Does Your Avatar Have Personality?

Once again while reading the Etsy forums in search of information treasure I came across this post  about if you should use a photo of yourself or one of your product as your avatar. Half of the responses were in favor of a photo of yourself the reason being Etsy is about people. The other half of the responses were in favor of a product photo to represent the shop. It really stood out, that many had said, they only clicked on product avatars. One person said it didn’t matter as long as the avatar was interesting. Yet another brought up that the Etsy admin have avatar’s with photo’s of themselves.

Having been ready for an avatar change, I was considering changing to a photo of myself. Especially since many of my Etsy teammates have such lovely photo’s of themselves and I noticed it is becoming a trend.

A big concern for me is the name of my Etsy Shop, VintagePrecious. If I changed to a photo of myself would many assume I sold vintage?  I named my shop VintagePrecious because my designs are inspired by vintage for precious little girls. I think it makes sense for Etsy admin to have photo's of themeselves because even though they have Etsy shops they represent Etsy. It would make sense, that if you are asking for help or advice in the forums from Etsy admin you are not talking to a shoe. One thing I’ve noticed about the Etsy admin photo's, is it gives Etsy even more personality.

Etsy must know this, I’m sure they did their research. So how do we give our shops personality & representation with our avatars? TAGSMITH on Etsy has had more success with his avatar now than when it was a photo of himself as you can see here in his avatar .  I think TAGSMITH nailed it! ;)  You don't see his face, but you do see his hands at work making his craft.

I want Lloyd Price to sing to my avatar, “Oh-oh-over and over I'll prove my love to you... 'Cause you've got personality.”  I’m off to brainstorm for a creative way to merge both personality and shop representation into my 75 x 75 pixels avatar!