Getting Noticed on Etsy
It’s near impossible to get noticed on Etsy, and the market is super flooded with people trying to sell the same products! Have 20 listings in my store and spent two weeks on them. In three months, I’ve had two views! I’ve been in print on demand for two plus years, I have 500 designs, and I barely make any money! So, you know, I get comments like that every day . And I find it really interesting because about a month or so ago I found a product niche that I wanted to test out on Etsy using print-on-demand products, so I created a brand new Etsy store.
Early Success with a Test Store
Over a week, I slowly added in 25 print-on-demand products using designs that I created with Canva and Midjourney. And a day later, the store had its first sale. Since then, I’ve been slowly adding in more products for testing, and as I have, the sales have also organically grown. In fact, I checked my sales today and saw that in the past week, this test store has done about $200 worth of sales with a profit margin of about 25 to 40 percent depending on the product that’s been sold. And just to clarify, the store is brand new. It has no social media presence or social proof. It has no store reviews. And it does not sell custom products. The store is working entirely passively on autopilot!
Understanding Etsy’s Algorithm
So that got me thinking: Why is it that I set up a little test store, and within weeks, it became a passive income source that I can now grow, whereas others spend two years uploading 500 designs and are lucky to make even just one sale? It’s an interesting question, right? So I wanted to make a video to share with you the seven things that I did that I think made a pretty big difference.
1. Optimizing Listings for Impressions
I optimize listings for the new listing impression algorithm. So if I had to guess, I think that the most common question that I get asked is this: “Sarah, how can I get people to actually view my items on Etsy? They just get lost in a sea of products!” It’s a good question. So you have to understand that there are two main sources of traffic on Etsy. The first is very simple—it’s search traffic. It’s when you search for an item, and Etsy shows you results. And then the second, arguably more important, form of traffic is the recommended items. It’s when you come to, say, your homepage, and Etsy shows you items that they think you might like.
2. Focus on Quality, Not Quantity
Another key to keep in mind that if you want to make money quickly, is that you have to be efficient with your time. Which is why I find it very strange when people just add in hundreds of items into their stores, just because. I think, for example, of the viewer from earlier who spent two years uploading 500 designs and getting no traction.
3. Using Myself as a Yardstick
Okay, I can imagine a bunch of people are saying: “All right, Sarah, you say it’s a waste of time to just add in bad designs that are not clickable. But how am I supposed to know if my design is good or if it’s bad?!”
4. Creating Designs that Fill a Gap in the Market
In addition to using yourself as a yardstick, another really easy way to create a great design is to focus on niches and sub-niches which don’t have a lot of good options already.
5. Mid-Tier Pricing to Take Advantage of Price Anchoring
So another question I get asked often is this: “Sarah, how am I supposed to make any money on Etsy after product costs and Etsy fees?!”
6. Showing Products Being Used by a Real Person
So here is the thing, in addition to Etsy wanting to see that people are interested in clicking on your item, they also want to see that some of those people are going to go on to buy it.
7. Creating My Own Luck by Being Persistent
As I said earlier, when you’re creating a new Etsy store, there is definitely some luck involved. Because as I said, when you create a new listing and it gets test impressions on, say, a random person’s homepage, you have no control over who Etsy chose to put it in front of.