Warrior advise needed - starting an Etsy store...

Pal, what you are looking for isn't in any tutorial or ebook. You have to try it for yourself. Its hit & trial method.

Thanks, I wasn't thinking about a "recipe-for-success" type resource...I was thinking something along the lines of set-up and best practices.

I remember all the time wasted reading about SEO back in the day, won't be making the mistake with anything new I do.

I currently have 2 successful Etsy stores. Here are a few pointers:

- Do your research. Just like you would for any product/website - learn as much as you can about similar Etsy listings/stores. Unlike a stand-alone website, you can actually learn alot if you "look". Find a similar seller and check their sales count and feedback. Just from those two metrics alone, you'll be able to gauge how often they make a sale and decide if its even worth your time.

- Understand the audience on Etsy. Sounds obvious, but make sure you are selling a product that is in a main category and/or appeals to the Etsy audience. I'm just pointing this out because alot of material on Warrior forum may not exactly be best suited to market to Etsy.

- Spend time on your listings, fill out AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. Think SEO here. Fill out as many optional fields as possible. Try to optimize your listing description. Etsy allows around 13 tags for a listing - use them ALL.

Link internal products if you can (internal links are the only ones that Etsy will make clickable). For example, I offer a "bundle" of my products, and I link to the bundle product in all of my single product listings. Use caution when linking to external sites - it wont be clickable and Etsy really doesnt want it.

Use the very first line in the description for the item title/keyword.

Although listings stay in a very simple format, I try to create "section headers" by getting creative like this:

---------------------------------------
Contact Us
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Please email us with any questions and we'll be happy to help!


- Lastly: another obvious one but sales and FEEDBACK are important. When you first open your store, run big sales (I like to do 50%) in order to generate your first few sales. You might want to advertise using Etsy's platform as well...even if it costs you more than you are making to start, you NEED to get 5-10 sales under your belt...people look at this stat alot. Once you make a sale, send individual follow up messages through etsy to your new customers. ASK them for positive feedback and make sure you give them a reason why you need it (that's important), even if the reason is "because my store is brand new". Here is an example of a follow up message i send:

Hi! Thank you so much for your order. We wanted to follow up and make sure you were able to download your items without any issues. If you have questions or need help, please reach out to us anytime.

Because our shop is brand new, we would greatly appreciate if you could leave positive feedback when you have a moment.

Thanks in advance for your support, have a great day!


I hope that helps, best of luck with your new store!

-Biagio