ByHand.me is a new handmade crafter/artisan community site. This site has everything and could definetly be the next great way to promote your store, find inspiration and connect with other artists, and find great handmade items to buy.
This site isn’t really in competition with sites like etsy as it isnt somewhere you can create a store to sell your items but rather its a place to create more community. Here is the basic run down:
Handmade items, handmade artisans, handmade code, handmade friendships. This is the revolution of the handmade playground. It starts with a simple guy, Adam, also known on etsy and artfire as infivision. He decided he wanted a better social community to promote handmade. While ning offers this to some extent, he felt it was too generic and has a poor user interface. In a quest for something better he developed http://byhand.me. Designed and created in under a week and for under $100 – ok so he had to purchase the domain and a security certificate – ByHand serves as a free social network for those who make handmade and those who buy handmade. Here’s a run down of what you can expect from the site:
* Artisan Directory
* Spotlights
* Forums
* Member Blogs
* Social Networking
* Chat
* Private Messaging
* RSS Feeds
* And more..
I just created a profile and right off the bat I am loving the chat feature and the ‘Spotlights’ feature. Spotlights functions bit like an etsy treasury but never expire and you can feature items from all the major craft selling sites.
I have one spotlight suggestion: on the create a new spotlight page have the spotlight help text visible there with base links for all the main selling sites, etc. I’m lazy and like to have that sort of thing right at my fingertips. 🙂
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