Do What Scares You

I've admitted several times that I was intimidated by MySpace. It always struck me as a type of exclusive club where you had to know everything about it before joining, but the only way to learn was to join. And I have to admit, seeing some of the wild messages friends and family have received on their pages definitely scared me. (Um, who in their right mind offers to send naked photos of themselves to someone they don't know? Especially to a married man whose space is covered with photos of his wedding?)

However, I've always heard of Etsy sellers using MySpace to promote their shops and find new customers. Yes, some of them had some pretty wild "message" stories, too, but it was beginning to seem like the good might outweigh the bad. But it was a forum post created by BattleMaiden-- who has an Etsy shop for her fantasy illustrations -- on how to use MySpace as a marketing tool that finally gave me the push I needed to take the leap into that world. It was very detailed on exactly how to get started, something I definitely needed to keep me from feeling quite so lost there.

So, a little over a week ago, I created a MySpace page. I quickly found how easy it is to get wrapped up in the little details, plus it's just as distracting as some of the Etsy forums can be. It's easy to get sucked into just checking out page after page... So I had to put a definite limit on my MySpace time, otherwise I'd never have any new work to show off there and in my Etsy shop!

The first two days, I spent about 2 hours each. Most of that was figuring out what background I wanted, as well as uploading pictures and my Etsy Mini (similar to what I have here on my blog, showing the latest items from my shop.) Almost every day since I've set aside at least an hour to join groups and search for people who I want to add. I try not to do this randomly, I choose people who have an interest in my type of work and/or are local business I'd like to network with. Especially wedding businesses. I wanted to focus more on weddings this year, and less on craft fairs.

Only time will tell if the decision to jump into MySpace was the right one . . .