Etsy tips and tricks

Last month I reached the milestone of publishing 100 items in my Etsy shop.
I did some deeper research into what has been bought, who did buy, what doesn't sell, ...
Analyzing these numbers taught me a lot and I will tell you what you can do to boost your shop or get some new traffic.
Or if you're about to open an Etsy shop yourself, I have some good tips for you.

1. Intro

As you might know, I opened my Etsy shop 7 months ago (see Passive income with Etsy). I only sell AI-generated art in a very specific niche.
I did see some YouTube videos of people saying that you easily can earn thousands of $ per month, pure passive income. And I was very intrigued by this as it looked indeed very easy.
Well, I can assure you, don't believe what they tell you, it is much harder than you might think. It's like saying 'Jeff Bezos earns 1 billion a year, if you open something like Amazon you also can make this'.
But I don't want to discourage you, it is a fun way to start a passive income stream and you learn a lot about how to market your products, what to sell, ...
If you're a creative person, just open your own shop, it is very easy and cheap to do. If you're not creative at all (like me), there is always AI that can help you. Or be smart and sell what creative people need to be creative.
It's like with everything in life: just do it! If you make money: well done. If you don't sell anything, it will be a good learning experience.

2. What did I do wrong?

I can't say I did do many things wrong. But I now realize that I did do many things not right.
First of all, try to be yourself and do not copy others. In the beginning, I visited shops selling the same kind of AI Art as I was trying to sell and I just tried to copy their best-selling products.
Wrong: nobody is waiting for another clone or copy of something they've seen already 100 times. Nobody is waiting for another monkey in a spacesuit
Be yourself and try to find your own style.
I did lots of research on YouTube listening to people what sells and what is trending.
Wrong: what is trending or hot now won't be trending anymore in 3-4 weeks. It takes a few weeks before Etsy's algorithm starts showing your newly created listings.
So don't publish any Christmas items at the beginning of December, you will be too late (unless you're an already established shop).
Already start listing items for let's say Valentine's Day in January, so it will start getting traction around the right moment.
And again: be special, be yourself. Nobody is waiting for your coffee mug with "I love you" written on it.

3. Some useful tips

Before I opened my AI art-related Etsy shop, I did lots of research about what niche market I was going to sell into.
Make sure it is not oversaturated. I am going to use Print-on-Demand as an example. There are thousands of POD shops offering exactly the same items. Can you imagine how difficult it is for a starter to get noticed in that large ocean of sellers?
Go deeper into that market and specialize in a very niche section. For example, sell only coffee mugs with the face of a labrador on it.
You can later extend your shop to other niches or go broader into your niche.
Have enough listings on your opening:
This may sound weird but it will make sense.
When I opened my shop, I had 50 items ready. And the weeks after, I listed 2 or 3 new items a week. In the first weeks, you will have no sales but the amount of visitors will slowly increase when you list more and more.
And now comes the important part: after a few weeks, you will see the first sales. And this will already give you a good indication of what is selling and what is not. Now you're on a schedule of listing a few items a week, it is easy to pivot and make more items in the same genre as the products that are selling. And slowly but steadily the amount of purchases will increase.
Don't fall in love with your own products:
I learned this the hard way and it may sound rude but it is not because you like something that you created that other people will like it too.
So many times I thought 'This will become such a bestseller, I just love what I made' and guess what? Till now zero sales for these items.
Be commercial and try creating things that the broad majority of the people will love.
Price setting
It is not because you are a new shop that you have to sell your products for an extremely cheap price. No, your creativity and hard work also need to be paid.
Do some research and visit other shops and check what prices they ask for. And then make an average of it and that will be your price. You can always higher your prices later on.
be patient:
don't expect a lot of sales in the first weeks. Just keep on listing new items regularly and I assure you that sales will follow. Just be patient and consistent.
Market yourself:
This doesn't mean that you have to post everything on Pinterest or Instagram. No, focus on Etsy alone. Use all the SEO tools that Etsy is offering you. They give you space for 10 pictures of your product: use them. You have 13 SEO tags: use them.
Give a present:
Etsy gives you the opportunity to send an automated email (with a discount link) to everyone who did make a purchase or to everyone who favorited one of your items.
Make use of this options, it gives you clients a good feeling and most of the times, they will use this discount.
Evaluate and re-evaluate:
After a certain period or amount of items (I think I will do this when I reached 150 listings) make an evaluation of all your listings. Replace the ones that didn't get sales or attention with new ones. That way you will grow your shop into a qualitative one.

4. Numbers don't lie

After publishing 100 items, I really wanted to know what were the best selling prodects and which ones weren't selling. I already had an idea about this but I created an Excel list and the results really didn't surprise me at all.
I guess you already heard of the Pareto-principle which means that (in sales) 80% of your income comes from 20% of your products.
And indeed, numbers don't lie. As you can see from the Excel-sheet below ... 80% of all my income from from 25% of my listed items. Ok, not completely like the Pareto principle but close enough.

I already had a slight suspicion of this this but I really didn't know it was this obvious.
And what this Excel sheet also shows me is that there is a cluster of related items that sell extremely well. Some clusters sell according expectancies and some others don't sell at all. I was really surpised with so many items not selling at all. 60% of all listed items didn't see a single purchase (some of them even never have been viewed).
These products were mainly created in the beginning of my Etsy-shop, so you can say I did evolve in a positive way and statred creating items that people like and buy.
I have to admit that the newer listings are of much higher quality than the ones I published in the early days of my shop.

5. Who are my clients?

This one is according to the Pareto principle: 82% of everyone who made purchases in my Etsy-shop are female.
Did this surprise me? Not really but I never expected this number to be so high. The items I sell are mostly used for decorative purposes and I guess this is more the field of women.
85% of all my customers come from the US, which also doesn't surpise me as Etsy is best known in the US. In Europe, most people never heard of it.
A few weeks ago, I asked some buyers what they used my items for and this also gave me a good insight in what direction my shop should evolve.

6. Why I don't run ads

Many YouTubers say you need to run ads to boost the visibility of your shop. They can be right, but I never done it. Why?
The reason is very simple: it is not worth it for my products. The price of a single item in my shop is between 2$ and 3$. And the price per click Etsy charges is between 0.2$ and 0.5$.
So it is not worth it, The cost for running ads would far surpass the profits I get from it.
What I do as kind of promotion?
Trick:
Run sales!
This may sound weird but this adds to the visibility of your shop and is (in my eyes) more profitable than running ads.
If you run a sale, your products are shown like this:

What you will see when your sale comes to its final hours (see 2nd one), there will be an extra line added 'Sale ends in x hours'. This way your item also gets on the first page of the search result.

7. Ideas for the next months

As mentioned before, there is a cluster of similar items that are selling much better than other products. My plan for the upcoming weeks in the gather these together in a bundle and call it 'Bundle ... buy 8 get 10' (or something like that).
If 1 item costs 2.75$, I will put a price of 22$ for a bundle of 10 items. If people were tempted to buy 1 or 2 items, I hope the will buy the whole bundle instead, seeing it is cheaper buying a bundle than buying separate items.
And on this bundle, I think I might run ads because percentage wise it more profitable. And if they click on the ad but don't buy it, they can always buy a individual item in my shop. So, it's a win-win situation.
At least, that is what I think about it. I will keep you updated on the result.

Name *

Email *

Message