Etsy Poland Team: News desk: meeting with Direcor of the International Business Development at Etsy.

Did you know there are over 400 000 active sellers (who updated their shops in the last 90 days) and over 6 million items listed on ETSY? Don’t these numbers make your head spin? And to think that ETSY was only created 5 years ago and just because one furniture maker did not know where to sell his work!

On Wednesday, a very small number of the huge ETSY family met in the newly refurbished Townhouse Bar in Galway. The second floor of the pub was reserved for us, ETSY folks, and our special guest - Liz Wald, Director of the International Business Development at Etsy, who came to Ireland with a short visit to talk about the future development of ETSY in Europe.

As a professional business woman, Liz gave us a handful of numbers that describe the business on ETSY. You can check the ETSY statistics, including a monthly business report known as ETSY WEATHER REPORT here or you can just look at the numbers published for August 2010!

Monkey business curated by KnitSpinFelt

$25.5 million of goods were sold by our community in August. That’s 7.1% higher than July's $23.8 million.
That represents 1,404,248 items sold for the month, 7.2% higher than July’s 1,309,740.
2,117,388 new items were listed in the month, 6.5% higher than July's 1,988,188.
278,208 new members joined the Etsy community in the month, up 17,941, or 6.9%, from July.
777,607,777 page views were recorded on the site in August.

And a great news: The $25.5 million of goods sold by the community represents a 75% increase from 2009's total. At the same time, items sold were up 58%!

ETSY is growing, and it’s growing fast! No recession, depression or any other –ession! There is a growing need for handmade items so the future is bright here in ETSY-land!

But I digress, so I’ll go straight to the core of the meeting. These were the news I wrote down in my notebook, an old-school style, noticing that either everyone had the voice recorders on or people have some kind of a super memory, in which case I feel like the poor Dori fish ;/

Check out system will be modified – option for entering promotional coupons and discounts will be added.
You’ll be able to list your items in your own currency, although each seller will still be charged for listing items and the 3.5% commission from each sale in USD.
ETSY will get translated into local languages starting with German, French and Italian, and followed by other languages. ETSY community will be asked to participate in the global translation, so stay tuned!
There is a possibility to support the UK, German ETSY blogs, so if anyone is interested in writing few posts and knows the lingo, get in touch with AmityUK or matt.
Your location in the world will become an important information as the front page may feature items from your local sellers, so please make sure you’re not currently residing in a la-la-land of any kind.
Also, search will have an option ignoring items which can not be shipped to your home country (make sure you have your shipping done properly!)
Check out http://www.etsy.com/explorer for a new way of item search (still in the beta mode).
2/3 of ETSY visitors are directed to the website from other sites. Twitter, Flickr and Facebook are amongst the most common. ETSY will investigate the importance of these social network websites and is asking for an opinion on how there sites help your Etsy business (if at all).
The ETSY Team interface will undergo a professional facelift.

New team members will be added by the team contact person, and not by ETSY admins.
Each member will be able to upload a photo of him(her)self.
Discussion threads will be searchable.
Teams may apply for money GRANTS, which may be used to organise an event or to advertise ETSY in local or national media, to name the few possibilities. For details, contact Morgan.

In addition to teams, GROUPS will be created. The affiliated programs will promote a group of members (for a small fee). Just another way to get your name known and stand out from the crowd.
New tool delivering all statistical data about your shop, from the number of visitors, favourite items to the numbers of sold items and their average cost, called Metricly will be available soon.