#etsy tips

My Etsy shop has been open just under 2 months, and as a new start up I have constantly been learning the ins and outs of Etsy (and business in general!). I thought selling on Etsy would be simple, and that sales would just come to me. How wrong I was! It takes a lot of time, hard work and dedication. It’s not what I expected, but the whole experience has been a real eye opener and rewarding. I’ve had the opportunity to talk to some like-minded business people (both locally and internationally) and I cannot be more thankful for the advice I have received.

My aim is to share my experiences and what I have learnt with you all every Sunday, in what I call Etsy Seller’s Sunday. I welcome any comments and debates around what I discuss, and I hope that my posts will help someone along the way. Hopefully, you can avoid the confused face I had which was very similar to the image below!

My first topic I will be discussing is listings.

When I opened my shop I had 3 listings. I took multitudes of pictures, changed the descriptions over and over and was still getting no sales. I was left wondering what I was doing wrong and how I could fix it. After many hours of googling and tearing my hair out, I found a few sites with different good solutions for me, which increased my views and visits (and even got me my first sales). The below isn’t an exhaustive list, but they are the top tips I’ve used in my shop which put me in the right direction.

1) More listings = More chances to pop up on a search When I started my Etsy shop I had three listings. One of my listings was on the second page (which at the time I thought was great!). The others were much further behind, but I thought that one might be enough. I can tell you now, unless you have something incredibly unique that no one else is doing and everyone wants, this is NOT enough! You need to aim to get on the first few pages of a search. So lets use my Etsy shop as an example, when a customer types gift boxes for her in the search bar, lots of listings come up from lots of different sellers. I saw some shops had multiple listings appear on the same page, and they were almost identical (some exact matches)! But these shops were the best sellers. They had more chance of having one of their products viewed when they had five listings on a search and I only had one. I now have 23 listings, and my Etsy search views are way higher than when I first started.

2) Why variations aren’t always the best A couple of my original items had a vegan option, and I used variations to highlight this. What I realised was that I could easily make these items into two listings. One for a non-vegan product, and the other for my vegan alternative. With this in mind, you’re increasing your listings, are more likely to get more search results and have more tags to use! I went from my original 3 listings to 5. So, if you have a shop that sells bracelets, you could easily split each colour as a new listing rather than use variations, then link other colours to each description (Look at tip 3). I don’t recommend this if you have 100 different colours, you don’t want to spam potential customers, but there would be nothing stopping you from having a red bracelet listing with the variations as different shades of red etc. You’ll have to evaluate how many listings you think would be suitable for your product, but  I do recommend avoiding variations where suitable.

3) Link your listings with each other So let's go with the previous example of a bracelet shop. You have separated your listings into different colours. But how about if a customer views a red bracelet and their favourite colour is blue? A fix for this is to link your listings. In your description, you can add a note saying that other colours are available, and add a link to your other listings. This makes it easy for the customer to find exactly what they want without having to go on your shop and finding it themselves. This can be done with an easy sentence, such as: For the blue option, please visit this link

4) Be consistent The key to any Etsy shop is consistency. Look at what your customers want and update your listings and products to reflect this. You don’t need to be adding 50 listings a month just to get more searches. It’s better to have a few good quality listings rather than a lot of bad ones. If you add a product a week, be consistent with that. It’s better to add a few a month that 100 in one month then no more the rest of the year. At the same time, don’t add listings if you don’t feel you are prepared. If you’re adding a listing just for the sake of it, it is probably not going to be worth the money or the hassle. Just aim to create new products regularly and update them when they are 100% ready and well thought through.

5) Different occasions, different listings Similar to the variations, if you have products that can be used for different occasions then use a different listing for each! If you use different keywords in each listing, you will hit more search terms and get more visits. For example, if you are selling party supplies that can be used for birthdays, baby showers, graduations, weddings etc, then have a different listing for each with different tags. Even though they are the same product, they have many different uses and you may miss a sale opportunity if you try to advertise them all in one listing. Again, the more listings you have, the more opportunities you have to come up in a search and that is what every Etsy seller wants right?

6) Review your listings From the initial cost, your Etsy listing is available for three months (unless renewed). After your listings have been up for three months, use Etsy Stats to review how they are doing. Are they performing well? Are they getting viewed as much as your other products? Is it worth renewing? If they’re not performing as they should be you have a couple of options. One is to review your listing, and edit accordingly. Are the tags relevant? Does it use optimum keywords for SEO? Does the picture look attractive? The second option is to scrap the listing. There’s no point in paying for listings that aren’t generating income.

So that concludes my first post for Etsy Seller’s Sunday! The above helped me a lot when starting up my shop, but every shop is different and gets different results! The best way is to use trial and error, and learn what your customers want and how to get them purchasing your fantastic product!

If you have anything to add, or want to comment on any of the above then please leave a comment. I look forward to hearing your thoughts, and what works for you.

Happy Sunday, and I’ll be back with another post soon!

Lots of Love

Tuesday

Xxx

Make Money By Selling Arts And Crafts On Etsy

Etsy is a Web-enabled buyer and seller sorority similar to eBay, but emphasizes on selling arts, crafts handmade or vintage items and supplies. With about 30 million visitors each month Etsy provides a wonderful podium for artisans, crafters and creative designers which aids them in spreading their work to the worldwide audience and grow their business.

Being a visual medium, your product photos can make or break your Etsy business. I have seen countless Etsy stores thrive purely because they had stunning product photos. On the other hand, I have seen some stores with immense potential flounder because they lacked good photography skills or were trying to pinch their pennies by not hiring an expert. Thankfully, things have changed immensely in the past couple of years.