Sunday, February 08, 2009

Are You Using EtsyHacks Yet?

I mentioned EtsyHacks in another post recently, but at that point I was only theorizing about how much time Ian's scripts would save me. Now I've been using them for a couple of months, and I can't tell you how happy I am with them!

With over 350 listings in my shop, it's always been a painful process to track something down so I could edit it. Renewing, since I don't always wait until something is nearing its expiration date, is also kind of a pain. Want to send a convo to your customer? I send all my customers convos to thank them and to tell them when I've shipped their packages, and it's so much easier now to do it with the link right on the receipt page (thanks to one of Ian's scripts).

The EtsyHacks scripts run on Firefox (sooooooo much better than Internet Explorer!), but there are also some things called "scriptlets" that run on I.E., for those of you who haven't switched yet.

I know you can go to the site to see them for yourself and download them (they're very quick and easy to install and don't even require you to restart your browser). I've been using them on three different computers with three different operating systems, one with Windows 2000, one with Windows XP, and one with Ubuntu; and they've worked great.

My favorite ones are:
- edit this item - This script allows you to edit the item while you're viewing it. Have a lot of listings in your shop? Search for the one you want to edit, view it, and there's the little hyperlink on the side that lets you edit it right there. No more scrolling through pages of listings to find the one you want to edit.

- renew listing - Same kind of thing as edit. Search for items you want to renew, and click the hyperlink right on the item's page as you're viewing it. No more working your way backwards through your listings if you decide to renew something early.

- copy listing - Oh, how long I've wanted this!!! I do a lot of relisting, but sometimes I want to list a few new items at a time and I don't have a recently-sold one that'll work. This script lets you choose any listing and copy it. It copies everything except the pictures, so all you have to do is a bit of editing, upload your pictures, and you're done. It's so much easier than starting from scratch!

- subtotals - This one saves me the trouble of doing math. As much as I've tried to get my shipping charges to calculate accurately, it just doesn't work that well if someone purchases more than 3-4 items from me on one order. The shipping always winds up being too high, and I have to send a refund. Now I can see the item total and the shipping total right there on the receipt page. So convenient!

- cancel transaction - I know we all hate to have to cancel transactions, but it happens sometimes. Now, rather than going to the Sold Items view to grab the transaction numbers that need to be cancelled, I can just click the listing the Sold Items page and then click the 'cancel transaction' button right there. The script even fills in the transaction ID, so I don't have to copy and paste.

Seriously. Go try these out!

And there's some great news!!! Ian is working on a Fast Tagger script!!! I'm so tired of clicking in those tag fields and typing into each one (you can't even tab between fields), and now Ian's putting together a script that'll allow you to type in your tags in one place, separated by commas. I like the idea of that one so much that I'm going to sponsor it.

What am I ever going to do with all the time I'm saving?!?!?
:-)

6 comments:

Melody Marie Murray said...

Thanks for the pointer!

Unknown said...

Very cool, will have to check it out!

Anonymous said...

I can not wait for the fast tagger to be ready! awesome!

Kristin said...

I will have to get Etsy Hacks, as I am using firefox now...
I WISH I had started using firefox months and months ago! It really is SOOOOOO much faster!

Anonymous said...

Looks like a big time saver. Thanks for the tip, I'll have to check it out!

:-) MaryLou said...

Thanks for the comments, everyone! I hope the EtsyHacks scripts work as well for you as they have for me.

If you start using them, be sure to let me know how you like them.

:-)