Epcd2010

Etsy is one of the best ways to create an online craft business for a new seller. You can quickly and easily set up an online store without worrying about building your own website or setting up ecommerce on your own. In under an hour you can be selling to a built in market of eager customers from all over the world! It just takes a little know-how and practice to make Etsy work for you in building a successful online business selling your crafts. If you’re just starting out on Etsy this article will show you how to build a new Etsy shop and start selling your crafts online.

First some statistics: Etsy is the world’s largest online marketplace for indie handmade goods and it is growing fast. $25.5 million worth of goods were sold on Etsy in August. That is a more than 7% increase over July, and a 75% increase over August of 2009! Etsy got 777 million page views in the month of August alone.

Here is how to build a shop on Etsy. First you have to visit Etsy and set up an account. It’s free. You will choose one account name that will never change (so choose well!). But one account can have several shops so if you have more than one kind of craft business, you can divide up your wares into distinct stores with their own branding. Try to make a shop name that is unique and memorable!

Once you have your account and at least one shop, you need to set up your storefront. You do this through “Your Etsy.” Click on the link for “Appearance” to start. First you have to get a banner for the top of your shop. Etsy provides some banners but it’s better to make your own. For good tutorials on making Etsy Banners and other aspects of selling on Etsy, you can check the Etsy Blog, called “The Storque.” They have “How-To” posts all the time that are really helpful. And there are great graphic design shops on Etsy who will custom design a banner for you for a small cost.

After your banner you will enter your one-line shop description, and also create a Shop Announcement, where you explain what you do and what makes your shop unique. You will also fill out sections on Shop Policies, which explains how you will handle shipping, and things like returns. Last, you will create a “Shipping Profile” that covers your domestic and international shipping rates. You can get an idea about how to do all these by checking other shops. It’s not hard.,

Once you get your shop set up, you can start listing items. Just click “list an item” to start. You give it a title (think about Google Search and put your keywords up front in the title–avoid whimsical or vague titles), and then describe it. Be specific. Include colors and measurements. Tell a little story about it what makes it unique. Then move on to materials, where you list what went into the item. Be careful to use commas between each material, and no periods or dashes. Then on the next page, you “tag” the item. You get 14 tags. Use them all! Tag with colors, especially trendy seasonal colors, seasonal themes like holidays, patterns (houndstooth, polka dot, etc.), shapes (square, chunky, etc.) and motifs (woodland animals is trendy right now, for example).

After that you upload 5 photos. Now this is the important part–your photos have to be good! You can use your digital point and shoot camera, but make sure it’s set on macro for closeup shooting (the macro function is the little flower button on most cameras). Get a good simple background that has some interest to it. For example photograph your jewelry on pretty rocks, or on a piece of wood. Take lots of shots!

Then, and this is important, import your photos into photo editing software like Photoshop or even Picasa (easy and free), and tinker with them. Crop them to highlight and magnify your product. Sharpen them. Use highlights and fill light to brighten them, and use contrast to make your colors stand out. Remember that the tiny thumbnail photos that customers see when they’re browsing are little squares so make sure your product is visible in a square version of your photo.

Finally, export your photos to a Pictures file in about a 1000 pixel size. Etsy won’t take photos larger than 2 MB. You can upload your photos from there into Etsy.

After you finish uploading, you just click “finish” and agree to pay 20 cents per listing, and you’re done.

Here are the fees: it costs 20 cents per listing, and then Etsy takes 3% of your sale. Paypal also takes 1%. So, price your items accordingly.

A note on pricing: don’t price too low! The word on the street at Etsy is: if you want to sell more, raise your prices.

It is a good idea to have at least 20 items in your store, and more if you can. Someone did some research and found out that sellers who have twice as many items do more than twice as much business. In other words, having a well stocked shop makes customers buy more!

Now that you have your shop set up, it’s time to promote it. Easy ways to promote are to use the Showcase Feature on Etsy (cost: $7), relist and add new items constantly (that way your stuff stays at the top of lists in your categories), and participate in the Forums that are on the “Community” section of the Etsy site. Join some Teams of other sellers that do similar work as you (find Teams in the Community section also). That gets your name out there.

Other ways to promote your Etsy shop are by posting your photos to free galleries like Craftgawker or ShowcaseEdge, setting up links to your site at resource sites like Unanimous Craft or Esellernow, and checking out membership sites like Handmadecraftshow and Handmade Spark.

And of course, you’ll want to create a Facebook Fan Page for your business and a Twitter account and a blog…but not all at once of course!

Last–be patient and persistent. For most sellers, it takes months to see traffic build on their Etsy site. You learn tricks of photography and tagging that help customers find you, and little by little you build a customer base. But, with some work and patience, you can use Etsy to build a successful online craft business.