I listed my first Etsy items last week (on the 14th), I made my first sales on the same day and I celebrated by eating a dee-lish-ush gooey toffee muffin. So a week later I am reporting back to you good folks with what I’ve learned and some of my observations so far…
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Why I’m liking Etsy so far…
- It’s the one of the most established ‘Craft Mall’ sites – which means that it has more users (sellers and buyers). Of course, the only thing with having lots of other sellers in the same mall is that it can be easy to get lost in a sea of other shops. This means that there is more of an onus on sellers to market themselves, but then, business marketing is important. You gotta do it!
- Ease of use - I was genuinely surprised at how easy it was to set up shop. Yes, I already do run another shop, but my main shop’s admin and payment system is completely different to that of Etsy’s. I tell you what, I wish it was as easy to set up my main shop as it what to set up my Etsy shop! The steps to setting up and listing items on Etsy are pretty intuitive and if you get stuck the help, FAQs and forums are excellent.
- Etsy community - I really like the convo facility on Etsy. This is a messaging system that buyers and sellers can use to message you and say Hi!, ask you for product info, or other comments. It’s nicely laid out, efficient and easy to use. I also really dig the feedback system. I think that customer feedback is a very good thing to have on your site and because it is widely used on Etsy it’s an added motivation for buyers and sellers to be good to each other
The forums are an excellent source of news, business advice and support and encouragement.
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This Weeks Top Etsy selling tips;
- If you can, list around 3 items every day (or as often as poss) – be they brand new items or adding to stock of existing items. Doing this will keep your items and your shop high in the list of searches so buyers can more easily find you. So if for instance you have 6 of the same bracelets to sell consider listing them over 3 days instead of in one go, on one day.
- Choose tags carefully and be generous with them, (but stay relevant, or Etsy may delete them). When choosing tags think of what a buyer would type into the search box when trying to look for a given item, think of as many relevant word combinations as you can and include them all. It’s worth the effort. Take for example a glue that I sell. This fabric glue happens to be wonderful for purse making so the tags that I have for this glue are as follows: gutermann, glue, fabric, purse, making, frame, sewing, supplies, commercial.
- Market yourself. I know I keep going on and on about this, but as you have already heard me say (umpteen times) there’s not much point in making something beautiful when no one out there knows it exists. I made a big noise about the opening of my shop by blogging about it, but instead of just letting folks know about the shop opening I offered a tempting freebie to the first 10 customers of the shop to get the ball rolling. It worked pretty quickly! If you can, do periodically offer gifts to customers because everyone likes a gift now and again.
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Kris is a fun and crafty mom of four. She expresses her creativity as the owner of Jesse Kate Designs, a sewing pattern and machine embroidery brand. Kris also stays busy as the site manager of 
Crissy is the founder of 
Lisa is a generally content (who said generally - don't get her started!) 30 something living in London, who amongst other things sells everything you might need to make unique and lovely handmade handbags at home from her online store 
How are you finding the transatlantic divide though? I was thinking about starting an etsy shop, but I figured that my products would be too expensive compared to US-based etsy sellers since the dollar-pound difference is so great (and I have to price in pounds to make it worth my while), and then charge international shipping on top of that. I know there’s Dawanda and Folksy that would cut down on the monetary disparity, but they just don’t seem to get the same amount of buyers etsy attracts…
I agree with you, it is important to market elsewhere besides relisting to sell you etsy items.
Don’t mean to be synical, but the story is too good for some people…
Me and a friend gave up for now in etsy…we can’t see any mistake of our own in trying to sell things in etsy…but…I see that it’s hard to compete with some crafter that only make things by using other’s work (design, pattern)without giving credit especially in sewing world…especially the level is very-very advance…I can do the same, just using other people work just to make “quicker sell” and production, but that’s not my thing at all…
yes, etsy drives a lot of customer but may be it works for USA sellers only…personally, I find it’s quite rare to find Asian (not Asian that live in USA) craft sellers succeed in etsy unless they are also selling supplies or sellers that sell digital/.pdf product, no matter how good and original their creation is.
now, i only make a noise through my web, flickr, blogs…moreover, after i see that some products in etsy is quickly and easily copied. I feel like, listing in etsy is like killing my self. I get sales, but my products get copied and I get no name…may be, I may the one who can get the bad name: the copying seller…uh…especially when I have no sales, yet…
I said to my husband, I’ll get back to etsy when my own sales outside etsy get better or succeed; he said, when you are succeed, you won’t get back to etsy. Yes, I guess, so…
My sales is very slow outside etsy, but it’s better for me personally…
for me, etsy is great for supplies. that’s it…for craft buy and sell? I rather go to the craft show to buy things (my country is a crafts country)and sell my crafts not in etsy anymore…
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I agree that Etsy is a great way to bring additional businesss to your customer base. In response to Melissa’s comment, as sellers on Etsy we can decide where we ship to. For example, as an American, I decided to keep my shipping within the US. You can decide to sell just to Europeans. The flexibility is great!
Good luck and continued success!
@ nichan:
Sorry to hear about your experiences on Etsy.
Yes it’s true that a lot of copying does go on in Etsy and outside of it. It’s very depressing.
It look like you have done the right thing. You have to be happy with what you do, if you are making money but you are unhappy with what you do it’s not good for you soul (or your health!)
I wish you every success on your other site and you blog.
@ Jan Foselli:
Hi Jan,
Yes I agree. I have found that folks on my Etsy shop sometimes pop over to my main site which is great!
Yep Etsy does give a good amount of flexibility.
Wishing you luck in your business!
@ Laura Bucci:
Yes definitely! I understand that a lot of crafter would rather spend all of their time making their lovely items, but if you’re in business you gotta tell folks about it too.
@ melissa:
Good question.
I understand that some higher priced craft items might be a bit too much for our transatlantic cousins. I think that it might still be a good idea to open you etsy shop (and market it!) because of the amount of users and you can then opt to ship to European customers only. You can ask others to email you if they would like your items delivered to rest of world.
Open an Etsy shop is not very risky in terms of expense, it only costs $0.20 to list an item and there are no set-up fees.
I’m finally catching up on your blogs, so please excuse me if I stalk you a little today….
I’m enjoying my Etsy experience, especially considering that I haven’t been able to put the time into it that I have wanted.
One of your pieces of advice answered something that I had been wondering about… whether to scatter the listings of items that you have a few of. I’ll be doing that from now on.
The only thing I wish was (and you’d have the same issue), I wish I could find a good accounting program that would help me with the different currencies (on eBay/Etsy) that I sell in. I have spreadsheets set up, but in a dreamworld, it would all be in one place. Mind you, earning in different currencies can be great as different markets rise and fall.
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