New Venues

I know in a previous post I mentioned that I was going to expand the venues that I was selling on. I have done this, sort of a grand experiment lol and have decided to give each venue until after Christmas, through the four month period most of these venues give you for listing times. Sooo say til the end of February. I have just recently signed up with four new venues, 1000Markets, Shop Handmade Handmade Fuzion and Artfire. So far I am very very happy with 1000Markets, the site looks awesome, it's juried (ya I know but I really like it, it is very profressional looking and the concept is completely awesome) and the admins are fabulous. Plus they already offer most of what that other site seems to think is not important, like stats, being able to move your items around and put them in any order you want. And there is no listing fee, they don't plan on making there money from listing AND they are going to be doing advertising for the site, as in for buyers. Also lots of other stuff that I won't mention now.
I like Shop Handmade simply because it is very proactive as far as the environment goes. Not hard to list on once you get used to the interface either. And its free to list. I may keep this one simply because its free to list and free to sell, plus I can donate a quarter for each item I sell and help save the rainforest. Doesn't get better than that.
I was pretty excited about Handmade Fuzion at first, the site is very clean looking and it has some good stats also. However the listing fee is .15 (which I really don't have a problem with) but if you want to get any hits at all you have to also pay .50 for front page exposure. So now its .65 to list instead of .15 or no one looks are your items. That is a bit steep for me and could rapidly become a fairly large bill. If I don't get some sales from this venue fairly regularly by February it will most likely be taken down.
Artfire is free to list and free to sell but I am not sure how buyers find your products. I am currently paying $7 a month for the upgraded shop which does have awesome stats. I was told that this would also give me additional exposure. We will see how it goes.
I am not closing my etsy shop, I have invested way too much time in it at this point but I will not be listing new items as often as I am being completely buried. I am adding all of my new product to my 1000Markets shop at this point and will most likely spend a good bit of my energy on that. More to come on how that site works later. I have several more that I am aslo using that are also under review but I won't go into that now.