Etsy is the world’s largest online marketplace for handcrafted goods and has become a go-to destination for shoppers looking to buy unique gifts. Maybe you’re thinking of selling on Etsy? This step-by-step guide will help take you through the process from choosing your Shop name to opening up!

You’ve got questions like these about starting an Etsy business: How do I build get customers? How do I set up an online Etsy shop? How do I price my products? How much does it cost to start a business on Etsy? Will anyone buy my products?

The good news is you don’t have to figure it all out on your own. Here are answers to your Etsy business questions.

These straightforward steps will get you quickly get started selling handmade items in your own shop on Etsy.com. Ready to make money with your artistic talents online? Let’s go

Start Your Etsy Shop in a Few Simple Steps

Etsy is a unique online handmade marketplace that connects independent makers and buyers from all over the world. It’s an easy process if you start with the basics.

The first thing you’ll need to do to start a business on Etsy is get signed up on Etsy.

Setting up an Etsy account is easy. Click on the “Sell on Etsy” link, enter your email, name, and password in the appropriate fields and then tap or click “Register.”

Or you can sign up using your existing Facebook, Google, or Apple accounts.

Plan Your Branding & Product Selection

Now you will visit the “shop preferences” page for your primary online store settings. The page will refresh once you enter your credentials for signing up.

The preferences page will allow you to set your default language, your home country, and the shop currency for your Etsy listings. The current currency conversion fees are 2.5% on the sale amount. You will be asked a couple of questions, much of which is meant for Etsy’s surveying purposes. You don’t have to worry about your information getting into the hands of the public, as only Etsy has access to your data.

Once you personalize your shop preferences page, you will move on to the next and the most fun part of your shop creation on Etsy. And that is deciding your shop name.

If you need help deciding your shop name, think about what kind of vibe or tone reflects in your Etsy shop’s products or services.

For example, if most of your items are jewelry, maybe something like “Jewelry Wonderland” would be appropriate to reflect customers’ airy feelings when they visit an actual jewelry store.

In contrast, if all of your items are vintage clothing, a more classic name like “Vintage Clothing Boutique” might be better.

The more unique the company’s brand is, the easier it becomes for your audience to remember what sets your business apart from others in similar product lines.

Here are some of Etsy’s general guidelines for choosing the shop name before you start an Etsy shop:

• The shop name shouldn’t be already in use.
• Use uppercase wherever possible to make your name creative and memorable
• The shop name should be less than 20 characters.
• Make sure that your intended shop name doesn’t translate into something offensive in other languages.

Get inspiration from my list of the cutest (and most creative) craft business names here

Once you have crafted your business’s name, you can start adding items to your online shop. However, there are a few things that you need to keep in mind while selecting products to upload and sell on your eCommerce store on Etsy:

• You can’t sell weapons and explosives.
• You need to be able to differentiate between copying and inspiration. For example, you can sell something that is inspired by another store’s product. However, you may be at a greater risk of getting in trouble if you are copying someone else’s product entirely.
• If you are selling handmade products, make sure that the supplies used in producing the items are not restricted or illegal to import or use in your home country.

Also, don’t forget to read Etsy’s guidelines and terms of service thoroughly before getting started. Among other things, you need to source your materials ethically. For example, you can’t use endangered animal materials, toxic glues, and so on. Visit Etsy’s seller policy for more details on this subject.

Register on Etsy Platform  

Today there is tremendous competition on the Etsy website for crafts supplies and various other items, and as a result, it’s a bit harder than ever to stand out from the crowd. That said, putting extra effort into how you present yourself will go a long way.

Make sure to fill out all the sections on your Etsy product page when you start an Etsy shop. For example, add pictures (as discussed later), a detailed description, and what materials you use to produce your products or how your vintage items are made in the additional details section. Generally, Etsy shoppers want to know how your items are made and how good their quality is before purchasing from you on Etsy.

Give them more information than they need so that when they want to purchase from you, your customers will know precisely what they are buying.

Pricing Your Etsy Items & Etsy Fees

Many new Etsy sellers face their most significant problem when starting to do business on this platform – what is the best way to price their items. Since you, as a new Etsy seller, will be competing with thousands of other Etsy shops selling similar products, how can you make sure your prices are in a good range? What if people think the price is too high or too low?

Luckily there are a few strategies as recommended by Etsy’s seller handbook. The two most common approaches in setting up the pricing of your Etsy listing include the a) top-down approach and b) the bottom-up approach.

The Top-Down Approach:

The top-down approach involves taking into account the cost of inputs that go directly and indirectly into the making of your product. These costs include labor, time, and overhead expenses, along with material costs.

You are mainly doing in this method to calculate those single or double factors that have the most impact on the overall cost of making your product. So, for example, if you sell doormats, the number of labor hours spent on creating those doormats might have the highest cost.

After finding out those 2-3 factors that come with the highest cost, you decide the alternatives for those factors and plan how much you can reduce them without affecting the quality and output of your product. This way, you have a range within which you can profitably price your products.

Handmade Product Pricing Strategies 

Two of the standard pricing calculation strategies are as follows:

The bottom-up approach involves determining how much you would be willing to sell the product after you expense your material and labor costs. Here you first add up all your costs, including labor and overhead (electricity, rent, etc.) divide the total by the number of items you crafted to determine your total costs. Then you add your markup.

An example of bottom-up pricing is a wooden box that costs $2.25 in materials, $1.50 in labor, and $.75 in overhead costs $4.50 to produce. If you want to have a 50% gross profit margin (you double your total costs), your retail price would be $9.00 per handcrafted item.

The opposite is top-down pricing. This pricing strategy is where you decide on your retail price first and then set your material and labor costs to fit within your projected profit margins.  I generally recommend this approach for pricing because it often better reflects market pricing and produces greater profits.

An example of top-down pricing is to first research the market and determine that your handmade wooden box is similar in design, size, and quality to other items selling for $12.50 per box. After setting your retail price at $12.50, you calculate your profit margin by subtracting your total costs.

Learn more about startup costs for your jewelry business in my in-depth article here

Etsy Seller Fees: Types and Percentages

Now let’s talk about the types of fees that Etsy charges its sellers.

Starting up an Etsy shop is free, but it’ll cost you to keep your business going. You might want to consider upgrading to a paid subscription plan that offers additional features and perks like online marketing for crafting supplies and different products!

Etsy fees are another critical thing you should know all about: how they work and how much they are, especially for small businesses. For example, Etsy charges sellers a listing fee of $0.20 per item for four months and a transaction fee of 5% of the total item costs from the seller’s end on each sale made through your listing.

The chart below details each fee type with links to details and Etsy policies on their site.

Chart of Etsy Shop Fees by Type

After four months, the listing expires, and you can choose to renew the listing yourself or opt for the auto-renewal of the listing so that the listing fee gets deducted from your account automatically. If you are a small business and just starting, you can choose to pay manually.

Of course, there are shipping costs associated too.

But first, you need to have your payment preferences set and your billing information related to your bank account entered for Etsy to charge you for your sales.

How to Build Your Etsy Site and List Your Products

Although a website isn’t necessary to sell on Etsy, it’s a great asset to have when your Etsy business grows. It can be used as a showcase for all of your products or just a single product. So, if you decide to create a website for your Etsy business, how easy will it be for you to promote it?

Etsy provides sellers with the ability to integrate their shop data into an off-site blog or eCommerce platform using API’s which are available via the developers and API page on their website.

For utilizing the hidden power of a product listing, Etsy allows a shop owner to use tags through which users can find your listing.  For these product listing tags, you can use up to 13 words and phrases associated with your product.

Make sure that the keywords in the title of your listing attract people to click on them. It would help if you also considered how well your description appeals to potential customers. For example, the title of a listing is only visible when a person is browsing through categories of similar items.

A longer listing description isn’t necessarily better because some online shoppers like to browse quickly and read short descriptions before purchasing. 

Tips for Great Etsy Product Photos

Pictures speak volumes, and when potential Etsy customers visit Etsy shops, they make up their minds in a matter of moments.

Take this into account and take good-quality pictures of your products using high-quality lighting setups or even professional photography services.

Market Your Etsy Shop: Promotion, SEO and Keywords

Many Etsy shop owners often wonder how they can get their items featured on Etsy’s front page for all Etsians to see. You need to do only two things if you want your items on the front page: 1) have good quality product photos and 2) write a good description of how your item is made or how it works.

Most people won’t bother checking out how a product works will make your life easier as a seller. Instead, people want to know how they can use it and how cool it looks on them!

With Etsy’s minimum requirement of five pictures, you can show your customers more than one angle and all the different colors for variations in your Etsy shop. Fitting within square dimensions is also a must to ensure that potential buyers see each product from every possible perspective before making their final purchase decision.

Switching up what appears in your thumbnails could be just enough to increase those sales!

Etsy search engine optimization (SEO) is how you can help your store show up in the Etsy search results.

Many people who visit Etsy don’t go there to shop, but rather to find an item that they have seen somewhere else or heard about from friends or family, etc.

After going so far on doing business on Etsy, how can we forget how to market our shops? The following tips will help you sell more of your items and increase sales.

Use Etsy SEO Keyword Tools to Get Your Products Featured

EtsyRank tracks the performance of every Etsy item and how well its seller’s SEO strategies are working on Etsy’s search engine.

Marmalead is also a keyword tool that can help you find how competitive terms are and how often they appear in Etsy. You can optimize your existing listings with this tool’s help and audit how well your listings are optimized for the keyword terms.

Etsy SEO experts state that using the keywords in your listing’s title increases click-through rates by a considerable factor. So make sure to set aside some budget for these excellent SEO tools!

Selling on Etsy: Increase Profits by Upselling & Cross-selling

In e-commerce, increasing profits by upselling and cross-selling is a crucial tactic for any online store.

How often have you seen how people buy things (at a retail store or even when buying something online) just because it comes with other complementary items?

Or how about how some premium services come with coupons, giving users a good reason to upgrade to the service using the tools of upselling and cross-selling work to build your sales. Both of these terms are quite similar. One of them focuses on how you can increase profits by selling more items, and the other focuses on how you can sell more items by selling related products (items that complement each other).

So, on Etsy, how can you upsell, and how can you cross-sell?

One of the most profitable ways to increase sales on your pages is through related items.  You have devoted some space in your store for an object; how about turning that into a potential moneymaker by adding other relevant products?  By purchasing one pair of earrings,  how about getting another free? 

How you can cross-sell and increase sales is through bundle or package deals. When you have a large inventory of one type of product, how about grouping them all in one box or giving something free when someone purchases a particular item as a promotion?

Focusing on how to increase profits by upselling and cross-selling can be enough to bring your earnings up. 

These two tactics work so well that they are often used together to increase sales in retail stores. By how much you upsell items and how well you cross-sell by bundling your related products, you can significantly influence how many extra dollars you make per sale.

Examples of Most Profitable Etsy Shops

Learn how to become a successful Etsy shop owner by studying some of the most profitable shops on Etsy.com below.

CaitlynMinimalist
Dainty Personalized Jewelry crafted with Love
1,168,246 Sales

CaitlynMinimalist is a shop that specializes in personalized, minimalist jewelry. This includes writing your own name or handwriting on the necklace and even fingerprints! Her 5-star rating demonstrates her product quality and excellent customer service.

nicoledebruin
Charms & charm collections by Nicole de Bruin on Etsy
713,444 Sales

The perfect gift for the woman who has it all, Charm Collections provides not only stunning bracelets and necklaces but also a variety of charms that can be worn on them. They have been around since 2009 with nearly 50k followers to their name – plus 5-star ratings!

PeggySueAlso
PeggySueAlso Leather
731,134 Sales

Many Etsy shops are one of a kind, but PeggySueAlso Leather is truly unique! They have tons of graphic design patterns printed onto leather. Some popular examples include the “I love you so” pattern and this adorable bunny with hearts for eyes that says “happy.” This Etsy shop has 23k admirers on Etsy who can’t get enough of their beautifully made products.

FAQ for Etsy Sellers:

Do I need a business license to sell crafts or any other product on Etsy?

You don’t need a business license to sell your products on Etsy. It is only required when you decide to operate your business legally in your state or city.

How much can you make on Etsy?

It depends upon several factors like how much you would sell, how well you market your Etsy shop, and how many or how little your expenses are.

Etsy has millions of users, and if your products end up there, you have the potential of reaching out to a vast number of people. And, if your products are unique and sell well, you are likely to find success on Etsy.

According to smartmoneymamas.com, only 25% of the Etsy sellers out of the 20 that they interviewed made a full-time income compared to 75% of them who just considered themselves stay-at-home parents.

Know you know that being a successful Etsy seller takes more than just posting items on your shop and hitting the publish button.

You need to research your potential product, fully optimize your listing, and keeping track of your reviews as well.

How do I start an Etsy shop for beginners?

While there’s no right or wrong way of doing things when it comes to starting your eCommerce shop on the site, there are plenty of strategies that other sellers use which might be helpful for businesses just beginning.

Here are some tips on how to start an Etsy shop!

• First, create an account with the name of your business – this will be used as your company name on Etsy
• Next, upload pictures of all of the items in your store. Finally, fill in bank account details for your online business. 
• Finally, write a title & description for each photo and make sure it includes keywords about what type of item it is

How much does the average person make on Etsy?

Sellers can make anywhere from 500$/month to over 5,000$/month.  The best way to have an idea of how much a seller is bringing in is to check out their feedback score and how long they’ve been selling. This data gives you an idea of how many sales they’ve made and how good their products are.

The more you sell, the higher your ranking will be on Etsy. High ranking scores do make selling easier because it lets other people know that you’re a great seller and have been trusted by others in the past. Positive feedback can increase your sales as well!

Small business owners can make anywhere from 400$/month to over 5000$/month. Of course, it all depends on how much you want to work and how long you’ve been at it!

So, are you ready to start your own Etsy shop?

If so, take a deep breath and follow the steps we’ve outlined above. You can do it! We hope this article has helped answer any questions about opening an Etsy shop or listing products on Etsy for sale.

There is no need for any coding experience or design skills-you can make an Etsy site with the click of a button. You’ll be on your way to becoming one of the millions of sellers on this platform who are living their entrepreneurial dreams by being in charge of all aspects of their business from marketing, pricing, shipping, customer service, and more.

Best of luck with your new business venture!

13 Ways to Launch a Successful Etsy Shop

Etsy’s online marketplace makes it easy to get your hand-crafted products in front of the right audience. From learning about what they want, getting them hooked on social media, and making sure you’re taking care of business with these 13 tips…you’ll be able to turn a simple Etsy shop into something that takes off!

The post How To Open Your Etsy Shop and Sell Handmade Crafts appeared first on Best 4 Businesses - Entrepreneur Resources.