Etsy Investment Question

[Former_Member]

Hi everyone, hope your day is going great. I wanted to ask this to those who don't mind sharing.

What is your monthly investment to Etsy and what are your number of sales?

I just started selling a couple of months ago and I have found that if I do not renew or list new items daily, I do not get any views. Period, bottom line! I understand relevancy and tag changes and all the good stuff, but it seems as if I still must renew or list several times a day.

My monthly budget is $30 (about a $1 a day) and my average sales are around 6 or 7 and my average sales $ a month around $70. So my sales are covering expenses - which is a good thing. But I am wondering if I jump my monthly budget to $60, would my sales also double.

I see many of us trying to build sales and see many with strong monthly sales and was wondering - if you don't mind sharing - How much are you investing in listing and renewing dollars each month and how many sales you are getting on average each month. . Thanks!

[Former_Member]

I use to renew a few items a day and was getting barely any views and definitely no sales! I have thus only tried to renew when I get a sale. However, some of my old items I renew maybe once a week just to be seen even if just a few minutes lol.

I started my own website and am trying to push my traffic there in order to keep more of my sales.

I suggest to double your budget for 1 month just to compare what happens, then you'd be in a better position to make a longer term adjustment.

[dorsetclothing]

I renew or list 1 item every day. That's enough to get some views. But I do find that it's not worth investing more than that into etsy because only 10-20% of my sales come from within etsy. The rest come from my promotion offline. My bill is increasing each month, but so are my sales (except this month I'm going backwards). My bills have been between $15-25 a month, and my sales for the past few months have been between $300-600.

In large categories like jewelry, recency plays a huge part, so you can still be seen at the top of search for a short while if you renew and your tags and titles are good.

If I were you, I wouldn't increase your budget just yet. I'd go and find as many different free ways to promote your store, and see what works after testing things for a month or so. If you're not getting more traffic in that way, then try doubling your budget for a month.

[Former_Member]

Thanks Jacque and Mon. Good information. It seems as most of my views come from Etsy. A few from facebook. Saturday my store was featured by the Top Treasury and I had over 200 views that day (500 according to google analytics) and three sells. Best day ever!

Mon, what are some of the ways you are promoting yourself offline?

[dorsetclothing]

I have a blog and a tumblr, both which have about 300 followers, a deviantart account which has 2900 watchers, and I'm involved in doll forums.
I don't use facebook or twitter, mainly because I just feel they're not for me, but each person needs to find what works best.

A good way to get interest is to be able to talk about or post content that isn't always related to your store. You show a part of yourself that people relate to. I especially like tumblr for this because it's a largely image based blogging platform, so I don't have to have something amazing or witty to say to connect with people. I post pictures of things I like, and reblog other people's pictures. Then I slip in pictures of my own work, so it's not this constant promotion. The way tumblr works is that if you like what someone posts, you can either like it like on FB, or reblog it on to your own blog. If you have something people really like, it can go viral. I've seen quite a few etsy sellers get a lot of attention because of it.
This is my page if you want to see what it looks like (warning, it can be a bit not safe for work sometimes): http://kawaiimon.tumblr.com/

A similar thing is pinterest, which I know a lot of people enjoy, but I haven't used myself because I feel it's too close to tumblr. You "pin" links to images and pages that you like, like a virtual pinboard. In other teams I've been in people have pinned each other's work as a way of helping promote each other. Again, if you like it, you can repin it on to your own page.

[Former_Member]

Wow thanks for all the great info. I just recently started a blog. WWW.goodhopcreations.blogspot.com and just finished my website. www.goodhope creations.com but other than knowing I should have one I really don't know how to push it out. Thanks for the good tips.