It's near impossible to get noticed on Etsy, and the market is super flooded with people trying
to sell the same products! Have 20 listings in my store and spent two weeks on them. In three
months, I've had two views! I've been in print on demand for two plus years, I have 500 designs,
and I barely make any money! So, you know, I get comments like that every day on this channel. And
I find it really interesting because about a month or so ago I found a product niche that
I wanted to test out on Etsy using print-on-demand products, so I created a brand new Etsy store. And
over a week I slowly added in 25 print-on-demand products using designs that I created with Canva
and Midjourney. And a day later, the store had its first sale. And since then I've been slowly
adding in more products for testing and as I have the sales have also organically grown. In fact,
I checked my sales today and saw that in the past week this test store has done about $200
worth of sales with a profit margin of about 25 to 40 percent depending on the product that's been
sold. And just to clarify, the store is brand new. It has no social media presence or social proof.
It has no store reviews. And it does not sell custom products. The store is working entirely
passively on autopilot! So that got me thinking. Why is it that I set up a little test store and
within weeks, it became a passive income source that I can now grow, whereas others spend two
years uploading 500 designs and are lucky to make even just one sale? It's an interesting question,
right? So I wanted to make a video to share with you the seven things that I did that I think made
a pretty big difference. One: I optimize listings for the new listing impression algorithm. So if I
had to guess, I think that the most common question that I get asked is this: "Sarah,
how can I get people to actually view my items on Etsy? They just get lost in a sea of products!"
It's a good question. So you have to understand that there are two main sources of traffic on
Etsy. The first is very simple it's search traffic. It's when you search for an item and Etsy
shows you results. And then the second, arguably more important form of traffic, is the recommended
items. It's when you come to, say, your home page, and Etsy shows you items that they think that you
might like. And over time for many people this has become the primary way that they buy products on
Etsy. And it's no surprise because it's how most big websites work these days. Take YouTube. Yes,
you can come to YouTube and do a search for a video topic that you want to watch, but that's
not how most people do it. Most people just come to their home page and watch whatever video that
YouTube recommends to them. Well, what websites like YouTube and Etsy will do is they will give
new videos and new products Test Impressions on showcase pages like the home page. Basically,
when you upload a product to Etsy, they will show it to a small number of people on say,
their home page and see if anybody clicks on it. And then like Ddomino's if someone does click on
it, they'll then show it on more home pages, which will then get more clicks, and so on.
Etsy makes money by having more products and more stores succeed which is why they designed
their algorithm to give all stores including new stores a chance. So it was this algorithm that
I took advantage of to bring in the customers to my store. However, there is definitely some luck
involved with it. Because you think about it, if you create say a dog t-shirt, but Etsy goes out
and puts it on the home page of someone that likes cats, then that person will never click on your
item, and this traffic source might fizzle out. Sadly we can't control who Etsy tests our product
in front of, however we can increase the chances that Etsy will test our products in front of the
right people by giving Etsy as much information about it as possible. Which means then that you
need to be very descriptive with say, your title, your description and your tags. But it also means
filling out as much information as you can, such as filling out the product attributes.
That way for example if someone likes items in the hippie niche and your item is in that style,
Etsy can put it in front of someone who has a history of buying items like that. Two:
I focused on quality not quantity. Another key to keep in mind that if you want to make money
quickly, is that you have to be efficient with your time. Which is why I find it very strange
when people just add in hundreds of items into their stores, just because. I think for example
of the viewer from earlier who'd spent two years uploading 500 designs and getting no traction.
Look I can't see their store so I can only make guesses, but my guess is that their designs were
probably low quality and that they weren't interesting enough that if somebody saw it,
that they would want to click on it. That's also why I find it so odd anytime someone asks me:
"Sarah, why do you spend so much time to talking about creating products and designs to sell, and
you don't talk about traffic?" Because the answer to that of course, as I've hopefully explained in
this video, is that if you have great designs, that therefore equals great traffic. As you can
see, when Etsy puts your new product in front of a test group of people on say their home page,
they cannot see anything about your store. They can't see how many reviews you've had how many
sales you've had the only thing that they can see is your product picture. People are only clicking
on designs purely by how they look. And if you get a click from those test impressions, Etsy will
then put your product in front of more people, which will result in more clicks, which over
time more sales. Which is exactly why I spend so much time talking about this and why I would never
recommend focusing on uploading a specific number of products like I know a lot of people do. And by
the way if you're watching this and you would like to learn how I create and design products that
entice customers to click on them and buy them, you should be sure to download my free ebook which
I will have a link to in the video description below. By the way people have been reading my
ebook and they have been reviewing it on Goodreads which I absolutely appreciate so thank you so much
for everyone that's done so! Three: I used myself as a yardstick to create clickable products. Okay
I can imagine a bunch of people are saying: "All right Sarah, you say it's a waste of time to just
add in bad designs that are not clickable. But how am I supposed to know if my design is good or if
it's bad?!" After all what makes art good or bad it is entirely subjective and that is absolutely
true. Which is exactly why I love to use myself as a yardstick. To do that, pick a niche that
you yourself are a customer in. So like me, do you love dogs and like to buy dog merchandise?
Great! Create designs around that. Or are you instead passionate about hiking and camping and
like to buy merchandise themed around that? Great! Create designs for that niche instead. By doing
that you you can always ask yourself an important question while designing it: "Okay, if I saw this
design on another product being recommended to me would I want to click on it if I saw this design
as a t-shirt on Etsy, would I click it and open it up?" If so great upload it. If you wouldn't,
don't bother. Four: I didn't copy others - I created designs that filled a gap in the market.
So in addition to using yourself as a yardstick, another really easy way to create a great design
is to focus on niches and sub niches which don't have a lot of good options already. Case in point
let's leave Etsy for a moment and actually hop on over to another website, Redbubble. I once had a
viewer who left a comment sharing their Redbubble store with me telling me that within a few days
of opening their store that they had made money which was pretty cool. So I decided to check out
and open their store and when I did, I quickly realized that all of their sales had likely come
from just two designs that they had created. And one of them was this a photo of a rocky beach that
customers really like to buy as a bath mat. So out of curiosity at the time, I went to Redbubble and
did a search for other bath mats featuring beach photos. And I quickly noticed a pattern. Everyone
else had uploaded photos of standard cliché white sandy beaches. And nobody else, except the store,
had uploaded any photos of rocky beaches. Which was a great opportunity because while it's true
that probably 90% of people prefer white sandy beaches, there is a small percentage of people
their prefer rocky beaches. As there were no other options, any decent photo that had been uploaded
would have been considered an amazing product to these customers, which is why focusing on niches
like that is so much easier in my opinion. So on to my next tip but before I do, a quick word
from today's sponsor. Me! Yes, there are so many shady sponsors on YouTube these days that for now,
I have decided to sponsor my own videos. So I'm sponsoring it to let you know that if you would
like to create your own Etsy print on demand store but you don't know how you should be sure
to check out my course the Ecomm Clubhouse. It shows you how to set up an Etsy store,
how to come up with product ideas, and even how to optimize Etsy listings. If you'd like to see if my
video course is right for you I'll have a link to it in the video description but for now, back
to the video. Five: I focused on mid-tier pricing to take advantage of price anchoring. So another
question I get asked often is this: "Sarah, how am I supposed to make any money on Etsy after
product costs and Etsy fees?!" And I'm honestly a bit confused when people ask me these questions
to be honest because there are so many free Etsy profit calculators out there like this one here
from Craftybase, which you can use to check to see what the profit margin will be for your product
if you set it at a particular price. That way you can make sure that you're making a profit on your
product rather than making a loss. Now of course I'm sure some people are going to reply with:
"Oh Sarah, have you seen the prices that people are pricing their items for on Etsy? People are
selling their t-shirts for less than ten dollars. Sarah, if I sold my t-shirts for a list of ten
dollars on Etsy, I would make no money! It's impossible to make a profit." And I always think
well gee here is a crazy idea, maybe don't try to compete to have the lowest price possible! Because
frankly you don't have to, and I believe you shouldn't thanks to the psychological phenomena
of price anchoring. See here's the really strange thing when you start to think about it, pricing
is entirely subjective. If I ask 10 different people what a t-shirt is worth chances are I'll
get a range of different answers because no one honestly really knows what a t-shirt is worth. We
just make up a price, and the way that we usually do that is with price anchoring. Price anchoring
is a psychological phenomena where we use other products prices to help us decide what another
product's price should be worth and most people decide it should be somewhere in the middle. An
interesting study with beer showed this in action. In the study a restaurant put two beers on the
menu a premium beer for two dollars and fifty cents and a cheap beer for a dollar eighty. Well,
eighty percent of people would choose the premium beer, not a cheap beer. In phase two of the study
a restaurant listed three beers on the menu - a premium beer for two dollars and fifty cents,
a standard beer for a dollar eighty, and a super cheap beer for a dollar sixty. And now, eighty
percent of people chose the $1.80 beer. And then in phase three of the study they offered three
beers - a super premium beer for three dollars and forty cents, a standard beer for two dollars and
fifty cents, and a cheap beer for a dollar sixty. And guess what? Eighty percent of people chose the
$2.50 beer! And so when you try to compete for the lowest possible price on Etsy, not only are
you losing money per sale, but you're potentially hurting your sales too. People are skeptical of
the lowest price product, but they also don't want to be ripped off by the highest priced product,
which is why most people will want to purchase a product that's priced somewhere in the middle.
Six: I showed my products being used by a real person. So here is the thing, in addition to
Etsy wanting to see that people are interested in clicking on your item, they also do want to see
that some of those people are going to go on to buy it. Again it's like dominoes. You get one sale
and Etsy goes oh, people like this, and they start showing it to more people. And so your sales go up
and you make more money. As a new store you're obviously at a disadvantage because you don't
have social proof and you don't have reviews yet, so you need to take advantage of every opportunity
that you have to increase your conversions which is why I make sure to include lifestyle photos of
my products actually being used by a real person, because studies have shown that something we all
intuitively know and that is that when we see a photo of a product being used by a real person,
it makes us far more likely to act actually buy it. And it's a question I'm actually often asked:
"Sarah, how can I get photos of my products being used in a lifestyle context? And well, my favorite
app to do this is absolutely Placeit. Placeit has two different types of accounts, they've got a
paid account and they've got a free account that gets you access to thousands of photos. You just
upload your design and then Placeit will literally place it onto a product! Seven: I created my own
luck by being persistent. So as I said earlier, when you're creating a new Etsy store, there is
definitely some luck involved. Because as I said, when you create a new listing and it gets test
impressions on say a random person's home page, you have no control over who Etsy chose to put it
in front of. And so sometimes you just get unlucky because Etsy puts it in front of the wrong person,
they don't click on it, and then they stop giving it impressions. And so because of that,
it is especially important to be persistent. Take for example example that person that added in
just 20 items into this store, got no traction, and then gave up. Well as I said at the start
of this video, for the first week I didn't get a sale either. It wasn't until I'd added in my
25th item that I got a sale within my store. And so just imagine then if this person had also added
another 5 products too. Perhaps it would have been their 25th product that would have won the
Etsy lottery and been matched with the right customer, and now like me Etsy's algorithm would
have more data on who the right customer is, they could then use that to pair their other products
with the right customers, and so that store could also have potentially become a passive income
source to ready to be scaled up. But of course we'll never know, but perhaps we would have known,
if they had been persistent! So then did you learn something new? If so please subscribe.
And if you're interested in learning more about print on demand be sure to watch my video 10
things to do before you start a print-on-demand store I'll see you over in the next video