Etsy success Sydney: My honest experience

A few days ago, as a lot of you already know I went to Etsy Success Sydney. Today I will share with you what I thought of it with 100% honesty.


Location
B-E-A-UTIFUL!
Being up the top of the MCA we had an incredible view…

Even though the weather was… well less than brilliant we still had one of the most amazing views in the city. 🙂 The set was all made from pallets, which I am assuming was not just set up for Etsy but all of the Vivid festival. It was great. Set, tables, bar, stools. Everything had an amazing raw, handmade feel. As beautiful as the spot was if there was any more people attending the event it would not have been very practical. It was quite squishy at times, although if the weather was better we might have had more space if more people took advantage of the awesome balcony space at the venue.

Freebies
What was in the bag… Frankie mag, TMOD card, a pen, beautifully designed program and a few flyers of course. Personally I did think there would be a little bit more in there. Even just a bunch of etsy branded stuff, pins, stickers, that kind of thing. Having said that I was not disappointed. Free frankie mag was awesome. Its quality not quantity as they say. Morning tea and lunch were included. I quite liked the food. They made a point to mention that there was vegetarian options and personally I LOVED that! As a vego myself it can be super hard to get decent food at these kind of things…

Speakers
There was some seriously amazing speakers at this event. There were so many amazing speakers. Really inspiraional people. I wont give you the big long list of who was there, you can see that online but I will share with you a bit of that I learned from some of them…

Chad Dickerson – Etsy CEO – He spoke all about finding your courage, how to just take a leap and not worry about all the reasons NOT to do something. He asked the etsy community what they thought courage was. There were two of my favourite answers. (thats him in the first pic by the way…)

A few notes I also wrote while he was talking:
-recognise there is no failure
-be prepared to go your own way
-listen to your truest self

TMOD– These girls are amazing. So full of passion and love for what they do.
-don’t need to follow trends just be aware of them
-believe in your ideas, then others will
-be open to change
-collaboration can bring great things to you and the other party.

Valerie Khoo – Sydney Writers Centre
Valerie was a natural up on that stage. Full of confidence and had SO much to say. She talked all about boosting your business using social media. Now I wont give away every thing I got from her, she does run courses on this after all but here is a bit of what she said…
-don’t forget about traditional media. Still amazing to get featured in a REAL physical publication.
-social media is not about promotion its about communication and convosation
-you don’t have to share your personal life with your followers to show them your personality

Lara Hutton and Heidi Adnum – Sytling and taking great product shots
These two ladies had never met before the morning of the confrence but they worked so well together!
What I learned from them:
– Always defuse natural light, if its a cloudy day the coluds do that for you
-Only shoot with props that compliment the product. if they draw the eye away from the product get rid of it.
– You have 3 seconds to get someones attention from an image before they move on.
– When looking at your product shots ask yourself, would I buy it?

Heidi Adnum has a book out that I can’t wait to get my crafty little hands on. 🙂
Click here to check it out.

Drinks
Well, really, who doesn’t love free drinks at the end of a long day? I know I did. 😉