Change of venue.

Ten days out of surgery and I'm fit to be tied. I need to get back to creating but my hand is still much too sore and lacking strength to get back to work, so in the mean time I've been doing lots of research.

I think that the main thing I'm taking away from this week is how many tools are available for online selling and especially the force that drives the handmade movement. I have to admit, it's all a bit overwhelming and at this point.

Having said that, I had a bit of a crisis this week; I can't load Etsy! I don't know if this is a problem on my end or theirs, the problem has been ongoing for at least two weeks now. I've spend hours putting together a banner, writing up a profile and getting my shop ready to open, now 95% of the time I can't load the site. I tried different browsers but that didn't help.

Out of frustration, I went looking for other similar venues and to my surprise, I found several. Artfire.com seems by far to be the most promising and I've signed up with them. I'm really impressed with the sense of community that comes through on their forums. No problems loading their pages either. Sounds like a rather basic thing, but apparently not all venues are created equal... So Etsy has been dropped even before I was able to make any use of it.

I've also just discovered VoteHandmade. What a fabulous site!

Overall, I have to say that despite a few hurdles, I'm extremely positive about the opportunities available.