How To Make Money Opening an Etsy Shop

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When I first started selling on Etsy I waited 4 months for my first sale. I saw a post about how I could make money selling on Etsy and I started my shop with absolutely no research into anything. That first sale was the only sale I made for 6 more months.

Just before I made my first sale I was pretty positive that I was not going to have a successful Etsy shop and had given up. That one sale had me really looking at my store, my products, and what I was doing.

I decided to dive in and learn everything I could about running a successful Etsy shop. I tweaked, tested, and modified all of my plans and 8 months after I opened my shop I started making a sale a day then I had a product go viral that was leading to several sales every day.

I wish I had known what it took to make a sale a day on Etsy in the beginning. This is why I’ve decided to help you turn your dream of opening a successful Etsy shop into a reality.

Making money with an Etsy shop is possible when it’s done right and I’m giving you all of my best tips to making your dream a reality. I’m showing you exactly what I had to do to start making sales every day on Etsy.

My goal is that upon opening your shop you aren’t waiting 4 months for your first sale ever, like I did. I’m going to teach you how to treat your Etsy shop more like a business and less like a hobby you might make some money from.

Etsy Is Still A Great Selling Platform

In August of 2018 there were a reported 1.98 million sellers on Etsy and 35.8 million active buyers. Those are some huge numbers but do not let them intimidate you. Over my time of being on Etsy I’ve done a lot of research and tried my fair share of techniques from some of the biggest Etsy teachers.

Etsy is widely known as a fantastic platform to find quality handmade products. They have an easy to understand interface, provide some pretty awesome features, and make selling handmade products easy.

Let’s dive right in to opening an Etsy Shop.

Branding

When you look at the most successful Etsy sellers they have one thing in common. They have a brand, a niche, and when you see them it doesn’t take long to recognize which products belong to which sellers.

Branding is extremely important for your Etsy shop and it’s so much more than just a logo or color scheme. Your brand is the way you word things, what your designs look like, how you market yourself, and even your name.

Take a look at McDonald’s. The first thing you think of is the big golden arches. Those arches appear everywhere. Their packaging, their commercials, their advertisements. You know their colors are red and yellow. You recognize McDonald’s brand the moment you see it. This is what you want for your own brand.

Check out my post How To Start A Side Business When You Work Full Time.

Your Name

It took me a long time to pick my name. I went through so many different options before finally settling on Carpe Noctem Art. Of course when I started taking my business seriously I re-branded and ended up changing it to Crystal Lynn Prints. I created my logo, picked my fonts, picked a color scheme and even picked a niche I wanted to run with.

Picking your name is easier said than done. It’s easier when you figure out how you want to brand yourself. You need to keep certain things in mind.

First consider what you are selling? Are your pieces fun and whimsical, rustic and homey, or modern and minimalist? You might want to reconsider a name like Fairy Fun Time when you are selling rustic pieces.

Exercise: Write down words you would use to describe your pieces.

Next, who are your customers? Are they middle aged woman looking for home decor? Are they husbands looking for unique jewelry? Are they mothers looking for baby gear and nursery decor? Are they engaged couples planning their wedding?

Exercise: Write down words you would use to describe your customers.

Finally, how do you want your customers to feel when they look at your shop? Do you want them to feel inspired? Energized? Relaxed?

Exercise: Write down words to describe how you want your customers to feel? Check in a thesaurus to find similar words.

Now look at your list of words and see what combinations you come up with. Before you get your heart set on a name check to make sure it’s available. Write down your top choices, this could be three, five, or more. Ask your friends, family, and biggest supporters if the name suits your products.

Logo, Color Scheme, and Font Choices

You’re going to use all the same steps above for your name choice in deciding what your logo, color scheme, and fonts will look like.

Keep your products, customers, and the feel you want for your store in mind. Research what colors are popular for your industry. Check Google fonts to find the fonts to match the brand you’re creating.

When creating your logo you’ll want it to match your color scheme. You also want your fonts to be the same across promotional products, advertisements, banners, social media and anything else you’re name will appear on.

When it comes to branding consistency is key. Keep a record or a secret Pinterest board with info on fonts, colors, logo images and more.

Marketing

Part of branding is figuring out all your marketing a promotional designs first. Create your photo boxes, your Pinterest graphics, and social media graphics now. This will make streamlining your listing process a lot easier.

Create templates for social media posts, descriptions, advertisements at this same time. Research popular and relevant hashtags for Instagram and keep an easy record of them accessible for planning posts.

If you plan your marketing material while you are branding your shop and before you’ve listed a single product this will go a long way to helping you be successful from the start. Unlike me who thought I’d just get found among the other 1.4 million sellers.

Listings

When it comes to your listings there are a few key points you will need to understand. To be successful on Etsy you need to have plenty of quality products, at least 5 fantastic photos per product, easy to understand descriptions, and your SEO should be on point.

Plenty of products

I have read so many different opinions and guidelines when it comes to how many products you should have in your store. Some say 40 is the magic number of listings, others say over 100. I think they are both wrong. There is no magic number that guarantees success.

Take a look at your niche, do some market research. If you are selling knitted hats and the like, take a look at what your competitors and the successful shops look like. See how many products the most successful shops have. Make your goal to have that many products to list upon opening your shop.

Also make sure that your products make sense. The last thing you want to do is offer a wide variety of different types of products. Target is great but when you’re shopping handmade you go to someone who specializes in that product.

If you offer crocheted scarfs, printable art, wedding dresses, and jewelry you look like a big box store instead of a customized expert in handmade products. If you want to offer a lot of types of products, consider opening a couple of different shops.

Check out my post 9 Things To Sell On Etsy To Be Successful.

Photos

Etsy allows up to 10 photos per listing. You will want to use at least 5 of these photos. Create your mock ups now. If you are selling jewelry create your photo boxes, get the stands prepared, make sure your backgrounds are clear of distractions.

When it comes to your photos they should be clean, clear, and show your product well. If you have distractions in your background it takes away from your products. White is best for Etsy photos.

If you need help with taking better photos, even with your smart phone, this course teaches you how to take great photos that you can edit right on your phone. You don’t need a fancy expensive camera to take great product photos.

If you plan to market your Etsy store on Pinterest one or more of your photos should be made at Pinterest sizing. The recommended size is 600×900 px. You can use a short photo and add a background with information on the product above and below. You can also just use a tall photo of the product.

Descriptions

Your descriptions should be easy to read and full of information on the product. This is where you really sell it.

The most successful listings have descriptions that read at about a 4th grade reading level. It doesn’t matter what your reading level is or the reading level of your customers. You want to make sure your customer understands your descriptions perfectly.

You want to include things like materials, sizes, special care instructions, color options, and disclaimers. Use this space to make the customer aware of what they are getting when they purchase your product.

Explain processing times which are how long it will take to make their purchase as well as additional time to ship. Give an estimated total time till they receive their products and let them know that those times might be increased due to holidays.

Pro tips: Make sure you specify that colors may differ slightly from computer screen to actual product due to screen settings. You may also want to include a small 2-3 sentence paragraph about your return and refund policies.

SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimization. Every search engine has algorithms that take a search query and shows the best fitting results. Etsy is no different.

The key to understanding SEO, in Etsy and on Google, is to figure out exactly what people are searching for and match your product to that search. If you are selling a silver necklace with a sapphire pendant you will try to match your necklace to several different search queries that relate to your product description.

For my Etsy shop I had a handy tool that I used. I highly recommend paying the $19 a month and using the full version. Marmalead was the most helpful tool I have ever seen in finding the best Etsy keywords.

Your title and your tags is where Etsy searches for your keywords. Throwing a few in the beginning of your description is important for your listings to show up in google searches as well. Do not stuff your descriptions and titles full of keywords though, they should read naturally to your potential customers.

Use 3-4 keyword phrases that are about 3 words each. Try not to repeat the same word more than twice in your titles. By avoiding using the same word twice you can hit more keywords. Just make sure each phrase still sounds good. Use commas in between each keyword phrase so customers can easily read the title.

Next you copy and paste the entire title into the tags and hit enter. Finally, you break those keyword phrases down into single word keywords.

It looks like this:

Title:

But First Coffee, Coffee Kitchen Signs, Coffee Bar Wall Art, Printable Art

Tags:

But First Coffee, Coffee Kitchen Signs, Coffee Bar Wall Art, Printable Art, But First, Coffee, Kitchen Signs, Kitchen, Signs, Coffee Bar, Wall Art, Art, Printable.

The title is short and easy to read for the customer, still it is jam packed with all sorts of relative keywords. In turn those keywords are used in the tags helping to boost your SEO even more.

Promotion

Etsy has 54 million active customers. They want to make sure that those customers find exactly what they are looking for so that they buy. Customers buy, you make money and Etsy makes money. To help encourage sales Etsy has in the past given preference to shops that bring in new customers. As far as I currently know, they still do this.

If you are sharing your products to social media, if you are promoting your products on other avenues and getting views from those networks, you are setting yourself up to appear at higher rankings in Etsy Search on top of getting potential buyers from social media.

Before launching your store write out a marketing plan. Create a Facebook business page, a Pinterest business account, an Instagram account, and a Twitter account. Start following, tweeting, posting, and sharing your work space, other articles, other Etsy listings, and start promoting your brand.

Twitter

A tweet lasts for maybe 10 minutes before it’s no longer seen. Schedule several throughout the day. You should be on Twitter to retweet, heart, and reply to other people’s tweets daily. Scheduling your own tweets helps to minimize the amount of time you need to spend on Twitter.

You can use IFTTT to set a rotating schedule of Tweets via Google Calendar. Or you can use Buffer.

Facebook

Post at least once daily, 1-2 of those posts every week should be content relating to your products but not your products. The rest of the posts should be promoting your products or your shop. Sit down once a month and schedule out all your posts for the month in one day. This gives you more time to respond to questions and engage with your audience.

With Facebook it is helpful to have a content marketing plan as well. If you have a blog for your Etsy shop this will make sharing content easier. Figure out what type of content you are going to share on what days. This will make it easier for you to plan out your posting schedule.

Instagram

Post once a day in the feed and several times a day in your stories. Pick the best time for you to post and set a reminder daily.

One way to make posting to Instagram easier is to save your photo’s to your phone and using google keep or another note program write out your posts for the months with the dates to post them. In that post you want to include more than 10 hashtags but no more than 30.

Researching hashtags before planning out your posts will minimize the time you spend on Instagram as well. To research hashtags, go to Instagram search and start typing in a word you use to describe your product, picture, or post. Instagram will give you hashtag suggestions each with a number of posts next to it. You want hashtags that have at least 10,000 posts already on it.

You can write down all the hashtags you want to use. If you’re anything like me create a spreadsheet to help so that the following month you can just check your spreadsheet. About every 3-4 months you will want to recheck your hashtags to make sure they are still relevant or within the numbers you need.

For your sanity and to save time I would consider paying for and using Tailwind for Instagram scheduling.

Pinterest

For my own Etsy shop I had several products go viral on Pinterest. In one weekend I made over $600 in profit. Pinterest is absolutely worth your time.

Pinterest is the most effective tool I have used when it comes to my Etsy store. Pinterest image sizes should be 600×900 px and you will want to use keyword rich descriptions. Your descriptions should be no more than 2-3 sentences. Your images should be clean and showcase your product.

I will also recommend using Tailwind for your Pinterest. As you add products and loads of different pictures of those products I highly recommend using Tailwind so that you can schedule out all of your pins easily and not need to spend loads of time tracking and pinning to Pinterest.

Check out my post How to Use Pinterest for Etsy for more on using Pinterest to market your Etsy Shop.

Pro tip: Make sure you stay on brand across all social media platforms. You want your brand to be recognizable no matter where people see you.

Final Thoughts on How To Sell On Etsy

Opening an Etsy shop can feel extremely overwhelming so in order to help you stay on track, I have created a simple Business Plan that you can use to start your Etsy Shop. This plan will help you organize all those thoughts that are going through your head so you can focus on what needs to be done.

For me, the business plan is a necessary part of starting any home based business. Print your finished plan and frame it above your work space or desk as a reminder of where you want to focus your attention on your business.

Remember to get your 40 free listings and give me 40 free listings by starting your shop using this link. Pin this to a business board in order to come back to it as you start your Etsy store. Follow me on Pinterest

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10 thoughts on “How To Make Money Opening an Etsy Shop”

  1. Wonderful information! I feel like I just went through an online course that I should’ve paid for! Thanks for taking time to help out new shop owners. I am just beginning this journey and though I may not be certain about this, but I am confident!!

  2. This information is so valuable, I started my etsy shop a year ago and made 6 sales Lo ! My sister has a successful shop and just as you advised its a niche product she has. So Iam encouraged by her support and now with your wonderful information, not to give up , start was to change name which i have done with lots imput from family so hopefully its ok . I hope I’ve picked a niche product, next is photos only got an tablet, never thought of a business plan but will give it a go. Thanks once again
    Penny in qld

  3. It’s an eye-opener for a ‘BBC’ (Born-before-Computers) like me. A pensioner Diamond Toolmaker with some technical know-how and raw materials.
    I think I also can do it with this great help from you !

    1. I actually closed down my Etsy shop early last year because my passion wasn’t really in it. I learned a lot, had success with Etsy, and it was fun. While I was still running the store I did write these Etsy posts detailing what I found works. I have updated them with changes from Etsy (like the switch from 5 to 10 photos allowed) and updated the dates on the posts to reflect those changes. It all boils down to having fantastic basics and that is what these posts help people do, get the basics down so the slight changes that happen with the online business world don’t affect you as much.

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