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In order of importance I present the 10 things you REALLY did not know about selling on Etsy, let’s get into this!:

10: ETSY DOES NOT KNOW ITS OWN PLATFORM VERY WELL

 

OK, this one is for all the new Etsy sellers that flooded on to the platform at the start of Coronavirus in May 2020. Contrary to what you may think, Etsy does not understand several aspects of it’s own platform very well.

If you want to see what I mean just take a look at its own seller handbook.

Head in to the Keywords 101 section and in there is still says to use short product titles and to repeat your product titles in your tags.

In fact, you don’t need to repeat product titles in tags, and short titles are a very bad idea; and will result in less traffic to your Etsy store.

We always assume that the companies we trust to sell on actually know what they are doing with their own platform, but when it comes to Etsy there is a BIG disconnect between the backend staff (the people who DO know how Etsy works), and the information they give their customer facing admin and customer support teams.

 

9: USING MARMALEAD, ALURA, ERANK, AND SALE SAMURAI IS NOT GOING TO GET YOU MORE SALES

So, I know this one is going to ruffle some feathers, but hear me out and read CAREFULLY.

First of all, I would like to point out that all of the websites above do have some good functions, based around product research and competitor analysis…however…

When it comes to SEO and selling on Etsy, what I need you to understand is that none of the websites mentioned above have access to complete Etsy search data, NONE.

What they have access to is a limited search time limited data set purchased from a third party company.

None of the data centering around SEO is accurate, and none of the data surrounding revenue earned on sold products is accurate either; they are making educated guesses and nothing more.

So here is the fundamental issue I have with Marmalead, Erank, Alura and Sale Samurai:

Most of the users of these sites will either be new Etsy sellers or sellers that are growing their stores.

This means that by design, because they are in the growth phase of their stores, items will be added, and traffic in to their stores will increase.

On top of that, we know that Etsy gives new stores a visibility boost in the algorithm that lasts about 6 months.

So, sales will start to come VERY slowly, and Etsy sellers go hunting for ways to make sales happen faster, and fall in to the Marmalead, Alura, Erank & Sale Samurai “trap”.

By using these tools as their stores grow, it LOOKS like the tools are doing their job, sales start to come in and the seller is happy.

The reality is, unless the SEO is poor (and by poor I mean 5 word titles and no tags), it is not these websites that have driven the sales, but the store growth, which results in more ways to be made available to be ranked in search and non search areas of Etsy.

Attributing sales growth to these 4 websites is not a good idea, because in all but the most poor SEO cases it simply isn’t true.

Those sales would have started to come anyway.

Something which none of these websites will tell you (but I will right now), is that successful Etsy stores only get somewhere between 15% and 25% of their traffic from Etsy search.

The rest comes from non search areas of Etsy, which is of course, by design on Etsy’s part…Etsy will push successful stores harder in non search areas to make more money for themselves and the seller.

Think about all the noise around Etsy SEO, and now think about how it only accounts for 15% to 25% of total visits into a successful Etsy store….there are other FAR more powerful forces at play to get your items views than search SEO here.

If you want to learn how to do Etsy SEO easily and efficiently book a call with me.

 

8: BIGGER ETSY STORES MAKE WAY MORE SALES

The secret to selling on Etsy is a big store (OK there is a biiit more to it than that, but basically big stores win big on Etsy!).

Don’t let anyone tell you an Etsy store with 20 items in it is going to make thousands of sales in a year and be successful, it won’t.

Any stores that ARE successful with 20 items in them and making thousands of sales a year are able to do this for these exact 2 reasons:

1 Heavy social media driven traffic (which you really really do not want to waste time doing…explanation for that coming further down).

2 Selling a unique item that no one else sells. Now, this does happen…occasionally.

2015 for example, a guy opened a fidget spinner store on Etsy, little did he know but he was the first to do so.

In his first month he did over 1000 sales with one product in his store.

In 2022 and beyond don’t even think about selling on Etsy with less than 100 items in your Etsy store…unless the item truly is unique AND has demand.

Talk to me about growing your store here.

 

7: ALL OF THE SALES ACTION GOES OFF IN THE $20 – $60 PRICE RANGE

This one is a big area that a lot of sellers simply do not know much about.

The $20 – $60 price range is the sweetspot for selling on Etsy because customer purchases at these price points have no conversation that needs to take place, either in the buyers head to themselves, or to a significant other; about buying the item.

This is because spending that amount of money does not mean going without something else in another area of their lives for that purchase to happen.

Therefore as Etsy sellers it will pay you (literally) to make sure you have loads of items for sale in your store in this price range, most important for you the seller, is that this price range means you can make a decent profit margin on your items….the number 1 reason why I don’t advise selling stickers on etsy for $3…no margin!

 

6: ETSY IS GOING TO BE BIGGER THAN EBAY

There. i’ve said it.

In my opinion Etsy is going to surpass Etsy in customer base size in the next 24 to 36 months and become the world’s number 2 e commerce market place.

Etsy sellers have to get with the Etsy program here, the concept of “handmade” is long gone, you now need to start thinking about Etsy as a boutique marketplace where customers can go to purchase stuff they can’t find on other sites like Ebay and Amazon.

Etsy needs more customers and it’s going to get them through a ton of advertizing.

Etsy is going to squeeze more “performance related” upgrades out of it’s sellers to raise the standard of the customer purchasing experience as high as it possibly can.

One way Etsy is going to do this is with seller video options.

Expect live video selling to become a thing on Etsy within 2 years.

Also expect videos to become more and more important for selling on Etsy in general.

Could we see the death of the product description? Maybe!

 

5: DEAD PRODUCTS IN YOUR ETSY STORE AFFECT YOUR SALES

If you walked in to a real bricks and mortar store, took a look around and didn’t buy anything, the shop owner probably wouldn’t think much of it.

If 100 people came in to that shop and walked out without buying something, then the shop owner should be thinking something’s up.

That shop owner will immediately be looking at his products and questioning why they aren’t selling.

So, why then, with Etsy, are sellers happy to have their stores sit with 40%, 50% 60% and sometimes more items having never sold?

No one would EVER allow this to happen in a real world store, and Etsy should be no different.

Let me say this loud and clear: DEAD PRODUCTS KILL YOUR ETSY STORE SALES VELOCITY.

If you have an Etsy shop with 40% of it’s products having never sold after 12 months, these items are dragging your overall store visibility down, and costing you sales.

If you want help with your inventory management on Etsy, just get in touch.

 

4: USING SHORT PRODUCT TITLES WILL KILL YOUR ETSY SALES

So, this is a perfect example of number 10 in this list, in action.

Someone at Etsy thought it would be a good idea to tell people to use shorter, concise titles in their product SEO.

The problem is, that same someone at Etsy forgot to mention that this may help google understand your products better, but not Etsy.

Not only that, but using short product titles in Etsy literally stops you being made available for discovery for customer search queries.

Using shorter product titles in Etsy literally makes you LESS visible; so my advice is don’t do it.

 

3: ITEM VIDEOS WILL INCREASE YOUR ETSY CONVERSION RATE BY UP TO 10%

Now this, Etsy did get right, and they have been screaming at us to use videos in our listings since summer 2020.

They scream with good reason: per product conversions rise by up to 10% if you use product video.

It really is that effective, and should be at the top of your list for improving your Etsy listings.

There is nothing difficult about product videos, just SHOW THE ITEM IN USE, taking the video with your phone is perfectly adequate.

 

2: SOCIAL MEDIA TRAFFIC IS BAD FOR YOUR ETSY STORE

Now we’re getting to the real bombshells of this awesome blog post, ill shout this loud and clear:

Sending social media traffic to your Etsy store is a VERY bad idea.

…and get this, for small and/or new Etsy stores, sending social media traffic to that store will kill it’s chance of growing organically inside Etsy…that’s right, all that time you spend on SM sending that traffic over is actually DAMAGING your precious Etsy store.

But why is this?…and if it’s the case (which it is)…why is no one else talking about this massive massive problem?

So, first of all the reason why social media traffic is so bad for your Etsy store.

Making sales on Etsy comes down to one thing: QUALITY SCORE.

Not SEO, quality score.

The Etsy quality score eco system only works with sales generated INSIDE the platform. The sale has to start with a click from inside Etsy.

If the sale starts inside Etsy, the seller is then rewarded with a unit of quality score for that sale. This quality score immediately boosts the visibility of the item inside Etsy, but only for a short time.

If you make another sale of that product, Etsy hands that product another unit of quality score, and the items visibility is boosted again.

This process repeats over and over until you get the best seller badge.

Ever wondered why you keep selling certain items in your store over and over again? Yup, it’s quality score.

High listing quality score is effectively a guarantee to Etsy that your product will SELL if placed in front of the right customer’s eyes.

Now, I think you can see the problem with social media.

Social media traffic pointed at your Etsy store has one MAJOR fault…it does not start inside Etsy.

This means NO SALES….none…will be rewarded with quality score for sales generated from social media traffic.

Let that sink in for a moment.

This is how you literally get hooked in to having to constantly create social media content to make sales on Etsy, because you are stifling your store of the very thing it needs to succeed…quality score generated from sales inside the Etsy platform.

Add to that the sucker punch of social media traffic lowering your conversion rate, and you have a recipe for disaster.

So, why is nobody but me talking about this?

The answer is simple, no one else knows the problem exists.

If you want to understand more about this and selling on Etsy, feel free to book a call with me

 

1: SEO DOES NOT RANK YOUR PRODUCTS ON ETSY

I had to save the best until last, and again I guarantee this is the first time you will be reading these words:

SEO DOES NOT RANK YOUR PRODUCTS ON ETSY.

Everywhere you go on youtube, tiktok, IG, pinteres and other places you will hear the words “ranking” and “SEO” in the same sentence…without exception.

This is the biggest lie that has been sold to Etsy sellers, and it is one perpetuated by endless youtube gurus who want to sell you a subscription to Marmalead, Alura, Erank or Sale Samurai.

Let me reveal the truth about exactly how SEO works on Etsy and blow away this ranking myth…for good.

SEO does not rank your products on Etsy, but what it does do is make you available to be ranked.

This is entirely different to actually ranking. Ranking is not done with SEO, ill explain what ranks products on Etsy in a moment.

SEO’s job on Etsy is to get your item in to what are known as “product placement pools”.

Think of a product placement pool as a swimming pool. The swimming pool holds exactly 1000 products, and that is EXACTLY how many products Etsy’s SEO algorithm goes looking for when a search query comes in.

Etsy finds 1000 products for the search query, for example “women’s silver jewelry”.

ALL 1000 products will have those 3 keywords in ANY of the following 4 listing places:

TITLE

TAGS

ATTRIBUTES

CATEGORY

If Etsy cannot find 1000 products (which is very very rare), it will use partial search matches to fill the 1000 places.

Now that is effectively SEO’s job over.

Let me be clear, the customer has not seen anything yet, and NO ranking has taken place.

Now, a separate algorithmic process occurs using a totally separate algorithm called “The Ranker”.

This process passes over the 1000 products in the placement pool and ranks them according to QUALITY SCORE.

Remember quality score is given to your item when you make a sale, so it stands to reason that Etsy wants to surface products that it thinks have a chance of selling…can it get that information from SEO?? Of course not.

Quality score is Etsy’s inbuilt guarantee system that ensures it shows products that sell to customers.

Now it is clear to see how crazy it is to think that SEO and keywords are somehow going to make you rank higher and get you loads more sales, they won’t.

Now we understand how ranking actually works on Etsy I believe it also shines a light on all the companies that purport to be able to rank your Etsy items in search, when they clearly can do no such thing.

There is one situation where SEO will “rank” your product (it’s not really ranking but I digress), and that is on a low competition search query, which will happen from time to time.

If there is low competition for a keyword, then due to the lack of competition your item will appear to “rank” at the top of page 1 of search.

It’s not actually ranking on page 1, it’s just there because there isn’t anyone else to show for that exact keyword search query except you and maybe a couple of other listings.

This occurrence is pretty rare though and should not be thought of as ranking because it isn’t.

I hope you enjoyed my deep dive into the 10 things you really didn’t know about Etsy.

Feel free to leave a comment, and if you would like me to mentor you with your Etsy store, get in touch.