3 Things Million Dollar Etsy Shops Do
If you're trying to build a successful Etsy shop, or any business for that matter, you'll know that sometimes it's a lonely road, sometimes it's going to feel like you have no idea what you're doing and you don't know what the next step is.
For me, whenever I feel like this, one of the most helpful things that I do is to look at people who are already successful doing the things that I want to do and I just kind of observe what they're doing, I write everything down that I notice and I try to reverse engineer to how they got to their success.
So that's exactly what I did over the last few days, I went through all 100 of the top Etsy shops of the year. I was looking through their shop pages, their social medias, the items that they sold, every everything. And while all these stores were special and unique in their own way, I found three major characteristics that they all have in common. And I'm going to share them with you today in hopes we can apply them in our own stores so then we can maybe see the same kind of success in the future. So follow the article with us to the end.
So before I get into those things, I'm just going to talk about the tools that I use to do this research. And the first one is Erank. If you never heard of Erank, it's pretty much just a research tool that a lot of Etsy sellers use. And what I mainly use it for is just competitor research as well as just keeping an overall view on what the current trends are for certain keywords.
The other resource that I use is a website called Market Pulse, which has a pretty useful list of the best selling Etsy stores in the last 30 days. I found myself checking this website every so often just so I can kind of keep up to date with what the best Etsy sellers are doing right now.
5 Successful Etsy Shops
So after going through hundreds of Etsy shops, I really just want to focus on five of the main ones that I found really encapsulate the rest of the list and I'm going to go through them now.
So the first store is CaitlynMinimalist, which is a store that we've talked about before and in my opinion it's really one of the best stores on Etsy. I'm finding that it's always performing like near the top of the list when it comes to monthly sales and it's just one of the stores that I'm really vibing with the most.
The next one is SilverRainSilver. We have TwistStationery, Beadboat1 and ModParty. All of these stores are million dollar Etsy shops and they're still near the top of the list in terms of sales every month. So they're really good stores to check out.
Characteristic 1: Focus
And the first characteristic that I want to talk about is that they all have focus. So if you look through all their stores, you'll notice that all of them have a really strong focus on a certain niche in the market and it's something that their shop is known for. The top stores are focused on just one thing. Whether it's jewelry, stationery, or party supplies. They're not like a department store selling everything. They're really specialty stores where customers are going to them because they know that they're good at what they do.
And I really think that's what Etsy is all about. I think that the type of customer that Etsy attracts are customers that are looking for people who are really good at what they do. And the thing is, if you're selling a bunch of different things and you're not serving a specific niche, customers might assume that you're not good at what you do or maybe you're just drop shipping things from Alibaba or something like that.
Like for example, if a customer is going on Etsy and looking for a handmade leather wallet, they're going to look for a store that specializes in leather goods, right? Because they know that that store knows how to make really quality leather goods. If they see a store that's selling leather goods, wedding invitations, printables, jewelry or party supplies, like that kind of store is not going to be attractive to them.
So knowing that, I think it's important to pick a niche that really matches our skill set and whatever we're interested in it. And there's really two ways to approach trying to find your niche. You can either plan it right from the beginning or you can discover it along the way.
I know there's some people who know exactly what they want to do and they start that one thing and they see it to the end for the next five years. But for others like myself, it takes time to find the niche that's right for you.
One of the things that's helped me find my niche is to just write down everything that I think I'm good at or the things that other people say that I'm good at. And I look through the list and I see if there's any way that I can make a product out of those skills that I had. So that's something that you can do too, if you're struggling to find your niche.
Another thing that I want to mention is to try not to get into a niche just for the money. I get some messages from a lot of people saying they want to start a sticker shop, but they're not really artists or graphic designers or anything like that. And they don't like dealing with machines like cutting machines and printers.
And for people like that, I would actually suggest not getting into the sticker business, because if you don't like to design things or draw things or make art, and you don't like to deal with machines, that's really what making stickers is. I would say that there's probably a better niche that's suited for you instead of just making a sticker shop, because I have a sticker shop.
Characteristic 2: Drive
The next characteristic that these stores share, and that's drive. So if you spend the time and go through the list of all of these stores, you'll find that there's something that sticks out like a sore thumb, and that's that all of these stores have a huge amount of listings. And in my opinion, the only way to get this amount of listings is to have drive. So when I say that they have a lot of listings, I actually mean like an insane amount of listings.
So I'm just going to go through the list that I mentioned previously and tell you how many listings each store has. So as of today, CaitlynMinimalist has a total of 948 listings. ModParty has 1653, SilverRainSilver has 1940, TwistStationery has 2433, and Beadboat has 7717.
So just comparing those numbers with my store, my store has around 120 listings. And when I tell that to people, people think that that's a lot of listings, but that's nowhere close to what these stores have. And just going through the list and seeing these high number of listings, I can't help but think that this is really contributing to their overall success.
And if you take some time to think about it, it really makes sense because Etsy is a search engine. People are going on to Etsy to search for things to buy, and the more listings you have, the more chances you have to be found by potential customers.
And another thing that people talk about is Etsy ads and how they're really expensive and not worth it. Like, if you think of a listing as kind of like a pseudo ad, that directs people to your store it's really cost effective. Because a listing costs 20 cents to make, and it lasts for four months and has unlimited amount of clicks. It's not until somebody buys something that you have to pay another 20 cents. But for Etsy ads, in some cases, you're paying anywhere between 50 cents and over a dollar for just a click. Like, that's not even a guarantee that they're gonna buy the item.
So I think what most of these stores are doing is they're using listings to direct traffic to their store. Like, not all 7,000 of these listings are meant to be bestsellers, right? I think that some of meant to just direct traffic to their store so that customers can find what their best sellers are.
And when I say "drive", I really mean it because it takes a really driven person to have the dedication to make thousands and thousands of listings. And this is something that I'm going to be tackling over the next year. And what I can say is that you just really have to take it one at a time. You have to take it listing by listing every day or every week or every month. And you just have to make it a habit to start cranking these out. You're only going to be able to make this amount of listings if you really enjoy what you're doing. So that's another reason to remember the first point is to pick the right niche.
Characteristic 3: Longevity
The next characteristic that I noticed in all of these shops is longevity. This one's not as obvious as the other ones, but the vast majority of these stores that are listed in the top 100 have been running for a long time, like eight to 10 years.
And the thing with that is that a lot of people aren't willing to do things for eight to 10 years when they set out to start a business. Some people are looking for results, like within the year or even less. And as you can see with these doors, success doesn't come overnight. Most people look for instant gratification and to try to get rich quick.
But the thing is, like, a good business takes time to build. There are some stores that catch lightning in a bottle and they become overnight successes. But you can't bank on that happening to you. I think a lot of people struggle with longevity because of the uncertainty of business.
So a lot of people just give up and stop when things get tough. And you really just need to have faith and just to keep going. You have to believe that your business is going to be successful, even if it might not be. You have to be realistic about what your business is and what you think it can do. But it really pays in these cases to be optimistic. People are so pessimistic these days that just having a little bit of optimism is a great way to just keep yourself going when things are getting tough.
The hardest thing about business is that there's no set path to success. When you're in school and say you want to be a doctor or something like that, like, there's a set path to get you to where you want to be. Like, first you go to school and you take these courses, and then you take these exams, and then you work residency and so on, and eventually you'll become a doctor. Right? But for business, you really have to accept that it's not like this at all. It's kind of like you're just thrown into a random game where no one has explained the rules and you just have to figure it out as you go.
But one of the things that's really helped me is just to look at people who've already done it and just to try to reverse engineer what they've done. And if you treat business like this, like with this mindset, it can actually be fun.
Like, for me, when I'm playing board games, the funnest part for me is in the beginning when I'm trying to learn the rules and I'm trying to figure out, like, what my strategy is going to be and seeing if I can implement it. Board games, for me, like, they get boring once I become too good at it and I know what to do.
But yeah, I think those are the three most important things that I've seen that all these stores have in common. But do me a favor and look at the list for yourself and let me know if they have anything else in common that maybe I missed. And if you find something, write it to me in the comments.
