How do you make yourself real in an online world?

I have been selling my handmade jewelry on www.etsy.com since the end of November 2007. I have sold 209 items, have 766 hearts and 189 feedback. Etsy is not my first experience selling online, previous to selling on etsy I had an ebay store unrelated to my jewelry.

Being an online seller is really an art unto itself. You never get that personal experience by being able to look at someone and interact with them so you have to somehow create that personal experience and make yourself a real person to the buyer. As much as we deal with anonymous people in our world today because of phones and the internet we still all in the end want to know that we not just dealing with a computer but that we are dealing with real people.

Here are a few of the things that I do to hopefully make me a person not just a computer screen:

• when I ship an item I write a short email to let them know when and how I shipped it.
• my profile is a personal story which tells people a little about me.
• every package I send includes a personal handwritten note (hopefully with no spelling errors but I guess that would really show they are dealing with a real person!)
• emails are a great opportunity to get people to know you and to make a great impression.
• if someone mentions a purchase is for a special occasion or a gift I like to refer to that when I communicate with a customer because then it shows I am paying attention.

The notes listed above are just a few of the small things that I like to do that I hope make a big impression. When selling handmade items buyers want to know that even though they can't see it there is a face and crafty hands behind the purchase they made. I would like to think that one day I will have the online world of selling all figured out but I think it is an endless learning curve and each seller has to make it their own.