Saturday, April 24, 2010

EB Friday Hotlist: Own the Hour

This Saturday edition of the Hotlist is happening because my internet crashed yesterday and I didn't have a chance to write the post earlier in the week.  Sorry for the delay!

Own the Hour is an interesting advertising concept that's designed to help Etsy sellers promote their shops.  Each seller is able to display one item per hour on the site.  Each hour costs 50 cents and sellers can purchase as many hours as they want for the following day.  It seems like a great place to advertise.  The problem is that it's so new and not a lot of people have found it yet.  Every time I've been to the site, all of the slots have been empty.

I decided to purchase a 50 cent spot anyway to see how it worked.  I selected an hour for the following day and checked back.  My ad (and sadly only my ad) was posted on the site in gallery fashion:


The way the items are displayed is very reminiscent of Etsy's treasury.  I love the simple clean look of the site front page.  I didn't notice any hits from the site in my Google Analytics though and I don't see anyway to get statistics directly from Own the Hour on how many people click on purchased ads.

So my verdict?  Bookmark Own The Hour and check back with them in a few months' time.  Hopefully more people will have found them and decided to use the inexpensive advertising and it will make sense then to post your items there.  If traffic and advertiser numbers don't grow exponentially though, this really cool idea may be dead in the water.

Do you know of any great advertising opportunities for artisans?  Let us know in the comments!

Until next time,
Elle

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