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Motivated to be your own boss?
If you’re dissatisfied with your current work circumstances consider working for yourself.
If you’re a formally trained artist or artistically inclined and love the thought of making money through your passion, you should consider selling on Etsy.
It’s the ecommerce website based out of Brooklyn, NY that offers a wide range of items such as photography, art, clothing, jewelry, and more.
Etsy is a wonderful online platform for artists of all kinds to sell their work.
If you’ve considered selling on Etsy but don’t know where to begin, here are 5 steps to help you get started.
1. Find your niche.
The easiest way to find your niche is to ask yourself “Who do I make my products for?” If you make jewelry your answer is more than likely “Women”. But, that’s a very broad range so you’ll have to narrow it down a bit. Are you wanting to sell to young women, babies or grandmothers? Let’s say that you make necklaces that you think women of all ages would love. If you search for “necklace” on Etsy there are over 2,000,000 results! But, if you search for “necklace for niece” there are only a little over 1,600 results. Much less competition in that category.
2. Find out what sells.
There’s a fairly simple way to find out what’s selling on Etsy. Once you’ve found your niche, do a keyword search. Then, click on one of the listings in the results of that search. When you get to the listing, click on the shop name in the upper left hand corner. When you get to the owner’s shop, on the left hand side you will see a menu that has all of their shop categories. Underneath that it has “Shop Info” and you will see a link that has “866 Sales” (the number will be different with every shop).
Click on that link and you will be taken to a listing of all sales that have taken place in that particular shop. I love this feature because there is no guesswork at all! A lot of times my favorite item in someone else’s shop isn’t selling well, but another item that I hadn’t even noticed is being sold much more. This helps me realize that my tastes are different than others and sometimes I need to create my product for my customers rather than for myself.
3. Learn How to Compete.
Now that you’ve done a little research on what sells, you can see what you need to do to get ahead of the competition. The first thing you’ll notice is that the high selling items have detailed images with their description. A picture is worth a thousand words and I totally believe it is the first thing that catches a customer’s eye. Another thing you can do to compete is use effective keywords-ones that describe every aspect of your product. Use colors, shapes, type of material, sizes, and anything else you can think of to describe your product. If you run out of room in your product title, use more words in your tags when you are creating your listing. Think outside of the box!
4. Learn How to Stand Out.
The best way to stand out is to go back to tip #1 and ask yourself “What is my niche?”. It’s easier to stand out among a few thousand than it is among a few hundred thousand. Try to get a few of your products on the first page search results in a smaller niche and see what happens.
5. Have Fun!
The key to success is doing what you love and loving what you do. Your passion is most likely creating the product and the icing on the cake is selling it to someone who will appreciate it as much as you do! Etsy can help you do just that. And you’ll find that you may just make a few friends along the way.
This guest post was by Shannon. She is the owner of two Etsy shops. One is called Digital Princess where she offers custom designed invitations that you won’t find anywhere else. She also runs Scrapits and focuses on wedding anniversary gifts and custom invitations.
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