bespokeglass.bsky.social
Your favorite (stained glass) artist's favorite (stained glass) artist
In the biz since 2011.
https://bespoke.glass/
https://wemake.co/m/bespokeglass/profile/
27 posts
17 followers
86 following
Active Commenter
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youtu.be/d3mvEfON2CI?...
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One of the great blessings of being born a little late to fully get the obsession w the Beatles is having loved Yoko as a completely separate entity. Also the video for Bad Dancer is so delightful I’ve watched it 300x
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Also just moved my entire life+studio 2500miles to be less reliant on internet sales/marketing and have spent all week transitioning off Google Workspace (work) & personal gmail. Don't assume you know the heft of what people are doing bc it's pointed out you might not understand something.
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And maybe I can fully delete it soon. I don't know! This shit is not easy! Sometimes getting as close to what you want to do without losing your job/family/safety/whathaveyou is the best we can ask of each other.
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It's also not 1 choice, living ethically now is a million choices & most of them imperfect. What I AM doing thanks for asking, is: doing nothing that brings meta ad $. Deleting all my dms & refusing to use it for chitchat as I used to & many still do, no in-app sales or ad buys. ie: Doing my best.
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First off, you do not know my choices, and I'm not speaking only for myself. I'm saying it's not as easy as you're saying because it does have very real livelihood implications for extremely small businesses. It's not that we don't WANT TO leave.
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It’s kind of like telling your parents to get off facebook when that’s where all their contacts are. It’s a real nice idea but if their high school friends all communicate via fb then it’s not as easy as just reconvening elsewhere.
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Partly bc I’m in the middle of a major studio move, and partly bc I’m still figuring out what’s the best use of my limited time for posting across several apps. but my point remains that regardless of ethics or politics the designers I need to see my work are all still primarily looking at IG.
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There isn’t anything that replaces an audience built up over a decade on an app where people already are. I like BS but it’s more text than image based. Cara is good but no audience yet. Building audience & unconventional thinking are already a huge part of promoting work obviously.
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Yes. It’s extremely hard for working artists to promote or share our work without Instagram in particular, even though it’s far less functional than it used to be. We have to stay where we can be found.
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Totally. Remaining informed without constantly freaking out but also knowing some catastrophic thing could happen any minute or also very slowly and being vigilant but also protecting your peace is not easy!
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Also this doesn’t apply to items under $35 so shipping is unlikely to be 2x the price (even though it often DOES cost $8 to ship something small, regardless if it feels unfair. It is reality.)
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Obviously. My point is Etsy is supposed to be a market for handmade goods & it’s dumb to pretend shipping doesn’t cost $. People use the USPS and are not that stupid. Also they did this in 2019 so they ahead of where buyers were on free shipping at the time, it wasn’t the expectation.
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Video overall has been prioritized. Which is fine for lots of people, but WAY more time consuming to make. IG still works great for lots of people, but the simple relationship of followers seeing posts is way harder now.
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‘Gone wrong’ in the sense of what it was originally: people see posts of accts they follow. Btw logarithm & app design (ex: reels, suggested content + ads in feed) it feeds you more from accts you don’t follow, more like tiktok. Focus is on growth & it’s harder to get posts seen by followers.
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Yes exactly. I’d argue they are now more similar than people think though. They are both tech companies, it’s just not how people think of Etsy.
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Right, I mean obviously I do this. It's irritating that for that reason & because you'd roll in the max shipping cost rather than the actual cost based on distance, the buyer is paying more than necessary.
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Yes, that's exactly what happens. That hoses international buyers though who are charged for extra shipping. It's just so dumb to pretend these costs don't exist ESPECIALLY for handmade often fragile things made by humans, which arent packed by robots like Amazon; we all pay a yearly fee for Prime.
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We all have mailing lists but it's clearly not the solution. There is something that feels deeply unfair about the logarithm of IG, it's so unclear what you have to do to make your followers actually see your posts. It's all based on making people look at new stuff, a la tiktok.
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Wow, thanks! Um..not exactly. BS is hopeful but more text based; there's an IG type app called Cara, and a new maker site called wemake.co which I'm a big fan of, but all this is VERY fragmented. My own biz relies on interior designers finding me and they are on IG..so there I must remain for now
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Also I get that we relied on this mostly-free thing so whatever, but there isn't really an alternative yet & everyone has mailing list fatigue, so it is a big hit to tiny businesses, and now we are also battling AI and the shit politics of tech billionaires.
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But Etsy sees Amazon as its competitor so we have to pretend shipping is "free", by rolling it into the price. But since we have to estimate the cost instead of accurately charging shipping, you are paying more overall. But Etsy data shows buyers will happily pay $50 rather than $40 + $8 shipping.
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My personal beef w Etsy is forced "free" shipping - if we don’t offer "free" shipping over $30, our listings are pushed to the bottom of search. Shipping is CRAZY expensive and time-consuming and a whole other set of skills. Shipping materials cost me almost what all other supplies do sometimes.
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This post got traction! For anyone interested - I've sold on Etsy for 14 yrs. At times it has been most of my income. Etsy is fully a TECH company now, it's pub traded and makes all decisions based on data and profit. Doesn't mean it's entirely terrible! But it's not the idealistic thing it was.
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(replying from my biz acct now) Yes. Etsy buys ads on Pinterest as well. Which brings up the control issue- Pinterest leads to massive copying of work so I'd have LOVED to opt out of that platform (no diss on you! just highlighting why it's annoying to not have control over ads)
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YES most of us with small studio-based businesses have relied on Instagram for a decade now to promote work/connect to buyers. It literally does not function anymore (unless you like weird ASMRy process videos). Everyone I know has taken a huge hit in the past 2 yrs.. aside from troubling politics.