Artfire or Website, and Doing my own HTML

I've been kinda experimentally using artfire to sell my jewelry since July 4th 2009 (3 days ago) to see if it would be worth it to sell on artfire as well as etsy, or if I really liked it maybe switch to artfire from etsy. There's a lot about the site I really like. Like they're 'sale' feature. you just enable it and tell it how many percent off you want on all your items, and bam! Canada Day / 4th of July sale 20% off was in effect in about 6 seconds. lovely. Much faster than on etsy. I like the layout of etsy more, but that wasn't a big issue for me. The only thing I really didn't like is that I don't seem to be getting very many views... at all. I bought an add space in their necklace sub-catagory, which only cost me $2.50 for the week (they're on sale right now - half off) which I thought was awesome, but in 36 hours it has been seen 1944 times (that is that 1944 people have viewed the necklace page - not necessarily that they saw my add) and has been clicked a grand total of twice. woo.

So I decided I'd probably get more views if I became a 'verified seller'. Right now I have a "basic seller" account of artfire, which means that I don't pay I thing for listing or selling, and no monthly fees. the only draw backs are that I can only list 12 things, and can't customize the look of my shop as much as a verified seller. Verified sellers pay something around 12.00 a month, and that's it. they don't pay a thing for listing, or making a sale (etsy takes 3.5% or something) and they can list as much as they want.

My only issue with that was that I wasn't sure if I'd get any more views even if I was verified, and the the idea of having my own website came into my head and wouldn't leave. my only issue though is that I've never known anyone to buy jewelry off a private website, and I was pretty sure no one had ever made sales off a private website for jewelry, so I posted a topic on the etsy business forums, and everyone was so helpful <3.

My general consensus was not to leave etsy, because it's hard to advertise for a personal website, and it's so alone in the big internet that I might get totally lost in it all, but having a website as well as an etsy is great because then you have your own domain name to put on your business cards, and to tell people about, which makes you seem so much more creditable. That was an idea I was really excited about, and a few jewelry etsians told me that they actually make MORE money from their website than they do on their etsy's after like 3 years, but that's ok. and one girl refered me to her web host http://www.pappashop.com which I haven't tried yet, but I think I will be going with. $10.99/month for a year for a website with paypal and everything. very exciting.

I was going to sign up last night, but I found out you have to pay for the whole year at once, and as it turns out I didn't have 150.00 kicking around (it becomes 150 something after it's changed to Canadian) so I decided to wait a couple paydays :P

Until then I've decided to learn HTML so that when I do get the site I can make awesome layouts and things for it so it looks as professional as I want it too. and then I can make myself a blogger layout too and stop changing mine all the time :P