The Etsy MEGA Thread... Best Practices, Use, Etc.

[becks22]

Good Morning everyone,

While perusing the forum, I've seen a few smaller threads that mention Etsy but not a specific Etsy thread. I didn't know how many of you are selling on Etsy or use it at all. I thought this might be a good place to post any tips for Etsy for sellers and any other feedback that buyers can offer.

I personally do not have an Etsy shop but my mom does. I do all the backend stuff for her since she just figured out how to use email about 2 months ago. I take the photos, put up the listings, and do pretty much everything besides the actual sewing of the products. My mom only uses it as a hobby in conjunction with doing craft fairs around Christmas time so she isn't looking to sell a ton especially since she only can sew so much at one time but I figured they are people on here are do use Etsy as a business? Prints, digital downloads, pattterns, etc can all be scaleable and sold on Etsy so I just thought I would start a thread to learn more. Etsy also might be a good place to sell if you're just starting off and are flipping items as vintage items are pretty popular on Etsy.

Etsy is much like Amazon where you don't have control but you do have the ability of being a little bit more creative as compared to Amazon's storefront.

I've tried Etsy's version of PPC and haven't had a ton of luck with it. Has anyone tried their selling features for advertising or uses Pattern?

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

I've changed the thread title, hope to see this thread blow up with some great tips!

It is absolutely awful.

Of course it is, ETSY is now a public company.

You, the customer, is now the 4th stakeholder. Its shareholders are now the #1 top dog, and that means squeezing out every dime of profit from you, the customer. Ironically, they were able to grow and go public by putting customers FIRST. Now that this customer first philosophy has achieved its purpose, you are demoted to #4 where you will be used once again, this time for profit maximization.

 

[AnneC]

How does this work, if you have a minute to answer?

Currently, I make most of my sales on Amazon. On Etsy, I target the same audience, but I sell digital products (no hard costs). So, an example would be if I were to sell a rice cooker on Amazon, then I could sell rice cooker recipe cookbooks on Etsy.

I do this solely to collect email addresses on Etsy. One of these days, I’ll do something useful with that email list.

 

[AnneC]

Did anyone get switched over to the new Etsy ad platform?

When it was announced, we were talking about it and @1step was joking that it couldn't get worse, but it did.

It is absolutely awful.

 

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[becks22]

Her revenue is pretty much slim to none. She sells a few thousand dollars over the year-- it's more of a hobby. My mom isn't interested in making money plus she can spend upwards of 20-30 hours on some of her more intricate quilts.

We're not looking to scale her store right now but we are looking to improve her listings and get more sales if possible. I've played around with the storefront but haven't seen too much in results as of yet.

 

[broswoodwork]

What do you sell? Do you only market/ advertise on Etsy or do you have other platforms with followers that are redirected to your Etsy?

Hi @cieddss

I sell furniture. Originally, I was almost 100% Etsy, but now I'm about 30% on etsy and mostly on my own channel that I drive traffic to with Facebook, offerup, and word of mouth.

Etsy keeps forcing changes that aren't particularly suited to my business, and there's another huge one in the pipe that I'm under NDA about, so I'm trying to move as much business as possible off of there. Although, I'd like to move some new business on there (and elsewhere) that plays a bit nicer with the direction they're forcing the marketplace.

 

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[woken]

only have the one product, but i can make it in many different colors, so i guess each one can count as another item.

You should make one listing with all the colours available and then duplicate that listing and switch the title, tags and photos to another colour.

You need multiple listings to get more traffic to your shop. Over 30, but 100+ work best.

When you first open your store you’ll have around 1-2 months of boost. Etsy gives it to new shops.
Make sure you start right so you can have the best possible outcome.


Etsy is an one and done deal. Once you put in the required upfront work for your listings, you don’t need to do much to keep the momentum going.

I am currently funding my personal expenses through etsy, so I know a thing or two about it.Etsy is where I first tasted success with a £30k opening month.

Also, Etsy should be one of your sales channels. Once you set it up, you can then reuse everything you have for another sales channel.

Let me know if you need any help with ranking listings on the first page, etc.

 

[broswoodwork]

Did anyone get switched over to the new Etsy ad platform?

When it was announced, we were talking about it and @1step was joking that it couldn't get worse, but it did.

It is absolutely awful.

They haven't forced me to switch over yet. When they do, I'll test it briefly, and then likely pull ad spending.

*oops... spoke too soon. Just got switched.

Such a shame. I was getting like a 1300% roi. At least promoted listings was only 25% of my sales on platform.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Speaking of ETSY, I've been waiting for the stock to pull back so I can be a buyer... I'm guessing their earnings report will be pretty stellar as it is one of the companies to benefit big from CV19, even after the crisis abides. Looks like I'm late to the party on it.

 

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[soulprenuer]

Good Morning everyone,

While perusing the forum, I've seen a few smaller threads that mention Etsy but not a specific Etsy thread. I didn't know how many of you are selling on Etsy or use it at all. I thought this might be a good place to post any tips for Etsy for sellers and any other feedback that buyers can offer.

I personally do not have an Etsy shop but my mom does. I do all the backend stuff for her since she just figured out how to use email about 2 months ago. I take the photos, put up the listings, and do pretty much everything besides the actual sewing of the products. My mom only uses it as a hobby in conjunction with doing craft fairs around Christmas time so she isn't looking to sell a ton especially since she only can sew so much at one time but I figured they are people on here are do use Etsy as a business? Prints, digital downloads, pattterns, etc can all be scaleable and sold on Etsy so I just thought I would start a thread to learn more. Etsy also might be a good place to sell if you're just starting off and are flipping items as vintage items are pretty popular on Etsy.

Etsy is much like Amazon where you don't have control but you do have the ability of being a little bit more creative as compared to Amazon's storefront.

I've tried Etsy's version of PPC and haven't had a ton of luck with it. Has anyone tried their selling features for advertising or uses Pattern?

I know this thread is quite old but I thought i'd chime in! I do have an Etsy shop that I started in Fall 2021, and so far its been doing better than I thought, I have like 4 digital downloads up and I make like $300-450 a month, which makes me feel like it can be scaled if I put more time into it. There's a lot of research that goes into the process but its nice because after its up and running there is not that much maintenance after it goes live. Plus its a pretty low start-up cost for the digital download business.

Is anyone else doing digital downloads these days?

 

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[1step]

They're stealthily getting us to pay for their national advertising by pushing as many of our promoted listing ad dollars as possible onto low roi Google shopping ads.

Quite a genius way to lower their customer acquisition cost. I am sure shareholders will be pleased. How long will etsy sellers allow this to happen?

Based on how poor stats/analytics are on etsy there's no way they have the capabilities to run ads for everyone profitably. I would possibly give Amazon or Google the benefit of the doubt in regards to this but not etsy, there's just no way this is profitable for sellers.

 

[broswoodwork]

I've debated whether I should use Etsy for my company, Lienka Frames. I originally wanted to launch on Facebook, but I would have to promote it via ads. With Etsy, people are already in the art searching mood. I figured they would stumble upon my page easily. I heard with the Etsy Plus being 10/month, you can opt for ads and stuff that eventually bring the price down to $2/monthly. Is this true? What are your thoughts on where to start a new arts and craft company for a unique product. Here is a sample of what I am selling.
Lienka Frames

If you're already making them, you only have $.20/ every 3 months to lose by listing them on etsy. Definitely worth the trial. I personally haven't messed with etsy plus yet, though I did intend to try it out originally.

If you've got your tags set properly for what people are searching when they want to buy your exact item, and your first 140 characters of item description does the same, you'll get found; additionally, despite the new wonky advertising system they've implemented to push us onto Google shopping, the price per clicks are staying consistent and fair. Still <$.10/ per click on my end, so if you set a modest daily budget, you should get some traction there.

How much does it cost to ship your item clear across the country, and can you pack that expense directly into your product price without scaring people away?

 

[AnneC]

I heard with the Etsy Plus being 10/month, you can opt for ads and stuff that eventually bring the price down to $2/monthly.

I haven’t tried Plus, but Etsy has stated that it doesn’t help with rankings. It sounds like you get $5 worth of advertising and 15 listings ($.20 each = $3). There looks to be some other minor perks, and I noticed a beta “notify when out of stock” option that I believe they will switch to Plus.

As @broswoodwork said, there’s really no major downside to trying Etsy. It costs you 20 cents to list something, and it’s really easy. Also, you are getting your products in front of an audience of women shoppers, who are looking to buy something. On Facebook, people aren’t necessarily going to be in the buying mood while browsing.

 

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[Xeon]

Thanks for the heads up! I won't bother wasting my money. I guess playing the long game is better rather than try and take short cuts.

I've been adding in as many items as I can based on another comment in this thread or another talking about how the more items you have the better you rank...

I used to think that having more listings have a direct correlation on sales, but I now feel it's not true.

Etsy title and tags are also overrated.

My own conclusion after watching numerous etsy videos and tracking 50 competitors in eRank.com, is that while Etsy has a giant audience, you can't get access to that audience (aka getting found in search) unless you've lots of sales. It's a paradox, so one strategy is to use social media and outside ads to drive traffic and get sales from that method. Once the store has consistent sales, Etsy's algorithm will then really start to take it seriously and push it on Etsy search and that's when it snowballs from there.

Also, Etsy ads really sucks and feels like some primitive advertising system from the 1990s but that's another story.

 

[Deleted68316]

I am helping a friend with Etsy. Running a $3 a day ad. He has been profitable thanks to them.

Two things about Etsy ads:
1- Run them with the same amount of ad spend per day for at least 30 days (they say it to you pretty clear when you set up the ad)
2- wait at least 30 days to judge them. They usually start getting profitable at the end of the 30 days.

I know about point 2 because I saw a video on youtube saying the same things and it is actually true because the same happened to me. Nothing for almost a month, and then boom.

I have also lowered the price of the listings by 20% at a certain point and that helped as well.

I have noticed that if you have good things, as usual, people buy.

For instance, we had a good canvas with a great image but due to copyright issues that listing has been taken away. And guess what? It was selling like crazy.

I see people with great canvas pictures and cannot figure out how and where they get the license for those images since I have not been able to find them anywhere (Shutterstock, Getty, etc...).

 

[Marigold]

Great info, thanks so much for sharing.

Yes, I've actually just released a new product on my other website and I'm selling it through etsy to boost my shop sales. It's got me 20 sales so that's given me a good boost. I might run that strategy a few more times to get things going.

I've also just set up the discount for abandoned carts and favourited items.

 

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[AnneC]

Heads up, Etsy shop owners. Another half-baked Etsy feature was released today: the Star Seller badge. Totally idiotic, for multiple reasons.

 

[AnneC]

There’s a relatively new feature in Etsy Ads that lets you turn on/off relevant keywords. Etsy says it’s a “test,” so I don’t have a lot of faith in it. We’re only running ads on a handful of listings, but we did go through and scrub out some bad keywords.

 

[Nicole]

I'm not a seller on etsy, just an occasional buyer, and I have liked etsy so far when I'm looking for any kind of arts and crafts. I didn't know, until I read this thread, that etsy was yet another one of the businesses that had previously been privately owned, went public, and went downhill in a lot of ways after going public. I've seen this happen with a lot of other companies. It makes me wonder if anyone thinks of designing a company that they create with some kind of legal clause that says, 'This company can never be sold on the public market,' (I'm not sure how that would be phrased, legally) 'it can only be privately owned.' There would be some kind of clause that says that a public corporation cannot buy the goodwill of a private corporation, because it is not possible, based on thousands of examples, for a publicly owned company to behave the same way that the company behaved when it was privately owned. You shouldn't be allowed to legally buy the goodwill, the name and reputation, and act like you have the same identity, when so many examples have shown us that you never will have the same identity as the original corporation did, and the changes in the companies are non-trivial changes, major, substantial changes in what the company is, so that it's false advertising to claim that it's still the same company now. The absolute minimum is that it should be required to change the name of the company, when it buys all their assets. We're not etsy anymore, and we're not going to pretend that we are. We're not all-natural Breyers Ice Cream anymore, instead we are Chemicals-R-Us, and we're not gonna lie about it to you. And so on.

There should be some kind of statistic about how many privately owned companies exist, versus publicly traded companies that have stocks and shareholders. Is that number of private companies decreasing, statistically, compared to publicly traded companies nowadays?

How do you make arrangements to hand your 'kingdom' down to your 'heirs,' to make sure that your kingdom keeps the same spirit that you wanted it to have? Have you trained your replacement?

I just didn't realize until I read this thread that etsy was just another one of those companies, screwing things up from the sellers' point of view, behind the scenes, after going public.

 

[woken]

What are your thoughts on Etsy titles? Long? Short? What's working today?

long, robot-type style SEO.

Title must also be found in the description and tags. Most don’t bother with including the title words in the copy per se; personally i just copy the title and paste it as first line.

 

[1step]

So now for PPC you can no longer set your bid per click? Now you just set your daily budget and then etsy spends it how they see fit with CPC that they see fit? No thanks, I am good

It was already bad enough that they wouldn't allow you to choose keywords... Now you can't choose keywords or the bid.. Who in the hell thought that was a good idea?

 

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[rollerskates]

OOOOOH, I somehow missed this thread! I've been selling on Etsy for a number of years, but I've not fast laned any aspect of it. Always working on ways to do that, though. I used to sell handmade wedding stuff but the brides--AAAAUUUGGGGH! I have found success flipping vintage stuff on there, though, so I mainly do that now.

The new ad system is wretched, and I won't be using it. Anyway, looking forward to see what others have to say.

 

[broswoodwork]

collect email addresses

See, I'm not a very good business person yet, but I'm learning as I go.

I neglected filing buyer's email addresses for the first 3 years, and decided when Etsy was going to start coercing free shipping that I should probably have those... They make it really hard to dig them out efficiently, and this guy here made the only tool I could find to speedup the process:

How to Collect Emails from Etsy 2020 | Etsy Email Downloader

An article on the power of email marketing and how to download and organize all your Etsy sales data emails quickly. Read the tutorail now.

codyschneider.com

It still only let's you scrape about 30 at a time, but that was better than going page by page for each individual one 600 times.

Hopefully others who happen upon this thread may find it useful.

 

[foodiepersecond]

I've debated whether I should use Etsy for my company, Lienka Frames. I originally wanted to launch on Facebook, but I would have to promote it via ads. With Etsy, people are already in the art searching mood. I figured they would stumble upon my page easily. I heard with the Etsy Plus being 10/month, you can opt for ads and stuff that eventually bring the price down to $2/monthly. Is this true? What are your thoughts on where to start a new arts and craft company for a unique product. Here is a sample of what I am selling.
Lienka Frames

 

[foodiepersecond]

Offer both at different price points. More listings is more opportunities to be seen for minimal cost. Also, if the artwork avails itself to digital download, you can actually "fastlane" it right out of the gate over there.

I wish. Seeing the different layers, patterns, textures, etc make the art work unique. Definitely a more tangible item than digital. Always open on fastlane ideas though.

 

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[AnneC]

In case there are other Etsy sellers still watching this thread, check your emails for another Etsy ads overhaul.

I think the phrase “so you’ll be required to participate” is a controversial choice of words.

This comes when I finally got my ad spend down to a reasonable ACoS. Guess we’ll see how the new system pans out.

 

[AnneC]

I've tried a couple of times after my first store, many years ago, got suspended.

If you’ve been suspended, it’s doubtful. They definitely track names and addresses... probably IPs, too.

I had an Etsy shop with a friend. She bought me out, but we forgot to remove my name and address in one of the account settings. A year later, when her shop was suspended, my new Etsy shop was too. Fortunately, it was just because her credit card expired, so the payment didn’t go through. So, it was quickly resolved, and I was able to show that I was no longer associated with that Etsy shop. But they’re definitely watching.

 

[AnneC]

Curious on how everyone responds to negative reviews? Etsy lets you comment on a bad review but most people obviously try to work it out with the buyer directly. Any thoughts?

If it's outside of your control or otherwise violates ToS (delivery delays, profanity, mentions another website), you can use the"Report this review" link. Lately, anything that mentions slow delivery due to post office delays have been automatically removed, by using the link.

Otherwise, I usually send the customer a message and try to work things out. If they don't respond, I don't really worry about it because the reviews roll over so quickly. Plus, NOT having all 5-star reviews makes the shop look more legit, I think.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Heads up, Etsy shop owners. Another half-baked Etsy feature was released today: the Star Seller badge. Totally idiotic, for multiple reasons.

A squeezing of the stakeholder towel? More profit, less value for everyone but the Etsy sellers?

 

[WJK]

Good Morning everyone,

While perusing the forum, I've seen a few smaller threads that mention Etsy but not a specific Etsy thread. I didn't know how many of you are selling on Etsy or use it at all. I thought this might be a good place to post any tips for Etsy for sellers and any other feedback that buyers can offer.

I personally do not have an Etsy shop but my mom does. I do all the backend stuff for her since she just figured out how to use email about 2 months ago. I take the photos, put up the listings, and do pretty much everything besides the actual sewing of the products. My mom only uses it as a hobby in conjunction with doing craft fairs around Christmas time so she isn't looking to sell a ton especially since she only can sew so much at one time but I figured they are people on here are do use Etsy as a business? Prints, digital downloads, pattterns, etc can all be scaleable and sold on Etsy so I just thought I would start a thread to learn more. Etsy also might be a good place to sell if you're just starting off and are flipping items as vintage items are pretty popular on Etsy.

Etsy is much like Amazon where you don't have control but you do have the ability of being a little bit more creative as compared to Amazon's storefront.

I've tried Etsy's version of PPC and haven't had a ton of luck with it. Has anyone tried their selling features for advertising or uses Pattern?

I used to have a etsy shop. I sold stuff regularly. When they went public, the sales totally stopped. So, I no long have an etsy shop. Oh well.