The Realities of Selling on Etsy

Wow, I just have to post this video.  Heather Wells explains why she decided to close her Etsy store and it was an eye opener.  She closed her store in the middle of 2015 and goes through the numbers for us.  She had made over $56,000 dollars in the five years she was open and when she closed her Etsy shop she was in the top 3rd of the top 1% of Etsy sellers.  That sounds impressive but think about those numbers.  Most years she made around or under $11,000 a year.  $40,000 a year is considered poverty level in the U.S.  She sold charms which averaged $8 a sale but she averaged everything out and she made roughly $24 a day in the five years she was on the site.  She admits that if she had tried harder she could have sold more in 2013 and 2014 but she got upset at some changes made to the site and stopped trying for a while.  If you look at the numbers, she looks like a success and she says that she is proud of what she did but could you live off less than $1000 a month?  I'm in college and can support myself on roughly that each month but I rent a small apartment and that is after taxes and with no tuition costs or car problems.  I can't imagine supporting a family or life emergencies on that income.  Luckily there are other ways to make money online with your craft now a days, such as selling tutorials or blog advertising, and you should also sell at craft fairs and some crafts can be sold at consignment shops.  It is possible to make a living wage from your crafts but selling online should not be your only line of income unless you are fully established and already making a lot of money from your store before quitting your main job.  Heather averaged the numbers on the Etsy website for 2014 and found out that on average an Etsy store made $1,200 that year.  I averaged the numbers on the Etsy website today for 2015 and 1.6 million sellers today made $2.39 billion dollars in 2015 that means $1,494 per seller last year.  I had my crafts up for maybe six months a few years ago and got no sales.  Granted, I put the pictures up, probably had bad descriptions, and only had six items in my store.  I didn't add new items of figure out SEO or how to use social media to get viewers who would buy but I'm guessing I'm not the only person who got no sales.  That means a lot of people got under $1500 in 2015 and a lot of sellers got over $1500 in 2015.  I just want to be sure you understand the realities of selling crafts online.  It is possible to make a full-time income on a home craft business but you should not expect to merely put your products on Etsy and expect to suddenly sell them (as I expected all those years ago).  You have to work hard to make a full-time income of a craft business and use more than one income stream.  She ended her video with some simple but often overlooked tips on how she got over a thousand dollars every year her store was open.  One of the ones she mentioned was that an Etsy store needs a lot of items in it to look established.  She said that she didn't get regular sales until she had over 200 charms in her store.  I'm not sure how that progresses with other larger items, such as necklaces or OOAK figurines, but I have noticed that most stores seem to have more than one page of items.  I recommend you take a look at her video for an honest idea of what it takes to be "successful" on Etsy.

My Reboot with YouTube Video Reviews

It's been a few years since I started this blog and I apologize for stopping it with so little information.  I got busy with a major move then started college so I used those changes as excuses to stop my crafting and therefore my ability to stock an Etsy store.  Now I'm back at crafting and have learned a few new techniques.  These items are my early attempts at understanding polymer clay.  I'm rather proud of those flags at the bottom of the picture which are rather good for my first attempt at a complex cane.  But you aren't here to learn about polymer clay, you are here because you want to learn how to create and build an Etsy store that will hopefully become a full-time job for you or at least help pay for your addiction to creating beautiful things (or scary art if that is your preference).

So, let's get down to today's tips.  While surfing Youtube I found two videos about tips for setting up an Etsy shop.  There are more tip videos, I'm sure, but today I'll just review these two.

Let's start with Melanie Ham's shorter video: Tips for Starting an Etsy Shop.  Her video is a little less than 8 minutes and has some good basic tips such as to put a good price on your items so you can actually make a profit instead of under selling, tips on taking good pictures, and the reminder that writing a detailed description can save you time.  She also gives a great reminder to put thought into how you ship items and to respond quickly to emails.  Customer service is very important and it is easy to lose customers if you are not quick and friendly.  She gives some great tips for shipping from home and ends with a reminder that success takes time and research but is completely possible.  Check out her video for more details on her tips.

The next video is longer and posted by Sarah Mock.  It's nearly 32 minutes and part of a weekly series where Sarah interviews experts on blogs, social media, and how to save, or get, more money.  In this episode she talks to Hayley Croom about her soap store on Etsy.  Although there is a lot of chit chat, it is inspiring how Hayley started her business with a built in audience and grew it to a full-time income.  Her biggest tip and the thing she kept coming back to was to view your store as a business from the very beginning.  Starting you Etsy store as a hobby that you update occasionally when you feel like it is no way to start a business.  Even if it is merely a way for you to fund your crafting addiction and you don't plan to make your career out of your Etsy shop, you never know what the future holds.  Keep an eye on your emails and keep your shop up to date.  You never know when you may need returning customers or need to get a new job.  View your business as a job from the start, work consistently on it, and have set hours for work.  You can keep your shop down to something you deal with one hour a week or build it into something you work on 40 hours a week or 100 hours a week.  It is up to you how big you grow your business.  Both Hayley and Sarah agreed that it is very easy for self-employed people to work well beyond the normal working hours or for them to allow days to go by without getting any work done.  Creating a schedule and keeping to it is essential for self-employed people to be successful.  I could continue to badger this subject because consistency and time management are my worst qualities but it is time to move on.  Hayley also gave great tips for getting found on Etsy through tags and product titles as well as her inexpensive way to create great photos using a simple camera, natural light, and Flickr.  The photo can make or break a sale online and it is easy to find great ways to create great photos without spending a lot of money.  The two of them talked about how user friendly Etsy is and how helpful other sellers can be.  The forums on Etsy are very helpful and the website itself has great step by step tips to help sellers succeed on Etsy.