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Know Your Competition | Product Photography | Variety in Products | Figure out your Brand | Advertising / Self Promotion | Etsy Teams / Forums | About Page and Policy Page | SEO and Tags | Pricing | Have Fun
In order for you to also be successful, you must understand how Ecommerce (Etsy specifically) works and how to use that knowledge to help you tweak your online personality and your product listing to bring potential customers to YOUR table.
1.) Know Your Competition
Knowing your competition is key to having a selling success story, not just once, but multiple times over. This applies on real life retail or online retail situations. This involves knowing your competitions product, selling strategy, and pricing (especially if they have any deals).
Research! If you're selling on Etsy or any other platform (eBay, Amazon, Bonanza), you need to research and see how people are describing their items, how they are tagging their items, and what they are using as their item's titles. If your doing that already, then you're already on the right track.
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| Knowing what others are selling and how they are presenting their product is key to knowing how to present your own products! |
2.) Product Photography
Having a well photographed product/listing is key bringing a potential customer into your online shop or even view a product listing. Proper lighting, backdrop, environment, and stand (if you plan on selling jewelry or very small items) will help with your presentation of your item.
Unless your direct linking people to an item they are already interested in, they majority of your views to your listing will be because of your Main Picture for that listing. If its a dark picture, is crowded (has competing colors in its background), or just bad resolution quality, then you most likely wont get as many views to said listing, which means less chances of a purchase.
There are many tutorials out there on the web, with a good portion that are actual videos, that can help in taking decent product photography.
3.) Variety in Products
Grow! This one word, is one of the things, especially if you're new, will be a struggle. You have to constantly be growing your shop by uploading it with new products frequently.
The reason behind this need is that if the potential customer doesn't have much of a selection to choice from, then they wont think you have something to offer them. Variety in quantity (without the loss of Quality) is key to having a successful online shop. The more you have, the longer a customer will browse your shop and brand. The longer they are with you, the greater chances they'll make a purchase from you or better yet, contact you if something custom can be made based on what you have already offered in your shop.
4.) Figure out your Brand
Before or after, depending on if you have a game plan on what you want to do or if your new at it all, you need to figure out what your brand (aka your product and your style) is trying to represent.
Branding can be multiple things:
- Type of the Product being Offered
- How you Showcase it
- How you Personally Represent it
Type, Display, and/or Personality; these are the three kinds of branding you can represent. Wither you choose one, two, or all three is up to you, but it very important to be able to signify what your shop is about.
( Business cards, Logo Style, Name of your Shop, and any other Graphical add-ons that apply to your shop is Branding as well. These should fit together as a set and should never differ from each other or cause confession on your Brand's Identity.)
5.) Advertising / Self Promotion
Promoting yourself is just as important as being able to sell yourself and your brand. If you aren't promoting and advertising your product, then you are just stabbing yourself in the foot.
Advertising your product isn't as hard as it seems. Sometimes is might cost you some out of pocket cash, but the main focus here will be advertising on a free market.
The free advertising market, which includes primarily many social networking sites, is the focus of this section. In fact, you most likely use one of those sites (if you aren't, then you should!) on an almost daily basis.
These websites include:
- Facebook (primarily Facebook Pages)
- Google +
- Tumblr
- Youtube
This is just a short list of 7, but this is a strong short list of social media websites that are constantly waiting to be filled with new content, especially pictures and video.
Handling all these sites can be a handful. Luckily, there is an app/website that makes it simple to.
IF THIS THEN THAT, or simply IFTTT.com, offers the ability to cause one post, say to Facebook, be also posted amongst other sites. Indeed worth a check. ( I personally use this and I can guarantee it works amazingly) Its available for Iphone and Android devices.
Being able to spread yourself out to multiple locations and trying to get your product out there is so key to success! Its how movies are advertised; through TV, Social Media, Youtube, ect. The more you spread yourself upon the media, the more you'll get out of it in return, and that return being sales.
6.) Etsy Teams / Forums
Depending if your new or not, You should be checking out Etsy Teams and the Etsy Forums.
The Etsy Forums is a valuable source of information from thousands of users, past and present, filled with their questions and of course, answers. It is also a great place to see what the current buzz is about with the Etsy Website itself.
Besides the later, if you haven't ever noticed, there are dozens of people constantly asking other users, most of whom are sellers as well, to over look their shops and give them (Hopefully you in the near future) thoughtful cortiques from a specific listing to their overall shop. This in itself is a strong service to take advantage of since this advice is given freely.
Etsy Teams, just like the forums, is another avenue to seeking help from others, but more on the concentrating level. Most teams or groups, have a specific goal in mind, either that being to help others with Tags & SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to helping sellers with having a better item presentation.
There are also groups on Facebook that do the same thing as Etsy Teams, but with the better social interaction interface that Facebook provides. You can either search for them on your own on Facebook or you can check this list of Groups on this blog:
7.) About Page and Policy Page
I find it really important to fill in your Policy Page (Policy Example of Mine) as many potential customers that are new to Etsy might have doubt in a new shop (or even a well aged shop) and not purchase anything from you. Even if you have a filled Policy Page, look it over again, ask a friend or someone online to over look it and get their opinion. If by chance, one of those options have a conflict with your policies, then potential customers might also have a conflict with them as well.
Your About Page (About Page Example of Mine) is your place to shine, literally. Its your chance to tell anyone about you and what makes the shop itself tick. It could be your first and last opportunity to express yourself and your craft to those people who seek out your skill without having to talk to them one on one. Use your best pictures, best vocab and grammar, and upon everything else, make yourself sound interesting and unique (without sugarcoating it)!
8.) SEO and Tags
SEO and Listing Tags is crucial and also very in depth in many cases. Whether you're new to it or a veteran, these two things can make make you money or prevent you from making any money at all.
SEO is what Google or any other search engine uses to figure if your item has what the user of that search engine is looking for.
For example, if you type "Crocheted Baby Cockblock" in Google, you will most likely be engulfed by pictures and links to my Crocheted Cockblocks. This is the power of SEO.
SEO works along with pictures, link address, and the short beginning of a description on a page, in this instance, my Etsy (or any other site) listing.
Tags are used more primarily on the Etsy Site it self. It helps narrow down items and display what is most relevant to you or your customer's search.
When using tags, it is highly suggested to NOT use one worded tags. However, they can still be used, but its better to use a combination of words that help describe your listing/product. If you have issues with figuring what you should tag, go off of this list:
- What is it?
- What is it for?
- Who is it for?
- When can it be used?
- Why does it exist?
Here are also some guides that can help with Tagging and SEO:
9.) Pricing
The pricing of your items can attract or can scare away potential customers. Pricing can be one of the hardest things you'll have to decide upon, especially if the priced item in question is completely hand made.
There is a basic model of how to charge:
Material Cost + Labor Costs + Handmade Skill Charge = Pricing
Material Cost is easy to explain. Since you want to cover your purchasing costs of said material, you'll want to add this. This can also, in sometimes, be the most expensive part of the equation.
Labor Costs is hard to define. Depending on your craft, it could be above the standard min wage or it could be way below. This could also change from product to product, from simplicity or stupid difficult.
The Handmade Skill Charge is something I personally tack on to my pricing. My explanation to this when I tell people is that I'm providing a product that requires a certain amount of skill and experience that the normal individual wouldn't have the time or patience to learn themselves. I am providing something unique to the individual because of a Skill I have finely tuned with years of experience.
Last that isn't mention is that of Shipping Costs. Depending on your item, you can either absorb the shipping costs of the said item in question or add it on. This add on can either be on the Pricing itself or as a separate charge, which is usually listed as "Shipping and Handling".
The one thing you must be careful about with charging shipping separately, is that if the cost of the shipping isn't justified or overwhelming to a lot (without justification) then you'll be left with a customer that deletes the item from their online cart or plain out abandons it, which is never a good thing and honestly happens quite often, online and in real life.
10.) Have Fun
No. Seriously. Depending on your mindset or where your coming at, if your new at it all or a veteran, you need to remember to have fun, but still professional of course.
I have found that most of my creations come from me not even thinking about them because I was having fun with what I was doing.
If you tend to stress out or are scared of failure, try not too if its possible.
"One with an ease mind is quicker to react then with a mind filled with doubt and stress." - Amigurumi Man + All those other Wise Men & Women in the World