What is Etsy?

Small fiber art collage, Yasmintoo 2011, $75 available May 1st.

(Disclaimer: I have an Etsy store - yasmintoo.)

Etsy is an online market place where handmade and vintage goods are sold.

You may join Etsy as both a buyer and a seller.



Small fiber art collage, Yasmintoo 2011, $75 available May 1st.


From the about Etsy page "Our mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.
Our vision is to build a new economy and present a better choice.
The Etsy community spans the globe with buyers and sellers coming from more than 150 countries. Etsy sellers number in the hundreds of thousands."
 
Each Etsy seller sets up a shop with a banner, a slogan, a seller profile, and shop sections for listing items for sale. The front page of Etsy provides a search engine where buyers can search for items by shop name, type of merchandise, color, size, etc.

Small fiber art collage, Yasmintoo 2011, $75 available May 1st.

 
Also featured on the front page of Etsy are "treasuries." A treasury is a group of twelve items selected by an Etsy member, usually with a theme, and usually not including items from the member's own store. Not all treasuries make it to the front page of Etsy, but they are fun to create, a wonderful way to establish community with other Etsian's and a way of recognizing quality work.
 
Joining Etsy teams is encouraged. Teams may be based on locality, type of work, common interests, or other factors. Anyone may start a team. There are thousands of teams on Etsy.

Teams, treasuries, circles, favorite items and favorite shops are all internal Etsy marketing tools. A huge percentage of Etsy sales are made to Etsy members. (Keep it in the family.) Developing relationships with other Etsians and making sure your shop is getting noticed, may result in more sales.

Small fiber art collage, Yasmintoo 2011, $75 available May 1st.

Etsy accepts PayPal, but not everyone has or wants a PayPal account. Checks and money orders may also be accepted by choice from an individual store. Check out is smooth and simple.

Etsy subscribes to Google Analytics and automatically feed into Google listings. The analytics are helpful for tracking where traffic is coming from and in making decisions about where to spend your time and money capital in terms of advertising.

There are 14 fields for key words on Etsy. Understanding how to use them for the Etsy internal search engine and for Google is crucial to driving business to your store. Many leading fiber and textile artists with stores on Etsy have extremely limited sales. Some of this I attribute to not playing the Etsy game, but also when I review the key words on items, I often find that  key word/phrases used are not SEO friendly.

Etsy is image driven. This is the norm on the internet. So nothing new here. But if your images aren't up to par, you can bet on not being featured in treasuries or ever making the front page. There are numerous marketing opportunities available through an Etsy association, and all require striking contemporary images. The forums, labs and tutorials have advice on effectively photographing your work. (Photography is not my strong suit. I am constantly trying to understand how to take better images of my work.)

There are a few tricks to listing. Newly listed items in any given category are shown at the top of the search when using the default search. So the more often you list, the greater the likelihood that your items will get their 1 second of fame.

Small fiber art collage, Yasmintoo 2011, $75 available May 1st.

Etsy also shows just listed items on the front page. This works well if you have a lot of inventory. Not so great if you are just getting started or don't produce a great number of items. I try to list one item each day and promote the listing on all of my social networking sites.

For a fee, you may relist an item before the original listing expires. Some people do this frequently. I've tried it without any visible impact on sales, but it does result in a larger number of views, which may eventually result in a sale.

Lots of final words:
An Etsy presence is almost mandatory to sell handmade, hand crafted, small artifacts, etc. online.
Many local galleries, exhibition spaces, online portfolio, arts organizations, etc. search Etsy. For a while, I received more opportunities to participate in local events than I had sales.
Etsy should be one of many income and marketing streams, bricks and mortar and virtual.
Key words, descriptions, titles, images, pricing are important. (I don't have huge sales or looks, but my pricing is correct, so when I do sell something, my costs, labor and profit are covered.)
The monthly reports, stats and tracking are excellent.
Setting up systems for listing, and linking the listing to all of your social networking sites is crucial.
Decide how much time you are going to devote to participating in teams, forums, circles, etc. Then stick to it.
Huge market equals lots of competition. Making your work and listings stand out takes time, trial and error and consistency.
Reciprocity is the name of the game here. I include you in my treasury, you include me in yours. I add you to my circle, and find items I like that you also like and add those shops to my circle. I do a team treasury or Etsy mini and those team members include me in their treasuries and favorite my work. You get the idea.
Do not quit your day job.
Excellent customer service will always win in the end.
Fully explore the site to learn everything Etsy has to offer.
Last, but not least - Is Etsy perfect? No, but it is the best online market with the widest audience currently available.

If you've come this far, there must be a reason. Do you have an Etsy shop? What has your Etsy experience been like? Are you thinking about opening an Etsy shop? Do you have other questions about Etsy?