Small Biz Success Tips – Since 2012

Tag: how to sell on etsy (Page 1 of 2)

Etsy Holiday Marketing Tips

by Gail Oliver

It’s that time of year! My Etsy 2019 Holiday Planner is just out and this year it is bigger and better than ever!

Featuring 23 jam-packed pages of ideas, inspiration, trends, advice, SEO research, worksheets, planner pages and much much more so that your shop can really maximize holiday sales! Below is a sneak peak with three hot tips from the planner.

    • SEO: Did you know that searches for red dresses, red shoes, red jewelry, red tablecloths and red nail polish are highest in November and December? So take advantage of searches for this holiday color and maybe even add a red product into your product line.
    • Promoted Listings: Do not run Etsy Promoted Listings on every item in your shop. For example, do not run them on seasonal items such as spring items, Easter items, etc. Also, do not run them on listings that have a sales conversion rate of less than 1% (divide orders by visits). As you are paying for clicks, if there is a low chance the click will result in a sale, your ad results will not be as successful.
    • Memorable Package Inserts: In each product package include a beautifully printed recipe card that has a Christmas cookie recipe on it. Make sure it also has your shop information on the back or at the bottom. This way when the customer pulls this recipe out every Christmas, they will remember your shop!

Other Holiday Posts…


© 2019 Gail Oliver. All rights reserved.

4 Quick & Easy Etsy Tips

If you need a boost for your Etsy shop before the holiday buying rush starts next week, here are four of my quick and easy Etsy tips.

Gift Search Phrases

Not everyone just searches “Christmas Gift for”. There are other search phrases that are actually even more popular such as White Elephant Gifts, Secret Santa Gifts, 12 Days of Christmas Gifts, Stocking Stuffers, Advent Calendar Fillers, Hanukkah Gifts, Diwali Gifts, Thanksgiving Gifts, Christmas Gifts Under 10, Christmas Gifts Under 20 and so forth. So test these in Etsy Autocomplete and then use relevant ones in your titles and tags. 

Send Coupons for Free

Are you taking advantage of Etsy’s FREE offer to send a coupon code to anyone who puts your product in their cart and/or favorites it? If you were planning to do a Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale anyway, why not take advantage of this offer. Go into your Dashboard/Marketing/Sales and Coupons and you will see Targeted Campaigns at the top for both Abandoned Cart and Recently Favorited. 

Repeat Business

Always be selling, so in every package that you send out this holiday season (and all year long) be sure to include a flyer with a special offer for the customer to come back to your shop for Valentine’s Day gifts and/or an after Christmas sale (this is just one of the things that I recommend in my Etsy 30-Day Success Plan). Actually, any kind of insert that you can put into the package to get customers to remember your shop is always a good idea. Here is a post I wrote two years ago that might give you some ideas: Creative Ideas for Packaging Inserts.

Download Sales

Do you sell digital downloads? I do, so I am sure that quite often people contact you asking where the download is. Etsy actually has a very good description that you should put into your outgoing email to buyer, as well as at the end of the listing description. It will SAVE you tons of time answering this same question over and over again. I added a little more to it:

NOTE: If you’re purchasing a digital file that’s available for instant download, you can access the file via your account’s “Purchases and reviews” page, but you’ll also receive a separate email with a download link. If you purchased as a guest, you’ll find the link to download your items in the receipt that was emailed to you after purchase.The link will direct you to the order’s Downloads page. Also, check your spam folder as sometimes the emails will end up there.

On a fun note, back in August, I wrote a blog post about Christmas Product Ideas and Trends for 2018, and I mentioned an idea I had to create an Advent Calendar for dogs, and, guess what, Trader Joe’s came out with one this week:

This is why it is important to read my blog as you too might get a great idea (for free). 

For more inspiration be sure to check out my post, What National Day is Today: The Trend of National Days.

Is Your Business Struggling? I offer very affordable Phone Consultations.

Also Read:

© 2018 Gail Oliver. All rights reserved.

Why is My Etsy Traffic (and Sales) Down?

etsy shop trafficIs your Etsy shop traffic down?

Many Etsy shops come to me and wonder why their traffic and sales are down from one month to another (be sure to read about my 30-Day Etsy Success Plan below). The obvious answer is because buying patterns are not constant, they fluctuate with holidays, seasons, even the economy.

So how do you know if it is just your traffic and sales that are down as opposed to the traffic and sales on Etsy being down overall?

Look at Your Etsy Ad Impressions

One easy way to tell if it is just you or an overall occurrence is to look at your impressions if you are running Etsy Promoted Listings. The number of impressions is based on search demand, so if your impressions are down from last month, then it would indicate that searches overall were down and it is likely not a problem specific to you (provided that you did not make any changes to your ad campaign from the previous month). When this happens it is a good time to reach out to your previous customers with a special offer to get things going again.

Look at Etsy’s Quarterly Stats

Etsy is a public company so they have to release their quarterly sales revenues. 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, or January 1st to March 31st. So you can’t always expect to sell in March what you sold in December, but again this can depend on what you are selling. However, it is a good time to run a sale because when demand is down, prices should go down (and vice versa).

Look at Your Etsy Stats

Login to your Etsy account, go to your dashboard and look at your stats for last year. A bar chart will come up that will clearly indicate which months were your strongest and which ones were your weakest. So if March was a bad month for you last year, it makes sense that it might be bad again for you this year. The key is not always to measure if sales drop from month to month, but rather that they are increasing month over month. In other words, if sales for March 2018 were lower than February 2018, but still higher than they were for March 2017, then I wouldn’t be panicking as overall growth is still there.

Look at Google Trends

Certain products sell best at certain times of the year. If I type “backpacks” into Google Trends, it is quite obvious that searches peak in mid August (see below), so I wouldn’t be panicking in February if sales were down, but I would be upping my advertising budget in July and August to maximize this sales opportunity.

Here is How to Really Drive More Traffic

etsy shop trafficI have created the 30-Day Etsy Success Plan. This is an actionable step-by-step list of daily tactics to do to improve your Etsy shop, drive more sales and improve your sales. Everything is easy to follow in bullet point form with multiple tactics for each of the 30 days. I can’t recommend it enough. All of these tactics work, so you can’t lose. Available now at my Etsy Shop.

More of My Etsy Articles

© 2018 Gail Oliver. All rights reserved. Etsy shop traffic

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