How to Make Etsy Treasuries
Curate an Amazing Etsy Collection!
One of the best things about the Etsy community is the Treasury. Described as an ever-changing, member curated shopping gallery, the Treasury is a fun tool for sharing your favorite Etsy picks.
There are plenty of reasons to make a collection, and once you've tried it, you'll want to do it again and again. The steps are easy to learn and quickly become second nature, so you can turn all of your favorite listings into beautiful Treasuries.
With thousands of shops and listings to choose from, it can sometimes be difficult to locate exactly what you're looking for. When you need just the right item or photo to complete your vision, the Advanced Search feature can help.
You can narrow down your search by browsing through the Tags, Titles, Description or Materials of Etsy listings in any of the main categories, like Vintage, Home Décor or Jewelry.
Select the search criteria that you want to use, then type in keywords for the type of listing that you're looking for. You can narrow down the results by removing some keywords as well, using the minus (-) sign.
Choosing to view the results in Gallery format will make it easier to see what you've found, and pinpoint any items that would be suitable for your Treasury.
By narrowing down your search terms,
you can get more of the items that you're looking for.
Creating a Treasury
Share Your Selections
When you're ready to find items based on your theme, open the Treasury page in a new tab or window. Click on the Create a List button, and you'll find a fresh new page, ready for listings.
To grab the listings from your search results, you can right click, or open the listing in a new tab and copy the information in your browser's address bar. Head back to the treasury and paste the address in any of the squares. Then keep going to fill in all the squares!
You can give your Treasury a fun title, and add a description. Whatever you type into the Description box will be your first Comment on the collection. Let visitors know what your inspiration was, or your reason for creating your list.
Tagging Your Treasury
Adding Categories and Keywords
Adding tags to your Etsy Treasury serves many purposes.
Tags help show visitors what your theme is.
They help your Treasury turn up in searches.
Just like the tags on Etsy listings, Treasury tags create a clickable link to all other collections with the same keywords. For this reason, it's a good idea to be as straightforward as possible when selecting tags. You don't have to add a tag for every item in the collection, because the search function already uses listing tags.
Tags should describe what your treasury is about, what basic categories are featured, colors, shapes, etc.
This Treasury is tagged with:
midnight, blue, black,
night, moon, stars
Look for the Edit button if you want to change a listing, fill in an empty space when something sells, or make changes to your tags.
Which Treasury is Best? - An Ongoing Debate
Before the new Treasury system was introduced as "Treasury East", there were only 555 slots for creating a collection. The two systems, referred to as "Main" and "West" required a lot more effort, because a treasury could only be made when enough had expired to open up a space.
The old systems, including the Poster Sketch treasury planning tool, have been abandoned for the more attractive, permanent Treasury, which does not rely on Flash to function.
Which Treasury system was better?
Scroll down and center the collection on your monitor. Hold Ctrl and press PrtScr (Print Screen). Then open a picture editing program like MS Paint. Hold Ctrl and press V to paste the screenshot in. Crop away any unwanted portions of the image, and save as desired!
You can upload and save your treasury screenshots to many different places around the web, like your Flickr or Picasa album, or your Facebook page.
You can even promote your Treasuries with groups like Etsy Promo Love, or by looking for Treasury threads in the Etsy Promotions forum.
To learn more about taking Treasury screenshots, and sharing them on your blog, check out:
Treasury Making Tips - Some Unwritten Rules
- The first three items in the top row of your Treasury will be the thumbnails that show in the Treasury lists. These should be eye-catching, and give viewers an idea of what your treasury is all about.
- It is not totally taboo to include one of your own listings in a Treasury - it just won't make it to the Front Page if you do. It is tacky to include listings from your alternate shops.
- Choose a variety of items from different categories and sellers. Making Treasuries can be a great way to meet other Etsians, and expose your shop. However, using it simply to promote yourself is considered a faux pas on Etsy. If you also have an ArtFire account, you can use their "Collection" tool to make a treasury-like feature of only your listings.
- Tell people about your collection! Not all, but most, sellers want to know that they've been featured. Telling people will also increase your collection's views, especially if featured sellers tell their friends and teammates. But, if you don't want to message every seller featured, that's okay. Many people will find your treasury through the Recent Activity and Circles functions on Etsy.
- Take care of your Treasuries. Because the new system does not have an expiry date, there are hundreds of empty and neglected treasuries taking up space. If you're all done with a collection, you can even grab a screenshot and delete it.
Of all the things you can do on Etsy - besides running your shop - the Treasury is the most fun. Sure, you can have a lot of fun in the forums, too. But you also have to listen to a lot of complaining.
The Treasury is just pretty pictures and fun themes!
How do you feel about making treasuries?
Are you ready to make your first Etsy Treasury?
Please feel free to leave comments, or questions!