Treasury Thursday: How to Make a Treasury

It’s Treasury Thursday!  No this has nothing to do with Pirates or even the SAHM of Etsy Treasure hunt that is coming up.  Treasuries are the member curated collections of Etsy products that Etsy Admin often pick to put on the Etsy home page.   They are a great way to promote other SAHM of Etsy’s team member’s  shops and show the rest of the world the beautiful, fun, colorful, or strange items you have found exploring Etsy. 

There is a Season for Everything by Pam's Baby Bakery

Let me see if I can take a little of the mystery out of treasuries and make them a fun and effective way to promote our team.    Before we all get totally lost, let me define a couple of word in terms of Etsy and treasuries:

• Hotness-a measure of how popular a treasury is based on views, clicks, and comments.  The exact methods for determining a treasury’s “hotness” are not completely understood and seem to change periodically as people think they have figured out ways to “trick” the system.  Treasury listings are sorted by hotness.
• Views- the number of times someone has looked at the treasury.
• Comment- it is as simple as it sounds.  Leave a note under the treasury. 
• Clicks -  How many times the “magic” item is clicked on.  They “magic” item is often changing.

Now that we are all speaking the same language, what is a good way to go about building a treasury?  A good place to start is to pick a theme; colors can be a good place to start,  but you can use anything else your imagination can come up with.  Once you have a theme, it is time to fill in your slots. 

·       Here’s a few more tips to make making a treasury easier. 

•       To help support the SAHM of Etsy team, be sure to search for items with the tag “SAHM of Etsy” that all team members should be tagging their items with.
•       Chose items that are well photographed, especially for the first 4 slots.  These are the photos that show up on the treasury list page.
•         Mark items as favorites when you see them.  When you sit down to build your collection searching your favorites is much easier than searching all of Etsy.
•       Make you treasury “private” if you don’t have time to finish the entire thing in one sitting.  Then you can save it and come back and finish it later.  Just don’t forget to change it to “everyone” when you finish ;) 

•       Open two windows or tabs.  One for your treasury and one to look for items.  If you navigate away from your treasury without saving it your work is lost.
•       Include all different types of items and price points in your treasury.  The broader the variety the “hotter” the treasury is likely to be.
•        Use a different shop of every slot and only use your own shop once if at all.   The idea of a treasury is to show off other shops not to promote your own store. 
•       Tag your treasury like you would an item in your shop and include both “SAHM of Etsy team” and “teametsy.” 
•       Share your treasuries with everyone.  Maybe also take a minute to link to this post and  let them know what a treasury is. You can easily share any treasury by clicking on the icons under the “share” section to the right of the treasury.  (SAHM of Etsy team members also should add it to the discussion thread for the month.)

Treasuries are really a fun and creative way to get to know what products are available out on Etsy.  Enjoy, have fun, and don’t think too hard.  Treasuries truly are enjoyable even if you don’t make it to the front page.

Pam- Pam's Baby Bakery