How to sell on Esty Successfully

also read How do bloggers get paid? – 5 ways to make money as a blogger

Choose Your Products & Brand Name

Etsy’s sign up process requires a shop name and at least a single product to be listed when you first setup your account.

The process looks like – Shop Preferences –> Name Your Shop –> Stock Your Shop –> Payment Options –> Billing

Shop name & first product are not things that you want to figure out while signing up, so it pays to decide on them beforehand, especially since it’s difficult to change it later.

Naming Your Shop

Etsy’s Seller Handbook has an excellent primer on shop name considerations.

But there are a few things to keep in mind –

• Your account name and shop name are two different things. In fact, an account can have multiple shops.
• You can set up your account and click “Sell on Etsy” to go partially through the set up process to check name availability.
• Be sure to Google your potential brand name to check for conflicts.
• Go ahead and search on a domain registrar (like NameCheap or GoDaddy) and purchase a domain name for future use – even if it’s not needed for your Etsy Shop.

Your shop description and logo are not necessary to get started – though it is good to work on before setup.

Selecting Your First Product

It costs $0.20 to list a product on Etsy. And if you are starting a shop, then you likely already have your first product in mind.

But to list your product, you’ll need to decide on a few things beforehand.

It needs to meet Etsy’s marketplace rules.

You’ll need photos. Etsy says to:

• Use high-quality JPG, PNG or GIF files that are at least 570px wide – but 1000px recommended.
• Use photos with natural or diffused lighting – not flash lighting.
• Your photos will be in thumbnails with the ability to zoom and view full-size.
• Have your product description copy ready. Find a balance between clarity, conciseness, detail & descriptiveness. Here’s my resources on copywriting.

Do the same with your product title – make sure it’s descriptive, memorable but also readable.

List out categories for your product. Use this page to research product categories and descriptions. Etsy also has this resource on creating “tags” for your product.

Once you have your shop name and product chosen, you can start your shop setup. Everything else during setup will be easily changeable after setup.

Setting Up Your Store

Now let’s actually setup your Etsy shop.

Etsy’s Onboarding

Etsy’s shop signup process is straightforward and simple.

Start with setting up a general account then click “Sell on Etsy.”

You’ll go through a setup process that starts with general preferences.

You’ll then Name your shop. Pull from the list that you researched earlier.

Next you’ll need to put up at least one listing. Pull from the list that you put together earlier.

When you go into add a listing, you’ll get moved to the listing screen. Fill out all the fields as best as you can. You can edit your listing later.

Then you’ll enter search terms for your listing – see your earlier research.

After the main listing page, you’ll enter in your shipping preferences.

Lastly, you’ll enter in your bank (for deposits) and credit card information (for listing payments) then you’ll confirm your location and Open your shop!

Listing More Products

Once you’ve started your shop, you can navigate to your Listings Manager to add, renew and manage your listings.

When you are managing your listings – be sure to use Quick Edit and Organize in Sections to save time and help customers sift and sort your products.

Here’s Etsy’s rules and fees for listings.

While any single listing is not expensive – dozens or hundreds together can add up since they expire after 4 months. Etsy’s model encourages you to focus on your few top sellers with high margins. In the last section, this will be a consideration on whether & how to expand your store.

There’s not a lot of room on Etsy for low-volume cross-sell items.

That said – Etsy’s Listing Manager does allow you to quickly deactivate, renew or delete items as you decide on your merchandising.

Changing Options & Settings

Compared to your own online store with something like Shopify or WordPress – your Etsy shop has limited options for customization. But that is the point.

Limited options means that you can focus on what matters on Etsy – your products and your service. You can leave the design and functionality to Etsy.

That said – you do have options on Etsy. And the options you do have are worth spending time on.

Start with your homepage –

• cover photo – minimum 1200px x 300px
• shop title – limited to 55 characters
• shop logo – minimum 500px x 500px
• featured listings
• shop announcement

But don’t forget that there are several other sections as you scroll down on your main edit page.

You can start with your main About page. Keep in mind that what you put here is not just to tell people about yourself – but also to increase trust and sell your product.

Keep in mind that many (if not most) shoppers will be scanning on mobile. Avoid low resolution imagery and “blocks of text.” Keep videos concise. Add links to your other channels.

Next is Shop Policies. These are boring but essential for many buyers. Remember a few things when writing your store policies –

• Although buyers trust Etsy, they do not know you, your product or your process.
• A few extremely clear policies are better than many specific or conditional policies.
• Try to look at your policies a new customer – not from your perspective or process.
• Don’t solve problems that do not exist yet.
• Use policies to reassure buyers with a clear process from the moment the click the buy button until the product arrives at their door.

Also keep in mind that policies set expectations which in turn influence reviews. Simply having policies improves your placement in Etsy search, but having good reviews from good expectations helps even more. It all works together.

Lastly is a miscellaneous section for FAQs and European sellers.

With FAQs – remember that this is not a catch-all section. Ideally, you’ll answer any product questions in your product listing and shop questions in the policies. Check out my post on FAQ best practices for ideas.

Etsy is always updating their features and tweaking their design. Be sure to occasionally check for new shop settings and options.

Using Etsy Shop Features

Your Etsy shop comes with more than just a shop. It also allows you to manage orders, view shop analytics, print labels, create coupons and more.

Explaining every feature is beyond this guide’s scope – but simply keep in mind that Etsy has features that not every seller will (or should) use – but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

Like using any new tool, success means reading the owner’s manual. Take a bit of time to simply click around and read the Seller’s Handbook.

But definitely use Etsy Analytics. You’ll use it not only for inventory decisions, but also marketing decisions.

And marketing is what we’ll turn to next.

Marketing Your Store

Opening your Etsy shop does not guarantee sales. As of 2015 there were 1.4 million active sellers with thousands with more opening every day. And that doesn’t even include your competition elsewhere on the Web.

And yet – you also have an instant global market (that is, if you ship internationally) within a click. Your job is to decide who exactly you are selling to and where you can market to get their attention – and the answers to those questions will drive your marketing direction/campaign.

On Etsy

The biggest benefit of Etsy is that they have their own audience of Etsy Shoppers.

In other words, there are more than 20 million customers already shopping Etsy – even if they do not know about your specific store.

It’s a bit like getting a stall at a popular farmer’s market – people are coming to the destination. You simply have to get their attention once they are there.

On Etsy, you have a few options.

Etsy Search

You can get visits from Etsy searches. Etsy’s search engine is very different from general web search engines like Google or Bing. Etsy has their own algorithms and data – they’ve discussed how they approach search here.

But the rule of thumb is to have descriptive, memorable product titles with detailed, readable descriptions. It means creating listings that you would want to purchase if you were a customer.

Etsy Promoted Listings

If you are new and/or have a good profit margin – you can always pay to appear in Etsy search results. Keep in mind that paid listings can have additional benefits from traffic & sales.

First, you get data and feedback from customers. In the beginning, this is invaluable. You can use it to improve your products, listings and overall marketing.

Second, you get reviews which can help in Etsy’s search engine.

Etsy Affiliates

An affiliate program is a partnership that pays a fee or percentage to someone who drives a sale on your site. They are an excellent way to drive sales (since you only pay your affiliate partner a fee when you actually get a sale). But they can also be tough to set up & police for fraud.

But Etsy has an internal affiliate program that you can opt into. Etsy handles the technical work and you can use the affiliate program to recruit partners – such as niche blogs, sponsorship opportunities, etc.

CONCLUSION

You can also use social media platforms to market and grow your esty brands platforms like Pinterest and Instagram are a match made in marketing heaven for esty.

checkout  BEST 23 PINTEREST MARKETING TOOLS TO SKYROCKET YOUR PINTEREST REACH.

Facebook and Twitter are also good resources to get good sales on esty, you can engage in viral engagements and harshtags to grow your audience.