So, you want to take your business idea to the next level, and start promoting it on Etsy. This is an excellent platform to do so, but it comes with its unique set of guidelines and strategies. As you may have guessed, there is a lot of information out there on the internet on starting an Etsy business – but how much of it is actually helpful?
When you’re doing your research, it’s essential to be discerning. Let’s simplify it a little bit, and look at just the top five tips for starting your Etsy business online.
1. Exercise Patience
This isn’t necessarily a tangible, practical thing you can do, but it certainly counts towards having a successful Etsy business. It’s great advice because it’s a good reminder that you’re not going to experience overnight success with it.
It’s going to take a lot of time and hard work to build up a solid store with a loyal following, so the best thing you can do is keep chipping away at it and have patience. If your first few listings aren’t gaining the traction you want – don’t give up.
2. Get the Price Right
In the world of Etsy, getting the price right of your items is an art form in and of itself. It’s also something that you’re not going to learn straight away, and there will be a lot of trial and error before you come across the perfect strategy for your listings.
At the end of the day, you deserve a living wage, just like everyone else. Don’t underprice yourself, but don’t overdo it, either. Experiment a bit with the price until you find the sweet spot.
3. Make Sure You Have Great Customer Support
It’s one thing to have a product or service you’re trying to sell on Etsy – but what if things start to really take off? When you begin to build a real community around your listings, you’ll start to realize that there are many more steps to running an Etsy business that goes beyond the sale of your product.
One of these steps is having excellent customer support that customers can rely on if something goes wrong. For example, if something has happened to their delivery, or they’re not sure where it is, you’ll need to be able to resolve this. Great customer service equals happy customers, which are highly likely to turn into repeat customers.
4. Get Your Finances Straight
Even if you’re just a one-man band and you don’t have a big budget, you’ll need to get your finances in order to operate a successful Etsy business. You may even find that you need more than you have to get it off the ground.
If this is the case, you may want to think about taking out a small, low-risk loan. There are plenty of personal and title loan refinance options like LoanCenter that allow you to pick a flexible repayment plan so that you can worry about that side of things further down the track.
5. Do Your Research
If you’re chomping at the bit to get your Etsy store up and running, you may skip a very important step – doing your market research. You would be amazed at how much you can learn not only about the industry but about your target demographic if you take some time to research them.
The better you know your customers, the easier it will be to sell your products to them.
Setting up shop through Etsy is both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. However, the more prepared you are at the beginning, the smoother the flow. Take a page from our book and make sure you’re going into it armed with knowledge, research, and a little bit of know-how.
Set your goal
Having a goal in life is an essential step towards success and running an Etsy business is no different. There is a catch, though. Setting a general goal, like making a million dollars in two years is all well and good (ok, maybe unrealistic on Etsy, but it is perfectly fine to dream big and aim for the stars), but that can be somewhat overwhelming. Once you set up your goal, you need to create a plan for how to achieve it, and this is an important step. You need to break your goal into smaller bites, the one you can actually swallow. Create a series of milestones that will progressively lead you to the end zone. Smaller goals are easier to focus on and easier to achieve, increasing your self-confidence and providing motivation for the next step. And we can all do with some self-confidence and motivation these days.
Create Professional Pictures
A Picture is worth a thousand words, especially in e-commerce when a customer can’t feel your product in their hands. Instead, they have to make a judgment on whether to buy it based on the pictures you posted. That is why it is absolutely crucial that those pictures be top-notch quality. Having a blurry image on your products page will deter even customers who know what they are buying from making a purchase. Creating professional-looking photos isn’t really that hard, but if you are unsure or just can’t manage it, you should consider getting some outside help.
Practice Makes Perfect
If you are selling things you made, bear in mind that you won’t be offering a perfect product right off the bat. It will take some time to get into the groove and create something you can be proud of. That doesn’t mean you should try and sell just about any garbage you put together in minutes, of course. Some sort of quality control has to exist. Just don’t fret about small imperfections. Some customers even prefer those, as they get a unique product. As long as your stuff doesn’t look sloppy, you have a chance of selling it, even with some small imperfections. As time goes by and your skill increases, you will eventually eliminate those.
Don’t wait for the perfect product
Some people refuse to sell anything they aren’t confident it is absolutely perfect. There are probably some fields that require that kind of dedication, but Etsy probably isn’t one of them. It is better to be done than to be perfect. If you keep polishing and making corrections, you will never have a finished product to sell, which defeats the whole purpose of running an Etsy business.