3 Mistakes That Will Crush Your Etsy Shop

10 min readApr 30, 2021

From Disappointment to Successful Etsy Shop

Why Many Sellers are Near to Close Etsy Shops

This article is devoted to the Etsy shop story of a kindergarten teacher, Mary Jones, with her losses, failures and as a result great marketplace experience.

Being a creative person, she cannot but jump into her hobby of handmade jewelry while free time.

So, after positive feedback from friends and acquaintances Mary started thinking of online business to have opportunities to make even more people glad to wear her items.

And it was a period of “how to start an Etsy shop” Internet surfing. Why not to earn some extra money indeed?!

However, two children of 13 and 3 years old require some business idea without taking too much time.

And finally, she made 70 items, set up her Etsy shop and started waiting. But there were no sales.

She managed to sell only 2 items during the first six months with zero positive reviews, even after tons of energy.

“I was really in despair after half a year without selling my items and I thought about giving up of my Etsy shop seriously”.

Her shop was on the brink of failure. So, in six months Mary realized, something was wrong with her business strategy! As she saw other Etsy sellers were successful, selling similar goods at higher prices.

It was annoying greatly and Mary understood the importance of a clear strategy and a plan to re-energize her shop.

And that was the crucial moment for her further development and starting point of her challenging Etsy way.

Having made some efforts, she set up the process:

“I identified what was wrong with my shop, changed several moments in some listings and in a while I noticed rather good results. After all I managed to organize a selling process, and now I have more than 6000 Etsy sales”.

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Rough Mistakes Most Etsy Sellers Make

Now, Mary Jones is eager to share her experience and tips with Etsy — beginners to keep them from doing the same mistakes:

Let’s start with Description. And the main rule here sounds like — it should be enticing.

So, if we are talking about description, every seller should mind this opportunity to interact with his or her audience and seize the moment to persuade potential customers into buying the items.

Mary Jones was struggling for a long time without sales on Etsy and low conversion.

And surely she did not focus on her descriptions as something really worth attention.

In her occasion these sections were like bare enumerations of items’ characteristics without any allure.

Of course, if there is an effective description, but other factors are skipped, no wonder the description cannot salvage the situation.

But even managing other sections properly, bad description can probably spoil all your efforts.

So, consider taking into account Mary’s mistakes.

AND HERE ARE DON’Ts # 1:

- No Description Ignoring;

- No Evident Evidence;

- No Emotionless.

As a bonus Mary would like kindly to share her conclusions for you to make this article as informative and practical as possible.

You should totally concentrate on further three components of her formula of success:

1) Enumerate profits and advantages of your items.

2) Mention emotions after purchasing of your items.

As people buy emotions, give them what they are looking for! But mind, your description is not a novel.

Prepare them beforehand and come back when creating a specific listing. Thus, you can edit the text effectively.

3) Remember also usage of first keywords from the title in the corresponded description.

Such an approach intensifies the value of main keywords for Etsy store algorithm.

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How to Cope with SEO Issues without a Sweat

The second mistake in our list means Keywords and SEO.

At one time SEO became a stumbling block for Mary like for most Etsy sellers to generate more sales.

It sounds strange, serious and even frustrating, but if you are going to be successful on the marketplace, you are doomed to sort it out at least basically.

When starting her Etsy business, Mary set up her account partially, as perhaps most of sellers do.

She had not heard about keywords and tags before, she could not evaluate their crucial significance.

Logically, as a result their creation was no other but a quest and challenge for Jones.

As Mary said now, she lost that SEO battle, but as we can see now, she won this Etsy search war on being successful.

However, this complicated and intricate way of Etsy SEO subjugation leads her to clear understanding of when and how to fix Etsy SEO components to bring more views, generate sales and boost profit for Etsy shop.

Summing up her optimization experience, we can figure out the following recommendations for your Etsy shop ideas:

DON’Ts # 2:

- No SEO Improvisation;

- No General and Widespread Keywords;

- No Near-empty Filling in.

And the next formula of SEO success contains concentrated experience of Jones Etsy SEO way:

1) Repeat your SEO analysis regularly. It may include Shop Analysis, Listing Analysis and Keyword Analysis.

Automated tools like Seller-Way will help you to do this task without a sweat.

Make sure you use All of 13 Tags, mind Long Tail Keywords and Performing Keywords.

Surely, it could be great to fix all SEO components once and forget, selling this way for years.

But it does not work this way, at least not successfully.

Reviewing your SEO every 30 days should be quite reasonable for all Etsy Shops because of a fast-changing and fast-growing online market all over the world.

2) Organize your Etsy store for easier navigation.

Your potential clients should find the necessary items fast and easily.

As imagine, that there is no section gradation on the left-hand side of the shop, so they need to look for what they need among all your listings.

And what if you have 50+ or 70 / 100 + listings?! Totally disappointing approach.

Make the structure of Etsy store comfortable to find items, just clicking several times, and you can see changes.

3) And the final moment to focus on means Attributes.

Use this section as if that is one more opportunity to fill in keywords for a listing.

Ignoring and leaving them blank really influence Etsy search process.

It does not actually matter, what niche you are working on, as there are always at least several details you would like to specify about your items, but there are no spaces anymore.

So, that is high time to remember Attributes for better and more effective promotion.

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Why Branding Matters for Influencing Etsy Sales

The last but not the least mistake is Branding, including Photos, Shop Design and About Section.

Branding issues perhaps are not so evident, but sometimes become crucial mistakes among Etsy sellers.

Just after setting up of an Etsy shop, Mary Jones was focused on waiting of sales, she lost sight of other aspects that all together create the whole picture of successful selling on the marketplace.

So, one of the initial and really widespread inadvertence was zero branding.

She believed sincerely that as her items were here, it was enough for being on demand on Etsy.

But, to tell the truth, it is quite difficult nowadays to find not saturated niche and rocket on the top just because of selling these particular items.

Mary knew about photo presentation of her items, but she forgot that it is something deeper than just visual.

Dark photos, without any conception and with shadows hardly could be judged as an eye-catching portfolio.

Moreover, when looking at covers of listings, they looked not quite compatible, because of different time of shooting during a day-light period.

But it was not the only gap in branding: absence of the general conception of photos made them not interesting and without emotions.

When looking at them, potential customers did not feel any excitement, delight or desire to buy.

Surely, Mary did not go through the hassle of banner, shop icon and owner photo.

So, DON’Ts # 3:

- No Dark, Boring and Old-fashioned Photos;

- No Covers Incongruity;

- No Photos Misconception.

And on the contrary, having considerable experience of Etsy selling, Mary Jones exhorted to pay attention to her personal formula for success in branding!

1) Use templates to simplify the process of photo content creation.

Plus, such an approach can help to organize a common view of a shop with all its listings. Mind also colors you are going to use.

It is not a secret that each color has its impact, association and mood, so it will be quite reasonable to choose several colors to strengthen the message of your Etsy business, figuring out the necessary mood.

So, colors should match your mission and emotions from items in particular.

As I guess you can remember, when clicking on some shop, you got some mixed emotions: items are good enough, but there is still something that holds you from a sale as you just feel some mismatch and disagreement.

2) Fill in all the positions that Etsy suggests you to fill in.

As it works with the help of some algorithm that requires enough data to make analysis of your potential clients: who likely buys your items, who likes and visits your shop.

So, if you skip texting information about all information and conditions your shop works, you should be ready that definitely you won’t be on the top.

Even in case you do not have such positions or services etc. or maybe this information is evident because of mentioning somewhere else, anyway, it is better to fill all the sections properly.

On the contrary, ranking could be low just because of loss of necessary data for the algorithm.

As a result, skipping filling in all sections, you are losing chances to be visible. Mind this fact!

3) Third point here mentions “About section”. It is a must!

Moreover, it should be filled in, as you could get from the previous tips. But it’s high time to mention its format. Let’s start with a photo format.

Actually, it is not something really catching and outstanding. Your listings are the place for good photos of high quality.

On the contrary, in “About section” pay attention to video format.

As your potential clients are not ready to waste time and read your long — read story about items and the process itself. Show them the process!

There are enough variants to present your items with video content: time-lapse, video presentation of different stages of the process or your video speech or excursion to your working place etc.

Remember three main factors about a video — it should be short, catching and interesting!

So, editing rules.

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The Importance of Trends and Social Media

So, below you can find several tips which successful Etsy sellers never miss to use:

Follow Trends

Nowadays,s business running requires fast decisions, as well as being constantly on the wave.

Without following trends, it is hardly impossible.

Etsy is not an exception, so whatever niche you are working in, you should keep pace trending items and go by what is on demand on the marketplace.

You can even use special tool for such a purpose, like Trends Plus tool from Seller-Way.

Create your brand awareness

Use all possible social media for being within hearing.

However, it rather depends on your niche.

As it can be Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, blog and site.

But the point is you should like the platform where you are starting promotion of your Etsy shop ideas.

As without persistence and disciplinary you cannot continue being active for a long time successfully.

Also, the choice of social media channels depends on your target audience.

Identify your target audience

Once you identified the portrait of your potential client, it will be easier for you to manage your description.

However, if you face some difficulties in this issue, then, you can answer and analyze the following questions:

· who can use my items?

· whom can my items help?

· who bought my items previously and what for?

· who can buy them as a present?

And remember your answers while creating description for your listings.

Find your Blue ocean strategy

Such an approach helps you to get out an oversaturated market and maybe even become the first and top Etsy seller in a newly created one.

The principle of the mentioned strategy requires narrowing of the chosen sphere as more as possible.

It should be your niche, but you should combine this niche with other life principles.

For example, you are for eco-movement and create stickers.

So, let it be stickers that are devoted to eco theme all over the world.

This way you can differ from your competitors effectively.