did you know there are ten common mistakes that many Etsy sellers are
making that might be causing their shops to fail or not do as well as they hope
for let's talk about them and see if anything you're doings on the list
hey I'm Pam Duthie I have been selling on Etsy for over a decade I have made all
the mistakes in trying to make my shop grow so I want to share them with you so
that you don't have to make the mistakes let's get started
mistake number one and a real biggie that people make that causes their shop
to fail is simply their expectations we've probably all been there you start
your shop you make your first listing you think that's it I've put a listing
up it'll sell I'll make more stuff and basically my my income is only dedicated
by how much stuff I can make you have an expectation that you list something and
it also and I want to tell you that's not the case now I'm not telling you
this so you give up straight away I'm telling you this so you don't give up
the majority of sellers do not make sales in their first week they probably
don't make sales in their first month in fact 95% of sellers on Etsy have not
made 1,000 sales yet so the majority of sellers on Etsy are not making a
full-time living now that's not to say that you can't that's not to say to
totally give up right now before you even get started also the majority of
sellers are not learning about SEO though not come into videos like these
they're not trained to learn they just put up their listing expected or sell
and come away so I just want you to have the expectations the understanding that
it might take a while to grow there's a lot to learn but you have the chance of
an entire worldwide market so you really have the chance if you put the work in
and keep your expectations sensible you have the chance of doing really well
mistake number two is not making any changes you might have figured it out
your shop might have been doing really well you put up your listings you know
what you're doing and you just keep on doing the same thing not making any
changes is a great way in any kind of reach
to fail your customers are constantly changing what's fashionable is
constantly changing your competition other people coming onto the site is
constantly changing so we have to constantly be changing a little bit at a
time seeing what's working seeing what's no longer working making little changes
experimenting with new ranges if you're not making changes you're not standing
still you're going backwards you have to constantly be doing a little something
all the time but also the complete opposite mistake number three is making
too many changes making all the changes at once
now this especially happened last year when Etsy released its ultimate guide
to search a fantastic document explaining about the SEO it's a great
document but the problem is people took this not as Etsy saying we're
constantly make changes here's the line in the sand here's where things are just
now but people took that to mean that easy had made a big change and we all
had to make a step change so they went in and they changed hundreds of listings
in their shop all in one day and then we're surprised when things totally
tanked so yes you want to keep making changes but keep making changes to the
things that aren't working do not touch your best performing items until they
stop being your best performing items and even then even when working on your
poorly performing items don't make all the changes at once don't keep going in
and changing every day make a change note what that change is note when you
make that change and then see what the difference is over a period of weeks
that earring actually has a fantastic tool for monitoring the effects of your
changes I actually made a video about that but you can go in and tell it to
monitor certain items just before you're going to make a change so if you monitor
the item a week 10 days before you make the change on that item
it'll take a snapshot every day showing you how many views how many hearts how
many sales you get on that item you make your change
it'll take a snapshot and show you what changes you made what's different about
the title what's different about tags etc and then it will keep snatch
snapshotting every day so you'll see if you're getting more views than you were
before or less views mistake number four is no or ineffective SEO I know SEO
search engine optimization sounds like such a massive deal and it is it's a big
learning curve there's a lot to learn here but if we think about it as just
SEO is as telling Etsy what we believe our items are so they can serve
them up to the correct buyers so this means you want to rather than just put
up a listing and it says beautiful blue picture called serendipity nobody's
gonna be searching for that so think your titles and your tags work together
to tell eat see who to show you for so you want to do a little bit of research
to find out what are gonna be the best terms I have a ton of videos on this if
you want to check out the playlists mistake number five copying big shops
now while it is a good thing to have a look at the other people in your
competition to be aware of them and see what you're doing sometimes it's all too
easy to want to just jump in and say well my titles and tags are almost
exactly the same as this big shop why is it that I'm not being seen well there's
a few reasons for this this bigger shop has a history on each see they know like
trust each other eat see knows that this shop has a history of selling it has a
history of good customer experience so it's more likely if it puts up that
listing then the customers gonna buy it so if that's the case they're Etsys
gonna show that listing a whole lot more and not only that with that bigger
ranking power with that bigger experience that bigger history then this
shop does naturally have more ranking power so it might both a dominate a
search that at the minute your little shops not able to added to that with
more history it's likely this shop has a following on other places mailing lists
social media so when they put up a listing they're able to drive a lot of
more people to that item so again that gives them more
power to rank for more competitive terms so I'm not saying it's a bad thing to
aim for some competitive terms for four words for phrases that shoppers are
using to look for things but don't just wholesale copy the big guys you might
not be quite in the same league so be inspired by them check what they're
doing and what they're saying and then experiment and test to find out if you
can actually rank for these things if you compete for them mistake number six
you might just have the wrong atoms I know this is a harsh fact but we all
make mistakes when we start up all entrepreneurs have mistakes have failed
businesses have failed ideas behind them so it might be that you wanted to start
your business with certain items but they're just not resonating with the
customers or you're wanting to make a living off of the thing you're making
but the thing you're making doesn't have the economic impact it can't make that
same amount of money there's certain things that in general people don't just
pay for the right price things like cross-stitch now if you
create small cross stitches for cards or little little pictures for baby's room
or whatever you can get the money for your time out of that if there's
something a bit different if you create fantastic massive works of art from your
own design you can make the money out of that but if you're completing cross
stitch kits that anyone else can buy it's a lot of work and the chances of
someone paying in a proper decent hourly wage for you to do that is not so likely
it's exactly the same with other things like knitwear etc there's a lot of work
and people don't necessarily for a basic pair of gloves if they can buy that
machine made from somewhere else for a cheaper price they might not see the
point see the value in your hand creating it however if you trade with
more exclusive fibers or a more eye-catching pattern just standing out
and being different being different is better than being the best then people
are gonna see you you've got more of a chance of your item
selling for a better price for a better hourly wage for you mistake number seven
photography or specifically not caring all that much about your photography I
don't want to wind too much but whenever I make a video on here about photography
it gets the lowest number of years people are just not interested in
researching about photography and I'm gonna say this is one of the biggest
things because freshly your customers it's not like in a normal bricks and
mortar shop they can't see your item they can't touch it they can't feel it
so your photographs have to convey to them that this is what your item is this
is super important this is it from all the angles they'd want to see this is
how big it is this is what the surface looks like the photographs have to show
that not only that they have to inspire the buyer when they're looking through a
page of 20 items it has to pop out and they go oh I like the look of that one
you can tell them how they would be using liate them as well because there
are some things I've done it myself I'm sure you've all done it when you're
searching you're like what on earth is that if you place it in context people
can see how it's to be used and the final and most important one is to do
really really well selling online you want to go viral and to go viral that
means other people are so inspired by your pictures that they share your item
they share it lots on Instagram Pinterest Facebook it gets passed around
it gets seen everywhere and if you look at the items that are going viral if you
look at the things that pop up on your Facebook page they might not be the best
items in the world but boy they've got good photography so don't just dump your
items on a table take a picture and go that's good enough borrow the person
down the street to model for you go out to a beautiful location hire your
friends kids who's doing a photography course do what it takes to attempt to
improve your photography mistake number eight ignoring your shop you've put up
your listings you've done a bit of SEO your photographs are even quite good so
you put up your listings and they're going to
last four months so you just leave them there if no orders are coming in you
don't do anything to your shop search engines actually prefer constant
activity so rather than every four months you do four hours worth of work
in one day sitting down in your shop it's much better if you do 10 20 minutes
every day so sitting down with your morning coffee just make it a routine
that you go in and do something in your shop ring you a listing that's nearly
expired change some titles experiment with something respond to your customers
obviously but do a little in your shop every day mistake number nine wasting
your energy complaining okay I'm kinda complaining in this
video but if you go in any of the groups or any of the forums even on Etsy you
will see pages of people complaining sales are down today sales are down this
week sales are down this month is Etsy dying it's terrible and you can sit
in these forums and you can listen to all of this and you can really get into
your head and say what Etsy must be failing
look there's 20 people saying what a terrible time they've had today this
complaints there's people talking about changes which you didn't even know were
happening because you know most of the time it's not people something's
happened in someone's shop and they assume it's because Etsy made a
change so sitting around in an echo chamber sitting around with a bunch of
people talking about how everything's failing is wasting your energy rather
than hearing now now don't get me wrong right if there's a genuine problem
absolutely go to the forums ask for help with the things speak to the Etsy
people yeah message eat see talk to people find out if anyone else is having
this problem that's fine but don't spend all your energy with all
this negativity it doesn't help because the thing is the
shops that are doing well are not sitting on the forums complaining about
doing badly and it's like this with everything especially on the internet
for every ten people that are happy possibly only one
of them we'll say they're happy possibly any one of them will give a happy review
but if anyone's unhappy oh you're gonna hear them complain you're gonna see the
one-star review so don't give so much weight to a negativity your Energy's
best spent somewhere else and number ten of the reasons why most people are
failing and that is giving up you could just be steps away from glory building
online presence is like pushing a snowball up a hill it starts it's hard
work and you don't see much benefit from it and you keep going and you keep
shoving and you keep shoving and it's getting harder and harder and you're
seeing less but suddenly you get to the top of the hill with this giant snowball
and if you had given up two steps before you wouldn't see the awesomeness that's
just about to happen I know it's hard it's hard to have faith
in yourself it's hard to have faith that you're going in the right direction but
I'll tell you five or six years ago I was where you were - I was absolutely
almost quitting not even almost quitting I had actually said to myself I was
given myself one more month to really look into SEO to really give my shopp a
push else I was stopping I was giving up I was that close I was one month away
from quitting and I really got my head down I did a bit of work rather than on
the forums listening to the negative people I went on the forums and listened
to the people who were helping I asked about SEO I read about SEO I did
everything I could I sat and watched youtube videos on how to work my camera
better and you know what at the end of that month I was already doing better by
the end of that Christmas period just those three months at the end of the
year my shop had done better than it had ever done in the previous four or five
years and since then every single year I've grown my shop now yes as I say with
the whole expectations yes I didn't immediately go from failing to making a
living out of it I grew exponentially - now that I miss
at a stage where I'm terrified terrified idli that a word it is now I'm
terrified idli worried about the amount of orders coming in it's so good so the
one thing that guarantees 100% guarantees your shop will fail is if you
give up I know it's difficult but I hope that helps I can at least keep you
inspired to keep going and who knows you might just be this step away from the
edge of the hill thank you so much for joining me and I'll see you next time