brandchild
Newbie
- Mar 28, 2021
- 1
- 29
Etsy is completely an open marketplace where shop owners sell myriad of different items to millions of hungry shoppers around the world.
I know many of you guys have been selling on Etsy since a long time or at least have tested the water. Back in the days, the competition among sellers was so less. But nowadays, it seems new shops are just mushrooming every now and then. Especially during this pandemic, so many people have taken to Etsy, opened a new shop and gotten some nice side money. But with each passing day, the competition seems to be getting more and more.
From the point of opening new shops, Etsy has also gotten smarter. Now, it asks to submit an application form while opening a new shop, else your shop will be deactivated immediately. For example in India, Etsy has partnered with a third party service provider to verify authenticity of new shop owners.
Nevertheless, there is still scope to get your slice of the pie - simply because there is so much demand.
Once you cross the first hurdle of opening your shop on Etsy, the real test begins - creating your first listing. By this time, you should have selected your niche and must have decided what and how to promote.
Without further ado, I will now leave my 2 cents here. If it helps even a single person then it will be worth my time and effort to post this thread.
First step - choose your niche and product
The ITEMS fall into basically three categories:
Physical items:
There are many types of physical products sold on Etsy. A few of them being:
Digital products:
Services:
There are many more niches that don’t come to my mind now, but you get the idea.
Now you might be thinking what should you choose? The answer is, it depends. If you can actually create some handmade products, great, go create your shop. Otherwise you can create some digital products like resumes and sell them as well.
Second step - getting your product ready
For the sake of it, I will take the example of selling marketing materials for photographers.
For this, take the example of Etsy shop “ByStephanieDesign”
The shop has more than 23K sales with products being in the range of $15 to $65
So over the months and years, the sales actually add up.
Shops in other niches like “t shirts” sell thousands of items each month and make a killing.
So for our example, how can we come up with the marketing materials for photographers?
We need little bit of Photoshop skills and Canva is also a good tool.
We can also get the design elements from websites like Creative Fabrica which we will integrate into our marketing templates.(Creative Fabrica is now running a $1 summer sale, in which one can download more than 1M graphics and fonts)
Third step - creating actual listings
Once the products are ready, we need to create the actual listings.
We need to come up with square size listing images that will highlight our marketing materials
Listing images can be 1000x1000 pixel and of high quality that will increase our chances of higher number of sales. For example check this link:
https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/669703977/wedding-album-template-10x10-and-12x12?ref=shop_home_feat_4
Once the listing images are ready, open a word file or notepad in your system and start writing the product description.
Write some features of your products and how they will benefit the buyers and how they are good for different occasions…. You get the gist
Fourth step - Etsy Ads (optional, but recommended)
Note - Etsy also gives the option of advertising outside of Etsy and through third party partner Networks, for example Google Ads. Please ignore that option. That is a monstrous money sucker as far as your advertising budget is concerned.
Final thoughts
Some products like resumes require less effort to get started, but competition may be huge.
On the other hand, if you search for a listing “hire a programmer”, you will find only 7 listings - so the chances of getting sales is much more in this case. Once you get some sales you can branch out to other listings like “creating Shopify websites” and creating “clothes boutique website”.
I just explained the whole process for an example product. Now please choose your product, do the research, and get started.
If you have any questions regarding selling on Etsy or the products and services themselves, please ask me in the comments.
Good luck.
Note:
I know many of you guys have been selling on Etsy since a long time or at least have tested the water. Back in the days, the competition among sellers was so less. But nowadays, it seems new shops are just mushrooming every now and then. Especially during this pandemic, so many people have taken to Etsy, opened a new shop and gotten some nice side money. But with each passing day, the competition seems to be getting more and more.
From the point of opening new shops, Etsy has also gotten smarter. Now, it asks to submit an application form while opening a new shop, else your shop will be deactivated immediately. For example in India, Etsy has partnered with a third party service provider to verify authenticity of new shop owners.
Nevertheless, there is still scope to get your slice of the pie - simply because there is so much demand.
Once you cross the first hurdle of opening your shop on Etsy, the real test begins - creating your first listing. By this time, you should have selected your niche and must have decided what and how to promote.
Without further ado, I will now leave my 2 cents here. If it helps even a single person then it will be worth my time and effort to post this thread.
First step - choose your niche and product
The ITEMS fall into basically three categories:
- Physical (tangible) items
- Digital (intangible) items
- Services
Physical items:
There are many types of physical products sold on Etsy. A few of them being:
- Jewellery
- Vintage items (pots, jewellery, furniture)
- Dog I’d tags (personalized sell more)
- Dog collars
- Street signs
- House name plates (now in huge demand - both wooden and vinyl)
- Diffusers
- Gifts
- Pens
- Bed sheets
- T shirts (obviously, but the competition is huge)
- Mugs
- Crafts and Art
- Invitation cards and thank you cards
- And, many more…..
Digital products:
- Meal planners
- Yearly planners
- Debt reduction planner
- Printable invitation cards
- Printable Mandalas
- SVG (countless items) - low profit margin, but if you can come up with a good portfolio, profit can be considerable.
- Marketing material for photographers
- Resumes
- WordPress themes
- Shopify themes
- Lightroom presets
- Premade logo
- Premade websites
Services:
- Tarot card reading
- Astrology
- Love spell
- Money spell
- Psychic reading (drawing your future soulmate) - I believe this niche was started some one year back by a single seller and he was so popular and so was his shop. Now you can find thousands of people selling this same product. So you get the idea, how fierce the competition is on Etsy
- Website design
- Hire a programmer
- Beauty, boutique, salon, hair website design
- Website brand banners
- Logo design
There are many more niches that don’t come to my mind now, but you get the idea.
Now you might be thinking what should you choose? The answer is, it depends. If you can actually create some handmade products, great, go create your shop. Otherwise you can create some digital products like resumes and sell them as well.
Second step - getting your product ready
For the sake of it, I will take the example of selling marketing materials for photographers.
For this, take the example of Etsy shop “ByStephanieDesign”
The shop has more than 23K sales with products being in the range of $15 to $65
So over the months and years, the sales actually add up.
Shops in other niches like “t shirts” sell thousands of items each month and make a killing.
So for our example, how can we come up with the marketing materials for photographers?
We need little bit of Photoshop skills and Canva is also a good tool.
We can also get the design elements from websites like Creative Fabrica which we will integrate into our marketing templates.(Creative Fabrica is now running a $1 summer sale, in which one can download more than 1M graphics and fonts)
Third step - creating actual listings
Once the products are ready, we need to create the actual listings.
We need to come up with square size listing images that will highlight our marketing materials
Listing images can be 1000x1000 pixel and of high quality that will increase our chances of higher number of sales. For example check this link:
https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/669703977/wedding-album-template-10x10-and-12x12?ref=shop_home_feat_4
Once the listing images are ready, open a word file or notepad in your system and start writing the product description.
Write some features of your products and how they will benefit the buyers and how they are good for different occasions…. You get the gist
Fourth step - Etsy Ads (optional, but recommended)
- Etsy ads can be a great way to get some good traffic and some nice sells. This is how it works:
- Unlike Google or Facebook Ads, there are no campaigns and ad sets here.
- You just select all or some of your listings and set a daily budget for your ads.
- I would suggest to start with $10 per day or $5 for that matter - depending upon your comfort level.
- Etsy will study how your listings perform on your ads in initial few days and will optimize and decide which listing to spend the most on.
- Start with a small budget and check which of your listings are giving better results.
- Unselect the listings that are not performing well in terms of orders.
- Scale up your daily ad budget if you start getting good results.
Note - Etsy also gives the option of advertising outside of Etsy and through third party partner Networks, for example Google Ads. Please ignore that option. That is a monstrous money sucker as far as your advertising budget is concerned.
Final thoughts
Some products like resumes require less effort to get started, but competition may be huge.
On the other hand, if you search for a listing “hire a programmer”, you will find only 7 listings - so the chances of getting sales is much more in this case. Once you get some sales you can branch out to other listings like “creating Shopify websites” and creating “clothes boutique website”.
I just explained the whole process for an example product. Now please choose your product, do the research, and get started.
If you have any questions regarding selling on Etsy or the products and services themselves, please ask me in the comments.
Good luck.
Note:
- This my first post here, and No, I am not selling anything through this post. Whatever your questions, please ask in the comments.
- English is not my first language, so please excuse any mistakes.
