How to Sell on Etsy with 22 of My Best Etsy Success Tips

UPDATED NOVEMBER 2023.

Want to know how to sell successfully on Etsy? Not the basic stuff, but the best tips?

I’ve been consulting for Etsy shops since 2012, (and I sell there myself) so here are just a few of my best tips. 

Etsy Tip #1: WHAT to Sell on Etsy

Now, the first thing you should know is that not every type of product sells well on Etsy. This is why I wrote my best-selling ebook What to Sell on Etsy that shows you product demand versus number of listings on Etsy (I update it every few months).  In other words, you want to aim to sell products for which  there is high demand, but little competition.

But, from my personal experience, I can tell you a couple of tips:

• Ornaments always sell well every November and December, so much so that I have clients who do not have to work the rest of the year.
  

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• The tshirt market on Etsy is fairly saturated, but the key is to go after the volume shirt sales for things like bachelorette destination getaways and family cruises (yes, this is a thing on Etsy).
• If you can quickly jump on a product that’s trending, you could do well in the short run. For example, when Michelle Obama wore a “VOTE” necklace back in 2020, sales of similar necklaces skyrocketed on Etsy.

Etsy Tip #2: What You CAN’T Sell on Etsy

You do not want to come to Etsy and try to just sell a hodge dodge of stuff, like you would on eBay. That is not what Etsy is all about. Plus, you are NOT allowed to RESELL items you didn’t make, unless they are vintage (so NO drop shipping, go to Amazon for that). 

You also can’t sell anything that might offend, as Etsy does have rules against this. For example, when shops started to sell QAnon and Insurrection merchandise, Etsy quickly shut them down.

You also have to be very careful regarding copyrights and trademarks. Even though you will see other Etsy sellers doing it, you cannot sell Disney, NFL, Marvel and Harry Potter themed merchandise, for example. Etsy Trust & Safety does periodic random checks of shops, and if they see these items, they will deactivate them (permanently) and maybe even your entire shop.

Even with vintage items, you have to be careful what brand names you use as certain prominent fashion brands will not allow you to include their name in the listing or it gets deactivated. To give you an example, I was creating a custom order for a person named Jordan, so in my listing title I wrote “Custom Order for Jordan”. Etsy Trust & Safety deactivated it because their “bot” assumed I was selling “custom Jordan sneakers”, which you cannot sell on Etsy.

Etsy Tip #3: WHO to Sell to on Etsy

In order to know WHAT to sell on Etsy, you have to understand WHO buys here. Women dominate buying on Etsy at 80% and they are typically in the age range of 25 to 45. The gift buyer also dominates Etsy, therefore you are essentially targeting the female gift buyer for the most part. This is likely why “gift for boyfriend” is the top gift search. 

And she buys for every type of occasion from weddings and housewarmings to baby showers and Friendsgiving. And she buys for everyone in her life, from her kids and her brother-in-law to her friends and her coworkers. So keep this in mind when you are deciding what to sell, as well as which keywords to use. 

If you need more help getting your shop seen on Etsy, be sure to download my best-selling Etsy 30-Day Success Plan.

Etsy Tip #4: Selling POD Products

Using fulfillment houses and print on demand (POD) services is allowed on Etsy, as long as the original design is yours. So this means creating a design for a t-shirt, but using a POD like Printful to actually print the shirt and ship it to the customer. POD products can be shirts, mugs, art prints, ornaments, and a variety of other items.

The downside to having an Etsy shop that uses POD services is that profit margins are very slim as the POD takes up to 50%. This means you have to do high volume sales in order for your shop to be worthwhile.

Also, while the POD takes care of the shipping for you, this can also be a negative. If your fulfillment house get backlogged or takes a long time to ship, your shop is the one that gets blamed, especially with a bad review. You are handing over the control of your shop to a third party, and this can work against you.

Etsy Tip #5: The Biggest Buying Holidays

Hands down, Christmas is the biggest selling time on Etsy. It starts in early October and goes pretty much up until Christmas Day, so make sure you can ship up to the last minute.

However, Halloween is the second biggest buying holiday on Etsy and it gets bigger every year!

For most holidays, it is not just about selling gifts, but also selling holiday decor, holiday fashion, party invitations and much more! The more creative, the better as each season will have its hot fad. The last few years it has been matching family pajamas, for example, for both Halloween and Christmas. 

In terms of Halloween items, customers flock to Etsy for the traditional Halloween items like indoor and outdoor decor, kids costumes, adult costumes, dog costumes, masks, and treat baskets. In fact, dog costumes is one item that has high demand and little competition on Etsy.

But customers also come looking for unusual Halloween items, like Halloween wedding dresses, Halloween advent calendars and more.

After that, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are also top selling occasions. Again, I have had customers who sell enough in May and June that they do not sell the rest of the year. For these two occasions, matching items do really well, such as Matching Mother and Daughter Necklaces or Matching Father and Son Hats.

My Etsy Holiday Planner covers ALL of the holidays and big buying occasions through the year, with planning timelines, the top searches, product ideas and more.

Etsy Tip #6: Create Listings That Are Sets

One of my best tips for selling on Etsy is to add listings to your Etsy shop that are SETS of products. Not perfectly matchy matchy sets, but coordinated sets. For example, maybe an art print set whereby the customer gets 5 different prints in 3 different sizes but all in the same color scheme. Not only do you sell more products at one time to one customer, but customers are looking for the convenience of you doing the “decorating” for them.

This same strategy can be applied to jewelry (sets of earrings are always in demand), fashion accessories, throw pillows, baby items, personalized gifts, wreaths, beauty products, greeting cards, seasonal (fall set of products), and holiday items (Halloween decor set).

Again, the goal is not just to put matching items together but rather like-minded or coordinated items together. Buyers on Etsy love getting value offers. 

Etsy Tip #7: Slow Times

Historically, Etsy’s strongest selling period has always been Q4, which is October 1st to December 31st. Also, historically, Etsy’s slowest selling period is Q1, which is January 1st to March 31st. So, depending on the type of Etsy shop you have, you can’t always expect to sell in March what you sold in December. However, this slow time is a good time to run a sale because when demand is low, prices should go down. Why give a big discount when sales are hot? Save them for the slow times.

Etsy Tip #8: Do Not Rely on Etsy for ALL Traffic

One of the biggest mistakes in regards to selling on Etsy is too much of a dependence upon the Etsy search engine for traffic. Big, big mistake! When I consult for an online business, whether they sell on Etsy, Amazon, and so forth, I always advise that their traffic be a balance of traffic from the marketplace’s search engine but also Google search, email marketing, publicity, advertising and social media. My 12-Month Marketing Plans give you other tactics each month to drive more traffic.

If you focus all of your efforts just on Etsy traffic and Etsy makes one little change to the search algorithm, your business can fall off substantially and immediately. I have seen it happen to many once successful Etsy shops and then they practically have to start all over.

Don’t get me wrong, Etsy SEO is important but it is just one component. Don’t make it the only one if you want to have a successful shop. 

Etsy Tip #9: Maintaining Your Etsy Customers

The best thing you can do to get repeat business from anyone who buys from you on Etsy, is to ask the customer to opt in on your email list. Etsy has an integrated one called MailFold that you can use, or you can link to your own email sign up that you have on your blog or website. It would really help if you offered customers an incentive, such as 15% off their first order if they sign up.

The goal is to then email your customer list at the start of every quarter with new products in the shop and/or several weeks before any of the big gift buying occasions with a special offer or early bird sale. This is really important for Black Friday, to get those sales before these customers spend elsewhere. Depending on what you sell, you want at least 20% of your business to be repeat customers.

Etsy Tip #10: Avoid Backorders 

I have had Etsy shops come to me in a panic stating that Etsy shut down their shop so they could catch up on orders. This happens a lot during the Christmas buying time, when Etsy feels that a shop has too many overdue orders and is worried customers will start cancelling. Therefore, try to keep up on your orders and avoid too many reaching overdue status.

Etsy Tip #11: Careful About Too Much Success in the Beginning

Unfortunately, there are scammers on Etsy so Etsy does have to protect customers. People would set up a tshirt shop, for example, selling shirts super cheap so that they immediately got tons of orders. Then they would shut down the store, never fulfilling the orders and keeping the money. As a result, if Etsy sees a sudden burst of sales at a new store, they might suspend the store temporarily in order to see if it is legitimate.

Etsy Tip #12: Personalized Gifts on Etsy

The most popular search in November on Etsy is “personalized gift”. This is because people come to Etsy looking for those unique items, and then they want it personalized for the recipient.

Personalization typically means the adding of a name, initials, date, geography coordinates, a graphic or an icon that represents the person in some way. No matter what you sell on Etsy, if you can offer some form of personalization, you have a better chance of making the sale.

Etsy Tip #13: Constantly Renewing Listings

So many Etsy sellers waste a ton of money on manually renewing their listings several times a day, thinking it helps their ranking in Etsy search. Guess what, it doesn’t! This is false information, based on how Etsy use to work.

Back in the day, the landing page of Etsy was a grid of products that had all been listed (brand new item) or re-listed (it just sold so it re-listed) in the last hour. It would change every hour. So sellers found that when they manually renewed a listing, this was a way to make the front page, if only for an hour. Etsy’s landing page has not worked like this in years, yet people still float around this tactic as if it still works today. You are wasting your money!

Etsy Tip #14: Using the Etsy Ads

If you haven’t tried the Etsy ads yet, I do recommend them to get things going, but only on your higher priced products. With the Etsy ads, you cannot set the bid rate or pick the keywords, and since the competition for ads is fairly fierce on Etsy, bid rates can get high.

Therefore, lower priced products simply cannot afford the high bid rates. The only way I would recommend the Etsy ads is if you can bundle some of your lower priced products together to make a higher priced product. 

Watch your ROAS stats on the listings you advertise. The higher, the better. Don’t run ads on listings that have a low ROAS or are not in season i.e. don’t advertise a Halloween costume in May.

Etsy Tip #15: Getting More Clicks on Your Photos

Your Etsy SEO could be working wonderfully in that your listings are ranking high in Etsy search, maybe even making the first page of results, but you still are not seeing traffic. At this point, this is no longer an SEO issue, but potentially a product photo issue.

There are many reasons why someone might NOT click on your product photos when they come up in Etsy search results. For example, if you are showing a black throw pillow but the customer is looking for grey, they are not going to click on your photo unless you have a banner or circle on the image indicating “Other Colors Available”. Same with other sizes, materials, styles, patterns and so forth. So use circles, banners and other text on the image to attract the eye as well as lure them in to see the other colors you have. 

Another reason for low clickthrough is if your photos look like everyone else’s. You will just blend in and not stand out. Therefore, do a search on Etsy for your main search phrase and see the photos that come up. If they are all on white backgrounds, for example, then put yours on a brightly colored background. One of my best Etsy shop tips is to do the opposite, not the same thing that your competitors are doing if you really want to stand out.

Finally, if your product photography is poor quality, this is likely another issue why you are not getting clickthrough. If you are going to be selling the same designs over and over again, it is worthwhile to invest in professional photography.

Etsy Tip #16: Etsy SEO Tips

Etsy SEO is very complicated and based on so much more than keywords and search phrases. While it helps to fill up your listing titles and tags with popular search phrases, Etsy will rank your listings based on many other factors including having a high conversion rate, offering free shipping, shipping quickly, and having the Best Seller distinction. Having a combination of all or most of these factors is what will make your listing rank well.

One thing that can help your listing’s SEO is to run a sale, as typically 75% of listings on the first page of Etsy results are on sale, so Etsy puts a lot of weight on this. Discover many more SEO tips (along with how to develop a success SEO strategy) in my best-selling Etsy SEO Guide. 

Etsy Tip #17: Do Not Use Search Phrases That Don’t Apply

Many Etsy shops try to use popular Etsy search phrases that do not apply, just to try and take advantage of the high traffic. However, there is a down side to doing this if you are running Etsy ads. When you run the Etsy ads you are being charged by the click. So if you indicate something in the listing title that makes someone click on the listing, but then they find out you don’t really offer this, you just paid for a click that will not turn into a sale. This can get very expensive very fast.

For example, I had a customer who was selling a baby onesie. Just the onesie, no other accessories. He couldn’t understand why the conversion on clickthrough was so low. He was using the very popular search phrase, “Baby Outfit” in the listing title, and as a result, people were clicking on the onesie thinking there would be other items included (such as a tutu, leg warmers, headband) as part of the outfit, but there wasn’t. Therefore, he ended up paying for a lot of clicks that did not turn into sales. Therefore, do not to mislead or it can cost you. 

Etsy Tip #18: Using Social Media

Social media is important but it does not always convert as high into sales as other forms of marketing. That being said, it can’t hurt. What I always tell Etsy shops to do is try and comment regularly on Etsy’s posts on Facebook and Instagram, in order to get seen by people following their accounts, as well as by the Etsy merchandisers and social media experts who pick the products to feature. It also helps to use the Etsy hash tags that the merchandisers search on to find products to feature, such as #EtsyFinds.

For a long time, Etsy would feature any type of succulent product on their social media pages, simply if you used the hashtag #SucculentSaturday. The key is to follow their accounts to see if there is another type of hashtag they seem to regularly feature. My download, 365 Social Media Post Ideas makes your social media marketing super easy!

Etsy Tip #19: Getting the Best Seller Distinction

One key to doing well on Etsy, is when your listings get awarded with Etsy’s Best Seller Distinction. Having this label appear on the listing really helps its sales conversion rate, because customers respond well to buying something that has proven to be a best seller. It makes the purchase less risky. Now, getting the distinction doesn’t always mean that your listing is a best seller overall on Etsy, but rather just in your shop. 

You also have to maintain it, because if sales slip on the listing, the distinction goes away. You will also see that the Best Seller distinction helps your ad impressions and ad ranking as well. If you were to select all of your listings to be advertised on Etsy, Etsy will gravitate towards giving the most ad impressions to the listings that have the Best Seller distinction. Even just one listing having the Best Seller distinction can end up bringing the majority of your traffic – both organic and paid traffic. 

Etsy Tip #20: What’s Big on Black Friday

Want to know one of the most popular items on Black Friday? Engagement rings! This is due to the fact that Black Friday is predominantly seen as a time to get an amazing deal on those high ticket items and engagement rings are a high ticket item.

Also, 80% off all engagements occur between Christmas and January 1st, so the timing is right. Therefore, if you sell engagement rings, I would consider offering a significant Black Friday sale (it can’t be 10%, that just won’t cut it) and start promoting it in early November in your Etsy shop banner, Etsy shop announcement and email marketing to current customers (they can pass the offer along to their friends and family). You might also need to have some rings that are ready to ship to really take advantage.

Etsy Tip #21: Don’t Give Up on Your Etsy Shop So Quickly

So many Etsy shops will throw in the towel way too early. It takes time to get a shop going. It can even take up to three months before the Etsy search engine has indexed all of your new listings, so if you are relying solely on Etsy for traffic, you have to give it some time.

Now, some customers are a little hesitant to purchase from new shops that have no reviews or sales. But trust me, you will eventually get that first customer who takes a chance. So stick with it, or get one on one help with my Etsy Shop Critique. 

Etsy Tip #22: How to Find Success Selling on Etsy

Learn even more about how to sell on Etsy with my best-selling Etsy downloads, available at my Etsy Store. 

More Etsy Posts

• Highlights from my 2022 Etsy Holiday Sales Planner
• Etsy’s New Off Site Ad Policy
• Big Changes Ahead for Etsy SEO
  

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