Tips on Making Sales on Etsy

At some point, everyone eventually writes the Etsy post. I think it is my turn now!

Recently, a team member asked for some feedback on why she wasn't selling things. So I let loose - but then someone pointed out that my feedback would make a good blog post, so I have decided to make the comments more general, and add a few enhancements.

1. Make beautiful things. Having a great product should be a given, but not everyone starts there (by the way, my team member makes incredibly beautiful things.) If the quality is not there, if it's not something that someone decides they have to have, it simply will not sell. Now, there are a lot of people out there who think they make beautiful things, but they do not. It's kind of like American Idol - out of the millions who audition, all of them think they can sing. When you listen to a sampling of those millions, everyone recognizes that a great portion of them cannot sing. Some of them are decent singers, some of them are horrendous, and a few of them are quite brilliant. On Etsy, you will also find this same variation. What you want to do is try not to be the person that everyone knows cannot sing. :) If you want to rise to the top, you need to make beautiful things in a quality way that people want to buy.
2. Set your prices carefully. Your competition is not Walmart. Most of the time, you're not even really in competition with other sellers on Etsy. Your items are handmade - why are you trying to match prices with Walmart? "Well, if someone can get a handmade queen-sized quilt from Walmart for $80, then I have to sell mine for $80 too." No. No. No! (Trust me, I have seen some doozies on Etsy!) If you sell a high-end product, sell it at a high-end price. Make sure you are getting paid a fair price not only for your time & materials, but for your creativity. A lot of people just want to break even, or don't track their costs closely enough to determine if they are turning a profit. Pricing is as much an art as a science. Just keep in mind that for prices in the upper range (above ~$100) people tend to think more carefully about their purchase & things may not sell as quickly. But keep in mind that prices that are way too low can also scare off buyers, because they get suspicious about you being a factory instead of one person crafting handmade.
3. Promote yourself. There are over 3 million items on Etsy. How will your item get noticed? If you just list it and stop there, your brilliant, affordable masterpiece will get buried into page 100 of the listings in a matter of minutes. You need to be out there networking, both on and offline; using social networking sites, advertising, promoting, everything. Let people know about your brilliant item and why they need & want it.
4. Take good pictures. They don't have to be professionally staged, but they should be bright, clear, and show your product in many different ways. You have 5 pictures - use them! Show the front, show the back, show the inside, show the side, show it in use. Make sure your lighting is good & doesn't cast a lot of shadows. If you want to take a close-up picture, don't shove the camera at the item; use your macro setting. If your items are really high-end & you can't take a good photograph to save your life, consider professional photography. You may be able to even trade services with the photographer if you make a product they want to have.
   
5. Tag items properly. There is nothing more frustrating to a buyer than searching for something specific and getting something completely irrelevant. If you make pendants, don't tag the item with necklace just because you can hang the pendant on a necklace! Imagine trying to find a necklace and coming back with 200 pages of pendants-only. If you make yo-yos for quilt projects, do not tag the yo-yos with "quilt". A yo-yo is NOT a quilt! Use all 14 tags available to you. Make sure one of your tags says either handmade, vintage, or supplies. Tag with color. Tag with descriptive adjectives. Tag with size. Use tags that are not already in your title. Etsy wrote a great Storque article on tagging. You don't need every combination of a word (quilt, quilts, quilting, quilted, etc.) Etsy searches are based on root words, so "quilt" will do just fine & cover all the bases. Make sure your category tag is most appropriate, and the place where people are most likely to find it. If you make baby quilts, you can list it under children or you can list it under quilts. My advice - if someone is looking specifically for a baby quilt, they typically will go to the quilt category first; you can use tags to say baby, girl, boy, toddler, child, etc.
   
6. Buy some stuff on Etsy!! If you are a new seller, or you haven't yet made a sale, you have zero feedback. The longer you go with no feedback, the more hesitant people are to buy from you. They start to question your products, your trustworthiness, whether you are really active on the site to pay attention to them. When you buy stuff, you can leave feedback for others, and hopefully they leave feedback for you too. You don't have to spend $100 or anything extravagant. Just consider this - before you go to a craft store to buy a supply, see if someone is selling it on Etsy first. If so, and the price is reasonable to you, buy it! This not only supports handmade, but it also helps you by demonstrating you are an active, trustworthy person.
7. Offer international shipping. 99% of the world lives somewhere else other than where you live! If you are a little leery about how to do this, you don't have to set up hundreds of shipping rates. You can set up a rate for within your own country, to another country very near to you, and then have a rate for everybody else that will cover your costs (in general.) Making people convo you to get a shipping rate is just making it that much more likely that they will try to find your product from someone else who is more accommodating & less of a hassle to deal with.
   

Sometimes it takes a while to make a sale, so don't get too discouraged. Not everyone can be the #1 seller on Etsy, or sell multiple items per day every day, but a lot of people can sell enough to make it worthwhile to keep going.

Happy quilting!