New Etsy Shop & What First Steps to Take!

[Former_Member]

Hi Everyone! I'm so excited to be a part of the Etsy Success Team. I just opened up my shop and would love to hear stories about how you made your first sale and what has proven to be successful for you in your etsy shop!

Best,
Jen

[organicmountainwoman]

Hi Jen!
Congratulations on your new shop!
My first sale actually came from a team member. I was showing my husband the feed and how you favorite items and he said "Look...there's an order". I'm pretty sure I wore a hole in my floor from the five minute happy dance I did. It will be so cool when you get your first order (I get all smiley when I get an order....never gets old)!
This team is fantastic for advice for new shops.
-I like your photos. They're crisp and clean. Try to use all five in each listing.
-Filling out your About page lets people know that there's a person behind the shop...etsy customers like the small business connection.
-Fill out your Shop Policies. If you encounter a problem with a customer at any point, your butt is covered :) You can scan other shop's policies and adjust them to meet your needs.
I've found that the more items I have listed, the higher the sales.
I've also found that SEO is super important and regularly work on keywords/titles. Your keywords should match your title and should be more than one word. Ex- Instead of the keyword "chanel" use "La Mode Chanel" as you have that in your title and listing. Try typing words into the etsy search and a list will pop down as to what is most popular with it (not sure if that makes sense). If you type Italy into the search, this comes up:
italy
italy in handmade
made in italy
italy map
italy photography
italy necklace
italy soccer
italy painting
italy art
florence italy
italy world cup
find shop names containing italy
If any combination of those keywords fit your card, use them.
Hope that helps!
Super best of luck with your new shop:)

[Former_Member]

Hi Jen and Shannie,
My sister and I just opened our shop at the end of August and are still waiting for our first sale. That's one of the reasons I've joined this Etsy Success team: to figure out what we can do to make our shop more inviting.

Shannie, I really like the suggestions you have made here and have begun making some changes to our item tags.

Looking forward to learning more!

Margaret

[Former_Member]

SEO, SEO, SEO. It's the key to success. Here's my cut and pasted advice I give to everyone:

There is no substitute for good SEO. I post this over and over, and people seem to just ignore it and ask the same question about getting more views and sales immediately after I post it.

Again: There. Is. No. Substitute. For. Good. SEO.

And again, here is how you learn how to do it:

Go to the Relevancy & SEO team and learn as much as you can about picking the best keywords.
https://www.etsy.com/teams/11352/relevancy-and-seo-for-all-etsy-shops

Then I also suggest that you read about my method, which goes a little further than they do on the Relevancy team.
https://cleverruthie.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/a-sweet-secret-to-seo-and-etsy-happiness/

Good SEO means you're driving buyers into your store who are ACTIVELY looking for EXACTLY what you're selling. That means sales, not just views. Yesterday my views were about a third of normal -- but I still had a sale. It's not just quantity of views, it's QUALITY. And that means learning SEO.

If you don't take the time and effort to understand and execute proper SEO, you'll never succeed. Period.