experiment - renewing hourly

I've decided to run a little experiment in my Etsy shop, pandacub. For those of you who are fellow Etsy sellers, you'll probably know what this is about and understand what I'm talking about. For everyone else, please feel free to ignore this post as it probably won't make much sense. :)

On Wednesday, July 8, at around 9 am I started renewing or listing an item every hour (renewing an old item or listing a new one). I'm hoping to keep this up for the next 48 hours to see what kind of effect it has in attracting new people to my shop. Of course, it won't be a truly scientific experiment since I don't plan on giving up sleep, so there won't be much renewing overnight (my overnight, which I know is daytime in other parts of the world) and of course, there are other reasons people may be venturing into my shop that are not a direct result of my actions, so please, PLEASE take these numbers with a grain of salt. :)

I don't expect to get much sales immediately from this, just more exposure for my shop, but I added the sales column just in case!

p.s. I also started a post in the Etsy forums about this experiment, so some shops views/hearts will be a result of that forum thread.

p.p.s. After some feedback (some nice, some...uh, not so nice) I'm going to add another "chapter" to this experiment in the hopes of making it more useful. Later on, I will do the whole thing again (renew/relist for 48 hours) on a Wed/Thurs, but without telling anyone until after I'm done. That way, those numbers will not be affected by people who are curious about the shop because of the experiment. And then, there will be Chapter 3, where I won't do anything at all for 48 hrs (again, on Wed/Thurs) and post those numbers as well. The 3 chapters added together should give a fuller picture into this whole renewing thing (I hope).

Wednesday, July 8, 2009 (all times listed are Eastern Standard Time)

Time	Action	Item Views	Shop Hearts	Sales
8:57 am	re-listed expired item	10,488	675	0
10:06 am	re-listed expired item	10,523	675	0
11:08 am	renewed item	10,672	677	0
12:05 pm	re-listed expired item	10,717	680	0
1:08 pm	re-listed expired item	10,749	681	0
2:08 pm	renewed item	10,751	681	0
3:13 pm	renewed item	10,690*	681	1
4:07 pm	re-listed expired item	10,697	681	0
4:48 pm	renewed item	10,734	681	0
6:13 pm	renewed item	10,565**	683	0
7:14 pm	renewed item	10,571	684	0
8:13 pm	listed new item	10,580	685	0
9:16 pm	re-listed expired item	10,620	685	0
10:38 pm	listed new item	10,631	685	0
11:42 pm	listed new item	10,641	685	0

*the drop in item views is because I sold an item, so that item's view counts is no longer counted into the total.
**the drop in item views is because several items expired and so were removed from the shop

Thursday, July 9, 2009 (all times listed are Eastern Standard Time)

Time	Action	Item Views	Shop Hearts	Sales
12:25 am	re-listed expired item	10,718	685	0
6:56 am	renewed item	10,763	685	0
8:40 am	renewed item	10,784	685	0
9:25 am	renewed item	10,792	685	0
10:23 am	renewed item	10,801	686	0
11:19 am	listed new item	10,816	686	0
1:04 pm	renewed item	10,827	686	0
2:10 pm	listed new item	10,839	686	0
3:07 pm	listed new item	10,850	687	0
4:35 pm	renewed item	10,862	688	0
6:07 pm	re-listed expired item	10,872	688	0
7:28 pm	renewed item	10,920	688	0
9:10 pm	renewed item	10,948	688	0
9:58 pm	renewed item	10,952	689	0
11:17 pm	renewed item	11,014	690	0