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.

Etsy Tool

I'm still having trouble with the next part of my journey to creating an Etsy business. I need to describe what I offer, as in pricing and products. I have a pretty good idea of what I want to sell. My problem will be figuring out what to price my products at. Most artists, most small business owners in fact, underprice many of their products due to under confidence and a poor understanding of demand. That way they may have more products sold, but they also get less profit so they have less money to grow the business by marketing or trying new products. People who price their products under the best price, that sweet spot where people will still buy but you get a good profit, often get stuck in a rut or burn out. I'm probably going to price my products too low since I have trouble thinking people will ever buy something handmade by me. To avoid that I decided to figure out where I want to be in my market and who my direct and indirect competitors are on Etsy. I found a few lovely shops selling stone jewelry and a few selling jewelry aimed at the healing power of stone jewelry but I learned something new when I did a search on Google.

I was looking for tools to analyze competitors on Etsy and stumbled upon this interesting tool designed into Etsy. Once you type keywords into Etsy, the site brings up lots of links to items near that phrase. However, if you look directly below the search box, in the upper right corner of the search listings is a set of three small square icons. If you click on the chart icon, a new search will come up while a chart of how many listings fit (by percent) in what price range as well as gives three or four examples you can click to see what items in that category may look like. I believe you have to be logged in to see the chart icon, but that is rarely a problem for sellers on Etsy. Although this tool is not very good for seeing who your competition is or where you fit in the market you are thinking of entering, it is a good quick gauge of what prices are common in your market and how detailed your product should be to sell in a high price range or that other are selling less detailed work at that price range. Nothing beats good market research when researching competition but this tool is a quick chart for Etsy sellers to use when deciding if you are pricing your item too low or too high. It can't be your only pricing aid, but I will go into specific pricing techniques in a much later post. At this stage I am merely using the tool to decide if I would rather sell $20 necklaces or $100 necklaces in my store. I think that my store will focus on a nice place in between for now. As I get comfortable and better at techniques I can add a few more expensive pieces to see how it goes. For now I have a good round number to put in my branding statement. I just need to decide some more things about my market before I start getting into the specifics of my store and brand. I can't have merely a general idea of my store when I start deciding on plans so it is back to market research for me.

Day 2-Starting The Process

   Yesterday I started the blog and told you how long it's been since I touched my store.  Today I pulled out my handy notebook and tried to figure out just what I do or want to do.  I want to make elegant jewelry that a lady would wear for it's beauty and the sentiment behind it.  That means I'm marketing elegant jewelry as gifts.  Hm, marketing directly to a buyer is hard enough.  How do I convince a lady that this necklace is exactly what she's looking to buy her sister, friend, or daughter?  I'm not even thinking of how I'll market to husbands, sons, or boyfriends.  However, I finally managed to get what I think is a basic mission statement, of sorts.  The point of this step was to create an explanation of what I plan to sell to whom and why they should chose me over a competitor.  I know that this part of the branding process will change a few times before I put anything online, but it is a good idea to sit down and think first.  I knew that what I had in the store wasn't what I wanted to work on for a long period of time (I barely lasted a month working on that store).  I also had a basic idea of how I wanted my product received and the basic materials I want to use.  I just had to figure out a basic target audience.  I may have an awesome product but if I'm marketing it to the wrong set of people or trying to market to everyone, the people who are likely to buy my product aren't likely to see the ads.  The lucky sighting resulting in a buy every few months (given my budget and the other steps in the buying process, I'd get lucky with that if marketing to the wrong group), isn't worth skipping the step of figuring out a market likely to buy your product.  I'll go into this more when we get to the Target Market step.  Now I just want a very brief idea of who I'm selling for.  At the moment my target market is a lady looking for a lovely handmade gift for her elegant friend.  I'll add age, hangouts, hobbies, and more later.  For now I can easily say what I do and who should care as well as why they should care.
   Now I'm ready to go to the next step of explaining what my products are, how they're made, what they're priced, and other product descriptions I need in order to feel comfortable with my product plan.  Knowing roughly what price I'll use will help me decide target market, what quality my supplies will be, how much time I should spend on a piece to make a profit, and a few other production costs.  Don't undervalue your time.  If you are on Etsy you are creating one of a kind products others don't have the time or skills to create.  Be proud of what you create and price it accurately.

Tip: the generally accepted pricing guide is to add up the time spent on a design (the actual time spent perfecting a piece or plan may be divided and split out over the whole line instead of putting the design time all in the first piece) along with the materials and add those two up.  Then add some money for overhead (the cost of advertising, web fees, utilities at your studio, maybe rent, and office supplies are spread out throughout all the products) and a small profit.  That should give you what is called the wholesale price.  If you ever sell to a wholesaler, that is the price you give them.  That way you still make a profit but they get it for cheaper than retail.  For the retail price, or what you would sell it on Etsy for, double the wholesale price.  Here is the article from the Etsy Blog explaining it better.

With the first two steps jotted down on paper, it's time to get my notebook next to my computer and figure out who my competition is and how I'm different from them.  I'll explain that more next time.  A very important part of these steps is to have that notebook.  If you want to have a document of the computer or a bunch of post-it notes to write on, that's okay.  The point is that you write down your decisions as you go.  It's true that you will probably rewrite the early decisions a few times during the process, writing down your thoughts clarifies them and helps you remember them in the future.  The more things you have written down, the better your foundation and understanding you will be as you work through the rest of these questions.