Minding the Shop

First of all, thank you to everyone who has looked at my shop, shared and liked on Facebook, and commented on it.  It's pretty exciting to see the view counter go up (everything has stats these days)!  I have to admit, I've been feeling a little apprehensive since I opened the shop.  On the one hand, I just want to open my shop, list things as I knit them, and leave it at that.  On the other hand, I have a lot of yarn, and while I'm hoping to raise a little money for our adoptions, my dream is to eventually use the shop to support other adoptions (either with money or donations to auctions, etc).  That would require selling more than just a few things, which is more likely to happen if I make a concerted effort to promote the shop.  Of course, promoting the shop means moving beyond my little circle of friends, which means asking everyone to share the shop with their circles.  I'm also not super comfortable with promoting myself, although I need to remember that there are plenty of people who want to support us in our adoption journey.
I need to think about a few more things too, now that I've opened it.  I wonder if it was easier or harder to have an etsy shop before there were all these venues for advertising--I realized today that I haven't even tapped into Pinterest.  I didn't give much thought to special orders.  Several people have mentioned newborn items, and I figured out today that I haven't made many newborn items because I don't have a newborn to size them on.  :)  I had an awesome (commercial) pair of booties/slippers that I used with Luke, and I've been meaning to design a knitted version.  Time to get on that!