I’ve spent most of the weekend thinking about and planning a shop on Etsy. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and I’ve managed to rope some other people in, so we’ve decided to jump in and go for it. I’ve been looking at the site in my spare time for about two years now, studying the successful shops and looking at what sets them apart from the unsuccessful shops. (It’s not always the product) So I’ve decided to share my opinion of what makes a successful shop on Etsy, and after I’ve been open for a while I’ll revisit this post and see if my tactics worked.

First of all, if you’ve never heard of Etsy or visited it, you need to. Now.

Okay. So, Etsy was started in 2005 as an online marketplace for selling all things handmade. They also allow supplies to be sold (for selling to other crafters) and vintage items (defined as items over 20 years old.) Anyone can open a shop, and it’s free. (The only downside is that you can only have one shop per account, so if you want multiple shops, you must have multiple accounts each with a different email address.) It costs $.20 to list and item, you can upload four or five pictures for free, the listing runs for four months, and when an item sells they only charge a %3.5 fee. (Take that, ebay!)

From all of my research, here is a list of my opinions on what makes a successful Etsy shop:

Good Photos

You don’t have to be a professional photographer, but it does pay off to do a little research on taking better photos. In focus, good lighting, and cropped close enough to get a good view of the product.

Consistent Style

If possible, photograph all your items against the same backdrop. Having a uniform style makes a shop look much more attractive.  Photographing some items on the couch, some on a table, and some outside creates disjointed look that is distracting to buyers.

List Items Regularly

Newly listed items appear at the top of the search results, so it’s a good idea to list a few items every day or at least every other day.

Utilize Tags & Descriptions

Just like Cafepress, you must tag your items well to be found in the search. Keyword rich descriptions also help.

Promote Your Shop Outside of Etsy

Most of the successful shops I looked at also had blogs. You can also use Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Myspace, etc.

So here is my plan. I have the shop name reserved already, a shop banner with my logo and a matching avatar. I have a blog hosted on my own domain with my logo and matching color scheme. I signed up for a Flickr account with the same name and avatr which I will use for hosting my pictures. That way if anyone happens to run across one of my items on Flickr and checks my profile, they may be led to my blog and then to my shop. One has to be careful with Flickr though. They do not allow advertising, so while you can post images and tag them with the word “etsy”, you can’t make any reference to them being for sale, or put your link in the description. You can put the link on your profile page though. The last thing I did was set up a Twitter account with the same name and avatar, and installed the WordPress plugin so that followers will be notified whenever I make a new post. I also plan on printing some round stickers with my logo and putting them on the outside of any packages I mail.

I’m hoping that all of this will help my business become a recognizable brand. I’ll post the shop link when it’s all set up, stay tuned!

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