Do you want to start your own e-commerce business but don’t know which platform to use? Would you like to learn how to sell on Etsy?
Are you good at creating products other people can use?
On Etsy, you can start a home e-commerce business right away, selling everything from handmade items to vintage products and creative services. Isn’t that cool?
You bet it is! Etsy makes it easy for you to start a business and scale it as long as you have the proper business model and marketing strategy.
In this article, you’ll learn how to sell on Etsy, specifically how to:
- Understand What Etsy Really Is
- Create An Account
- Set Your Shop Preferences
- Choose Your Etsy Shop Name
- Add Items To Your Shop
- Implement A Marketing Strategy
- Be Present On Social Media (or Wherever Your Audience Is At)
- Choose Your Payment Method
- Implement Etsy SEO And Price Optimization
Ready? Let’s start.
1. Understanding What Etsy Really Is
To profitably sell on Etsy, understand what the platform is. Etsy is an e-commerce website on which you can display and sell hand-crafted items as well as digital products. You can create products, submit them and then sit back and watch the passive income roll in.
2. Create An Account
To lucratively sell on Etsy, examine Etsy’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Visit Etsy.com and sign in. To register, fill out the form and create an account with your email address—or choose Continue with Google, Continue with Facebook, or Continue with Apple. Check your inbox for an email from [email protected] with confirmation instructions to confirm your account.
3. Set Your Shop Preferences
To profitably sell on Etsy, input all your personal details and proceed to the “Shop Preferences” page. There, specify your store’s basic settings, including your preferred language, home country and currency.
Click “Save” and continue. Choose the right settings because they affect your store’s popularity and the type of potential shoppers you attract.
4. Choose Your Etsy Shop Name
To beneficially sell on Etsy, be very creative, selective and meticulous. Before you open your Etsy shop, take time to choose the right business name—because when you start, you can only change your name once.
Your shop name can be anything you like, but it should be very simple, easy to remember, and most importantly, reflective of your products and values. Make sure the shop name is catchy and 4 to 20 characters long. Hit “save and continue”.
5. Add Items To Your Shop
To lucratively sell on Etsy, list items on Etsy that are handmade, vintage (at least 20 years old) or crafted materials.
Stock your shop and add as many listings as possible; you can start with at least 10 listings.
Give each item a descriptive title; this makes it appear professionally on Etsy. Be precise and avoid using too many words in the title. Include at least three high-quality images of what you’re selling.
Remember the buyer can zoom in on your images, so make them look as good as possible.
Add a description that contains details of the products you are listing in your shop. Write a persuasive description and make the potential buyer curious enough to delve into the product details to learn more.
Finally, take advantage of all 13 “tags” available per item on Etsy.
Customers discover your item by typing keywords into the search bar. Consider what a buyer may put into a search bar to discover your product—use the same as keywords for your tags.
Enter your pricing information, including the price of each of your items. Insert in your description all relevant facts about your shipping processes, such as the shipping services, charges, country of origin, processing time, and item weight and size.
Preview your full listing to see how it appears to prospective customers. Publish your listing so your consumers can see it.
You can sell on Etsy everything from bath bombs and woodwork to frames, resin crafts and even T-shirts. (For T-shirts, purchase the T-shirts and inscribe your designs on them.)
6. Implement A Marketing Strategy
To sell on Etsy, implement an effective marketing strategy so you get your products to show on the first and second pages of search results.
The higher your product ranks, the more likely you can make consistent sales.
First, conduct market research to identify your ideal customer—the more you can figure out and know about your target customer, the more you can tailor a marketing campaign to his or her needs.
Second, keep in mind that unique positioning is important. Find some competitors—in other words, a few shops that are similar to yours and sell products in the same niche—analyze what your competitors do, and look at their Etsy shops and listings to compare your shop with your competitors’ stores.
7. Be Present On Social Media (Or Wherever Your Audiences Are At)
To sell productively on Etsy, engage your prospective customers on platforms where they are present. Be active on social media to increase your brand awareness and drive more sales. Pop out questions about what your customers can be searching for on social media and provide relevant answers to the questions.
8. Choose Your Payment Method
To successfully sell on Etsy, add your bank details to your Etsy account to begin receiving payments from your Etsy transactions. Fill out the deposit schedule as to how often and when you wish to be paid.
Choose from daily, weekly, biweekly or monthly. Note that payments can take up to five business days to reach your bank account.
9. Implement Etsy SEO And Price Optimization
Get your products to appear on the top and second pages of search results to increase your chances of selling on Etsy. Your chances of consistently making sales increase with the position of your goods on the pages.
Take Etsy SEO and price optimization more seriously if you want to start generating money on Etsy. Etsy SEO makes your products more visible, resulting in increased purchases.
Also, optimize your pricing; undercutting can lead to a price war, while overpricing can result in no sales. So you must consistently strike a balance.
Etsy SEO, like other platforms, uses keywords. To achieve this, research what customers are searching for, then incorporate those keywords into your product description and tags.
Recap
To sell on Etsy, sign up and set up your shop preferences. Select your shop’s language and country. Then select how often you want to sell—start on a part-time basis but later on graduate to a full-time seller status so you can ultimately enjoy the benefits of Etsy sales.
Enter your shop name. Experts recommend a creative name—something catchy— but check the availability, and keep in mind the name can only be 20 characters long.
Pick a name that represents you (what your shop is about and what you’re selling). Stock your shop, and add as many listings as you can: 10 or more is great to start with.
Be consistent with the process to optimize your profits.