by Gail Oliver, Online Marketing Consultant

One of my favorite books is “The Power of Positive Thinking“, and a quote in the book that always stands out to me is “People are defeated in life not because of lack of ability, but for lack of wholeheartedness“. The same applies to your business. Have you thrown yourself entirely into marketing and promoting your Etsy shop or have you just done it half heartedly? This is likely the reason you are not finding success.

A lot of people come to me for advice and then, for some reason, don’t take the advice or pick and choose parts of the advice. It is almost as if they think that just asking my opinion will somehow change things. No, if things are not working then you HAVE to make changes, sometimes major changes. Remember the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It won’t happen.

I know many shops who refuse to invest one dime into marketing and then wonder why they have no customers. You don’t just set up a shop and then sit and wait; you’ll be waiting for a long time. They fear spending any money, but the old adage that you have to spend money to make money is true. Running a $100 Google ad that results in $500 in sales is definitely worthwhile. Spending $200 might get you $1,000 in sales. Now, if the ad brought no sales, then at least you know and can spend your ad dollars somewhere else.

I have clients who just do a little marketing and expect big results. For example, if you sent out 10 pitches trying to get publicity for your shop and none were successful, then send out 100, and try smaller blogs instead of just the most popular ones.

I have some clients who expect to see results of their efforts the very next day, and if they don’t, they freak out and want to give up. Success rarely comes quickly or easily. There is no magic secret. It takes TIME, it takes MONEY and it takes EFFORT to grow your business, and you have to do all three wholeheartedly, not just a little.

How to set up an Etsy shopThis is one of the reasons I came up with my best selling Etsy 30-Day Success Plan because I literally give you a “To Do” list marketing-wise. These are tactics you need to do every day and every month in order to get your shop seen. Yes, you will have to invest some money and some time and some effort but it is the only way to see results. Otherwise, expect to have another year like this year.

If you want your shop to be successful you HAVE to amp up your marketing. No more half hearted efforts, you have to really go for it, take risks, spend money (wisely) and get loud about your business.

© 2016 Gail Oliver. All rights reserved.