Selling on Etsy: A Frustrating Lesson

It was one of those days....

Last Friday I photographed a terrific vintage glass cloche and gray marble cheese server for my Etsy shop:

I filled out most of the necessary listing forms: title, description, tags, etc., but ran out of time to finish it completely, since we were heading out to a football game in Vermont and I had to pack and otherwise get ready to leave.


So yesterday, back home again, I thought: time to get that cloche and cheese server online.

As is my practice for every listing I do, in addition to filling out the information about the piece I also package it so it's ready to ship out immediately once a buyer hits "purchase." I'm able to do this because, fortunately, there's a shed in back of our house where I store all my boxes on rows of metal and wood shelving.

So I carefully put bubble wrap and brown paper around the glass cloche and the marble tray, and tucked in my card along with a little handwritten note. Taking the two pieces, I put them carefully inside one of the recyclable boxes I keep in the garage, stuffing all the sides and edges with recycled cardboard, brown paper, and plastic grocery bags. On went the tape and voila: all was secure and ready to go. I weighed and measured the box and put those numbers into my listing. It was ready to publish.

But before I hit the "publish" button I thought: let me just read through everything to make sure there are no spelling errors or other mistakes.  And then I saw it: on Friday I'd left a blank space in the description text where the cloche and marble base measurements were to be slugged in.

Urrrrggghhh! For awhile I fought it, trying to think of some way I could estimate those measurements, but in the end there was nothing to do but rip off all the tape, remove the scrunched up plastic bags, cardboard, brown paper, and bubble wrap, get a tape measure and write down the height, width, and base diameter of both pieces.

Then I rewrapped everything, labeled the box and took it to the shed, entered the information in the proper place, and hit the "publish" button. Talk about time consuming. To console myself, I tried thinking about how I'd sold several great items over the weekend:

But I learned a lesson: Never leave a nearly but not quite finished listing on a Friday without writing a huge sign beforehand: MAKE SURE YOU MEASURE THIS ITEM BEFORE PACKING & LISTING!

Now, if I can just remember to do this....