Here’s the premise: you have an Etsy shop, your own blog, accounts on Twitter and Facebook, and are part of countless social networking sites.
What you don’t have? One place to put it all, and perhaps the technical expertise to launch your own website.
So in steps SoopSee, which offers its services to combine and mainstream these efforts into a centralized location on the web.
Sound good to you? It sounded interesting to me, so I had to go take it for a test-drive — on their free account, of course!
Getting registered was really easy. Just provide your Etsy login information and your email address, go check your inbox, click on the link to activate and you’re ready to get started. Now, once logged in, you have to provide additional details (like your twitter username if you want to tweet out new listings to your followers), pick a theme for your site, import your blog (if you have one), and so on. All in all, pretty easy. If you can set up your Etsy shop, you should have no problem setting up on SoopSee.
The end result? A pretty simple website with separate pages for your shop listings, blog, stockists, about, and contact. On the backend or dashboard of the site, you can check basic Etsy stats (shop hearts and sales) or track your Google Analytics and Twitter accounts for the site. Check this link to see some sample sites.
Some interesting things to note:
- there are 2 types of accounts: free and Sooper (a subscription charge applies to the latter)
- free accounts are limited to 6 theme options, while the upgraded Sooper account offers 2 additional themes
- can blog from within SoopSee, eliminating the need to set up a blog with another blogging platform
- SoopSee currently states that they are in “beta” mode
All in all, SoopSee is pretty lightweight — and that works great for some people and not so great for others.
Here’s who I think it would be good for:
- Those who have an Etsy shop and are interested in an easy way to set up their own separate website, either on a free SoopSee subdomain or a purchased custom domain.
- Those who have an Etsy shop and twitter account and are looking for an easy way to automate tweets to their followers about new shop items.
- Those who have an Etsy shop and are contemplating starting their own blog (but aren’t really sure if blogging will be for them).
Here’s who I don’t think would be happy:
- Those who have an Etsy shop and an already established blog on WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, Squarespace or others. (You’ve probably worked hard to establish an audience who has your blog bookmarked and likes seeing your blog and Etsy shop separate. Adding a SoopSee site would only fragment your audience, and that just isn’t a good idea.)
- Those who have an Etsy shop and some technical know-how on websites and customizing them. (You’re just not going to be happy with the limited options and generic feel here.)
I would also like to make one more point: setting up a SoopSee site does not all of a sudden free you from updating your social networking sites — nor do they claim to. They just pull information in from a variety of sources and host it all on central site for you. So, yes, you have to continue blogging on your blogger/wordpress/typepad blog and yes, you have to continue updating your social networking sites — if you have those, of course.
Now, this is not meant to be an exhaustive list of pros, cons and features. There are definitely more nuances to SoopSee than I get in to here. All in all, it’s worth looking at for yourself and determining if you’d be in the happy or not-so-happy category.
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Seller Tool: SoopSee
Here’s the premise: you have an Etsy shop, your own blog, accounts on Twitter and Facebook, and are part of countless social networking sites.
What you don’t have? One place to put it all, and perhaps the technical expertise to launch your own website.
So in steps SoopSee, which offers its services to combine and mainstream these efforts into a centralized location on the web.
Sound good to you? It sounded interesting to me, so I had to go take it for a test-drive — on their free account, of course!
Getting registered was really easy. Just provide your Etsy login information and your email address, go check your inbox, click on the link to activate and you’re ready to get started. Now, once logged in, you have to provide additional details (like your twitter username if you want to tweet out new listings to your followers), pick a theme for your site, import your blog (if you have one), and so on. All in all, pretty easy. If you can set up your Etsy shop, you should have no problem setting up on SoopSee.
The end result? A pretty simple website with separate pages for your shop listings, blog, stockists, about, and contact. On the backend or dashboard of the site, you can check basic Etsy stats (shop hearts and sales) or track your Google Analytics and Twitter accounts for the site. Check this link to see some sample sites.
Some interesting things to note:
All in all, SoopSee is pretty lightweight — and that works great for some people and not so great for others.
Here’s who I think it would be good for:
Here’s who I don’t think would be happy:
I would also like to make one more point: setting up a SoopSee site does not all of a sudden free you from updating your social networking sites — nor do they claim to. They just pull information in from a variety of sources and host it all on central site for you. So, yes, you have to continue blogging on your blogger/wordpress/typepad blog and yes, you have to continue updating your social networking sites — if you have those, of course.
Now, this is not meant to be an exhaustive list of pros, cons and features. There are definitely more nuances to SoopSee than I get in to here. All in all, it’s worth looking at for yourself and determining if you’d be in the happy or not-so-happy category.