Danielle’s (that’s me!) Tips for Etsy Success

{Hand Embroidery by The Merriweather Council – Available for purchase here.}

I was so honored when April asked little ol’ me to do an interview with her for ARTrepreneur! Like, seriously on the floor shocked out of my head.

Okay, back to reality.

I had such a great time chatting with April and I tried to share as much insight as possible. Our discussion revolved mostly around marketing through and building a successful Etsy shop.

April thought I was qualified to be a resource on this topic! Awh shucks!

Here are some takeaways from my interview:

Use the Merchandising reports on Etsy.

If you want your items to have a better chance of getting exposure on Etsy’s front page or in one of the Finds emails, you will want to pay attention to the Merchandising Trends report that Etsy puts out once a month. In this report, which gets posted to Etsy’s seller’s handbook, you will find information regarding seasonal trends, upcoming holidays and other cultural events, forecasted popular colors, keywords, motifs and styles.

While it seems that mustaches and small woodland creatures are not going away – chalk boards and writeable surfaces have also been gaining popularity, as have fortune cookies, vintage industrial objects and terrariums. Perhaps these are trends only on Etsy, but if your item fits the bill, you want to utilize it to bring traffic to your shop.

The merchandising report will give you lots of new words, and ideas for tagging and titling. Use the report to update tags and stay in the know about what the trends are. Pay attention to the Finds emails and you will see the themes often get pulled right from the Merchandising Report. (There are a few versions of the Etsy Finds email – Daily, Weddings, Fashion and Dudes. You can see which ones you are signed up to receive by going to “your account”- “settings” and then “emails.”)

See the reports here.  (This links to the July report.)

Think outside the box. Appeal to varied levels of intellect.

Once, I did a search for “avacado” on Etsy and got a bunch of pages of listings, which is a lot but I thought for sure there would be more – turns out, I spelled it wrong. I realized, with the help of some others, that this was probably intentional. And you know what – I think it’s brilliant. If your item could be searchable with a word that is commonly misspelled, why not use that in your tags? Don’t misspell the word in your titles though, that won’t look good.

For you, as the maker of your item, you might know all the technical terms for it, but does everyone else? Try to use both the technical term and the commonfolk term when tagging.

If your item is purple, absolutely use “purple” as a tag, but how about “phlox” (pulled straight off the July merchandising report) or “lavender” or “eggplant”?

Come on! Make your listings work for you! Use all the space you are allotted for tags and use synonyms.

Promote Others.

I really enjoy making treasuries on Etsy, and the return on time investment is pretty good. People often wonder about how to get front page exposure on Etsy – and the answer is: get involved. Promote others through Treasury making and soon you will see others promoting you in Treasuries. Those items you see on the front page of Etsy are from member curated Treasuries. That means someone put that treasury together, and simple math tells us that the more Treasuries you are featured in, the better your chances are of landing on the front page.
If you enjoy making Treasuries and marketing your shop on Etsy, you might consider joining a treasury making team on Etsy. Before you do that though, I suggest you get your shop to a place you are happy with – cohesive, well maintained and well stocked. Treasury making is a free, fun, and relatively simple way to market your shop – because once you start promoting others, they will start promoting you.

Smile.

I didn’t say this in the interview but, smiling couldn’t hurt so let those pearly whites show! It definitely couldn’t hurt.

About the Author: Hello! I’m Danielle, the President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, Administrative Assistant and summer intern and blog updater at The Merriweather Council. I enjoy sipping iced lattes, listening to boy band music, watching crime solving TV shows and putting things in hoops. I am often covered in little bits of thread and fabric but, well, ‘I want it that way’ 😉