Help and tips required

[OceanArtsNorthDevon]

Hi
Sorry to harp on again but I am becoming very dispondant with Etsy, I opened my shop in August but have had no sales or enquiries? Ive held back on stocking up my shop further as I have had no interest on what I have at the moment so see little point adding to my costs, what am I doing wrong? I already sell online and have done for many years, have very good feedback and no problems plus I have had many orders over the years for custom pieces as well, I joined Etsy to try and increase my sales as I thought it would target the right market as all my work is handcrafted. I do all the usual promotion through teams and when I do I get the views to my shop, I have seen my work appear in treasuries a couple of times done by Etsy for the UK , have very kindly appeared in treasuries from this team and also by other people I do not know, I have tried changing my tags but at a loss to what I am doing wrong other than people are just not interested in what I do but I do sell elsewhere? Any help and advise is most welcome.
Thanks
Mark

[Former_Member]

Hi Mark

Sometimes it does take a while to get your sales started, so don't feel too bad about it.

Do you ship overseas? The majority of my sales are not from the UK, and without international sales I would be struggling to sell anything too.

How about getting feedback on your shop from 'Peek' testing (I put a link in another thread in this group a while back)? They will get an independent person to look at your shop, and then they answer a series of set questions about your shop. I have found this useful, even though it is nerve racking waiting to see what someone thinks of your hard work and efforts! The testing is free (you can have up to three feedbacks in a month), and you normally only have to wait a couple of hours to get the video feedback in your email inbox.

However, I am sure it is only a matter of time until you make your first sale - hang in there!

[Former_Member]

Here's that link if you want to give it a go:

https://www.etsy.com/uk/teams/7722/discussions/discuss/13944142/page/1

[Former_Member]

Hi Mark
I have taken another look at your shop and thought what could make it even more tempting. I think that your work would really light up if it was photographed and displayed in a surf setting. Wall clocks on the beach or propped up by some lovely beach stones. Also look at your lighting natural light that shows the shape of the products would be best. hope this helps.
Luna

[Former_Member]

ps I know that you have done a bit of staging but maybe take it further. You seem to have taken photos with the light behind the product try the other way around.

[Former_Member]

Hi Mark,

I'm really sorry to hear that you're not getting the results you want from Etsy. It's horrid when it feels like it's just not working. I've been having a look at your shop too, and the main things that can both draw in a customer, and put them off, are product photography, and postage costs.

Considering this, I thought it might be helpful for me to me to do a short critique of one item in your shop, and I chose this one...

https://www.etsy.com/listing/204228232/water-colour-card-hand-painted?ref=shop_home_active_9

So, first of all, your postage costs are really low, which is great! I can see that you charge £1 postage to the UK, and only £1.50 to the USA, which is super low! As Sarah says above, overseas sales will probably become your bread and butter here on Etsy. I certainly sell a lot to the states and Australia, so postage costs here are relevant and important, and you seem to be getting this right.

Secondly - photography. I think you could improve in this area, without a huge amount of work. With the listing above, the painting is obviously really very detailed and has a lot of refined work in it, but we just can't see this from the photograph! If you have a look in my shop, you can see how my photographs are very close up, and I've done this to show the detail in the design.

The trick with photography is plenty of NATURAL light. My photos are taken on a white background (a piece of A£ white foam from my local art store), next to my office window, with my phone camera! I kid you not! This is a handy article from the Etsy blog that you might find useful...

https://blog.etsy.com/en/2010/etsys-guide-to-photography/

I actually really like the idea of a combination of staged photographs and detailed close up ones for your items.

I don't know if I've been helpful, but I know that you could be really successful on Etsy, and want to help you as much as possible to get there!

Charlotte xx

[OceanArtsNorthDevon]

Hi
Thank you all so much for taking the time and trouble to look at my shop and offer advice which has all been really helpful and I will redo the photos to try and get them to stand out more ( been having a few problems with my internet so haven't been able to do much on shop this week).

Also I made my first sale today on Etsy which has made me very happy and I hope it certainly won't be the last! I sold one of my Union Jack Surfboard Clocks which is great!
Thanks
Mark

[Former_Member]

Why don't you try recommending etsy to others with the link, then you get 40 free listings

You can post the link on facebook, on your facebook page, on twitter, in a blog, or contact people directly if you know of people

then you have a nice chunk of free listings to stock up your shop with

As the more items you have in your shop, the better chance you have of your shop and items being seen

I'd read somewhere that 50 items was the magic number (then elsewhere I'd read that it's more)

[Former_Member]

another thing....

I've just had a look at your hanging driftwood mobiles (beautiful by the way!!)
and the way they are listed with the variations is confusing, as you have a choice of dimension and a choice of colour
so it seems like you can order each dimension in each of the 3 colour choices

however, I think you've only made 3

also, from the photos I was struggling to work out which one was which, at a glance

a number of name on the photo (can be added in picmonkey or photoshop or other editing program/software) may be better

although, if you can spare the listings I think they'd work better listed separately, as each one could then be found in a search/treasury


also, I think some of your descriptions are a bit wordy/too much information (i'm guilty of this too!!)
I don't think you need to put about your facebook, twitter and pinterest on every item description as it says about this in your banner, shop info and shop links

also, in a couple of the descriptions I read you seemed to be pushing your other items more than the actual item I was looking at ;)

[Former_Member]

And don't forget twitter!!

Twitter is fab for etsy as you can click the "tweet" button on your item, it shares a link and photo straight to twitter, which then generates views on your etsy page

don't forget to use relevant # tags in your tweet (#upcycled #devon #handmade #sentfromdevon etc.) to ensure your tweet reaches more people

and consider joining in some of the twitter networking hours. Wednesday 7.30pm-9.30pm is #handmadehour and 8pm-9pm is #devonhour

just by tweeting links to your etsy shop and items at this time, using these #tags you can generate a ton of traffic to your shop

[CLMCovers]

agree with everything said above especially about the photography.

only other thing I would say is that for $0.20 (for 3 months!) its the cheapest way to advertise your beautiful work to the rest of the world. I would list as much as possible...the more you have on etsy the better.

i have a website where most of my sales come from but I use Etsy as another way to find buyers who might not find my shop.

good luck

[YellowT4Studio]

The biggest market for Etsy is etsy. I market to those already on etsy (millions of them!). To do this search out promotional games with groups (see my details for groups), interact on the main forum, ship worldwide.
If you carry out some form of activity on Etsy every day you will see things happen after a while.
Etsy works like a cat....if you don't pamper it daily it will wonder off to another shop.

Just a few pointers there

[OceanArtsNorthDevon]

Hi
Once again thank you for taking the time and trouble to give me some useful tips it is very much appreciated. Just a quick question, I haven't set my shop up to accept Etsy gift vouchers how do these work? Do you still receive payment in the normal way?
Thanks
Mark

[YellowT4Studio]

Good question.... I can but have not seen one in 2 years. So equally have no idea!

[Former_Member]

Hi Mark and Janners! As far as I can tell through looking through the seller handbook, yes you do receive the money as per usual. However, I'm going to post something in the general forums to try to get a definitive answer! I'll pop a link to the forum post in here once I've done it. x

[Former_Member]

Here you go!

https://www.etsy.com/teams/7718/questions/discuss/15622248/

x