If you are a designer, artist, photographer, writer, knitter, soap-maker or just a person who loves to create in his spare time and make something inspiring with his own hands, then Etsy is for you!
It is a famous eCommerce online marketplace with millions of active users that allows people from all over the world to sell and buy goods online. This resource is specific in that it allows people to earn money from their hobbies. The entire range of goods on Etsy is handmade. Create your online store and offer your product to the whole world!
If you’re ready to start your shop at Etsy, you should get deep into the guidelines to understand its nature. We’ve completed effective tips for you to take the cake!
Make an original product
The very first mistake that many different crafters make is considering that any handmade stuff is easily sold. But that’s not always true, each product has its own potential and not all of them are profitable.
Think about ways to establish your own niche, scan over the market and competitors. If you have lots of ideas, try to gather them into specific sections and find the biggest one — that’s it! Make sure that all your items are cohesive and original that will help you to find your target audience.
Originality and your own style is the key to a great success.
Read the seller guidelines carefully
Not only you must do the market research about your product to see how it sells, how big your competition is — but also you must spend time for Etsy research.
This store has definite rules and guides so business owners usually refer to them to get the most of the platform. Its guidelines teach how to present your products professionally and how to make money on Etsy. You can read them on Etsy platform in this way:
Study its policies to meet and follow the rules and recommendations;
Join Etsy sellers team to have live discussions and read helpful articles;
Browse forums to get help and find useful information;
Watch videos on official Etsy Youtube channel, named Etsy Success, to be aware about new updates, interesting ideas and expert’s advice.
Being a seller isn’t just have an item and present it. Ask for experienced sellers’ advice, read how-to’s and some strategies if you wish to be a master in it. You can find them on sellers’ blogs about Etsy and crafting business, e.g. Etsyland, Everything Etsy, Handmadeology.
Understand your customers
A great number of shoppers is the key point of any successful store. So to find and keep in touch with your target audience is a really important thing. That will help you to understand their needs and demands, analyze it and choose the most popular style, form or color.
To reach your audience you should think about categories which unite them:
Demographics(age, accomodation, education, family status, etc.);
Psychographics(personality, values, hobbies, life style, etc.).
After making the research, you will feel your audience, their need and preferences so focus on creating the best items for them. This is the way to a well-selling product and people’s reviews and comments will show you the direction for improvement.
As you got your products in, show them in the most favourable light, in other words, take the best photographs. Considering that you have an original product for sale, nice photos are a must have. The first photograph is the most important one because this thing will put your customer’s mind on your shop. To see the photos is the only way to choose your item and buy it online.
Here are some tricks:
Post 5 photos from different angles;
Make your background with the same coloring and lighting;
Use daylight to show natural color of your product;
Take some close-up shots to show its texture and shots from some distance to show its size and how it fits the room or person.
All your photos should be representative, please the eye, show profits of the product.
Write a Detailed Product Description
Now you uploaded some great photos and, next you should retain your audience with engaging and informative description of the item. Talk about the style you made it, list the features(materials, color, size, etc) and ideas to use it. Speak about some problem and ways to solve it with your craft. Show benefits your product will bring to people. Ensure you used keywords and hashtags to get your customers easily find your item in Google or any other search engine.
Build your brand
An important characteristic that differentiates an established business from a start-up is its brand value. Once a company establishes its brand value in the market, its target audience will be ready to buy more, even at a premium, from them. This rule applies to Etsy shops too. So, the next thing you must do is build your brand. On Etsy, this mostly involves an outstanding graphic design strategy. Create a memorable and appealing logo. Use it on your Etsy shop. Design some impressive banners for your Etsy shop using the logo and its colours. The logo and its colours should be used extensively wherever your brand presence is felt by your customers, including packaging, social media, and so on.
Optimize shop for SEO
When a customer does shopping online, he or she is likely to use search or browse it in Google or another engine. So SEO is a necessary part of setting up your Etsy store.
Make a list of words which people may use while looking for an item of yours and add them to your titles, descriptions and hashtags. Take into consideration everything from the name of your shop to your items’ descriptions. In addition, control your site updating and adding new information to it.
Keywords are really important and will help to get your products found. A lot of sellers don’t take them into account but it’s a huge mistake. SEO-friendly shops are set at the top of web searches.
To have many customers means to spread your product all over the world and social media is a helpful tool in it. Create accounts in popular social channels such as Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, etc and start a community. Post photos of your crafts with descriptions, set its advertising and communicate with your followers. If people see you making your items with passion and soul, they will be more interested in your creations. Also you can hold competitions, giveaways with famous bloggers to get your name out everywhere. Announce new things and changes on your site or blog and interact with your audience.
Special promotions
There will always be customers who love what you are selling but won’t be too happy about the price. Periodic discounts or special promotions can help you turn them over to your side. Etsy can offer you an option which allows you to choose a type of promotion and its schedule for your shop:
sales;
offers to interested customers;
coupons.
With different promotions seller holds the attention of shoppers and encourage them to add more objects to their crafts. You can use social channels to share your promotions. One of the ways how to succeed is to send out promotions or their updates to Instagram, Pinterest, etc. Even you can set your shop to do it automatically to save time.
Pricing strategy
Pricing your products too high can make them prohibitive to the majority of the Etsy visitors. On the other hand, pricing them too low can negatively impact your brand value or even make it infeasible for you to run your business. Therefore, the right pricing strategy is a crucial factor for success, be it on Etsy or elsewhere.
There are two options before you when it comes to pricing. In the first approach, you can consider all the costs that you incur for each product – inventory, logistics, labour, marketing, and so on. Then set an appropriate profit margin on the cost to arrive at your ideal price for each product.
In the second approach, you perform extensive research of your potential customers and other sellers on Etsy to arrive at an average price for your product category, variant, and quality. You can ask other sellers in your Etsy forum group whether that price makes sense to them. If you receive a good response and can cover your costs under that price, then that’s a reasonable price too.
Google shopping
Leveraging Google Shopping can make a tremendous impact on your sales. When it comes to Google Shopping, the sky’s the only limit. Etsy offers a Google Shopping integration, albeit for a small fee. Sellers who know how to utilise Google Shopping to boost search engine traffic to their website can experience a massive boost to their traffic and sales. Of course, Google Shopping might seem like an expensive advertising option, especially if you are a small seller. However, it allows you to set your expense budgets and accords you complete control over your advertising expense. Once you begin to use Google Shopping, you will not be dependent on the traffic from Etsy alone. Here are two types of Google advertising options on Etsy:
1. Google Shopping Engine Ads
There are platforms that help people find and compare items from different stores. They are called shopping engines and are useful for exposing your item in case of shoppers not searching on Etsy. With the help of Shopping Engine Ads your listings are auto-syndicated out to popular shopping engines for free.
2. Promoted Listings
In addition to advertisements, Etsy gave sellers the opportunity to advertise independently their products in Google search.
Then there are only 3 settings:
Daily budget (minimum $ 1);
The country of users who will be shown the ad (now you can select one of the countries – USA, Canada, Australia, UK, France, Germany);
Choose an option to add all new listings to advertising.
Use apps
Etsy allows you to use apps and integrations to make technology work for you. You can use a vast variety of apps to boost your productivity and upgrade your ecommerce strategy. For instance, you can use apps to simplify your logistics. The Etsy orders can be directly routed to your shipping partners, instead of you having to assign them manually. Likewise, you can use email apps to send personalised emails to your shoppers. You can also use apps for allowing your shoppers to customise your products, enhance your images, schedule your social media posts, and do much more.
Etsy grants you a dedicated space for broadcasting top offers, special promotions, sale announcements, and so on. This space at the top of your Etsy shop page is called shop announcements. You can add featured products or any other announcements that can help you improve your sales. You can even employ SEO techniques to boost your visibility on Etsy as well as search engines.
Conclusion
To transform your Etsy shop into a sustainable source of revenue, it’s not enough that you bring in new customers. You should also protect your existing customers from acquisition by the competition. A bulk of your revenues will come from your most ardent fans, and you must have a strong customer-centric business model to reward them for their continued loyalty. Retaining an old customer is always cheaper than acquiring a new one. So, if you want to become successful on Etsy, make sure that each of your customers receives a smooth and rewarding shopping experience with you. That way, you can spend less money on acquiring new customers and instead focus on improving your profitability.
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