Another front page plus, there is a scroll over mini window feature on the front page items:
(click pic to go to Crobbies' front page)


Listing is easy and all on one page. note: there has since been a fix for browsers that do not show the single page properly - you can list page by page if necessary. There is even a nifty color selector tool. The program automatically picks 5 main colors from image, which you can then change if necessary. My first picture has some strange lighting in one corner, so the auto pick was incorrect. All you have to do is click on the selected box and it goes away.

Category selection has a main and sub-category selection, which you must choose from. This was one of the only concerns I had for my items. Neither my zip pouch nor my keyring had a category that really fit. I addressed the issue with Crobbies, so this may be a good time to see how they respond to seller inquiries. note: They already responded to my inquiry about the categories and have added a "request category" area. Just 2 hours ago I listed an item and used this feature - I just received a message before I finished this post saying that it has been added! seriously...this is the message:

"Categories Added!

Jan 14, 2009 9:50pm

Pouches (zippered & cosmetic) added =) "

The tags and materials entries are done one at a time, with an Add to click on after each entry. Do not use spaces, instead use an underscore if it requires more than one word.

Shipping does not have a save and load feature like some sites, but it is simple and right there. However, international shipping only has one price option. I had to give an average of my usual Canada, Australia & Everywhere Else price.

One more neat feature – an RSS feed. I put my blog on there and it will show the 10 most recent posts (title only). I think that if there are fewer posts it will show more because I did one across a shop that had a snippet in there blog section.
This is the listing page: (click to enlarge)


Once listed, there is a drop down menu under each item for categorizing within your shop. Editing items after listed is very simple – one click on item page brings you to original listing page and you go from there. This is what the final listing looks like:



And the shop page itself:

You don’t have to go to your page to list a new item, just click on the Sell tab. There is a forums section and a blog area. Note: the blog area is for a blog you start there that shows up under the blog tab, not in your shop. They are still on the new side and keep coming up with more to offer its sellers. You can stay up to date by following them on Twitter.

So what do I think of the sign up & listing? Easy sign up & listing process. Visually, the font and personalization is still a work in progress, so I won’t get into that. The site is still manageable enough size wise that you don’t have to worry about getting lost at the bottom of your category.

Thanks to Storybeader for reminding me to link up to my post with all the fees associated with the various sell sites...just click here.

Crobbies has a special on their site right now:

"Pay no listing fees and no sale fees on any item listed between jan 1st 2009 & feb 14th, 2009 even if it sells anytime after the cutoff!

If you're not a Crobbies member join now its free! Members get their own unique web shop & url to sell their crafts: YourShopName.crobbies.com Members can also create their own blogs, chat in the forums, write articles, learn and help educate others.

Get started selling now by clicking the 'Sell' tab up above in the site navigation or by clicking here.

Thanks to TiLTcreations for inspiring this special."

yup...that's me :)