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Etsy - definitely the best place for makers and artists to grow and turn their hobby into a full-time job.
Hello and welcome back to my Etsy Guide / Blog! So if you are just figuring out how to take your craft to the next level and how to make a living from doing something that you love, you’ve come to the right place. For those who don't know me yet, I'm Kato and My company - "Qisabags" was established on Etsy and we produce and sell Premium quality, Handcrafted Leather bags on various e-commerce platforms including Etsy, Shopify and Amazon.
In this lesson we’ll go through all the advantages of opening an Etsy shop, or in case you already have a shop, I hope this gives you the motivation to optimize it even further.
1. The Cost. Opening an Etsy shop is actually free and if you have referrals you can even post couple of listing for free as well. Otherwise adding each listing costs 0,2 cents, which is also a very reasonable price for placing a product on such a powerful platform. So in my case, when I started with just 20$, Etsy was definitely the cheapest and the most efficient way to have my work seen by hundreds of people without a need for a huge start up capital / investment.
2. Traffic. This bring us to Number 2 - The traffic. In 2020, these platform had over 60.27 million buyers comparing to only 10% of sellers, which means that demand on this platform is much higher than the supply, and you have a great chance to be competitive on this platform and catch an interested buyer. Etsy works hard on promoting their website and its creators on many different levels in order to drive these tremendous traffic to their platform. Which means that half of your job is managed by Etsy itself and all you have to do is direct already interested customers to your etsy page by managing organic etsy search or etsy ads.
3. Growth Opportunity. I can tell from my own experience, that Etsy is a real deal and in 2022 there is literally no other place where you would rather start selling your creations in order to get the higher exposure. At first you are starting small with a few following, but this platform has so much potential! If you play your card right, Etsy can easily become your main source of income and a full-time job. You will even be able to hire people and grow your business, just like I did starting from ground zero, with no investment.
4. Easy to navigate. The interface of this platform is very user friendly and comparing to all the other ecommerce platform, it’s actually the easiest to navigate and the best way to start your ecommerce journey. I always advice all of my students to start here, get acquainted with the basics of selling online and than try out other platforms as well, like Shopify for example, which is also a great platform but a bit harder to navigate for beginners.
5. Low Fees. As I mentioned earlier, Opening an Etsy doesn’t require much of an initial investment, it’s free and overall it’s much cheaper than opening an actual physical store or selling your work anywhere else. Etsy is also cheaper than most of the ecommerce platforms of similar scale : For example on Etsy it’s only 0,2 cents per each listing and a renewal after a sale of a listing and 5% from a sale - it will be 6.5% in April 2022. There is also no subscription fee. Amazon Handmade on the other Hand, charges 15% per sale, and for a Regular Amazon there is a 40$ monthly subscription plus the + additional selling fees. As for me, Shopify is the cheapest option in the ecommerce field, but it doesn’t have as much of an initial exposure as Etsy. So you are basically paying the difference in Fees, for the huge amount of traffic that is brought to you by Etsy.
6. Customer service Insights. Etsy has one important feature that I think is the most essential for your growth, which is - Messages. When I started on platform, I only had three kinds of different products and I thought that would be enough for my brand, but later on I began to receive custom inquires and suggestions through direct Etsy messages on how to improve my products, and honestly now I know that this was the turning point for my business. Suddenly, I understood exactly what my customers need and I started to implement those changes and designing more and more new product through customers requests. After that we grew tremendously. Now we have more than 30 kinds of different products in almost every color, which meet the needs of our customers. This feature gives you opportunity to give your product a trial run and immediately receive a feedback, so basically it’s like a free focus group where you have the possibility to listen to your target audience, test new products and improve already existing ones accordingly.
7.Learning from competitors. Etsy is full of all kinds of talented creators. There are plenty of shops, which have been on this platform much longer than you and have substantial number of sales. They have already implemented the best practices for their shops and In order to learn from them and become a better seller, you have to conduct a research of your niche market. You need to find shops that are doing well in your field and see what their key selling points are. Break down their shop into several pieces and study what you think is working for them and than try to implement and consider this tips for your shop as well. These practice doesn’t mean that you have to copy someone, your shop should always be unique and express the essence of your brand, but you can always take a good example, which will help you in your own, individual way.
8. Artisans Market Place. When you decide to sell your work online, it always matters for your brand identity, where exactly you are selling it. Etsy is a marketplace for artists and creators, and if you are one of those, than this is a perfect platform for you. Etsy values new ideas, new creations and promotes their talented artists constantly.
9. Passive income - Making money in your sleep – What I especially love about this platform is, that after a while you can just sit back and relax a bit, and gain a profit from your work without a need to constantly be present. When you are done optimizing your shop, Ety SEO and you are at the point of receiving orders on a daily bases, you can than put your whole effort into creating new designs, working on a new project and at the same receiving orders. So after a while Etsy becomes your main passive income.
10. Fastest Results – As I mentioned earlier, Etsy works on bringing a huge amount of traffic to the website every minute of every day and this is your opportunity to get the huge amount of exposure in a short period of time. So once you get one of your listing out there on the first 5 pages of Etsy search (SERP) you can have the fastest results that ensure a sale and a good placement on Etsy search for quite a long time. Etsy algorithm does require some time for a new listings to get seen, but when it happens the results will follow. I used to upload new listings every other day when I started and in 3-4 month I already had constant sales every day. This results differ according to a price of your product, if it’s quite affordable or a digital product you’ll have a much higher conversion rate.
In conclusion, I would definitely suggest taking the time to invest in to these platform because, from my experience these marketplace is the most promising and effective out there for ecommerce newbies. I was able to achieve a lot with this platform in just a 2 years, but even after the first 5-6 month I was already able to hire my team and rent a workspace to become a full-time Etsy Seller.
That’s all for today’s lesson and I hope you guys will consider all this before
opening a shop, I gathered this information from my personal Five year experience on this platform and I also researched a lot of Etsy sellers who improved their presence on this platform drastically because of this simple steps.
For more Etsy tips visit my ecommerce blog.
For more video tutorials on Etsy SEO visit my skillshare teaching account.
Good luck and see you in the next blog!
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