Who'duv Thunk? My shop was included on a Sports Website!

This weekend, I was going through my swooonantiques.etsy.com shop stats (akin to google analytics). This is something I try to do this regularly in order to get a sense of my traffic sources as well as to see what key words bring shoppers to my shop. Typically, etsy and google are my top traffic sources.

However when I looked at my stats in line graph format, there was a noticeable spike in shop traffic from a single source.... a source that I have never heard of. Usually etsy and google combined result in 50-150 views in a day. But on September 14, I had 1,163 views! "What the?!?!?!" (in a good way of course).

So I researched the source of the traffic spike. Surprisingly, the source is a sports website called Uni Watch. In my personal life, sports play a huge role. I have two kids who play competitive hockey and a husband who is a huge football fan and plays hockey himself. Naturally, I thought there must be some mistake. The must have been some huge crossing of wires/life compartments. I couldn't fathom why I was getting traffic from a sports website.


Uni Watch is a unique website, one that I would never have imagined existed. It is a website that devotes itself to the "obsessive study of athletics aesthetics". Here is what they say in their "Here's the Deal"/"About Us" section.

"Uni Watch is a media project that deconstructs the finer points of sports uniforms in obsessive and excruciating detail. It has nothing to do with fashion — it’s about documenting and maintaining the visual history of sports design, and about minutiae fetishism as its own reward. If that concept doesn’t make sense to you, no problem — Uni Watch definitely isn’t for everyone, and there have always been people who Don’t Get It™. But for those who understand the pleasures of detail obsession, programmatic classification systems, information overload, and sports history, you’ve come to the right place."

So I read through the website, particularly the posts from the day which caused my traffic spike. "EUREKA-I found it!" The author of one of the articles referenced an item I had in my shop, the only sports-related item I (currently) have listed. The reference is buried deep in the day's post in an article called the "Collectors Corner" by Brinke Guthrie. If you read far enough you will see that he took a moment to go onto etsy and found several vintage sports items including mine. In his article he referred to my item as "some old-timey sports decals".

Phew, mystery now solved; I now know the reason for the traffic spike. I am grateful for the additional traffic and exposure that I received. I must go and thank Mr. Guthrie. Additionally, I found unique and extremely interesting website that I never knew existed. I will be sure to share it with all of my sports fan family and friends.

The "old-timey sports decals" have not yet sold - now is your chance!

Who Am I

About me.. My name is Jennifer. My mom named me after an African American classmate in the 1960s whom she thought was breathtakingly beautiful. I suppose she hoped I too would be beautiful. I like the name, especially when said as the full name. It sounds sophisticated and maybe even sexy. But that is not me. I am more of a Jen. Not Jenny or Jennifer just Jen.

Jen just seems so much more down to earth, don’t you think? I think of myself as down to earth. I don’t worry too much about how I look, though I don’t wear a bathrobe and slippers everyday. I always wear sneakers because they are the most body conscious shoe I can find. And I wash may hair, but not every day….I have better things to do than to spend too much time messing with it. I also don’t spend too much time worry about what others think. I am quirky and a little different, I am happy this way.

I value humor, compassion, creativity and hard work. Humor and laughter mean the world to me and I could not function with out it. There is a quote by Victor Borge “Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.” I love that quote. My own version is “Laughter is everything.”. If you cannot laugh and see humor in life, then you are not living compassionately, intelligently and openly.

I am a mother. That is my primary role and one that I take utterly seriously. I have two kids who are so very different. As a result I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out the best way to parent them and guide them. As a result of their distinctness, what works for one, usually does not work for the other. One is ADHD diagnosed and the other is not. One is a teenager (as of today she is 13) and one is still a boy person. Every day is vexing and perplexing on how I will manage to parent them and guide them on their journey.

I am a wife to a wonderful man whom I knew I was destined to marry. While “just friends” in college we eventually drifted apart. But I always referred to him as “the man I was supposed to marry”. Seven years later we were reunited; and at that moment, I knew we were gonna be together forever. We married 12 years after first meeting. He happens to be darn good looking, but the down to earth-ness in me is most drawn to his humor and creativity. He is the love of my life and he is my rock. I cannot imagine my life without this funny, creative, brilliant, strong, compassionate man in it.

I am a small business owner. I own a multifaceted online antiques and collectibles business. This is my passion; this is what keeps me sane (literally) in the chaos of my life. I love finding things that are really cheap (or sometimes free) and turning around to sell them and make some dough!! Plus it is real fun researching some of the oddities I come across. It is really amazing what some people deem as trash and how others will clamor to acquire that same item as a treasure. That is why my business name is FineLine Antiques. The tag line is “…. because there is a fine line between trash and treasure.” But I haven’t used the tagline much because I don’t want people to think I am charging them $50 for trash, even though, once in awhile, I am!

If you are so inclined to take a gander at some of my FineLine Antiques treasures, you can find them at:
www.fineline-antiques.com
www.swoonantiques.etsy.com
www.lucysclosetvintage.etsy.com
or our newsest venture
www.laughingfrogstudio.etsy.com

Now you know a little bit about me….feel free to share a little bit about who you are, I would love to know ya!