[AMA] Etsy seller since 2015 – scaled to 7 figures per year

[khazael]

Hey everyone,

Wanted to post about Etsy here since I don’t see much conversations about it.

I’ve been selling on Etsy since 2015. Started small, learned the platform the hard way -made a lots of mistakes-, and over time scaled it into a 7-figure yearly business. Etsy is still a big part of it, but over the last few years I’ve been putting a lot of effort into growing my own site so I’m not 100% dependent on the marketplace.

I’m starting this AMA because there’s a lot of noise around Etsy right now, and most advice comes from people who either had a short-term win or never scaled past a certain point.

I’ve dealt with:

• Scaling listings in competitive niches
• What actually moves the needle in Etsy SEO
• Pricing, free shipping, samples, and offer testing
• Growing without tripping trust or account issues
• Running Etsy alongside a standalone site
• Things that worked, and plenty that didn’t
• Automation, tools, etc
• Ai, listing optimization, what to do and what not to do

Not selling anything, not offering services, and no DMs. Just sharing real experience and answering questions for anyone trying to turn Etsy into something serious.

Ask whatever you want.

 

[meerce]

Nice to hear.
Did you have multiple accounts or single?
What niche are you in, if you dont mind asking

 

[NirvanaWolf]

So you're selling your own handmade products or selling chinese products?

 

[Panther28]

So you're selling your own handmade products or selling chinese products?

Wasted clanker time i think, is all their selling. lol Last sentence is a giveaway, seen that style flying around a few posts here. "Alot of noise right now" and "just sharing real experiance" are the giveaways.

 

[Project Limitless]

Etsy used to be good a few years back. Now it's a task to filter out good products from all the cheap ass resellers. These sellers are so lazy they even use aliexpress images lol

Anyway, what niche are you into? Physical or digital products?

 

[Dubelyon]

please recommend any VAs tht can help me with designs and listings?

 

[khazael]

Nice to hear.
Did you have multiple accounts or single?
What niche are you in, if you dont mind asking

I started with 1 account in 2015.. within a month I scaled to 3 to dominate search first page. They had a rule where you cannot be in the first page more than once organically then again with ads.

We are in the furniture niche.

 

[khazael]

So you're selling your own handmade products or selling chinese products?

We are selling made-to-order products.

Wasted clanker time i think, is all their selling. lol Last sentence is a giveaway, seen that style flying around a few posts here. "Alot of noise right now" and "just sharing real experiance" are the giveaways.

Nah.. I believe in sharing real stuff here.. you don’t know why we had to do to be here now sharing experiences.. hiring people, over hiring people during COVID.. letting go employees (half of them around 16) then.. thing going bad after.. accounting, getting scammed with investments… highly targeted scams trying to pose as customers to get 10k out of us, you name it.

I believe we can share real thing here..

please recommend any VAs tht can help me with designs and listings?

I tried anything but honestly indeed got the best of them…
Now we still have 3 VAs

Let’s say you can have someone 20 hours a week for $200. For me not bad…

Etsy used to be good a few years back. Now it's a task to filter out good products from all the cheap ass resellers. These sellers are so lazy they even use aliexpress images lol

Anyway, what niche are you into? Physical or digital products?

Yes! They used to be good they still good in a different way. They have been trying to remove sellers that resell but the big influx has been in jewelry. Now you see the same in canvas prints, 80% come from China and probably the same maker.. at least when you tear down the canvas to do a reverse engineering you see the same barcode all over those prints.

Nowadays, we have our images all over aliexpress with our products, they even copied our anssembly instructions.

 

[Rawspele]

Hey everyone,

Wanted to post about Etsy here since I don’t see much conversations about it.

I’ve been selling on Etsy since 2015. Started small, learned the platform the hard way -made a lots of mistakes-, and over time scaled it into a 7-figure yearly business. Etsy is still a big part of it, but over the last few years I’ve been putting a lot of effort into growing my own site so I’m not 100% dependent on the marketplace.

I’m starting this AMA because there’s a lot of noise around Etsy right now, and most advice comes from people who either had a short-term win or never scaled past a certain point.

I’ve dealt with:

• Scaling listings in competitive niches
• What actually moves the needle in Etsy SEO
• Pricing, free shipping, samples, and offer testing
• Growing without tripping trust or account issues
• Running Etsy alongside a standalone site
• Things that worked, and plenty that didn’t
• Automation, tools, etc
• Ai, listing optimization, what to do and what not to do

Not selling anything, not offering services, and no DMs. Just sharing real experience and answering questions for anyone trying to turn Etsy into something serious.

Ask whatever you want.

are you growing your own site organically or with ads?

 

[komedya]

Should we choose Etsy ads or social media ads?

 

[adwaitk007]

Etsy been shit for POD for me. Lost a lot on chargeback and never going that way again!

 

[khazael]

Should we choose Etsy ads or social media ads?

3 years ago Etsy Ads were great… today, not so much. I still spend 2k to earn 5k.. for me is no good but I see it as investment to improve my CR.

Depends on your business, buyer persona and where they hang out. Your products are transactions/commercial or more inspirational driven?

For me TikTok and IG are a waste of money… you cannot sell a furniture there but Pinterest is another monster.

 

[khazael]

are you growing your own site organically or with ads?

At first like 5 years ago was a shitty page, we tried Google Ads… by then I didn’t know so much or in other words I thought I knew how to do it.
Today still use it but in a very limited way.

We get like 38% of our traffic organically but bring about 45% of our website revenue. 50% is direct.. the rest socials specially Pinterest and collaborations.

Etsy been shit for POD for me. Lost a lot on chargeback and never going that way again!

POD is a double edged sword… you cannot control the quality before hand. I tried and ended up doing it myself. Customers Psychology is another animal.

 

[theusualkeysersoze]

Hey everyone,

Wanted to post about Etsy here since I don’t see much conversations about it.

I’ve been selling on Etsy since 2015. Started small, learned the platform the hard way -made a lots of mistakes-, and over time scaled it into a 7-figure yearly business. Etsy is still a big part of it, but over the last few years I’ve been putting a lot of effort into growing my own site so I’m not 100% dependent on the marketplace.

I’m starting this AMA because there’s a lot of noise around Etsy right now, and most advice comes from people who either had a short-term win or never scaled past a certain point.

I’ve dealt with:

• Scaling listings in competitive niches
• What actually moves the needle in Etsy SEO
• Pricing, free shipping, samples, and offer testing
• Growing without tripping trust or account issues
• Running Etsy alongside a standalone site
• Things that worked, and plenty that didn’t
• Automation, tools, etc
• Ai, listing optimization, what to do and what not to do

Not selling anything, not offering services, and no DMs. Just sharing real experience and answering questions for anyone trying to turn Etsy into something serious.

Ask whatever you want.

Yes, I think for big claims...I'd like to see some big proof.

What is 7 figures? Which currency? Turkish lira is not the same as gbp.

How much net profits, let's see the dashboards and the bank statements.

Once we have that, we can be confident that this isn't a fairytale, reads a bit like one, generated by chatgtp , no less

 

[khazael]

Yes, I think for big claims...I'd like to see some big proof.

What is 7 figures? Which currency? Turkish lira is not the same as gbp.

How much net profits, let's see the dashboards and the bank statements.

Once we have that, we can be confident that this isn't a fairytale, reads a bit like one, generated by chatgtp , no less

Get it! Do you want my 1099 and 1040? Nah

Here is a upper screenshot of ShipStation.. and all time of one of our store.

My break even right now is 80k we had a few months after COVID where we took serious looses in the hope to get better. Lesson learned

Forgot to mention everything is in USD and USA

 

[khazael]

what products do you sell?

Furniture, laser cut monograms, canvas prints.. everything made in house.

 

[kikoissdude]

Any insights on how to optimize our listings? Any ways we can give a listing a boost over competitors.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

 

[khazael]

Any insights on how to optimize our listings? Any ways we can give a listing a boost over competitors.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I have followed any damn advise from Etsy… results sometimes work and most of the time don’t. Do SEO specially titles, keywords and first descriptions sentence like everybody.

Now, keyword try to fill the keywords with may long tails as long and Etsy allow in length. Let’s say: customer are searching for beige mid century furniture use beige furniture, beige mid century, mid century furniture, etc.. why? Because the more matches in keywords+title+desc push you higher. They weight more when matching words within same keyword regardless of the order.

 

[HarshaYt]

Wasted clanker time i think, is all their selling. lol Last sentence is a giveaway, seen that style flying around a few posts here. "Alot of noise right now" and "just sharing real experiance" are the giveaways.

"What actually moves the needle" is a classic clanker phrase too
But OP might still be a legit etsy seller. Many people use llm's to format their ideas into a better written text element.

 

[khazael]

"What actually moves the needle" is a classic clanker phrase too
But OP might still be a legit etsy seller. Many people use llm's to format their ideas into a better written text element.

Yes!! I run almost everything trough LLMs.. emails, messages, kids teachers emails..

I use Claude code and Codex for all the tweaks in our code..
Pro and Max subscriptions to handle large datasets..
So yes, I input an unorganized text and let LLM organize it. Otherwise I could have time.