What is Etsy.com?
Etsy.com is an online buyer and seller community similar to eBay but focuses on selling arts, crafts handmade or vintage items and supplies.
With around 30 million visitors per month, Etsy provides a wonderful platform for artisans, crafters and creative designers which helps them in spreading their work to the worldwide audience and grow their business.
Your aim should be to leverage Etsy’s powerful visitor base to reach millions of people and sell your products to them without getting into the hassle of creating your own website, promoting it and handling payment processing.
Top Etsy sellers make up to 1 million dollars a year by selling arts, crafts and handmade items. If you take action, you can also be one among them.
Suitable For
Artistic and craftier people who love to envision, design and create their own items/products.
Skills Required
1. Creative abilities to imagine, think, design and create items which can be sold online.
2. Ability to promote your Etsy store using social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And through blogging, guest posting, networking.
Time Required For Creating Your Store On Etsy
You can register on Etsy almost instantly. But while creating your store you’ll need to craft its title, get photos of items that you want to sell, write a compelling description, decide on pricing points. To complete the above-mentioned steps it might one or two days.
Tips
1. Decide what you are going to sell – Before getting your feet inside Etsy make a list of list of items that you think you can create.
Once the list is ready, go to Etsy and type in keywords to find other sellers who offer similar items which you are planning to sell.
Discover what they are selling? how do their products differ from others? What are their pricing strategies? Do some competition analysis and try to find items on your list which will face less competition.
Based on your initial research and competition analysis finalize an item which you think will be more suitable for creating your initial space on Etsy.
2. Select a name for your store – Once you register an account with Etsy, the first thing you’ll have to do is to setup your store. And naming your store is the first step of the setup process.
Select a name that represents what you want to sell. But don’t waste your time on lingering for finding a perfect name.
Etsy gives you one more chance to rename your store, so pick a name right away, and give it more thought later on.
3. Set up your store – Following are the important steps you’ll need to follow while setting up for the store.
Create a logo
Creating a logo is very important for building a brand and improving credibility. Make sure the logo you design is unique and represents the items you want to sell. If you don’t have graphic design skills it’s always better to outsource the logo designing task to somebody on Fiverr. Tell them what you want and let the Fiverr experts do the job for you.
Take appealing item photos
Photos are going to be the first point of contact between your potential customer and your item.
So you need to make sure that your item photos do the job catching customer’s eyeballs and convince him/her to read the description.
If they don’t find item’s photos appealing then they’ll never bother reading your item’s description. One trick is to study the photographs of other successful stores who sell similar items like yours and then replicate their technique.
If possible try to take photos using a DSLR and use white plain backgrounds.
Offer varying price points and sizes
Most of the successful Etsy sellers offer varying item sizes and prices, this helps them to attract all levels of buyers. This strategy helps them to ensure that there is always something for everyone.
For example, If you sell smaller original pieces at a lower price point, people who cannot afford to buy large expensive pieces can still buy from you. In this way, you’ll cater the needs of both expensive and budget buyers.
5. Write compelling description – Your item’s description is the second most important factor after photos, it does the job of persuading potential customers to place an order with you. So make sure that you write the most compelling item description.
The best way to start is to study what your competitors have written their description, study the biggest questions that your potential customer ask.
Take notes and model your description based on your notes. Also, try to answer potential customer’s questions so that they don’t have any reservations while placing an order with you.
Also communicate important details about your item such as dimensions, the material used, care to be taken during use and so on.
6. Include right tags and keywords – Most of the potential customers will find your store through search. So you need to make sure that your title and description has right keywords incorporated into them.
To generate a list of keywords, think about what your potential customer would type into the search bar to find what you’re selling.
Snoop into your competitor’s title and description to dig out more relevant keywords. Also, make a list of relevant keywords that appear in the auto-suggested list of Etsy’s search bar and add them to your listings.
Other Options To Etsy
When you are planning to sell arts and crafts item Etsy should be your first choice of platform. But if you want to expand your reach even further you should consider selling your arts on the following websites.
Here’s the list of the sites optional to Etsy:
Zibbet.com
HandmadeArtists.com
UncommonGoods.com
AftCra.com
HyenaCart.com
How To Monetize
Monetization is very simple. More people place orders with you more money you make.
Your customer’s rating is going to have a huge impact on improving your sales, brand buildup and credibility. So make sure that you deliver quality items within your promised delivery dates.
Take time and care while packaging your item so that it doesn’t bend, chip or break in transit. Try to cover the cost of packing materials into your shipping charges.
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