12 Things I’ve Learned About Running an Etsy Shop
I hit an Etsy milestone a few days ago – 200 sales! I’ve learned an enormous amount about how to set-up my shop, promote my products and work with buyers and now I’m going to share some of the most important things I’ve learned with you…
Make a plan: Yep, I’m talking about planing for the millionth time. But, seriously, you can’t just fill up a shop and expect to take off. (If you do and it does then mega high five!) You have to have a plan for how you will promote your new business and what your goals are for sales. Do you want to sell five items a month? A week? A day? Specific goals are easier to hit than “I want to be an Etsy millionaire.”
Check your shop stats: I visit the shop stats page every couple weeks to check what users are searching for (mostly WordPress templates), where they’re coming from (mostly Etsy), and what listings are getting the most views (Rainbow Sorbet)
Manage expectations: When I started my shop I had no policies – you can bet that changed real quick! I had tons of emails for tech support because buyers didn’t know how to install templates or add buttons and a few people bought self-hosted templates when they were actually using WordPress.com. I was spending hours trying to explain things that were in the attached instructions or easily Googled.
Now I have an installation listing and a note saying I don’t offer tech support. I’m happy to help, but they’ll have to pay for my time. My order response also lets the buyer know exactly how long it will take me to send their template.
Update your listings: I get asked the same questions over and over – how wide is the post space? Can I change the navigation? Can I pick a different color? Do you offer custom design? And again, to save time, I add this information to the listings and to my shop policies. Sales are still growing and I’m answering a lot less email.
Do a little SEO: Notice how all my listings start with the product type and not the template name? It’s because people will type ‘premade blogger templates’ not ‘Hello Yellow’ into Google and I want to make sure my listings pop up on the first page of results.
I’ve also included keywords in the title to help people find specific colors or patterns. (Thanks to Mandy for that idea) Use keywords in your shop announcement as well and add categories – instead just templates I have WordPress templates, Blogger templates, social media icons, and photo templates.
Evaluate your stock: Every couple months I go through and remove any items that aren’t selling well.
Keep your focus: This is me as a shopper talking now…just like I tell you to do with your blog, having one type of item makes for a much cleaner shop. If I’m looking for dog collars I don’t want to wade through candles and jewelry to find what I want. I prefer to buy from the dog collar shop, not the “I make lots of stuff” shop.
Download the Etsy app: I used this for pretty much one thing – to re-list items once they have sold. I can’t tell you how many times a template sold, I re-listed it and then an hour later someone else bought it again.
Install Etsy Mini: See that little box in my sidebar…it brings me lots of traffic. A couple items with larger photos is better than small photos and lots of product.
PayPal charge backs: At the end of last year I ended up with a charge back on PayPal. This is when the buyer files a claim that they haven’t purchased/received the item and want their money back. It was right before Christmas… I bet somebody wanted a little extra shopping cash.
I responded PayPal with photos from my shop, Etsy convos, and emails showing that they had in fact purchased the template and emailed back and forth with me about it after they received the files. Despite my best efforts and a whole lot of evidence, their credit card company decided they could have their $50 back and I had to pay another $20 to Paypal because of it. I don’t really have any tips on avoiding this, but be aware that it does happen.
Keep track of sales & fees: I have a spreadsheet in Google Drive that I use to record each sale – when, what, who, URL, email, and how much I made. Etsy and PayPal fees are expenses (tax time!), so once a month I input those too.
Vacation: Since I’m not making items to order, I don’t shut my shop down for vacation. I put a note in the shop announcement and a note in the order response letting buyers know I’ll be back in a week and will send their orders then.
Want more Etsy info and inspiration? Handmadeology has about a bajillion articles to help you out >>> and Launch Grow Joy has links to a bunch of blogs on the subject of Etsy selling >>>
Any other Etsy sellers out there have tips?
03.15.13 in business
One tip I do for things like this that are easily re-sellable is to give them a listing quantity of 20 (or whatever number you choose). That way when they sell on Etsy it will automatically relist for you. The only time I relist manually anymore is if something is about to expire or if I just feel like relisting something to gain exposure.
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Since I sell jewelry, it’s something that I can actually send to bloggers, especially fashion bloggers/handmade bloggers. I like to send a piece of my jewelry out at least three times a year to a different blogger with a big following either as a gift or a giveaway item. My Etsy shop is fairly new but I have gotten a lot of new traffic and sales this way. It is definitely worth it (for me anyway) to outweigh the cost of the item that I am giving away.
I would also add that I think a very important thing to do as an Etsy seller is to promote the work of other Etsy sellers. I promote them on my blog and Pinterest. It’s also good to join some Etsy teams. They are a good community/support system and also like to promote good products.
I’m still pretty new to Etsy, but that’s what I have found works best for me so far.
I love the idea of sending gifts to people who might promote your work or just really love your jewelry.
One good thing to remember is to turn on Direct Checkout! I kept procrastinating it because I figured most sellers use Paypal anyway (and DC is only for US sellers) but as soon as I turned it on, my next 5 or 6 sales were all paid for through DC. I’m not sure if that impacted their decision to buy or not, but it’s still important to remember to do!
I always looked for sellers who had similar products and then looked at their seller feedback for negatives and neutrals. I was interested in potential customer complaints. Were more people concerned about the product looking EXACTLY like the picture.. Were people sometimes let down by photos being more enticing than the actual product? Where there any design flaws? (Like if using images on jewelry pieces.. did the design rub off or get wet?)
Essentially I was looking for problems similar sellers faced to try and avoid them before hand. I don’t want to make things that won’t last.
This is a great idea! I’ve checked out other shops to see what types of things are selling best and for pricing, but I never thought to look at feedback – going to do that right now!
Thanks for this great post. I do have an Etsy shop, and learned right away that it really is an extention of “one’s brand” and needs to be treated as such. I’ll definately be reading back through your post to see what I can do to give the ol’ shop a good polish.
I just opened my own shop so I’m much appreciative of this post. I planned the heck out of my shop and read all up on opening one from books on selling online, including those on selling specifically on etsy to wonderful tips left on Etsy’s blog, especially the quit your day job series, to using what I learned in business school. I had a friend that just plopped up a store. The pictures were terrible, she didn’t fill out any info (policies, about, etc) and just expected people to show up. Brick and mortar business don’t do that so why would it be different on the web?
I just opened my shop a couple of days ago and I’m loving the stats section. I find them so helpful for seeing what people are interested in. SEO is so huge! I have been making sure to stay on top of that with keywords throughout my posts and using all 13 tags. I was stoked to search some keywords that might bring up my posts, and some close to them, and see my products page rank higher. Granted, that doesn’t mean they will sell but it does mean I finally have this SEO bit down- at least enough to see it working.
I did not know about Etsy mini! Thank you for that! I’m going to go do that right away. I’m still figuring things out. One thing most people don’t offer in tips are talk on taxes. I plan to cover that once I get it sorted out this weekend because Etsy sellers do have to pay taxes and getting your tax ID and the whole shebang, I’m learning, is rather easy peasy and is not as daunting as many think.
I have a Google docs/drive spreadsheet too! I knew that right away I need to keep track of this stuff, for taxes and my own interest.
So many wonderful tips out there and I encourage more people to read up, research, do a competitive analysis, brand yourself and just be as much in the know as you can before opening shop but also know that you won’t know everything right away but that’s also part of the shop growth process. I look forward to all that I learn.
Great post!
Thanks Aubrey! I checked out your blog & was all ‘are those pogs???’ So cool – I haven’t seen anything like that before. I’m really thankful that I kept track of all my sales and fees (my accountant is too!) it makes it less stressful once tax time rolls around.
Haha, they are pogs. I’m attempting to bring the pog back. ;) I’m adding a bunch more today too, some what I call “statement pieces.” Thanks so much for checking out my blog and shop. :)
Oh I bet. I’m just trying to get my ducks in a row as far as all I need to do and fill out, tax wise.
These are great tips! I just started my own etsy shop, for custom resume design (for right now, it might expand) and I’ve already had two buyers! I’m pretty excited for that. I’m going to start designing for them next week, but I’ve already had them both fill out data sheets and sign design contracts. Would adding some of my photography be too much of a jump to include in my shop? I know you can section them out into separate categories, but I still worry about that.
Much Love,
Trissta
Hey Trissta – I think it depends on your plan – are you going to have more business related items in your shop or will there just be a few items? If you’re just sticking with a few items then adding photography will probably be just fine & make your shop look more full. But if you’re planning to add more business items (which I think is an awesome idea because I haven’t seen much of that on Etsy yet) then two shops might be a good idea.
Have you signed up to test Etsy digital downloads? That would cut down on response time. I know some knitting pattern designers that are testing it and it seems to be working well (others use Crafthub to deliver digital items instantly).
I hadn’t even heard of that. I have to create the headers for blog templates, but it would definitely work for icons and photo templates. Thanks for letting me know!
Your blog is seriously so helpful! I’m hoping to open an Etsy shop in the near future, so this post is perfect timing! Thanks for sharing :)
I’m planning to open an Etsy shop for some of my fine art and travel photography (I run a small wedding & portrait business on the side of my 9-5). Do you have any recommendations for how many items to have listed when you launch?
I would at least fill the first page, which I believe holds 24 items, but the more you post the more product there is to buy & share.