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 To Easily Come Up With New Products

Coming up with new product ideas can become difficult pretty quickly when you start your creative business. It was difficult for me before I even started! I tried very hard to come up with new and fresh concepts off the top of my head. Can anyone you relate?

I had to do something about this to prevent my small business from crashing before ever taking off. Just about as fast as I could, I developed a new anti "creative block" system. And now I going to share it with you!

Look To The Pros

Who better to get inspiration from than the people who have been successful? Now this is important. Do not copy their work. We're there to see the endless possibilities and spark an idea, not use somebody else's. Looking at the work of the 'pros' in your industry gives you a goal to shoot for. For me, this means looking at the work of famous artists and designers. For someone who knits or crochets, this could mean looking for inspiration at clothing stores. You get the picture.

Get Inspired By What's Around You

You can find inspiration for new products all around you. Go outside and be in awe of nature's beauty. Listen to a new music style. Look at those eye-catching pictures on Pinterest (you can find anything there, can I get an amen!) A certain color, sound, or smell could spark your next big idea. I was inspired to paint an Italian scene by some opera music I started listening to. In the end, I ended up painting three Italian themed paintings. Opera was my spark, who knew?

Research The Market

Look around to see what's trending. Not only will you be able to get some new concepts going, you'll be creating things that will be more likely to sell. Go to sites like Etsy and Amazon to see what type of products are selling the best. I jumped on the minimalist train and created some simple artworks after seeing how well they were doing for other artists.

Repurpose Your Work

When the above steps in the system don't work for you, go back to what you can trust. Your very own work. If you have a sculpted vase design that is doing well, smack a new handle on that baby. A necklace that people just can't get enough of? Make it in a new color. A blog post that went viral? Make a part two follow up! I did this with a butterfly sketch. I had one, saw that it was doing well, and then created two more to be sold individually and as a set. You are your best resource!

"Creative block" can be really tough to get through, but the above steps will of tremendous help to you. Have you been through a dry-spell before? What did you do to overcome it? Share how you created when creating didn't seem possible.

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The Ultimate Guide To Organizing Your Creative Business ( With A Free Printable!)

I don't know about you, but I love organizing things. My only problem is that I have trouble keeping things organized. After starting my creative business, I quickly realized that letting things go into disarray would not work. And so, I set out to develop a system to keep everything in check and ready to go for whatever need this new entrepreneur needs. First things first:

Keep It Pretty

This may sound silly, but it's the glue that keeps my routine together. I'm serious, if my supplies and / or workspace doesn't look good, I'm not motivated to work or put things in their proper places. That little extra sparkle or pop of color gets me going! You've got to find out what works for you. For me, it's my notebook with a motivational saying on the front and my 'business box' (an awesome gold and white box that I store my art supplies, notebooks, headphones, etc. in). Maybe for you, it's a stylish pen, a bright laptop decal, or even your favorite scented candle. Start experimenting!

Dedicate A Space

Now this doesn't mean that you need to have your own office because, let's face it, most people don't have room in their home for that. I would recommend having a desk in whichever room has the most space for it. That way you have everything you need in one convenient area. Bonus points if you decorate the wall space in front of you.

However, if you're like me, you don't even have room for a desk! Here's what I do, I use the living room as my 'office'. The sofa is my chair and my lap is my desk (you can get an actual lap desk too). My 'business box' is my storage space. I'll admit this isn't ideal, but as my business grows, I'll upgrade. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

Organize Your Ideas

Don't try to keep all of that information straight in your head. Please, just don't (take it from someone

who tried). Some people use computer documents to keep things organized, and while I do recommend you use a spreadsheet to keep track of your profits and expenses from day one, I prefer to do everything else the old-fashioned way. A notebook and a pencil are my tools of choice.

I have everything in my notebook. Pages dedicated to milestones reached, pages for taking notes on articles I read about business, and pages to keep track of my ideas so that I don't forget them. All of the things I need are right there at my fingertips. I highly recommend keeping one yourself!

Organize Your Process

Now this will vary slightly depending on what your creative business is, but organizing your process is the key to making everything run more smoothly. If you write a blog, take your ideas and write out a more detailed list of the main points of your post. If you create art, organize your tools to be all in the right place before you start a project. Or maybe, you need to make your listing process more efficient if you sell on a site like Etsy.

I've created a free printable to help make listing items on Etsy less of a pain. If you use Etsy, you know that it can be a tedious process. Finding keywords, deciding which to use, making sure you use them in the right place, it can all get confusing. This printable will help organize all of that. Subscribe at the top of the page to get instant access!

There you have it, my ultimate guide to organizing your creative business. Four simple concepts that will make your workday so much easier. What do you do to keep your business organized? Share with us in the comments below! And don't forget to subscribe at the top of the page!

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 Create A Free Etsy Shop Icon/Banner

Creating a professional looking shop icon and banner for your shop is vital for your business. It's the first impression you leave with a potential customer. If your icon doesn't look up to par, that customer may think your products won't be either. But, if your icon looks like time and effort was poured into it, they will think the same about your items. It's all about the presentation.

Where Can You Go?

There is a wonderful place where you can do this for free. Canva.com is a free site where you can design practically anything you need. It has preset sizes and design options for social media posts, blog posts, and even for Etsy icons and banners. I even used it to create the title graphic at the beginning of this post! Not only that, but it's extremely user-friendly. Even if you don't have an ounce of designer ability, the preset designs look wonderful as is, you only have to replace the writing with what you want it to say.

Below, I am going to show you a quick example design that took me less than ten minutes to make. Anyone can do it!

Here's a preset design for an Etsy icon. At this point, I've done nothing to the design except select it from the list to the left. As you can see, there are many templates I can choose from, and a lot more if you scroll down he list.

I've now replaced the words and letter in the original design with the name "My Shop" for the example. I also went to the 'Elements' section, then the 'Illustrations' section where I found this owl graphic. Then I moved it to the top of the circle so that it looked like it was perching there. 

After adding the scrolls from the 'Lines' section, also under 'Elements', I changed the color scheme. To do this, I clicked on whichever graphic I wanted the color change to occur on and several color blocks popped up on the top left of the white option bar. From there you can change the individual colors to your liking. Here I used greys and blue.

And just to show that it can be done, I added a background. From the 'Background' section I chose an image that looked like wooden planks. I changed the color from brown to grey and made it semi transparent by clicking the square right next to the trash can on the white option bar and adjusting the levels. This isn't necessary, but I included it for the example.

It's that easy! You can leave it, or customize it as much or as little as you want. It's totally up to you. And you can't beat being free. There are paid options if you like what they offer, but there are plenty of free, professional looking options. I'll leave the finished icon and two others that I took five minutes to create below. Or, you can check out my shop and see my icon and banner.

What about you? Are you good at design or do you leave that to someone else? Tell us your experience in the comment section below. And don't forget to subscribe at the top of the page!

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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