I know many of you are selling your products on Etsy and Facebook. Today I want to talk about Etsy for a little bit. These tips will be quick and to the point. Quality checks, if you will. Later on I will dive into more detail for search engine optimization (SEO), product pictures and titles descriptions. But for now I just want to go over the:

3 Things You MUST Do To Be Successful On Etsy.

1. You must have good pictures. MUST. There are 5 places for pictures on Etsy… USE THEM. Take pictures zoomed in, angles, zoomed out, with a model if you have one. Just get 5. “But I don’t have a good camera” isn’t an excuse. For my product pictures, I use my iPhone, daylight, and PicMonkey online. Every time I see a successful Etsy shop… They have excellent pictures.

2. Keywords. Use them! You have 13 keywords to use and each one can have 20 characters. Describe your item as if you were the person LOOKING for your item. I have a design that says “everyone is thankful for me.” It’s a fall design with a tree appliqué on it. So I’m going to think about how my design looks and how it’s best described. “Everyone is thankful for me” is too long to put in the keywords, so I will break it up to “everyone is” and “thankful for me.” I’m also going to add the version “everybody is” just for the people who are looking for the “everybody is thankful for me” version. DON’T USE 1 WORD KEYWORDS! Have you ever shopped for a black purse and only searched “black?” Nope. Use 2-3 word keywords for the best results.

If I’m looking for fall designs here’s some keywords I may type in the search box, “fall design,” “fall embroidery,” “thanksgiving design,” “fall appliqué,” “gratitude embroidery,” “tree appliqué,” (my design has a tree in it so this will be a keyword I’ll want to use)”Holiday embroidery,” “holiday appliqué,” “fall shirt ideas,” (since people use Etsy like Pinterest/Google now)… You get the idea.

3. Beef up your titles and descriptions. If you have an item that’s title is “cute shirt” and the description says “OMG this shirt is so cute”…. You’re not telling your buyer ANYTHING about your product. They say to use your product pictures like you can’t use any words, and use your titles and descriptions like you don’t have any pictures. So instead of “cute shirt,” you will want to say “Everyone is Thankful for Me Baby or Children’s Thanksgiving/Fall Shirt” and your description needs to note the title again, to improve SEO. I usually copy and paste it. Then it needs to go into even more detail on the brand shirt you are using, the sizes you offer with a sizing chart from the manufacturer, your turn around time, your color options, what this shirt would look great with, links to matching products in your shop, etc. Remember, you customer cannot touch your item. Pictures, titles and descriptions are the only way they know what they are ordering. All of these elements, along with with keywords, will help your ranking in Etsy and in Google so people actually find you!

Look at your shop stats for the past month, screenshot them, make some of these changes, and I am willing to bet that you will see a big difference a month from now.

I hope this helps you in some way! I wish you nothing but success with your businesses.