Don't Make These 10 Fatal Etsy Mistakes

I've been on Etsy for about two years now, and I've recently hit a pretty big milestone, at least for me, of hitting 5,000 sales and reaching over $75,000 in revenue on the platform. I learned a lot along the way and I've made a lot of mistakes. And some of you guys have been sharing your shop with me looking for feedback, and I see that you guys are making some of the same mistakes that I did too.

These mistakes could be causing you to lose out on sales, they could be losing you money, they could be losing you time, and they could be holding you back from reaching the success that you dreamt about when you first started your shop in the first place.

So let's not waste any time and get right into it and talk about the 10 biggest, largest, hugest Etsy mistakes that I see.

The 10 Biggest Etsy Mistakes I See

Mistake 1: Not taking enough photos

Most people are visual shoppers. Back in the 50s, when there was a radio in the center of the living room instead of a tv, you could get away with just describing your product with words. But these days, people really want to see what your product looks like in as many photos and videos as possible.

When I was on call with an Etsy shop optimizer last year, she told me that the more product images a listing has, the better off it does. And that's just according to the stats. I understand that if your shop uses a print on demand model like mine does, it's hard to get a lot of photos because you don't want to be creating so many products for all these different designs if you're not sure they're going to sell.

But another thing that you can do with this photo section is just convey important information that you want your customer to know. Things like specifications or sizing of your products or even just how to order or what's customizable. If you look at some of the biggest shops on the platform, you see that a lot of them do this. They use this section to display important information because you know that a lot of customers don't read the item descriptions.

Mistake 2: changing or editing your Best Sellers

Mistake number two is changing a best selling item or an item that's doing well. If you've been on Etsy for a while, you know that the search algorithm can be a fickle thing. It can change on a moment's notice and you really don't want to be encouraging it to change for items that are doing well for you. When you make changes to an item, it can take Etsy a while to index these changes in the search. And during this time it may or may not be available for customers to find.

People have shared stories with me saying that they went through all their listings in a day and made a bunch of changes all at once and their visits just dropped off to zero for like one to two days. I personally don't know if this is a huge deal anymore because Etsy is always making changes. But it is best practice to stagger out your updates if you can, because you don't want to be stuck in a scenario where your shop isn't searchable to customers.

If you do want to make changes, like you want to test out new photos or titles or descriptions, the best thing to do is something called A/B testing. Instead of making changes directly to an existing listing, you want to create a duplicate one with all the changes that you want. After that, you can sit back and just observe which listing is doing better and drop the underperforming one if you want.

Mistake 3: Copyright & Trademark Infringement

I know a lot of people do it and I know a lot of people don't get caught. And I know some shops make some decent money before getting shut down, but to me it's just not worth it. If you know me, you know that I'm always talking about how important it is to build a business that has the potential to last long term. But if you're doing something illegal like copyright infringement, you just can't do that because there's always a risk that any day your shop could get shut down.

I know it can be hard because if you just spend two seconds browsing on Etsy, you'll see that there's a ton of stores that have Disney stuff, Marvel stuff, or Pokemon stuff, and it almost seems like it's okay to sell these items.

I make a lot of Etsy related content here on blog, so I guess people think I actually work for Etsy or something. But I'm always getting messages from people who've had their shops shut down randomly and asking me to help them open an back up. Firstly, I don't work for Etsy, guys, I'm sorry, but I can't do anything to open up your shop again. And secondly, it's almost never random.

99% of these shops are infringing in copyright in some way and that's the reason they got shut down. Even if you're creating these products from scratch by yourself or you're personally drawing art pieces using these characters, if you're using IP that doesn't belong to you, there's always that risk. There's the risk that you're going to get shut down.

Mistake 4: Unprofessional responses to reviews or comments

You'll see this a lot if you spend any time browsing Etsy forums or Reddit. But a lot of people are not really professional when it comes to their customer service. I totally get it. As small business owners, we put our heart and souls into the products that we make. And when somebody criticizes our products or our shop, it can feel like it's a personal attack on ourselves.

There's going to be people who give you unfair reviews. There's going to be people who try to scam you for free product, and there's going to be people who just simply don't like your product. And that's okay. Not everybody has to like your product. Some of the biggest companies in the world who are making the most innovative products, they have haters too. Like, not everyone is going to like your products.

But one of the most important things that you can do for the long term health of your business is just to treat these people right anyways. If somebody gives you a bad review on Etsy, one of the worst things you can do is respond to them in an unprofessional way. It can be a huge turn off to any potential customers that might see it. It's really in your best interest to be the bigger person and to reply a courteous and understanding way, even if you don't really mean it.

My go to response when dealing with negative reviews is just to be sorry that they weren't happy with their order and just to let them know that if they need anything else. I'm always available via email or Etsy messages and I leave it at that. You don't have to go into detail about what the customer did wrong or how they didn't read the description or how they're like super crazy or something like that. Most people will get that vibe from reading their original review anyways, so you really don't need to point these things out.

Mistake 5: Underpricing your products

I like to browse Etsy from time to time just to discover new shops and just to see what everybody is doing. And whenever I do, I always stumble upon these shops that I feel must be losing money or just making less than minimum wage. I know there's a lot more competition on Etsy these days, and you can feel pressured to need to lower your price to compete, but in my experience, you really don't want to compete on price. That's the last thing you want to compete on, because it's a race to the bottom where everybody loses.

Pricing can be a very difficult thing to figure out. So I get it. But I've talked about this before and I think it might not be possible to charge too high for a product. The real thing you have to consider is, does the price match your ability to sell it?

Also, a lot of people think that if they increase their prices, they're going to lose a whole bunch of customers and they're going to make less money. But that's not always the case. But say you sell your items for $10 and you sell 100 of them a month, you increase your price to $20 and the worst thing happens, you lose half of your customers and half of your sales are gone.

But is it really that bad? Because if you work out the math, you're actually making the same amount of money while doing half the work. So it's not always a bad thing. I get comments sometimes from customers saying that my stickers are too expensive and I'm okay with that.

I personally am not looking to make the cheapest stickers on Etsy. If there are people out there looking for that, like they can easily find it from other stores. But I'm happy the prices that I've set, I'm happy with the quality of stickers that I'm making, and I'm happy making money doing what I do.

Mistake 6: Focusing on the wrong niche

I think that the majority of new shops that are struggling to get sales are making this mistake. They say that there are two modes of exploring and exploiting. Exploring is about testing why to find your points of leverage or to find a niche that works for you. But once you've found that niche, you should move into exploit mode where you're testing deep and narrow and doubling down on what really works.

For example, say that one day you just decide that you want to make stickers. Maybe you saw this really cool guy on YouTube and you want to be just like Him. You're really ambitious, so you make hundreds of listings with different sticker designs, but you're not getting any sales. What might happen to you is that the market just doesn't want this product from you at this time, and you could have spent all this time and energy with not much effort in return.

A more efficient way to do it would be to take your time and try out a variety of different things to see what works first, say you're interested in art. You can try putting your art on stickers, but also prints, greeting cards, pins, magnets, tote bags, mugs, or anything that comes to mind.

And maybe after doing all of those things, you find that your greeting cards are selling really well. This is where you want to change into exploit mode. You've found that greeting cards have been selling well for you, so now's the time to make hundreds of listings of greeting cards.

Most people skip the exploration step altogether because it can take a lot of time, but I argue that you could be wasting even more time by focusing on a niche that's not working for you at all.

Mistake 7: Etsy ads at the wrong time

There's this misconception that Etsy ads are like a magic wand that you can just wave and it's going to magically bring you sales. But that's not really the case at all. What ads do is get you on the top page for particular search terms, which in some cases might lead to sales, but in other cases might not do anything at all.

For example, I sell daycare labels and back to school labels for kids, which is a pretty seasonal business. I get sales throughout the year, but after running my shop for a while, I've learned that I have a busy season near the end of summer and early fall, and sales drop down in the springtime. There's no amount of money that I could spend on Etsy ads that would get my spring sales to the volume that I do during the fall.

Throwing money at Etsy ads is just going to be a waste because there's just simply less people looking for tags at that time. And the thing is, there are shops out there that are more seasonal than mine. This is an extreme example, but if you're selling Christmas ornaments or Christmas decorations, there's no reason to spend money on Etsy ads in June. It just doesn't make any sense.

So before you go and you spend your hard earned money on Etsy ads, just make sure You've given some thought about the timing.

Mistake 8: Copying the competition

When you see a successful store in your niche, it's natural to want to imitate them. You might be tempted to replicate the type of products that they make or even how they shoot their product photos. But in my experience, it's better to try to stand out. Like I said earlier, people are visual shoppers and when people are spending time to scroll through hundreds of different products, the best thing that you can do is try to stand out and make a good first impression.

Type in some of your tags into the search bar on Etsy and and make notes on what all your competitors are doing. Is there a common theme here? Is there something that you can do differently to stand out? Could you use different colors or a different setting for your photos?

For example, if you're searching for candles, I feel that most of these products give off the same vibe, but this store "chandellesFUNKY" really stands out. While most candle shops are going for a pastel muted colored look, this one uses bold and vibrant colors and instantly caught my eye. Looking at their sales, they have over 2500 and they only started last year, so it looks like it's working for them too.

Mistake 9: Setting it and forgetting it

If you've been on Etsy for a while, you know that it's not a platform where you can just set up a store, have it run, and just leave it up there to get sales forever. The algorithm, popular search terms, and general sales trends are always changing. And if you want your store to have continued success, you have to evolve too. One thing that you can do is to browse Etsy the same way a potential customer would.

I like to open up an Incognito tab on my browser, go to Etsy, and enter in search terms from my niche. Then I'll look through the first one to three pages to see what shows up. I'll click into the products that seem to be doing well and check out if they're using any tags that are new to me that I should switch to too.

This is a really great way to keep up with your tags and just your SEO in general. It doesn't take much effort at all and it just keeps your SEO updated.

Mistake 10: Not Starting

The next mistake that I see is the absolute worst, and that's not starting. It really hurts me. There's like a physical pain in my chest when I get comments from people saying that it's their dream to start a business. They have this great idea for it, and they've been watching my content for months, or some of them even years, and they still haven't started it yet.

I know that people are juggling a lot of different things and life gets in the way sometimes, but if you have an idea that you really want to do, you have to find a way to make it happen. It's easy to keep saying things like I'll do it once I'm done school, or I'll do it when my job is less hectic, or I'll do it when my kids are bolder. There will always be something. There will always be a reason not to do it. We only get one life, and people are out there living like we get another shot at this. Like we respawn at the end of it and we get to try again, but we don't.

If you have a dream that you really want, that you've been thinking about for years, you owe it to yourself to at least try, right? If you're really inspired now and you're ready to finally start your Etsy shop, check out this article here. It's the fastest way to get 200 sales. And if you're telling me that you don't have any time, check out this article here. It's how to make more money when you have no time.

So there we go, two articles, no excuses. I'll see you in the next article guys.