Emmalee recently asked me to “write a blog post about how to run an Etsy shop”, which I’m not sure I’m entirely qualified to do. I have a combined three and a half years on Etsy between this old shop and my current one, and I have almost always sold steadily – some times of the year do a lot better than others, and some times of my life have done a lot better than others. Etsy has exploded in the time I have been a part of it, and it has been really fascinating to watch, sometimes from right in the thick of things and sometimes from afar. I guess the easiest way for me to tell you “how to run an Etsy shop” is to tell you how I have, or have not, done it.
I first heard about Etsy in the spring of 2006 – there was an ad in a little indie magazine/catalog thing that I had picked up at Macrock, and my friend Claire and I spent many PBR-drinking-nights talking about shop possibilities. (Incidentally, she moved to New York that summer and now works for Etsy – she loves it.) That summer, as a result of some poor lease planning / moving to another country unknowns, Mikey and I found ourselves living with his mom for two months between our Morgantown life and our new Canada life. I was only employed for one of those months, so I spent the rest of my time working on an Etsy shop. It was a good outlet for summertime in Parkersburg slowness, and a good way to fill my time with something productive while I watched hours… and hours… and hours of bad Lifetime movies and HGTV.
I didn’t think it would last much past summer, because since it was such a new, US-based thing, I didn’t expect to be able to carry on with it once we’d moved to Toronto. That couple of months was awesome though. I opened my old shop on June 21st and made my first sale a week later, when I finally began listing things. I immediately sold two pairs of earrings to Mikey’s Aunt and another pair of earrings to this gal. It seemed so easy – I listed things and people bought them. The first things I ever sold were two pairs of these and a pair of earrings made from fishing spinners:
When I first started doing it I focused on making things out of random bits from dollar stores (the above eraser earrings), my father-in-law’s abandoned workshop junk in the basement, making buttons into stud earrings, stuff like that. I spent about two weeks meticulously melting the shanks off of buttons with a hot needle before I invested in a shank remover – a very wise move.
After I had a bunch of jewelry stocked up and had spent a few weeks hanging around on Etsy I was seeing the value in having a variety of stuff in your shop, so I started branching out – I sewed bags out of dishtowels and wallets out of fabric scraps and sold them (I’d never have the nerve to try to sell my sewing on Etsy now), I made marble magnets and sold them (I *actually* sold them – I doubt they’d sell now because there are a bajillion marble magnets to be had on there), I cut linoblocks and printed notecards and gift tags, I made weird coasters out of felt and sequins and tulle and sold every single set – as soon as I listed a pair of robot coasters Claire emailed to tell me I’d made the front page with them, and that was back when the front page was handpicked by the Etsy admin and stayed the same for two days or more. I was ecstatic. (Those coasters didn’t sell for months though – the front page isn’t everything.)
So we moved to Canada in August and I kept it going full-steam. It took me over a month to find a job once we got there, and when I did it was a horrible job and I was homesick and convinced we’d be living there for five or six years and was sure I’d never want to have a baby there and and and… throwing myself into making stuff was a huge respite. Once I navigated the horrors of the Canada Post I was able to keep it all going surprisingly well. I’d work 8 hours and then come home and work on Etsy all evening. I bought a soldering iron and taught myself how to make soldered glass necklaces. I bought crochet materials and couldn’t figure it out for the life of me. Big-city dollarstores were a goldmine for odds & ends and I started buying buttons in bulk online, and huge spools of ballchain online, and amazingly cheap beads and findings in Chinatown. I started trying to make my photos better, experimenting with different kinds of paper as backgrounds and getting rid of all the felt / cork / plastic mesh / drinking glass / houseplant photos I’d played around with. I started using only nickel-free and sterling plated findings. Etsy was booming and I was trying to keep up. I think this was around the time listing fees jumped from a dime to twenty cents – still a steal. I finally clued in and instead of listing things in quantities of five, or making one listing for three different colors of dinosaur studs, I started making individual listings for each color and relisting sold items if I had duplicates. I would make big batches of things and keep them all in a “to-list” box, picking out three or four things a day and adding them to my shop. I tried to keep myself at the top of searches by doing these things. I bought business cards that fall. Christmas was huge. There were nasty rumors that admin were going to do away with the vintage and supply categories so I started selling destashed supplies and vintage jewelry that I weeded from my wearing/repurposing collections (they didn’t – I still happily sell these things.) I’d made an art out of packaging and was going to the post office every day, requesting big stacks of customs slips every two or three weeks.
So for about a year it went that way – Etsy grew and I kept trying to make things better and better. I never did a ton of promoting my own stuff but I did spend a bit of time each day in the forums. I traded things with other sellers and envelopes full of their business cards and promos fell through my mail slot so I could make up promo packets to ship out with orders.
And then I found a job I liked. And we found music. And good friends. And Etsy wasn’t so time-consuming anymore, but it was still lots of fun so I kept it up. Things started to pile up, though – I’d make things and they’d get buried in the rubble of my craft table (where I was increasingly making NON-Etsy things again), I’d have big batches of half-finished projects, I’d buy supplies and not get around to using it right away like I had before, I didn’t spend any time in the forums except to put out calls for more promo stuff when I was running low. My shop was starting to seem more like work and less like fun because externally it was getting disorganized. Then I got pregnant, and for that nine months and most of the year after Hazel’s birth I was on autopilot, relisting sold and expired things but very rarely taking new things from my “to-list” box and putting them in my shop, and never making anything new for Etsy except the occasional restock batch of stud earrings… which my shop was getting entirely overrun with because all of the one of a kind stuff was selling and not getting replaced.
Last year before we moved I started taking charge of all of it because I was annoyed with having a shop full of plastic and I knew that I’d NEED it to be a well-oiled machine again when we moved home, really hoping that it would provide some income – I needed it to be ready to go so I could open up shop again as soon as we got here. So I started the long and tedious reorganization process with a little baby playing on the floor beside me. I went through every single piece of craft miscellaney I own and destashed supplies right and left. Some I gave away and some I packaged up to sell. I found every single finished thing in every nook and cranny and got it ready to ship. I took apart all of the broken things and threw away or threw them back into my supplies. I went through all of my inventory and took out stuff I was sick of to package up and sell on the cheap in sets, then I inventoried everything all over again and made spreadsheets, finally, after years of keeping it all on paper in a binder (which worked totally fine for me, but really? it was 2009.) I restocked my findings but didn’t let myself buy any more new supplies. I bought new business cards and kept putting together promo packets. I finished half-finished projects and bagged up all of my in-the-works resin necklaces for a time when I could sit down and get them done. I rephotographed everything. I made tons of new stuff for a craft show, and am in the process of integrating that stuff into my shop – I have not just let it sit there. I am really happy with where I am right now – I have gotten everything done that I wanted to do before the move, have made a HUGE dent in the Etsy-to-do list that I made on new year’s eve and was sure I’d be working on until June. I list new things or relist sold/expired things just about every day. The women at our post office know me. It is very satisfying considering our shared computer is dead, and I have to do it all with time I can get on Mikey’s school laptop. I think in another six weeks maybe, *maybe* I will be to the point where I can let myself start entirely new projects, because everything I have or have in the works will be done and ready to go. My packaging and shipping stuff will be under control. It feels good.
SO.
Over all of that time, through some of the biggest possible life changes, the things that have kept it going:
- good photos have been absolutely necessary. I am lucky that I have a lot more photography experience than the majority of Etsy sellers, and I’ve owned two very nice cameras in the process, and I’ve always had bountiful natural light. The photos I first took were nothing amazing, but they were good enough to get me on the front page and sell my stuff back then. I spent a lot of time playing around trying to find a “concept”, and where I am now is just fine with me. I don’t know if it’s front-page worthy, because “front-page-worthy” has changed entirely (and is another discussion entirely that has surprisingly little to do with photo quality), but they are clear and colorful and people look at them. That’s all I need.
- my inventory is organized in spreadsheets. My craft table may not be organized. My supplies may not be totally organized, but my inventory is impeccable. If something is damaged in shipping, which happened a few times a year with so much international shipping from Toronto, I could know in five seconds if I had replacements to offer or if a refund was in order. If someone messaged me to ask if I had more of ______ that they’d seen in my sold section, I’d know the answer with a quick check of my inventory list and could put up a reserved listing for them and make money immediately. When things sold I could relist them right away because I knew if I had duplicates. I never had to dig through my boxes of inventory to know, because I am good at keeping it on paper/spreadsheets. Since the first day on Etsy, my “process” that new items go through has been exactly the same: I make things and throw them in a “to photograph” container. Once they are photographed and the photos are edited and waiting in my “to-list” folder, I package for shipment and then add the items to my inventory sheet. If they are brand new one of them goes in the “to-list” box and the rest (if there are multiples) get put where they belong. If they aren’t new they get put away appropriately and then relisted in my shop if it’s something that had sold out entirely.
- my inventory is organized in boxes. For no reason other than that they were abundant, I started organizing things in those pretty shoebox-sized photo storage boxes. At first I had two (jewelry and everything else), and now I have nine, and one of them is all of my “to-list” stuff. Dangly earrings have a box, paper goods have a box… stud earrings have four boxes because there are tons of them. Animals all go in one box and are categorized further in labeled ziploc bags. It sounds completely OCD but it’s the only way I can manage having so much stuff. It takes ten seconds to find penguin studs to ship out.
When I see people asking for shop critiques in the Etsy forums, their photographs are almost always the first thing to get nitpicked. Personally, if I can’t tell what something is from the thumbnail I don’t look at it. Or if I can tell it’s a horrible yellow-light, bad photo, or if the background is so busy that I can’t tell what’s for sale, I don’t look at it. It makes shopping a guessing-game, and nobody wants that, so I guess that the need to make your photos as good as possible is my number one piece of advice. You don’t have to have an amazing camera or beautiful natural light at all hours of the day – simple photos are always my favorites, and you can get that effect a lot of different ways. There is tons of information to be had on the Etsy forums or other places online about making light boxes, etc.
If you are starting a new shop take half an hour (or less) to read through the Dos and Don’ts and other information on Etsy’s selling page – you will save yourself a lot of grief. Don’t try to skirt the rules – there are people who get great joy out of prowling listings at all hours of the day flagging things that are out of line (mostly because Etsy does not have people who do this, and they rely on the community to alert them to problems.) If you can’t find answers to your questions do a search in the forums – it’s something that has likely been asked before. If you still can’t find it, you can post in the appropriate category in the forums – there are lots of amazing, generous, helpful people willing to offer advice (and lots of snarky ones too, don’t take it personally – it’s the nature of an online forum I suppose.)
Build up your inventory and open your shop – the general consensus seems to be that buyers like to see a page or two of items to make the shop seem “full”, and then you can list a few things a day as often as you can to keep yourself at the top of searches. I personally don’t care – I will look at a shop that only has three things in it, and I will search through 30 pages of items if I’m really looking for something, but that basic rule seems to work. Steadily fill up your shop with items, and fill it with as much information as possible. Make a profile, and set up some shop policies about your shipping, your payment expectations, your returns, your workspace (do you have pets? do you smoke in your home?), and some bits about yourself. Fill out the piece asking for your location so we know from where we are buying. Put a few things in your shop announcement, but don’t make it so long that a buyer has to scroll down to see what’s actually for sale. Make a banner and icon (there are tools for this in the “resources” section under the community tab, and there are lots of talented sellers who will make you custom stuff for money or trade.)
Put as much information in your listings a possible: materials, use all 14 of your tags with colors / styles / themes / etc., photograph from all angles, be sure to include sizes, potential allergy information, everything you can think of.
Keep in touch with your buyers – double check addresses if Etsy and Paypal don’t match, let them know when their order has shipped, let them know if there is a delay for some reason. I have never said “sorry I’m getting your order out late, I was sick / I was snowed in / I couldn’t get the post office during their Saturday hours” and had a buyer get mad or leave bad feedback.
Thank your buyers. I’m always a little shocked when I order something on Etsy and the seller didn’t even take the time to write “thanks” on a computer-printed receipt. Isn’t the point of buying handmade to connect with an actual person? My customers are often shocked/delighted to receive a two-sentence thank you note with their orders. I’ve had people seemingly falling out of their chairs because I’d write “I hope your daughter likes them” after taking note of their mention of who the item was for. It’s not hard, and it gets you repeat customers.
If you are able, spend time meandering around the Etsy community as a whole. Visit the forums to read or discuss (there are important admin announcements at the top), read through some storque articles, and most importantly, SHOP! I am constantly looking through other sellers’ shops and am perpetually blown away by the talent on Etsy. You could outfit just about your whole life with amazing handmade goods. There is a lot to be learned from Etsians. I always find myself browsing through someone’s favorites, and then their favorites’ favorites, and then their favorites’ favorites’ favorites… but there are tons of treasuries, gift guides, and all the various things under the “explore” category on the front page. You will learn lots about unspoken etiquette that doesn’t necessarily show up in the Dos & Don’ts and see what works for other sellers.
And most importantly, I’d say, make sure your shop is what you want it to be. If you want to quit your day job, go for it. If you just want to put in a few hours a week you can do that too. If you want to work a little bit every day around the rest of your life as a creative outlet and some extra income, you can do that too. I don’t know how long I’ll sell on Etsy, but I have loved it through all these evolutions and can see myself doing it for awhile. I have definitely learned a lot over the past few years, not to mention ACQUIRED lots of amazing things :) I’m not necessarily trying to brand myself, but I’m happy to have a steadily-selling “line” of stuff that is always changing, and one of these days when I have the wall space, I will hang up a map and fill it with pins in all of the places where my stuff has scattered around the world. Mostly I am still just blown away that people will pay money for things that I made, but I am also finally settling into a 100% satisfied, “normal-routine” way of doing things, too. It does seem like a job, but a very very fun one.
Now, go forth and create. And leave me a link with your new shop names :)
