Etsy is a great place to sell your handmade crafts. On Etsy you can sell handmade crafts, vintage items and craft supplies. There are other sites such as iCraft, Folksy, Ebay, Artfire, Craigslist, and eCrater where you could also
list and sell your handmade treasures.
In this article we’ll be talking about selling in an Etsy shop. Getting started is easy, it’s being successful that takes a little more work. TJust opening a
shop and listing the products doesn’t guarantee sales, in additional to spending your time crafting you’ll need to market your crafts and promote your store. Etsy has great tutorials and forums that will assist you in marketing and promotion, and below you’ll find tips that will help you sell crafts online:
1. Find your niche.
Make your craft product unique and original, and something you enjoy making. Try selling a few different crafts online at first to see what sells and what doesn’t sell. Ask others their opinions on the items you are selling. This
process might take a little time, but will pay off in the end.
2. Utilize Social Networks
Sign up for accounts with Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. You can link these social network sites to your shop. In
addition, you should start a blog, as well as join Pinterest and HubPages. You may also want create a YouTube
account where you can post craft-making tutorials. Your goal is to connect and promote. The more visitors you attract
to your shop the more chances you will have of getting a buyer!
3. Keep Listing New Products.
It’s a good idea to list a new items every few days, especially after first opening your store. This will keep your
store fresh and shoppers coming back for more, not coming back and finding the same old stuff! This will also help in
getting your shop rotated in the line of newly listed products which gives you the opportunity of attracting new visitors
to your shop.
The qualities necessary to make money while selling crafts online are: Passion, Creativity and Persistence! The
opportunity to make a part-time or even full-time income on Etsy is real, there are many many stay-at-home moms
who are successfully making money and working from home selling their handmade crafts! Personally I’ve purchased
handmade items from a variety of Etsy stores and I always take notice of the number of sales the person has had,
and sometimes they are in the thousands.
4. Take Great Pictures of your Products
Taking really good photos is of utmost importance! Be sure they are clear, attention getting photos because this is the
first thing the visitors to your shop will notice. Be sure to Include more than one photo for each listing and make sure
the colors and size of your sale items are easily identified. You don’t want your customer to be disappointed once they
receive the item because it doesn’t look like the picture in your store. You could use your iPhone, smart phone or
digital camera to take pictures.
5. Write Great Descriptions & Tag It.
There is no such thing as too much information here, more is better, provided it’s the right information you are
providing. Your customer is buying without being able to see or touch the item. Close your eyes and picture what you
are selling, describe it in writing as though you were telling someone over the phone about it. Be specific and use
words that the buyer would type into their search engine if they were looking to purchase your handmade product. Be
concise and not too flowery. Include the size, the color, the material. Don’t use things like beautiful, breathtaking, wow,
great. Avoid using a variety of fonts and font colors, search engines don’t like them.
6. Renew Your Listings. You can renew active and expired listings. The cost is $.20 to renew and you will receive a
new listing date and expiration date (4 months later). Renewing moves your product to the Just Listed page, giving
you more exposure. There are programs that will do this automatically for you.
7. Encourage Bigger Sales. Encourage shoppers to buy more than one item. For example instead of listing one of my
crafts for $5.00 each I’d create a bundled listing that is 4 for $18.99. You could also offer free shipping on the second
(or more) or a percent off additional crafts purchased today. The shopper is already at your store, give them reasons
to stay and browse and add more to their shopping cart. Your goal is to increase your “per sale” dollar amount.
Pricing & Shipping
8. Price it Right. Remember to include all of your incidental costs such as shipping, mailing supplies, production
supplies, taxes, etc when calculating prices.
9. Keep Shipping Costs Down. Offer to combine products for reduced shipping rates, buy supplies in bulk, use the
free supplies offered by the post office, pay for postage online, use flat rates whenever possible, add the cost of
shipping supplies to your shipping price. Use the United States Post Office online calculator for calculating exact
shipping costs. I use a digital scale to calculate accurate weights and stopping costs.
10. Add a Mailing List to your Shop
Through your mailing list you’ll be able to promote your products to potential customers and current customers that
choose to sign up for your mailing list. This is great for running sales or offering discounts and coupons and for
keeping customers and visitors up to date on your shop, you could even create a monthly newsletter. As an incentive
to get your visitors to sign up for your mailing list you could offer them a 10% discount on their first order. Mail Chimp
is one of the services Etsy uses to create a mailing list and help you build your subscriber list. This a great tool to
have in your online selling tool belt to help you increase sales and create repeat customers.
Etsy Selling Rules
Once you sign up for your shop you will want to review the seller’s handbook to be sure that you aren’t breaking any
rules. Here are just a few rules to keep in mind:
Everything in the handmade category must be made or made and designed by you, the shop owner/seller.
If you are a designer and you are using someone else to make your items you must follow the manufacturing
policy and disclose information about your production partner in the listings in your shop.