Indieknives

Are you giving your shop that EXTRA POLISH it needs to shine? It's a bit like mirror-polishing a .

ELLBOW GREASE. You got to put in the hours. Goes for a , goes for an Etsy shop.

TOOLS. You don't have to do it all by hand. A goes a long way, and so does a tool.

OPTIONAL? With a knife, you've got tons of options to finish the bldae. With an not working on that polish is simply a WASTED OPPORTUNITY.

🤔

So, examples?

Do this for EVERY SINGLE POST. Yes, every. Every bit helps, increases chances to be found and seen. Again, ellbow grease. This isn't play, is it? :) You can do this! 🤝

👉 TITLE. 140 chars. Use them. Optimize the first few words to insanity. Because that's all mobile users see, and Etsy uses them for search more.

👉 TAGS. You get up to 13 of them. Use them all. Go for specific ones. Hunting knife is better than knife. Engraved hunting knife is even better.

👉 ATTRIBUTES. Go through them, use them.

👉 DESCRIPTION. Help people fall in love (with what you're selling). No handle material and type is not enough.

👉 PICS. High quality shots only, different “settings“ (studio, in use, detail, etc, Etsy has a post on this)

👉 KEYWORDS. Research them. And then use them in all the above where possible. Clusters: product, occasions and events, upcoming stuff.

All those deserve a separate post, but there is great content out there.

Other strong suggestions:

1. Fill in your About section. Google reads it, too.

2. Have a dozen listings. An empty shop looks abandoned.

3. Update listings ahead of occasions, such as Thanksgiving, hunting season, etc

This post isn't even remotely complete. DM or comment if you have questions!

How do YOU optimize your Etsy store? Comment or DM 👇

Best of luck folks!

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Struggling with selling your knives? Let's look at the upside: at least you're not dealing with a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, right? Let's consider THAT problem. 🤭

Please meet ZomDie, the good-looking errr lady in the picture. Zombies like her are running loose all over the world, eating folks, and all that nastiness. The smell isn’t good either. Brr.

While everyone was trying to figure out what’s going on, you instead managed to organize yourself a small but safe knife maker community, with two, three trustworthy people and lots of knives.

Good for you. 💯 What next?

Next, you’d like to add some more people, good people, because a few more people are definitely safer with zombies and bands of marauders out there.

But how do you get the trustworthy folks to come, while not being eaten alive by zombies?

Or in other words:

You got yourself something nice that people want, a community safe from Zombies. And you want a certain kind of people to join because they’ll contribute to the survival of the community.

Other people want in, too, but only to steal everything: the marauders. (We don’t want those.) And then there are those that you don’t want to get any attention from: the zombies.

Argh. 🤦‍♂️

Marketing yet again. 🙄

1️⃣ Your community—the PRODUCT you offer
2️⃣ Playing by the community rules—the PRICE of entry (Marauders don’t want to pay it)
3️⃣ The other survivors—the PEOPLE that want your product

Yes, even a Zombie Apocalypse poses a marketing problem!

And maybe YOU can help solve that? How can you attract THE RIGHT KIND of people to your knife maker community?

Okay, here is a BAD marketing idea:

🎸 Hold a concert in front of your gates because good people like good music! 🎶 (Your band will probably end up as a lunch snack for the zombies.)

What is a GOOD idea?

How would
YOU
attract the
RIGHT
kind of people?

Comment below! We’ll share the best answers in the next Sunday News!

Oh, and as you probably suspected: Rose is back 💯

Like this kind of post?

👉 Well, then ❤️ it 😂
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Thanks! Curious about your answers! 😁

How do you 📷 photograph a knife? Do you hire a pro? We had gotten a whole bunch of replies from you about that question.

One of them was by Gordon from . At 15y he isn't just making beautiful knives—he's taking slick pictures of them, too!

How does he do it?

Good news: He's happy to share his setup 🤗🙏 No magic 🧙‍♂️, dark secrets, pots full of money thrown into equipment. Just preparation, patience & attention to detail.

Words are his—we just edited & put formatting, emojis.

⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

LIGHTING 🔦

I use a white sheet on a stand with a desktop lamp behind it for the light source.

That gets a nice even light over the knife, and I can move the desk lamp to have the concentration of light in a different space.

I sometimes use objects to reflect the light in the right direction.

BACKGROUND

I place the knife on whatever background suits the style [of the knife] the best.

Recently I’ve been trying a black sheet as the background.

PREPARING

I take the time to make certain the knife is 💯 percent clean and has no residue or fingerprints.

I also make sure the camera lens is clean. 💪

CAMERA 📷

For a camera I just use my phone because it’s convenient and works pretty well.

YOU CAN DO IT TOO!

I would recommend that all makers use a setup like this or better.

It’s a small-time investment and makes a huge difference.

Hot sparks from an angle grinder look amazing, right? Until they hit you in the eye. I'm Ryan from and welcome to my monthly column at .

What do you need to start forging? I hear a lot of people talk about the bare essentials necessary to get going. Most people mention a hammer 🔨, a heat source 🔥, and a hard place to hit the steel on.

One thing I don't see on lists is something you definitely need to be using every time you are forging: safety goggles.

That's right, safety goggles. Cuz it's really hard to forge when you are blind. Scroll right to see mine.

On a daily basis my goggles protect my eyes from flying forge scale, hot sparks from that angle grinder, tons of wood and metal splinters, as well as the occasional hot piece of steel if my tongs slip.

I've had plenty of hot scale hit my face and lips, causing small burns, and you kind of expect that in a forge. But thanks to my safety goggles, my eyes are well protected.

Because those you can't replace.

And now a question for you: Do you use safety goggles? Which brand do you prefer? What's the worst accident your goggles saved you from?

Comment below 👇

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I'm Ryan from . Daggers and Diamonds by Dragons is my monthly column about workplace safety, gems in knifemaking, and other random maker related topics!

Here's something cool, a page called Indieknives has created a map featuring knifemakers from around the world and where to find them, as you may have guessed I'm now on the map 😎

I will put the link in the comments for those who want to check the map out 🌏