Part 2: How to Make Money Selling Arts and Crafts Items on Etsy
In my last post I revealed how you can make money selling arts and crafts on Etsy, even if you don’t have any artistic skills or talents. I discussed how Etsy works and the types of product that are sold on it (and to whom). I also set out some suggestions for choosing products you could sell from an Etsy shop yourself.
Today I’m going to take you through the practicalities of setting up your shop on Etsy, listing your first item, taking photos, writing descriptions, promoting your shop to boost sales, and more.
Table of Contents
Setting Up Your Shop
Before you can open an Etsy shop, you first have to join the site as a buyer. This is simple enough. Just click on the Register tab at the top of the Etsy homepage and enter the information required.
You have to provide a user name, and one tip here is to pick a name containing one or two of the keywords you want to target. This can help ensure that your shop is listed high in the search results for the keyword/s in question.
You can then set up your shop by clicking on Sell on Etsy. This is a simple, step-by-step process, and as mentioned last time no fee is charged. No coding is required either – it’s basically just a matter of providing some information and making a few choices.
Many new sellers agonize over their shop design, but it’s not worth wasting too much time on this. Most potential buyers will arrive via a search that takes them straight to a specific product listing, so this is where most of your effort should go.
Nonetheless, you do need to make some decisions about your shop’s overall look, so my advice would be to choose something simple but functional. You can always refine it later once you have made your first few sales.
One thing you should add at an early stage, however, is a banner or logo. This will be part of your branding, so it needs to be attractive and relevant to your product.
Unless you have skills in this area, it’s best to outsource logo design to someone who specializes in this. If you want to keep costs to a minimum, there are people on Fiverr.com who will create one for just $5 (about £4.00). At that price you could get a few done and choose the one you like best.
Your First Listing
My top tip here is to start small. Initially it is likely that only friends and family will see your shop, so there is no need to worry about offering a huge product range from day one.
In addition, if you spend hours making your products in a variety of sizes and colours and nobody wants to buy them, imagine how disappointed you will be. Much better to choose one particular product to start with, and make your listing for this the best it can be.
Product listings have two main components: the photo and the description. The photo is by far the most important, so let’s start by looking at that.
Taking Product Photos
The good news is you don’t need an expensive DSLR camera to take your product photos. A modern smartphone can produce more than acceptable results. Taking photos that sell well is an art, however, so here are some tips to get you started…
- Keep backgrounds plain and simple. The product should always be the star of the show.
- On the other hand, a strategically chosen prop (or props) can make even ordinary items look special.
- Use natural light if possible. This nearly always looks better than artificial.
- But if natural light isn’t available, use spotlights to ensure the product is brightly lit.
- For small items, get as close as you can while ensuring the product remains in focus.
- Use a tripod or stand to ensure your photos are as sharp as possible.
- Look at the photos in successful Etsy shops and see what you can learn from them.
- Try also searching on Pinterest for Etsy – this will produce image boards crammed with product photos from the site.
- Take lots of photos and use only the best. Digital cameras and smartphones don’t use expensive film, so take full advantage of this!
Another benefit of digital photography is that you can easily edit photos, e.g. to sharpen or crop them. There are various free photo editing tools online, including Canva and (my personal favourite) PicMonkey. If you’re using a smartphone, there are many free and low-cost photo-editing apps you can download.
Finally, you can also do some basic editing when you upload photos to your Etsy shop. Your member’s page will show a preview of how the photo will look, with edit options allowing you to crop, rotate and add filters.
Once you have your photo looking exactly how you want, click to save it. All that is left then is…
Adding a Description
While it’s not as crucial as the photo, having a good description is important too.
There’s no need to write reams about your product – the image will do most of the talking for you – but you still need to answer any obvious questions a potential buyer might have.
One good tactic is to study how similar products are sold in other shops. A quick keyword search on Etsy should unearth plenty of such shops for you.
Obviously, you shouldn’t copy descriptions word for word, but they will help you see the sort of points you should be covering. The chances are that the sellers have included those details in their listings because their customers have asked about them.
Note down also any words your competitors use regularly, such as rustic, customized or handmade, and try to incorporate at least some in your own listings. It can also be good to suggest possible uses for your product, e.g. ‘These make great gifts for bridesmaids’ or whatever.
Check your work for spelling and grammatical mistakes, and ensure that the description sounds as enticing as possible. Once you’ve done all that, there is just one other matter you need to attend to…
Pricing
This is something many new Etsy sellers find challenging, but essentially it’s a simple process.
Start by working out what it will cost you to produce and sell an item. That means adding up the cost of materials and adding Etsy’s listing and transaction fees. Obviously you won’t know the exact transaction fee until you have worked out your final price, so use your best guess initially.
Next you need to decide how much you want to earn per hour. Time is money, so the cost of your item will need to reflect this. Let’s say you aim to make £12 an hour, and it takes you half an hour to create your product. That means to make £12 an hour, you will need to make 12/2 = £6 from each item you sell.
Finally, I recommend adding an extra amount – say 10 percent – for profit. All real world businesses budget to make a profit, and even if you’re working part-time from your kitchen table, you should do likewise. Profits can be set against overheads such as heating and lighting, and can also be invested in tools to make you more productive. Or you can simply take them as additional earnings, of course!
Once you’ve come up with a total, the final thing you should do is compare this with what others are charging for comparable products. Ideally you should aim to be selling for a slightly lower price, initially at least, to make your items more attractive to potential buyers. That may mean reducing your target earnings a little, or finding ways to produce items more quickly.
Like other aspects of your operation, such as photos and descriptions, it is important to test various price levels and see which produces the best returns overall.
Promoting Your Shop
If you have followed all the steps above, it shouldn’t be long before potential buyers start arriving at your Etsy shop. But there are plenty of things you can do to attract more visitors and get the sales flowing. Below I have listed a variety of methods, some free, some paid for.
- Set up a Facebook fan page for your shop, with links to the items you are selling and other content that may interest potential buyers.
- Set up a Pinterest board as well, with photos of your products linking to the sales pages in question. This can be a powerful marketing tool for products that are visually appealing.
- You should also create an Instagram account on which to post photos of your arts and crafts products, again with a link back to your Etsy shop.
- Consider investing some money in paid advertising. You could spend a few pounds boosting your Facebook fan page posts, for example, so they reach a much larger target audience.
- Google Adwords is another advertising medium you could consider if your product is something people regularly search for using keywords. You won’t usually be able to show pictures using this method, of course.
- Share links to your Etsy shop and individual product listings on Twitter. You may wish to set up a Twitter account specifically for your shop as well.
- You can also pay to have your listings show up more prominently in search results on Etsy.
As sales start coming in, it’s important to keep in touch with your customers and answer any questions they ask promptly. This will help you get good reviews and ratings on Etsy, and may also turn some buyers into loyal customers who keep coming back for more. Plus the feedback you get can be invaluable for deciding what new products to offer in future. Etsy is in many ways a community of buyers and sellers, so grasp every opportunity to take advantage of this.
Final Thoughts
You won’t make a fortune from Etsy, but if you like arts and crafts, it can be a great way of earning money while doing something you enjoy.
It’s free to get started, and you can do it part-time or full-time. Etsy even lets you put up the virtual shutters on your shop for a week or two, if you want to go and spend some of your profits on a well-earned holiday. Check it out today, then take get out your scissors, your wire-cutters or your paintbrushes, and get crafting!
As always, if you have any comments or questions about this post, please do leave them below.