Top tips to Etsy success
Why sell your products on Etsy?
Starting your own online shop? Sure, your first instinct is whipping out everything in your wallet for a self-hosted webshop, marketing team, publicist, social media ads, and your entire entourage. Hey, it’s what Kylie Jenner did. Or, you could spend less money upfront and sell your items on Etsy, an existing famous e-commerce platform with everything built in to help you. And, Etsy takes item placement fees every several months as opposed to a higher monthly fee.
People are already familiar with the VIP branding Etsy has, but separating it from other department store websites and e-commerce options is how friendly it is to users. Shoppers come to Etsy because it feels good. Unpretentious. You can buy leggings with crazy patterns, hair extensions, and a fancy looking work outfit on the same day without saleswomen acting like that famous Pretty Woman Rodeo Drive scene.
Top tips to Etsy success
One of our first tips is accessibility. Have you ever written to a brand online and felt bad that they only respond to social media users who fit narrow demographics? Nobody is immune to this, and brands foolishly think we don’t notice. It happens to me being ignored in favour of hipster women Photoshopping themselves into human Pixar characters. An older gay male TV producer happily sending in how he used a decor company’s products only to see they respond to young parents in heterosexual relationships. A female publicist sharing her makeup look for a company to ignore her because her look isn’t heavy Instagram makeup. Don’t do this to your customers. Write back to them on social media. And when they respond on your Etsy shop, answer questions. We have had a customer on social media contact us and not buy a product until a month later.
A great tip for both new and existing business is to collect a customer email’s after purchase if possible. as this will allow you to get in touch with them for future marketing promotions of new products that they may also be interested in but always allow them the opt-out of the promotions if they wish to do so. Another easier option is adding your customers on social media if their accounts are not set to private.
Feedback, both good and bad, is always critical to a business in order for them to continue moving forward and learn about which aspects of their shop do work and which may need to be tweaked or removed. By keeping the product lines refreshed and reviewed, you will prevent your shop from becoming stagnant and remove any lines that do not sell well. By renewing your shop’s products will help you to see the lines that sell well and the lines that don’t so you can adjust your products accordingly.
Make sure your social media promotions are simple but engaging, as ads that have lots of writing or overly packed images can be very off-putting for viewers who probably do not want to read through more than 2-4 sentences or try and work what you are actually selling if the image is overloaded with text, graphics etc. Ads that work the best are simple and clear so they deliver your promotion to a customer quickly and effectively.
“I’ll be honest,” Samantha adds as our final major tip, “creating products and original items can be quite difficult to think up!” It does take time and patience, but you have to keep thinking that the outcome will make it all worthwhile. A huge tip, which may sound obvious to some, is marketing off social media! Marketing unconventionally is key when running an Etsy shop, no matter how fabulous and amazing your products may be, it’s pointless if no one can find them. There are many ways to get your Etsy shop seen, some choose to get paid advertisements, and whereas this is a great way for it to be seen on a large scale, if you are lacking fees this defies the point of opening a shop. I know some of you would argue that – you have to spend money to make money… Which is all fine and dandy if you have the funds for that. But what most do is advertise their shop freely on their social media pages and place the link to their shop on their bios. We've found this to be quite an effective approach, leaving what may have been funds for paid promoting to be spent on helping fund women filmmakers. In the future, we want to have additional goals we can meet for fundraisers.
Esty is a wonderful creative platform, and I think people are starting to realise if you want something unique and original, compared to your usual standard of items you can buy from mainstream retailers, this is where to search.
