(This column originally appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer)
Many entrepreneurs are finding that online marketplaces, like Etsy, are a great way to create new businesses — or earn money on the side. The massively popular marketplace for craft makers and creators has more than 9 million active sellers offering products to more than 96 million active buyers globally.
But with so much competition, making money on Etsy isn’t easy.
Here’s how a few local sellers have found success.
Be smart about marketing
With so many sellers on the platform, it’s important to make your listings stand apart, using targeted keywords and descriptions.
Cyd Katz, who sells New Jersey-themed clothing, art, and accessories from her site New Jersey Isn’t Boring, makes sure the titles of her items for sale are not only getting eyeballs, but attracting the right customers.
“I make sure the words ‘New Jersey’ are in all of my post titles along with sizes and dimensions,” she said. “Doing this makes it easier for potential customers to find my products and also helps resolve any questions upfront so the customer knows exactly what they’re getting.”
Jessica Rodgers sells hand-drawn pencil and marker illustrations of sites and scenes around Philadelphia from her site, Cityillustrator. She is not a marketing expert or even very tech savvy, she admits, but she was still able to make a professional-looking Etsy shop by relying heavily on the templates and other marketing tools the platform provides.
“Even if you don’t have any idea how to do a website, like me, you can still easily set up an Etsy site,” she said. “Etsy’s tools helped me better describe my products and create a visually appealing storefront.”
Including photos, Rodgers said, is one of the most important steps in making an Etsy site marketable.
“You have to take really good pictures with a quality camera,” she said. “I learned how important it is to get the lighting right and get professional help in order to make my products look as attractive as possible.”
Pay attention to costs
Selling on Etsy isn’t cheap. The site charges 20 cents for each listed item and takes a 6.5% transaction fee for every sale, including shipping. Experienced sellers like Laura Weiszer, the owner of Port Richmond’s Betsu Studio, learned to build these costs into her product pricing.
“With added charges for marketing and shipping, some sellers could be paying as much as 8–9% of their sales price in fees, and when you’re doing around 30 orders a month like we do, those fees really add up,” said Weiszer.
Katz also recommends insuring your items, particularly higher-priced offerings, because things can get lost in the mail.
“If things do go missing, make sure that you can file a claim and get your money back for that because most likely the customer will ask for a replacement,” she said. “And then you’re out double your money.”
Make customer service your top priority
Etsy puts a lot of emphasis on seller ratings, so it’s important for sellers to keep their customers happy.
Rodgers said Etsy usually gives sellers about 24 hours to respond to a customer comment. If too many comments go without a response, a seller can be penalized with lower search rankings. She recommends sellers set up auto-replies so customer issues are acknowledged immediately and work with customer support to resolve disputes.
This was particularly helpful, Rodgers said, when one customer left what Rodgers felt was an unfairly negative review. With documentation, like a tracking number or email exchanges, customer support can help with that.
“Luckily I haven’t had many bad situations, but when it happened … they took the bad review down,” she said.
Weiszer said as her business has grown, she’s added people to her own team to help with fulfillment issues and respond to shoppers’ questions. That helps her maintain “star level” on Etsy, a designation based on several factors including customer service.
“Customer service is a huge part of succeeding in business in general, and it’s no different on Etsy,” Weiszer said.
Keep updating your products
Successful sellers on Etsy treat their site like a brick-and-mortar store, which should always have new items in the window.
“Even if you don’t have a huge body of work, I think it’s important to just put up whatever you have whenever you have it,” Rodgers said. “Keep a consistent flow of products, link it to your other forms of social media and keep pushing people to your store.”
Weiszer agreed, suggesting that sellers post new products weekly or biweekly.
“If your store sells T-shirts and you’ve got a hundred T-shirts lying around, rather than just uploading them all at once — which seems tempting because you want your shop to look full — I think it’s probably better to do it slowly over the course of like a month or two,” she said
