Everything you need to know, in one place.
Etsy is a dedicated marketplace for handmade items, vintage products, and craft supplies.
Etsy is a dedicated marketplace for handmade items, vintage products, and craft supplies. It was founded in 2005 and became one of the largest online retailers of such items by focusing on something that sets it apart from general-purpose marketplaces – all Etsy products should be unique and handmade. This aspect defines the buyer's base on Etsy as well – customers looking for something they cannot get in general marketplaces.
According to Etsy rules, there are three types of products allowed to be listed on their platform – items made and designed by the seller himself, authentic vintage items of at least twenty years of age, and craft supplies. If you use a manufacturing partner, you need to state that information in your listing, which is important to keep in mind when choosing your product line. It is better to read the handmade policy on Etsy carefully before listing anything so that the item does not end up being removed from the website.
First of all, you need to open a free Etsy account and set your shop preferences regarding language, currency, and location. Then, choose a name that has not been taken yet. The process of opening a shop consists of providing information about your shop and filling out the form. Etsy will walk you through a process and ask you some basic information about how you will be paid. It will take no more than 20-30 minutes to complete this task. It is also important to pick a name that you would like to keep even when you change the product line.
When creating a listing on Etsy, you need to provide high-quality pictures of the product from several angles, use the title describing the product in the words used for searching, and provide detailed information regarding materials, care, and other aspects in the description. Etsy allows sellers to create variations for the product under a single listing without duplicating it. Filling in all the optional fields Etsy provides, not just the required ones, may help your product to become more popular.
To price your item on Etsy, you need to think not only about material costs but also add your time, shipping, and Etsy's fee to the price. It is one of the common beginner mistakes when they decide to price the item according to other listings without taking into account that the market is filled with cheap and non-profitable listings. It is better to add all your costs to the price and calculate your time per hour before publishing the product.
Every listing costs $0.20 and stays active for four months or until the item sells. Also, every sale means 6.5% transaction fee from the item price plus shipping. In addition, payment processing costs 3% of every item sold plus some additional flat fee per order in the USA, while the rates are different abroad. Etsy's Offsite Ads program takes 12 to 15% fee from the sale traced back to one of their outside ads. In average, most sellers pay from 12 to 20% fees from each sale.
Etsy search engine highly depends on your title and thirteen available tags that should reflect not general terms but the keywords used by the customer for searching your product. Consistently selling products, sending shipments on time, and receiving good reviews help to increase your ranking in the search engine because Etsy takes into account the history of your shop when calculating the rankings of particular listings. Refreshing old listings that do not sell may be a cheap way to revive an unpopular product without creating a new listing.
Etsy has two options – flat-rate and calculated shipping when the cost of the shipment is calculated automatically according to the destination and package weight. Most sellers find calculated shipping more accurate because they just need to weigh the product. It is cheaper to buy the shipping label through Etsy, which automatically provides the customer with the tracking link. The good packaging shows that you care about the product and customer.
With Etsy Ads you can pay to promote your listing on Etsy and select the daily budget for it yourself in the shop's dashboard. Offsite Ads are created automatically when Etsy places the listing on the websites outside Etsy such as Google or social networks, and takes a fee only if the sale is made due to the particular ad. Shops, selling a large amount of money annually, do not have the possibility to turn off this feature. To start with it, it is better to try Etsy Ads for your best-performing listings with a small budget.
The communication with customers and realistic handling time are very important to receive positive reviews from customers because the Etsy reviews are one of the main trust indicators for the new buyers. Prompt shipping and fast response to customers' messages significantly affect the reviews of the shop. One properly resolved complaint in messages often prevents negative feedback on the shop.
Some of the mistakes made by new sellers are pricing the item cheaply just to compete in price, using a small number of blurry pictures, not filling in fields like materials or size. Some others are not paying attention to the handmade policy and disclosure of the partnership used, trying to spread a small starting budget among many products instead of picking a few ones. Most of these mistakes are fixable, so the regular check of your shop from the perspective of the customer is helpful.
When a few listings sell consistently, it is better to expand into the products that are popular among the buyers of your items than scattering into unrelated categories. Building an email list and social following helps to reach past buyers who will not be reached by Etsy's algorithms anymore. The shop that uses its first sales as a starting point instead of a finish tends to survive in the future.