How I Got My First Sale On Etsy

If you're reading this, you're probably in one of two situations.

A) You're about to open or just opened your shop and you want to get a running start and sell as quickly as possible.

B) You were person 'A' but it' has been awhile since your shop opening and you haven't sold anything yet and you need advice to sell that first item.

I was person 'A' and 'B' a one point. I was filled with extreme optimism that I would open my shop and my products would fly off the shelves. One month later I was frustrated that, despite all my work, nothing had sold. There were three key changes I made that changed this. And these were the changes that got me my first sale.

Better Pictures

This was the first step I took toward getting my first sale. I sell prints of my art and let me tell you, how I presented it affected views on my products. Originally, I had one photo up of the original artwork, and that was it.

Mistake #1 was that I only had one picture up and didn't use all five slots. Mistake #2 was that my picture was dark. Like, embarrassingly dark. No matter what lighting I used I just couldn't seem to make it brighter. But then I discovered how to edit the picture properly, improving the quality tremendously. Just look for yourself.

After fixing all of my photographs, I realized that all others selling prints and art showed their work in a mockup. A mockup is basically showing what your product would look like in a real life situation to give your customer more purchasing confidence. For artists, this typically means displaying the art in a frame. For crochet or knitting, this could mean showing your items on a model (or willing friends and family).

I went through three different mockups before settling. That's because I learned a lesson with each one. My first mockup was against a grey brick wall with a black frame. This looked wonderful in theory, but it turns out that people have a tendency to click on bright, eye-catching photos. So then I switched to a light off-white wall with a cream frame. While this one was brighter, it didn't stand out in any way. Basically, it was blah. Then I reached my final mockup. It was bright, eye-catching, and simple. And that is the perfect mockup formula. Here it is.

Now self-evaluate your photographs and see what you can do to improve them. Make them bright, simple, and enticing to get those views! If you need inspiration for your photos, you can check out what I've done HERE.

SEO

If you're a newbie, you're going to hear this over and over again. When I learned about and improved upon my SEO, more people were able to find me through search, and that's what we want. There are many paid sites out there that will help you with SEO but I use a free site that gives you almost all of the same features a paid one will. It is very helpful and eye-opening. You can read all about how I use it HERE.

Promotion

This is the final step I took in my shop, and it's the step that truly led to my first sale. Promote your work! Now, this doesn't have to be paid promotion, because I don't use it. There are plenty of free ways to get your work out there in front of potential customers. The site that got me my sale was (drumroll please) Facebook.

There are groups on Facebook all about Etsy. I joined a couple of these and started promoting (posting to the group) once a day with a different product. When I post, I usually get some likes, occasionally a comment, but always click-throughs. Even if nobody buys your item, you'll rank better in results because of increased views. Then, one day, it happened.

I was posting a Valentine's Day card in a group and a woman commented on it asking if I had a version with a hedgehog. At that time, I was actually planning on making one, so I told her I would have it up tomorrow. I made it, posted it to the group, and she purchased it that same day. Not only that, but she ended up looking at my other cards and purchasing one more!

Join groups and Facebook and hen discover other ways to promote that work for you. Social media is the most common way: Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter are usually the go-to for most sellers. Experiment and find what works for your specific market!

I was so excited when I got that sale, and I'm excited for you to get yours as well. Be patient, and be optimistic, it will happen. Your small business is only as good as the care you put into it. Nurture your shop, and it will grow! If you want to read about how to start and run an Etsy shop for free, read THIS. 

Do you have any questions about selling? Or, have you already sold your first item? Share your experiences in the comment section below. And don't forget to subscribe for more Etsy and small creative business tips!

How I Use Etsy Rank For SEO

When you do any reading about how to improve your Etsy shop, you're inevitably going to see 'improve your SEO' everywhere. That's because it truly is that important. When I began working on having better SEO, I saw more of my views coming from search almost immediately. And guess what? I did it for free.

Etsy Rank

How did I do that? I used Etsy Rank. Most people use this free tool as a way to check where their listings rank under certain keywords on results pages. This is very helpful, but not the focus today. The option I most frequently use on this site is the Listing Audit found under the Listings section.

SEO Grading

Once you select a listing of your choice, you will see that your cumulative SEO has been graded. The grade is based upon how strong your keyword presence is on your listing. If your keyword shows up at the beginning of your title and description, you'll be given a grade of A for that keyword. For each element you're missing, you'll be docked a letter grade. We want to keep your keywords as mostly A's and B's. Here's an example of one of my listings for a painting print that needed a lot of work.

Example

As you can see, there's a lot of room for improvement. We want to make those x's go away by including your keywords in the respective places they are missing. You also want to include a mix of low and high competition keywords. To research which keywords are competitive, and find suggestions for related keywords, go to the Keyword Tool under the Tools section.

After making the necessary corrections to your listing, refresh the data for the page and you will be able to see how your updated listing is graded. After updating my listing, the cumulative SEO grade went up tp an A.

Those VIP tags indicate the keywords that Google will focus on the most. This way, if someone were to search with the term 'skull painting' my listing would be more likely to show up than if someone used the term 'feather art'.

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Ask your questions or share your SEO tips in the comment section below!

How To Open An Etsy Shop With No Money

'Opening up an Etsy shop without spending a penny? How is that possible?'

You may be asking yourself these, and other questions. To answer those questions was my goal when I first opened my shop MB Canvas Design. I wanted to earn money with my talents, but I had no money of my own to invest in a business. I also didn't want to spend nothing on my shop, and have it look like I spent no money. That is how my journey began to starting a quality Etsy shop for free.

1. Opening A Shop

The first step is to open up a shop. Um, duh you say. I know, I know. It just had to be said. While having a shop on Etsy is free, to open up shop you have to have at least one listing active. Each listing costs $0.20. Here was the first dilemma I encountered in my search. Luckily, there was an easy solution; many bloggers have posts that contain a deal for new sellers.

Those who already have an Etsy shop are able to participate in a deal where they have a link that gives both the shop owner, and the person opening a shop, 40 free listings, when said person opens their shop. So in essence, you click on the link and you'll be sent to the sign up page to become an Etsy seller and receive your first 40 listing for free. Here is a link just like the one I found when I first started (Disclaimer: when you click this link, not only will you get 40 listings, I will too, at no cost to you. Yay for free!) Click here to open up your very own shop!

2. Creating Your Shop Icon And Banner

Now that you have your very own shop (Nice going!), it's time to start making things look professional. You need a shop icon to represent your business (You, yes you. You're now a business owner! Gasp) and, if you would like, a shop banner as well. There are numerous sites out there where you can pay to create one, or even have someone create it for you. But the goal here is to do everything without spending anything.

The best option I found for these purposes was canva.com. This website has a large variety of free options to create your icon and banner. To make it easier on you, they even have preset size options for Etsy shops, bloggers, and social media users. In fact, the image at the top of this article was created with canva. So are all of the other images I created for my shop, and this blog. Not only do they have plenty of free options, but they're free and professional looking. That's what we're going for. Learn how I did it here.

3. Take Pictures Of Your Items

This is something I struggled to figure out how to make look good without spending money on an expensive camera, lighting equipment, editing software, and all of the other things you'll read that you need. For quite some time, I just accepted the fact that my photos wouldn't look good. The I discovered that shabby photos don't get views. Once I figured out how to improve my picture quality, the views on my products quickly increased. All I used was my smartphone and a free computer program. With the modern smartphone, you can take high resolution photographs in seconds. Here are some quick tips to make your pictures look even better:

1. Turn on the HDR feature.
2. Do not use flash.
3. Use natural light when you can.
4. Learn to use the 'pro' mode so that you can adjust settings for each individual picture.
5. Use Gimp to edit for your final image.

4. Use Gimp To Edit Your Pictures

Gimp was the quality game changer for me. Once I understood how I could use it, the difference I saw in my photographs was incredible. Just look at this example of a picture I took of a drawing I did for a print in my shop.

May I just say, wow. The difference is blatantly noticeable. The reason I chose Gimp was because, not only was it free, but it had all of the features I needed to edit my images that other paid for options, such as photoshop, had. It's a little challenging to learn to use, but there are tutorials all over the internet that will guide you step-by-step through the process. You can find Gimp here.

5. SEO Help

When it came to SEO (Search Engine Optimization), I was very tempted to figure out a way to spend money. That's because this is how people find you. If you don't have good SEO it is very unlikely that you'll have a lot of business from Etsy shoppers unless they find you some other way. Time after time I read stories from new sellers like me about how they signed up for a paid SEO tool, such as Marmalade, and it increased their sales by some large amount. Oh boy, was I tempted. Until I found out about a free option that is revolutionizing my SEO.

It's a wonderful site called etsyrank.com. Totally free, totally helpful. This site will grade each listing on it's SEO quality and show you where your optimization is lacking. You can also research which keywords are competitive and where your listings rank under keywords you have used. This is an extremely helpful tool. For further explanation of how I use this resource, read my post all about it.

6. Promotion

As you start up your shop, you're going to see paid promotion options everywhere you turn. No matter how tempting it may be, you do not need them. I have read countless stories about how a shop paid a good sized sum for advertising and promotion and it cost more to keep up than they earned back from it. The thing is, a lot of the most successful shop owners don't use it at all. They create an organic following through free social media platforms. If you ask a shop owner that does well how they get all of their traffic, most will tell you social media.

An organic following may take awhile to build up, so be patient and be consistent. Find which platform work for you and just go for it. You can also eventually start a blog centered around your craft or to help other shops. That is what I am doing here, and I am doing it for free with Blogger. It may not be as fancy as a paid for option but it gets the job done while looking nice.

These are all the ways I started a quality Etsy shop for free. If you have questions don't hesitate to ask them in the comment section below. Or, you can ask your questions in the Forums on Etsy. If there's one thing I've learned about creative business owners and the Etsy community, it's that they are always willing to help. I have seen people go above and beyond to help out a fellow creator. So I say to you, welcome to the Etsy family.

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