I’m super excited about today’s blog post because I will share with you the things I would do differently if I were starting an Etsy shop in 2022.

This is going to be a valued pack post with tips and tricks on getting started on Etsy the right way that will help you fast-track your results and start making money as little as your first month.

So, if you’re thinking of starting an Etsy shop in 2022 and don’t know where to start – make sure to grab a pen and paper because by the end of this post you’ll actionable steps that you can implement today!

Let’s get started!

Know Your WHY

The reason why I wanted to start with this tip is that when you first decide to open your Etsy store, you’re going to feel scared, you might start experiencing self-doubt (especially if you’re not making money right away) and you need to remind yourself of WHY you started your Etsy business in the first place so you don’t give up after a couple of months.

It’s important to write down your WHY and keep it somewhere you’ll see it all the time. It’s going to be different from everyone – when I started in the Digital Space 11 years ago was when I hit rock bottom, I had to drop out of school, went through a foreclosure, and bankruptcy. My WHY was and still is having financial freedom, and today, I am debt FREE, building my dream home, and the best part, I am my boss.

Do Market Research

It’s important to do market research when selling on Etsy to make sure your idea is going to be profitable. The main reason why many Etsy sellers fail is that they skip this part, and they take it upon themselves to wing it by adding all sorts of products, don’t do market research, and end up wasting so much valuable time. 

Market research doesn’t have to be complicated – write down the list of products you would like to sell on Etsy then start researching each idea on Etsy or use tools like eRank or Marmalade to find your top competitors and see are they making a profit on Etsy, how long have their shop been open, then take one step further by researching do they have a large social media following, do they have a website, would it be realistic goal to compete with this store?

These are determining factors that you would use to validate your product idea. 

Irresistible Unique Product

It all starts with an irresistible, unique product that caters to a specific market. It’s not about reinventing the wheel and creating a product from scratch. How can you take a profitable product in the Etsy marketplace and make it better than your competitors? 

You need to evaluate your products and ask yourself the following questions:

1. Why will customers buy from you?
2. How is your product better than the competition? 
3. What are the main pain points you are solving? 

If you can’t answer these questions about your products, you need to focus on this before proceeding with anything else. 

If you’re having a hard time adding your unique selling proposition, you can do the following – find who are your top 3 competitors, what are they offering, what are their strengths and weaknesses, and use that information to make your product better than theirs. 

Start An Email List

If I had to start all over again, I would have had my email list set up from day one. You need to have systems in place, and one of them is email marketing. Unfortunately, not every person who visits your shop will buy the first time around. You need to make sure your marketing efforts don’t go to waste. 

Whether you’re driving traffic to your shop from SEO, social media, or both, what happens to the people that don’t buy? They bounce and most likely will not come back to your shop.

By proactively promoting your email list on your shop and anywhere you promote your shop this will help capture their emails, so you can nurture those prospective buyers and remarket to them later at a later time. 

Do A Launch For Your Etsy Shop

You might be asking yourself – how do I create a launch with no audience. The first thing is realizing great things take time and don’t rush the process of creating a store. 

Focus on creating a robust product line that caters to a specific audience. I recommend at least ten products to start. 

The next step is to make sure your Etsy shop is optimized for higher conversions by having a professional logo, banner, about me section filled out, having drool-worthy photos, profile photo, shop policies set in place, have your email list set in place, enticing listing descriptions, and making sure your shop looks complete. 

After you have fully-optimize your Etsy store, you want to decide if you’re going to do a 15 or 30-day launch. This is ultimately your choice. Start posting on social media how your product solves a problem. And STOP selling the product itself – focus on selling the benefits. 

Remember, customers don’t care about your product or service’s features. Instead, they want to know how what you sell will benefit them.

You can turn a prospective customer into a buying customer when you focus on the benefits.

You want to build up anticipation before your launch by posting every single day on social media. You can pick one platform like Instagram or easily reshare your content on multiple platforms. 

The different types of posts you can create are:

1. Count down posts 
2. Quotes relevant to your niche
3. Testimonials if you have any
4. Post selling the benefits of your product
5. Sign up for the waitlist 
6. Sneak peek post 
7. Launching soon post
8. Behind the scenes post 
9. Meet the maker post 

This is a fun way to build some traction and start building your fan base from day one. During the launch, you should redirect everyone to your waitlist landing page where they can sign up to be the first one notified when you launch your shop. Make sure to add a CTA on every single post redirecting them to your waitlist page.

Pro tip- as prospective buyers start joining your waitlist, make sure to create an email sequence where you build up more anticipation about the new products you’re about to launch. 

This requires a lot of planning a bit of work from the upfront before you make any money, but this is the fastest way to build a fan base, get tons of people to visit your shop during launch day and make tons of sales as a new Etsy seller. (If you already have an audience, this would be a lot easier to get sales) 

Connect Your Etsy Shop To Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a third-party tracking tool that shows the volume of traffic to your website from different traffic sources. This is a free service available to all Etsy sellers, but it requires a separate account with Google. I highly recommend signing up because the more you know about your business the easier it will be scale your shop.

Run Etsy Ads

If it’s within your budget, running Etsy ads is a great way to get tons of eyeballs to your products, and this will be a good test to see how people resonate with your products. You can strategically look at your top competitors, compete with them by reducing your pricing, and potentially get tons of sales in a short time, therefore helping your listing quality score and potentially becoming a bestseller.

I do recommend getting your prices back up afterward – this is more for strategy and winning rankings in the search engine. 

Hire Help

When I first started on Etsy I underestimated how time-consuming adding a listing can be. If you’re not good at photography or writing your listing description hire help. Don’t waste time on tedious things that someone else can do for you. This will help free up more time for you to create more products and focus on other business areas. If you’re not as, unfortunately, to be able to hire help, then make sure you work on managing your time. 

When you’re in business for yourself is important to discipline your time. You need to set a basic schedule, or framework, of what needs to be completed within a specific period of time. You should be hard on yourself by not letting yourself procrastinate or do anything.

And developing self-discipline can help you have more leisure time, which enables you to improve your work and life balance long-term.

Ultimately, self-discipline is the ability to do what you should do, even if you don’t feel like doing it. Without self-discipline, it will be tough to keep up with the many tasks of growing a business online.

Ask yourself the following questions:

How are you keeping track of your time?

When your time is upon an individual task, are you stopping?

Are you easily distracted?

Do you find yourself wasting time online?

These things you have to be aware of will help you become more productive and not feel overwhelmed if managed correctly.

The last thing you want is to start a new Etsy business, and a month into it, start feeling like giving up, or it’s too much to handle.

Often, Etsy sellers feel this way because they have no structure or systems in place.

So, there you have it all of the things I would do if I started an Etsy shop from scratch. I’m an open book. Have questions? Please leave them below! Thanks for watching.

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