Leads/Resources: Byhand.me A Tool for the Hanmade Community

One of the great challenges of Etsy is getting exposure for your shop among the hundreds of thousands of talented sellers. Yet another challenge is connecting this Etsy shop (or preferred creative marketplace) with all the other online profiles you maintain into a unified online presence. To help address these struggles , M. Adam Kendall (Infinite Vision) has developed an interesting new resource for the handmade community, ByHand.me. ByHand.me's mission is to "put the personal back in handmade" with a series of community-driven tools for both the buyer and seller focused on solidifying one's various creative profiles into one central resource site. ByHand.me is part of an exciting new breed of "creative community" websites (as we are labeling them in our delicious bookmarks) we've seen sprout up over the last few months. Most important, ByHand.me is a FREE online community.

Benefits of registering and becoming a ByHand.me co-op artist include:

• Artisan Directory: summarize all your different online locations into one central directory, from your Etsy shop to your Flickr photos to your Twitter update page.
• Artist Spotlight: create a visual collection of your work (or the work of others) from different handmade venues (Etsy, Artfire, 1000Markets, etc.). These spotlights can then be reposted and promoted throughout the blogosphere.
• Blog Space: Wonder if anyone is reading your artist blog? Get more bang for your blog! When you publish to your byhand.me blog, the post appears on the byhand.me front page and is tweeted by twitter.com/byhandme. You can also repost the entry to your regular blog with a few quick clicks.
  
• ByHand.me Forum: meet and discuss issues relevant to the handmade community
• ByHand.me Clubhouse: similar to Etsy Teams, gather in groups based on location, interest, medium, etc.

A list of equally great features for the buyer is available here.

Probably our favorite feature, though, is the ability for all registered users, buyers or sellers, to create handmade wishlists and then e-mail these lists to other people. As the handmade movement continues to gain momentum, more and more individuals will be creating wedding and other gift registries focused on handmade products. The ByHand.me handmade wish list allows you to solidify your favorite products across seven popular handmade venues into one central wish list. You can also import your Etsy favorites in just one click. Sure there are wish list sites that allow you to pull products from any site, but it's fun to build a wish list alongside like-minded buyers and window shop for handmade works as you go along. Perhaps users will be able to suggest other sites they would like integrated into the wish list program as the site develops, maybe? Our suggestion would be to integrate with Supermarket.

So, check out ByHand.me and let us know what you think. You'll most likely be seeing a Dolan Geiman profile on the site in the coming few weeks. While your poking around, also check out the Shop ByHand blog written by Adam Kendall's wife Rebecca.

PS: Are you a blog focused on arts business and marketing, Etsy tutorials, or other biz-minded matters in the handmade community? Have you written articles on this topic? Drop us a line so we can be certain to bookmark the articles and blogs here.