Artists and craftsmen all across the world are launching creative businesses on Etsy. They are doing so with profitable results!
For those not aware, Etsy is a platform where everyone from artists to jewelry makers can sell their goods. You can find beautiful earrings, vintage objects, and even craft supplies conveniently located on Etsy. In the past few years the platform has exploded in popularity, helping millions of artists achieve their dreams of running a business fueled by their creativity.
So…. Want to join the (profitable) party? Here are four tips to help you get started on the world’s most successful creative business platform.
1. Use only the best photographs to showcase your work.
Your shoppers only have one way to understand what they are buying from you. Grainy, low quality photos won’t be give your creations a fighting chance on Etsy, no matter how beautiful they are in real life.
Make sure to use detailed, clean, well-lit pictures to display your work. Taking pictures from different angles to show your buyers a complete view of what they are purchasing is also a good idea.
2. Know your pricing before you sell!
Add all of the costs that go into making and shipping your piece before placing it on Etsy for a fixed price. Be aware of how much the input materials cost and how much it will cost to ship. Choose how much you would like to be paid per hour for your labor and multiply this by how long it will take you to create a piece.
Failing to add in all the costs of production and shipping can mean spending more on materials and delivery than you make on the sale. It can also lead to razor thin margins and very little return for your input time.
Make sure to price your work highly enough so that you get paid a satisfying wage. Watch out though! You will want to check the prices of similar work sold on Etsy to make sure you don’t price yourself out of the market.
3. Know your SEO.
If potential customers can’t find you when they search on Google (or even on Etsy itself!), they will never purchase anything you sell. Of course SEO is not your #1 priority, but it if you master this area you can dominate the market for people looking to purchase products like yours.
A good tool to use to discover what keywords you will want to target for your SEO rating is the Google Keyword Planner. Here, you can pick words related to your product that have high search volumes and low competition.
Think about words that are specific to your product and avoid blanket keywords such as ‘jewelry’ or ‘earrings.’ Though these widely searched keywords have many hits per month, competition for them is high and your Etsy page will need expensive help to rank against them.
4. Fish where the fish are.
Your potential customers are everywhere…. except your personal Etsy page. They spend their time on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Your mission as an up-and-coming Etsy superstar is to bring them from where they spend their time normally to your store page.
Posting pictures of your product on Facebook and Twitter and taking part in conversations with followers is a great way to drive interest in your offerings. Tweets with images are clicked on much more readily than simple text tweets, and this is a great reason to show images of your beautiful creations here.
Your creative business may be just about to take off!
If you want to begin selling your work online there is no better time than today, thanks to Etsy!
Selling handmade goods, vintage items, and craft supplies has never been easier. 30 million buyers agree, Etsy is a great place to purchase everything from jewelry to antiques!
The startup costs are extremely low ($0.20 cents to list an item for 4 months) and a small 3.5% fee is taken out of the sales price upon purchase. Etsy prides itself on helping artists escape the nine to five grind without taking a massive amount of their profits!
Are you ready to join this incredibly satisfied, fulfilled community?
Just one Etsy success story…..
Rebecca lives in Israel, where she used to work full time as a waitress at a popular bar in downtown Jerusalem. She quit her job months ago, and has since been exploring her passion for jewelry making with the help of Etsy.
She sells beautiful earrings online for prices between $20 and $30, and she would never go back to her ‘normal’ job since she began working her own Etsy shop.
It took her six months to get where she is today, but she now makes as much as she did in the bar! Her jewelry is worn all over the world, and she feels a pride for her work that was impossible for her before she found Etsy.
Are you ready to join the online community of artists that make the Etsy platform come to life? If you love to create, build, paint, or sculpt, Etsy may be the perfect place for you to make a living doing what you truly enjoy.
Read more about selling on online marketplaces here.