Former_Member
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In Search of My First Sale...

If anyone has a few minutes to spare to help a newcomer to Etsy, I would greatly appreciate it!

I opened up a store a few weeks ago selling nice, simple bracelets on Etsy. It's an outgrowth of a hobby (read: my husband is sick of my having hundreds of handmade bracelets taking up our entire vanity) and I don't need to make money off this - we both have good day jobs, but now that I've worked it all out in my brain, I really want to make this work.

I've read through the Etsy seller books, trolled question and answer feeds and read about a thousand blog articles. I've visualized my target audience (professional women, married or unmarried in their 20s and 30s with moderate to comfortable incomes), I bought a new camera, I've branched out into a few new designs (beyond the ones that I just like, which dominated my first dozen listings). I've re-tooled my item names, re-worked the descriptions and added google search analytics to my page. I've tried to do at least one treasury per day, which has driven a little bit of traffic to my shop, but never more than 3-5 folks per treasury.

My banner is weak - I'm not great with digital editing. I know that needs work and that's next on the to-do list. But, I guess ultimately, I'm hoping someone might look over my page (SouthboundRVA) and give me some good feedback. You can be as blunt as you like!

I haven't had any sales yet, then again it's only been a few weeks. I'm considering the possibility of starting a blog or a facebook page to help get things started. I'm not sure if I want to pay to promote - does it really work?

Any advice, suggestions, etc. would be very much welcome.

Thanks,
Kate
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Former_Member
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Re: In Search of My First Sale...

Hi Katherine! What lovely pieces -- and actually they're the kind of things I might even wear, and I hardly ever wear jewelry!

I'm gonna give you my 10 cent tour of SEO to drive more traffic to your store. This method works fabulously for the clients of my boss's company, where I learned it. It's not a secret but not many people know about it.

FIrst, you should learn whatever you can about choosing keywords, AKA Etsy tags. The most basic advice is: Figure out you how YOU would search for your items and use those phrases.

You have some decent ones but they won't be the best ones until you do some research. Right off the top of my head, for example, I doubt if people are looking for magnesite necklaces. They may want stones, or certain colors, but how many of your customers know what magnesite is?

Next, you should become best friends with Google's Keyword Planner. Here's a great tutorial on using it, if you don't already know how:

https://www.etsy.com/teams/11352/relevancy-and-seo-for-all-etsy-shops/discuss/13988472/page/1

Then, once you have a bunch or phrases that seem to have a decent amount of people looking for them, take the next step in my method.

1. Multiply the monthly search numbers by 12 to get an annual number.

2. Google each phrase you're considering in quotes (to eliminate irrelevant pages where "turquoise" and "necklace" might be on the same page, but have nothing to do with turquoise necklaces, for example). Check out the number of results Google says it has using that phrase at the top left of the results page.

3. Divide the number of annual searches for a phrase by the number of existing pages using the phrase. This is how you measure the competitiveness of the phrase! If you get something over 1, that means demand (the number of searches) is higher than supply (the number of existing pages). That's pure gold!

If you get something below 1, that means there are more pages with that phrase than there are searches, so your competition is stiff.

Now, in jewelry you'll find it hard to get ANYTHING above .3, because it's such a competitive niche. But you go with the best you can get.

Of course my method is geared toward Google, but people are people and search behavior is much the same on Bing, Yahoo and Etsy. But there is one other step I take here on Etsy: I search for the phrase I'm considering to see what the competition is here specifically. Etsy doesn't share how many people are searching on a phrase, darn it all, but they will tell you what the competition is! Sometimes that helps me narrow down my choices. (It also helps me decide what colors, styles, etc. to make my products in.)

Use your best phrases in your titles and the beginning of your descriptions, and as many of your phrases as you can in your tags. All of that helps Etsy and even Google decide that you have what people are searching for. It's all about driving not just traffic, but people who want what you're selling!

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. Good luck!
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Former_Member
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Re: In Search of My First Sale...

BTW, this is a lot of work, but once you get a spreadsheet of good phrases, it will help promote your items while you sleep. :-)
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Former_Member
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Re: In Search of My First Sale...

Mary,

That's tremendously helpful and something I'll get to working on right away! Great point on magnesite...I suppose the only people searching for magnesite necklaces are those making them and scoping out the competition!! :)

I appreciate the helpful game plan and can't thank you enough for that (and for the follow)!

Best,
Kate
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