Selling on Etsy – #SeptemberSideHustle

A lot of side hustles involve selling on Etsy so our Business Advisory team are going to share their top tips for maximising your sales strategy.

Anthony’s Top Tips on Branding

Branding is key and here are my top tips to creating that memorable and effective brand:

1) You want to create a brand which reflects your company ethos, your products and something which is memorable and will help customers identify your products and be able to relate to them, leading to a purchase decision.

2) Your brand should be easily identifiable and the best way to do this is to pre-define the style, colour scheme, fonts etc. you wish to use then be consistent in using them across different platforms and channels.

3) Your Etsy shop page should be given the same attention and detail as a shop front as this is the first impression your customers will get of your overall business. Pick an eye-catching logo which will easily convey what the business does whilst also make you stand out from your competitors. Your banner should also be similar but also make the most of the additional features such as the carousel or grid feature to use the extra space to show off more about your business and products.

Alex’s Top Tips on taking photos

In an Etsy buyer survey, 90% of respondents said the ‘quality of the images’ were the most important factor in whether they made a purchase. Given the format of Etsy, most users will scroll through hundreds of images and if yours is of poor quality, it significantly reduces the chances of someone clicking on it which not only stops them from buying that products, but also from discovering your wider product range too. So how do you take a good photo?

Here are some tips:

1) Lighting! No one will want to buy your product if they can’t see what it is. So position your items in front of a plain white wall with maximum lighting in front of them then snap away.

2) Take a few pictures of the same product from different angles to give customers a better understanding of the product overall and help them visualise having it.

3) Showcase your product being used as intended – so if you’re selling jewellery take a picture with it being worn (the product should remain in the foreground).

Will’s Top Tips on Keywords

Keywords are vital for any Etsy sales strategy as these are how your products are categorised and discovered:

1) The right categories for your products and – the more specific the category you select, the more likely potential customers searching for that individual product are likely to find you. You can also select subcategories which act as tags in themselves.

2) Descriptions are important and these are made up of a combination of your own free text and selecting attributes which are pre-defined options where you can select the ones which match your product the best.

3) Keywords, descriptions and tags should be regularly re-visited and compared against analytics data to see what is working well and what isn’t. By updating these regularly you’ll be targeting the right audience.

For more detailed guidance on maximising your Etsy sales strategy check out these helpful guides from Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/uk/seller-handbook.

If you have a product to sell on Etsy or are already running a side hustle on Etsy and are looking to expand then get in touch with X-Forces Enterprise HERE to see how we can help you with business advice, start-up funding, events & workshops and ongoing mentoring.

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