A few months ago I started noticing I was getting a few views from a site called Wanelo. Right away I needed to investigate what this was. So I went right to the source and before signing up to join I wanted to learn a little about the website.
Here is a short list of the things I found out:
1. Wanelo is a social store curated by the community. Users post, collect and organize products and follow people and stores they like. **So right away I was thinking another Pinterest? I investigated this further and will touch on this in a bit.**
2. Wanelo, pronounced "wah-nee-lo," comes from the words WAnt, NEed and LOve. Which is neither here nor there there really, but I thought it was cool.
3. And their motto "find unique products and stores you've never heard of", peaked my interest.
**About the 'another Pinterest' thought-what I found was:
Wanelo vs. Pinterest
Positives about Wanelo in comparison to Pinterest
~ The focus is only on products that are for sale vs Pinterest you can post any image.
~(the best thing about it) When you post a url it makes a unique pin, any attempts to post the same url will direct people back to the original pin. This means that all the attention gets focused on the one Wanelo page about that product, no duplicates!
~ As people repin your product it gets associated with other more popular items. People will start to see your item in others wish lists as they look at other things.~Both of these things mean that rather than my items flashing up quickly at the top of the list only to disappear soon after... Wanelo keeps plodding along slowly, drawing in a regular amount of views each week.
Negatives about Wanelo in comparison to Pinterest
~ It's just not as pretty, the look and feel of the site isn't as nice as Pinterest. I love the scrapbook type feel of Pinterest.-However that being said Pinterest recently it seems redid the profiles there and they are looking a lot more like Wanelo.
~There's only 6 categories and it's compulsory to categorize your items, I find myself repeatedly having to put my things into the 'women's' category which feels rather limiting
Overall Pinterest is more fun to use and has more variation but because Wanelo focuses primarily products... it's better at advertising. Also the founder of Wanelo and two employees are members of the Wanelo Etsy team and they tell us they have plans to expand the site.
One other cool thing about Wanelo is it is okay to post your own items. And in fact (though Etsy individual shops owners don't have this feature yet) if 5 items are posted to the site then the creator of the items then gets their own "store" on Wanelo. At this time Etsy as a whole has its own shop and Wanelo developers are looking into how to separate it out for us shop owners.***
So Wanelo is a great site for our shops. If you are still with me I'll walk you through signing up and posting to the site.
How to Sign up?
1.The easiest way is through your Facebook account. From there you will be directed to make up a user name and password. It is recommended to make it more personal than business but that is your choice.
2. Next you can add people to follow, but I recommend hitting skip and you can do this later.
3. You can also then add your Facebook friends or hit skip again.
4. Time for a profile pic.
5. Last step and this one makes using the site really easy, but you need to have Chrome or Firefox to use it. Drag the "+Post to Wanelo" button to your tool bar.
So you got an account now what?
How to use Wanelo?:
- Post your product finds from any online store.
- Browse others' finds and save them. saving is like voting a product up - more saves means higher placement on the homepage.
- If people like your taste, they will follow you. More followers + more saves = more visibility for you.
How to post a product?:
1. Go to a listing and click your "+ Post to Wanelo" button
2. A pop-up will come up and you can add a comment or price, then click "Post to Wanelo."
3. If the product is brand new to Wanelo it will then ask you fill out some info about the item. Fill this out well and use as many tags as you can so buyers can find you.
4. Click submit.
5. If a product has already been saved to Wanelo it will direct you to that item and you can save it to your collection.
What else?:
A few other things you can do is:
1. Edit your profile, adding an about you section with your interests and linking it to your Etsy shop and other social media sites.
2. Add collections, edit them, or delete them. The site comes with a few set up for you, but you can delete them or change the names to make them fit you.
3. As I think I stated in the Wanelo vs. Pinterest section post your own work, but post items you like from other online stores as well. Or post items from other Etsy shops.
4. You can post an item in each collection if you want. For example I have an "items I create" collection, but I may also post one of my cutting boards in my "cooking" collection.
5. The more saves an item get the more popular it becomes. And if it gets a ton of saves in the 1st 5 days it is on the site it will make it to the trending section-big advertising advantage to this.
If you are still with me that about sums it up about Wanelo. Feel free to follow me at http://www.wanelo.com/BillsWoodenPleasures or join the Wanelo Etsy team as well. Hope to see many of you Idaho Etsy Team members on Wanelo soon and anyone else whom is reading this post.
