How to Sell on Etsy

So you think you want to start selling on Etsy? Maybe you've been hearing about it on TikTok or you've been looking up passive income streams and you think Etsy might be the one for you.

Today I'm going to talk about how to start on Etsy the right way so that you don't make a bunch of these rookie mistakes.

How to Sale things on Etsy

Number one, if you're looking for passive income today, do not start on Etsy because you're not going to see a passive income stream today. It's going to be a lot of work up front, but it is worth it because the potential for passive income is definitely there. I just want to get that out of the way.

Etsy as a platform has a very low barrier to entry, so it has low startup costs. It's not like Amazon where you're going to have to have a lot of capital to get started. You don't have to learn coding or learn how to build a website. You don't have to hold inventory even. It's also very low skill level. A 10 year old could probably figure out how to start a shop if they wanted to.

So while the startup costs and the barrier to entry is low, the earning potential is high. It's virtually unlimited. It's one of the few platforms where you can actually build a brand, where you own your policies and you can create a really nice branded storefront.

Today I'm going to take you through the A to Z to really getting started on the right foot. I've sold over $1.5 million in revenue on the platform and that's over a million dollars in profit. And now I'm teaching over 1600 Etsy sellers how to do the exact same thing.

I would love for you to drop a comment below and let me know if you are a new Etsy seller, if you're thinking of starting on Etsy, or if you are a seasoned seller. So let's get started.

Step 1: Create An Etsy Account

Step one, you need to create an Etsy account. So you're going to go to Etsy.com, click Sign in and then click Register. So you're just going to type in a username and a password. Now do not overthink about what you're going to name the shop because you can change this literally at any, any point. I recommend just thinking of it as a placeholder for now, just get something up.

You're going to go to your profile and click "Sell On Etsy", you'll click "get started". Skip all the questions, click "start your shop" and you'll click your language, your country and your currency.

Now you're going to want your location to match up with your payment account. So we're going to name our shop something, we're going to call it Kicks and Giggles. Oh, it's already taken. So then you'll click something else. You can see they give you recommendations, but think about things you could add to the end of it.

If you really have a name you want to go with, you could add Co, you could add Collective, you could add Boutique, you could add shop, you could add studio, gallery. You could add so many different things to the ending to get what you want.

Now it's going to prompt you to create a first listing. So you are just going to upload anything, just take a picture. It could be anything you want. You just need to get a listing up. It does not even matter what it is. Just fill it out enough so that you can get a listing published and then fill out the rest of your shop. So I recommend just saying you're going to do other listings later.

Now you're going to want to enter all your payment account information. You're going to actually want to put in your accurate country of residence. You can set it up as an individual or a business account. You can switch over at any point. If you want to start as a business, switch to individual, start as individual, switch to business.

If you don't have an LLC set up, don't wait to open your shop until you have the llc. Just set it up as an individual account for now.

You're going to set up your shop's profile, really put in a banner and your shop announcement. You're going to start filling out the different sections, the "about" section, your policies, all the FAQ make sure to get that in there. Don't be a perfectionist about any of this because you can always update it.

So next you're going to list your products. Now you have lots of options. You could choose handmade items, supplies, print on demand, which is considered handmade or digital or vintage. Or you could do a combination of these things. And I recommend a customer first, product second approach.

Step 2: What To Sell?

So instead of trying to think of what to sell on Etsy, I would decide who you want to sell to? And I would recommend choosing customers with income that is consistent so that your income becomes very consistent as well.

So you're going to start getting these listing photos together whether you do mockups or you actually take photos yourself, I Recommend Having to 10 different types of listing photos within every listing to make it High converting.

Really use bright crisp photos where the product itself is taking up at least 80% of the square footage on that listing photo. I recommend just keeping it really simple. You do not need props. This isn't a family portrait. Natural lighting is best, really get things near a window if you're taking the pictures yourself.

Now mockups are fine on model typically does better than flat lays. And if you're gonna do mockups, you know, real person mockups versus AI mockups, I recommend having you know, a mix of both or lean towards real person if you're trying to decide which way to go.

Etsy is a great resource for the most modern, up to date, trendy looking mockups. So you're going to now create your first listing. Select if it's physical item or digital, if you made it, if someone else made it in your shop, or if another company or person made it.

Select if it's a finished product or if it's a supply category item. And then I would just say when it was made. You can always select production partners later. So within the listing itself there are so many different places to be including SEO.

Make sure that it's all input correctly the first time. Whatever you do, do not publish listings that are not ready to go. I've seen a lot of people decide to just fill their shop with listings that aren't optimized. They end up with a lot of work to redo.

So you're going to put in a placeholder title so title with perfect SEO and then you're going to start uploading your photos. We'll just pretend that this is what we're selling. Make sure to have the 10 different types of product photos along with a video. You're going to fill out your description if there's personalization elements make sure to add that personalization text box.

Put in your pricing and your quantities available. I recommend doing the highest quantity available. So Etsy sees it as having high high revenue potential for them and then variations. Definitely be utilizing your variations whenever possible. This is your place to affect the pricing with your variations.

So if you have a customization element that won't affect pricing, you can use the personalization text box if the variations are taken up by things that do affect pricing.

Now in your details you're going to want to select the appropriate categories and attributes. Do not get too hung up on the attributes, but really selecting the right category is important.

Now your tags, you do not want to skip on the tags. They should be consistent with the rest of your SEO as well as materials. That's another place to get your keywords in and then make sure to create shipping profiles as you go. Do not set up new shipping settings for every single product. You'll want to actually create shipping profiles and then use those over and over again.

You're also going to want to to make sure that your shop policies are set appropriately when you start to publish your listings. Make sure you're utilizing your shop sections as well as you create multiple listings. We don't want to have fewer than five items in a section. I recommend not having ads turned on when you start. I would focus on organic methods for driving traffic first.

With your initial listings I would probably set it to manual renewal if you are a brand new shop. Just because you don't want to be renewing things that aren't selling, you're likely going to have a high churn on your listings as you get better and better in creating them.

Now with the specifics of creating your listings, you might think, well, I know I'm supposed to have an optimized listing. What the heck does that mean? We want to be optimized for mobile and desktop. A lot of my students have at least 70 to 80% of their traffic coming through mobile, so it's an easy decision when someone's just scrolling on their phone.

We want your descriptions to answer and anticipate all questions that someone might have so that there's no friction in the purchasing process. This is not the place to have a flowery description. This isn't an English Paper. This is a pitch that is meant to convert someone. This is all also a place to cover your behind, if you know what I mean. This is where you should have materials clearly listed dimensions so there is no confusion about what someone's getting.

Set the expectations crystal clear. You want to avoid complaints, you want to avoid cases against your shop. And if you cover everything clearly in the description the buyer when they purchase on Etsy, they are acknowledging that they also agree to your shop policies that's part of the purchase transaction.

Do not use ChatGPT for any of your descriptions when you're starting, I recommend actually building a skeleton description and then reusing that.

Now pricing, you need to consider your costs, your time, your materials, your shipping if you are shipping something. But let's start from humble beginnings and not be overzealous with our pricing. We are not Gucci, we are not Prada. We are an Etsy seller that has no sales, so take that into consideraction.

If you do decide to do free shipping, build it in. I actually don't recommend doing the free shipping over $35. I recommend just choosing either free shipping or not.

Now, when you do set up your shipping settings, you're going to create shipping profiles. Specifically if you are doing any international shipping, you'll put in your zip code, you'll select your processing times. I always recommend doing that custom range so you could really have it appear to be a shorter potential ship time. And then you can extend this out further and have a wider window.

Set up where you're shipping to, if you only want to ship to certain countries, that is totally fine. Set up your mail classes, now I recommend selecting all mail classes but then scrolling down to where it says advanced shipping services. Click on that and select ground.

Because this means if you set up free shipping that they are going to get free shipping on the slowest or cheapest possible shipping method, which is ground.

Etsy hides it under the advanced shipping options, so you'll want to make sure to select that. And then if they want to upgrade to priority or anything faster than ground, then they are paying the full shipping amount, which is Ideal.

You know you could do free domestic shipping, I recommend not starting with free international you could get in way over your head here if you're not careful. And then just name it and save that shipping profile.

Now with shipping, you're going to want to make sure that your packaging is on point. Your first 10 orders are not the time to be reusing old beat up Amazon packages, Right? Perception is everything. I recommend being conscious of that with how you package your items, especially at the beginning.

And then with print on demand, you have very little control over the shipping presentation. So don't even worry about it. They will cover that for you. There are print on demand providers that will do custom packaging, but I don't think it's worth the extra cost to do that, especially when you start and you need to be able to be competitive with your pricing when you start a shop.

Step 3: How do you find Customers?

So now you've got some listings up, you've set up the shipping profiles. Essentially people could purchase from you, but how do you find customers?

Make sure your SEO is optimized, that's number one. If your SEO is not there, don't panic about the traffic situation. You need to put the SEO in first. You will see results within three to four weeks when you update your SEO.

Other ways to get traffic outside of SEO! Social media which is when you are driving traffic, and then Etsy ads, which is where you're paying to drive traffic.

I recommend starting with SEO first and then organic traffic from social media second. I would not even touch Etsy ads until you've completely exhausted these first two.

Now if you want to do ads, you can set up your budget. I recommend doing no more than a dollar a day.

Now, you cannot do ads within the first couple of weeks that you're on Etsy. So don't worry about this if you're opening your shop today. But eventually you could turn on ads. Just do a dollar a day, $2 $3, I wouldn't get crazy here. So you can actually turn ads on and off as you like.

You can share your goal for your ad which honestly I have not seen a big difference depending on what goal you choose. And at the bottom you can always pause your ads and turn them back on.

Step 4: Once someone orders, what are you supposed to do?

Now once someone orders, what are you supposed to do? Start implementing the best dang customer service you've ever done in your life. You pretend you are working for the Four Seasons and you are brand new and you want to impress everyone who walks in the door.

We really want to wow them to get amazing reviews. Go above and beyond, especially your first hundred sales that is so important. We want your review rate to be at least 25%.

And then as you start to get sales, you're going to want to start looking at your stats. Now I recommend not looking at your stats on a daily basis or even a weekly basis. I would look at your stats in a timeframe no shorter than three weeks at a time.

I really recommend 30 day stats and we want to get as much customer data and feedback as possible in that first month. The first month is not the time to sit around and see what happens.

If you need help launching on Etsy with your best foot forward and you're interested in applying real e commerce strategies to an Etsy shop to make it a real substantial business for yourself. Definitely reach out, you can just leave a comment below.

We'd love to talk to you and even share a free resource we have it's a great checklist that we can give you for your shop to make sure that you start on the right foot. Just leave a comment below, if you'd like that free checklist.