I started a new greeting card design the other day. 

This is it, almost done.

I used this bird cage that my friends gave me a few years ago as inspiration. I recently planted some hens and chicks in it. I'm not really sure if I'm happy with the card. I might re-do it. 

I've been doing that a lot recently, second guessing myself and my work. I've been having a lot of feelings of not being good enough, lately. I think it's a normal though process to have when you making a living as an illustrator/artist. Especially when business slows down, and wow, Etsy has slowed down for me significantly.

They recently changed their stats and before I'd receive between 150-200 views a day, or more. Recently I've been receiving an average of 30 view a day. The traffic to my shop has stopped. I don't know if it's because they've weeded out search bots, or if their search has changed. Maybe my search engine optimization is really bad?

I feel like I'm getting buried under thousands of other shops. It's discouraging and disappointing. I've been working on my Etsy shop for 10+ years. All that work. Nothing.  I feel like somehow older shops don't get the traffic that newer shops do. I can't prove this, but I do know some other very well established shops that have seen a huge decrease in traffic too. 

I'd love to invest more time and money into this site, to make it a commerce site, but I just don't have very much of either right now. And building up traffic to your own site is no easy feat. 

I'm not really sure what I'm going to do. I think focusing on doing more craft fairs, farmer's markets and really working on my wholesale business are the best bets right now. I'm going to also try to stay positive, and try not to be so hard on myself.