I’ve been selling on Etsy since 2010 and I have a top 0.1% Etsy shop and a top 4% shop. It’s not always been plain sailing. We didn’t make sales for the first few years, but, then again, we didn’t exactly put in the work.

Here are some of my top tips for successful Etsy selling, and the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the last 15 years of Etsy shop ownership.

Getting Started On Etsy

1- You need to know who your audience is before you can sell to them. Do your research. If you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one.

2- Share your story. Make it personal. People come to Etsy because it is the place to go for handmade, crafted items, so the best thing you can do is show up and share your inspiration, experiences and personality.

3- Show up consistently. Etsy loves it when you show up, add listings regularly and reply to enquiries swiftly.

Etsy Listing Advice

4- Use all 13 product tags. I’ve written more about this here.

5- Use all 10 images and make sure they are in focus and aesthetically pleasing. Take a look at this handy guide on how to use all 10 photo slots.

6- Add alt text to each image.

7- Add a short video to each listing. This could be a video of you demonstrating how your product works, a video of you making process or a stop motion. Etsy videos don’t have sound and are only 3-15 seconds long. The minimum video resolution is 500px, the ideal video resolution is at least 1080px.

8- Get to grips with long-tail keywords. That’s 2-3 words together to make a phrase that people search for. Erank is such a useful source for finding keywords for Etsy.

9- If an Etsy listing is working, don’t change it! Instead, duplicate the listing and make the changes you want to test. You will need to change the title and main image so it is different to the original.

10- Don’t keep changing your SEO. It takes the Etsy algorithm a few weeks to a few months to catch up and kick in, so don’t keep tweaking! If you constantly tweak and make changes to a listing on a regular basis, it’s never going to pay off.

11- Most of your income will come from a few of your listings. We have 3-4 bestsellers that bring in about 80% of our income. This is normal. Don’t tweak best selling listings too much (or at all). If it ain’t broke…

Marketing For Your Etsy Shop

12- Etsy selling alone is not enough. You need to show up on social media and share your products, your story, your processes and (you may not like the next one) your face. Yep, I used to cringe at the idea of putting my face (and my voice) out there, but personal branding is a small business owner’s secret sauce.

13- Have your own website as well as an Etsy shop. I cannot stress this enough. Your own website is yours. It doesn’t rely on Etsy’s algorithm and you aren’t competing against other makers on your own site. Etsy is amazing for helping you reach new audiences, but your own website is important too.

14- Pinterest is so good for getting your work out there for more people to see.

Etsy Order Advice

15- Answer enquiries swiftly and politely. Customer service is so important.

16- Pay attention to your packaging. Wrap items well to protect them, use nice boxes or envelopes, add branded stickers. First impressions count.

17- A handwritten thank you note goes a long way.

18- Always go the extra mile. Whether it’s pretty packaging, handwritten notes or a friendly message to check in and make sure that your customer is happy with their purchase.

19- Don’t run sales continuously. The occasional sale is fine, but you don’t want to become a brand known for always running discounts.

20- Instead of running constant sales, reward repeat buyers with a discount on their next order. This can be set up in the Sales and Discounts tab in your Etsy shop dashboard.

What lessons have you learned through running your own Etsy shop? Let me know!