Etsy is a flourishing e-commerce marketplace

Founded in 2005 and based out of the US, Etsy is one of the fastest-growing marketplaces of the last decade, especially for creative entrepreneurs or people trying to find a secondary source of income. Due to fewer full-time business owners (~20%) on the platform, it’s easier for many hobbyists, artists, and small entrepreneurs to get a good business going on Etsy. Etsy has been growing rapidly. According to Statista, Etsy boasted over 1.7Bn USD in annual revenue in 2020, double from 2019. It also has over 4.36Mn active sellers, out of which a whopping 81% identify themselves as women, and 97% run their Etsy sales from their homes! (globally)  So, Etsy is an amazing platform to list your products. And you can start earning some serious money, by putting your hours in Etsy listing. 

While we will look into the schematics with great detail to elevate your Product Listings throughout this article, it is a good idea to accustom yourself to the basic rules of listing products on the platform before beginning. 

You can find the Etsy Seller Policy guidelines here, and here is a brief rundown of what you cannot list on the platform, and will get banned if you do –

• Weapons and/or any Explosive materials
• No copypasta is allowed – so no copyright infringements and no items you didn’t ideate/ made yourself
• No items made from endangered animal species are allowed and for good reason
• Alcohol, drugs, and tobacco items are, again, banned
• No products/ items that glorify violence, or can result in spreading hatred in the community

Now, let us look at the best practices to be followed on the platform to ensure your listings are a success.

DO – Use your Creativity to the fullest

As we mentioned earlier, Etsy is a platform that isn’t a pure function-based marketplace like Amazon, or a price-driven marketplace like eBay, its uniqueness lies in the Artistry and Bold Creativity of its sellers.

So, it goes without saying that if you are selling on Etsy, your prospective audience needs to see a Spark in you.

Your Logo, your Brand Identity (through your language, tones, and images on your storefront), and your Products – all should resonate with the vibe your niche audience is looking for, it should highlight what’s unique about you as a person and as a creator.

DO – Write Catchy, SEO-optimised Product Descriptions

Product Descriptions are there for you to tell a story that resonates with your product, so that your customer can understand its origin, its journey and the problems that it is trying to solve, and how they can integrate it into their lives.

Product Descriptions, hence, are the fuel to power your sale, to convert a prospect into an end-user.

And while you should be trying to convey your story, you also have to keep in mind that your text has to be SEO-optimised for higher conversions. A thoroughly researched Product Description, with the right keywords and tags, can help you rank many times better than just a good story –

• Do thorough keyword research, even use external tools like Google Keyword Planner
• Target both short-tail and long-tail keywords
• Use all Tags to ensure as close a fit with your target niche as possible
• Use phrases and tags similar to your Product Title

We have published a thorough post, specifically to elevate Product Descriptions for e-commerce platforms like Etsy. Definitely, do give it a once over.

See this listing by Forest Essentials for example. It clearly outlines the utility that the hair spray brings – it solves major problems of hair loss and weak hair, with bulleted benefits for better recall.

DO- Use Visually Stunning Photos

Product images are a must-have for any entrepreneur operating in e-commerce in 2022. Photos are no longer just visual props, but an actual standalone medium to tell a story.

And what better way to tell your product story than through Images (and videos)?

You have to ensure that your product photos are –

• Visually appealing, and in line with your product’s character
• The story told through your photos should complement the one from your text description
• The Background, Props, and Stickers (if any) should all be in line with the vibe

Photos can lift even bland products to decent heights, so having top product photos is a no-brainer.

In this day and age of advanced smartphones, you don’t even have to spend time or money hiring a professional for your images.

DO – Engage with the Community

Community is King. And Etsy is definitely more community-oriented than stone-cold business platforms like Amazon.

So, your approach to Community-building is important, especially if you are starting off – you could do with help from your peers, your customers-turned-advocates, heck, even your competitors, who might give you a tip or two to help improve your listings and business.

Etsy has active forums and you should play a positive role to solve others’ problems, as well as use the opportunity to direct some traffic to your product pages and get the good ol’ word-of-mouth going.

DO – Extract the most from Social Media Marketing

Small sellers these days get more traction from Social Media than anything else, especially if your products resonate with what your niche audience is looking for.

Platforms like Instagram and Pinterest, even Tiktok, have that inbuilt element of Virality, which make them great options to explore for building business backbones on, in the present times.

Your Brand’s social media creativity and presence have the power and potential to make or break your sales on Etsy, and you can maximize your Shop Announcements (a unique Etsy feature) by using social media to bolster your reach for any promotions you are running.

That being said, here are a few things you should absolutely try to avoid.

DON’T – Enter saturated markets/ target generic audiences

Today’s e-commerce landscape is all about finding a niche that you have expertise in, and then drilling down into the core audience with innovative products. 

Most beginners or first-timers with lower levels of product research fail at their early attempts due to ignoring this very simple factoid – they go after larger audiences, which at the same time, are extremely saturated markets with big players with big marketing spends.

So, stick to what you do best, but do it in developing sectors, instead of overly saturated markets like Jewelry, Woodwork, etc. all of which have hundreds of thousands of Etsy sellers already.

DON’T – Rely solely on Etsy for traffic to your product pages

You want to maximize your product page traffic as frugally as possible, i.e. – with minimal market spending, at least at the very beginning.

The best way to do this is to use multiple prongs to get traffic to your products – 

• use your Social Media handles wisely, post innovative content
• post creative hooks through Articles on your Blog
• try for Guest posts on your Blog
• submit your product for Reviews by influencers, bloggers, or review sites
• start getting organic and maybe some paid traction going through Google

Doing all this will help you reduce dependence on Etsy users only, as even though they are in the hundreds of millions, only a few thousand would probably be interested in your niche. 

So, expanding your horizon of traffic possibilities will directly help you scale as well.

DON’T – Cling to older listings/ listings that don’t sell well

You should always keep the Quality of your Etsy storefront above quantity in terms of the number of products listed.

Many believe that more listings = more sales, but if it were true, things would have been so much easier.

Keeping nonperforming product listings on your storefront, only waters it down, and can even reduce the legitimacy of your products in the eyes of a new customer, potentially affecting a sale.

So, keep your store top-notch in terms of what’s doing well, and what’s not. It also helps in making operations easier for you and making things manageable by very small core staff.

Use Blend to Elevate your Etsy Listings to the Next Level

We have discussed in detail how Story, Keywords, Images, and Product Features can all come together to create the perfect product description to boost your traffic, as well as help convert more sales on Etsy.

But doing all that while keeping in mind technical factors like SEO, is not easy.

Thankfully, in a generation of technology, you have great options like the Blend App, which helps you generate, optimize, and push amazing descriptions for your product listings on Etsy in a few minutes, and with only a few clicks.

You can choose Language, Tone, Genre, and many other factors, to help keep your Brand creative, and preserve its Identity, yet get descriptions optimized for sales in very little time.

1. Choose Your Product Image

2. Set up Basics

3. Use Advanced options to set Audience, Tone & Platform

4. Edit and Optimise your Product Descriptions

Not only that, all the descriptions generated with the power of Artificial Intelligence, include Power Words to push your story through, and are perfect for Etsy marketplace SEO.

Download Blend – Start Removing and Editing the Background of Your Product Images today

You can visit the website here, you can directly go to the Google Play Store for Android and iOS Store for iPhones to get started with background removal and creating professional quality images today!

We are also building our Seller Academy with resources to help sellers up their game on e-commerce platforms — with 200k+ users and counting, and a Web App coming soon, Blend is changing the outlook to e-commerce listing.

You can stay up-to-date on our new releases through our Instagram account and our Pinterest page as well!