Good day everyone! I had to share the fabulous news I got today! I signed up for ArtFire a while back and instantly fell in love with it and quickly upgraded to a verified account. With a verified account you can list as much as you want and only pay one low monthly fee (which total helps me budget for my monthly expenses). Verified members also get lots of perks and can be involved in "Guilds". I'm the guild master of the Ghouls Guild. Another feature of being a verified member is referrals. ArtFire currently has a promotion going on for verified account members. Once they refer 10 friends to verified membership their account is free!!! It's called the free ride! When I heard about this I was so excited! I was already in love with ArtFire because the monthly membership fee was already 1/3 of my Etsy fees, but now the chance to have it all for FREE?! What could be better? Since that time I have been letting my friends know how much I love ArtFire and all the perks I've enjoyed. Some of them have used my referral link to sign up themselves! Since a basic ArtFire member is free for life there's no reason not to try it out! That's what I did. I tried it out for free and realized that ArtFire was the place for me! I noticed that I quickly had 4 referral points. Now I only needed 6 more to get my verified membership for free! I continued to chat to people about how much I loved ArtFire and a few let me know that they had signed up and quickly upgraded as well! I was stoked! I raced over to check my referral points but noticed that they didn't change. I thought "just be patient". I was but the number still didn't change after a couple weeks. I headed over to the ArtFire forums because I've always got a super quick response to my questions and concerns. With in a few hours, a helpful ArtFire member suggested I email the ArtFire support crew (service@artfire.com). I did so late last night. By the time I got around to checking my email today I had my response! That's another thing I love about ArtFire! Speedy helpful service! No waiting or surfing threw a million help pages to get a straight answer. There was something even more awesome than the speedy service though..... The email included this sentence:
"Wow! I double checked your referral count and you have 17! Congratulations on earning your FREE RIDE! J"
FREE RIDE?!?!? REALLY?!?! WOOHOOOOO!!!! I'm so excited!!!!!
ArtFire has already set up my membership as being free for life and now I'm cursing along on a FREE RIDE!!!!
Since I want my fellow ArtFire artisans to succeed with their quest for a "Free Ride" too I thought I'd list a few tips:
1. Get yourself familiar with ArtFire. Find out if you really do love it as much as I do. Know what's great about it and why someone else might want to join. A few of the things that have won me over are:
*Ease of use - I love being about to make a new listing on just ONE page
*Random Search - There's no need to relist (and spend more money) to try to get on the stop of the search pile. Your items never get buried (never to be seen again) because the ArtFire search and front page make sure everyone gets an equal amount of exposure. I'm so much happier now that the stress of relisting is gone!
*Unlimited Listing - I love being able to list as much as I want with out the guilt of having to pay for it in my monthly bill later.
*Shop Sale with One Click - I love that when I have a sale in my shop I can just go to "edit studio" and set up a sale that applies to all the items in my shop - no need to worry about reimbursing buyers later or changing each listing individually. Before I would dread trying to have a sale because it was so time consuming. Not anymore though! One click and everything is done! It's also just as simple to turn off the sale!
2. Once you know your stuff (why you love AF and why others will too), spread the word! I let my twitter followers know each and every time I found out another perk or something else I realized I LOVED about ArtFire. They asked lots of questions and were super supportive! They are the main reason I'm getting a free ride now!!! I LOVE YOU TWITTER FOLLOWERS!!!! I also added a link to my email signature and chatted up ArtFire to my flickr arts & craft group people. I also added a post to my blog that included the reasons why I love ArtFire.
3. Do not spam people, do not lie, do not trick people, ... basically don't be mean!!!! Be genuine, be honest, if you don't know the answer to their questions find out, and have fun! Let your referrals come naturally and you shouldn't go wrong. ArtFire is really easy for me to chat up since ArtFire is the largest growing art community on the web and is quickly closing in on Etsy for traffic - ArtFire doubles it's traffic consistently every month! If you love ArtFire as much as I do, you wont have a problem chatting it up naturally either :)
I hope this helps! Good luck my ArtFire honeys!
P.S. I also got another email a few hours later which said:
"Congratulations! Your product "Easter ABC's" has been randomly chosen as item of the hour. Your item will be featured on the ArtFire.com Home Page from 04/03/2009 @ 1:00 PM until 04/03/2009 @ 2:00 PM MST. Thank You for being a part of the ArtFire Community!"
Could today get any better???? What a great way to start the weekend :)
Congratulations...your hard work definitely paid off. Enjoy the FREE RIDE!
~@LydiasSpa