Why You're Making NO SALES On ETSY & How To Fix That For FREE
Are you not making any sales on Etsy? Are you getting little to no traffic to your Etsy store? Are you ready to turn that around? If you answered yes, I strongly recommend you read this blog post entirely, because today I'm going to tell you the tricks successful Etsy sellers use every day to drive traffic and make sales for FREE!
Optimize Your Listings
Search Engine Optimization, also known as 'SEO', is the process of tweaking your product listings strategically, so more customers can find your products in the Etsy search engine. For the best results, you want to show up for as many closely related search terms as possible. And there are many ways you can greatly improve your search engine optimization over the competition.
First, you’ll want to come to the search bar on etsy, and pretend you’re a customer looking for your product.
If your product is a t-shirt with the phrase “All I Care About Is Coffee And Maybe 3 People”, then you could start to type “coffee t-shirt” and “gift for coffee lover” and other things people in your niche would actually search for. Before you finish typing these phrases out completely, you want to pay attention to what searches etsy is recommending you. This is because these are things people are searching for the most. And this is how you can optimize your listing with high traffic search terms. Best case scenario, is you find a search term with high traffic and low competition as well. This makes it a lot easier to rank higher, because you’re not competing with as many shops.
Social Media
This method will require you to stay consistent. Social media algorithms tend to reward long-term consistency, so post at least every 1-3 days until your fan page has gained a sizable following. Then, occasionally create a post showing off your product. Make it exciting, so they’ll go “I need that!”. It also helps to create a temporary sale, and/or let people know there’s limited stock.
If you know a trucker who can relate to this, this makes a great gift for them!
*CURRENTLY ON SALE UNTIL MM/DD/YYYY*
(Or until stock runs out!)
When you create a fan-page like this, you’ve gathered your target audience in one spot for free. You no longer need to pay for ads every time you launch a product promotion, because you had the patience to gather your target audience in one spot in the form of a fan page community.
All you have to do is repost popular memes and pictures your target audience would love. And if your target audience is a group of people you yourself belong to, this is a lot easier, because you’ll know what you find the funniest and the most interesting as a fellow member of the community you’re selling to. This is why it’s important to pick a niche you are interested in, while also making sure there’s a large amount of people out there that share that interest.
If you don’t want to start an instagram fan page, or you want to increase your exposure even more, Pinterest is another great platform to take advantage of.
Now, while Instagram and Facebook can definitely generate conversions, it can be a bit harder with these platforms. Because if you think about it, the audience on Instagram and Facebook are there because they’re looking at funny pictures or keeping up with what their friends are doing that day.
They’re typically not searching for something to buy.
And on Pinterest, it’s the opposite. The Pinterest audience is specifically looking for new ideas, gifts, clothing, and more. When you post on Pinterest, people can just click a button to visit your product page link right on your post.
Instagram doesn’t give you this ability unless you use paid ads. Instead, you have to direct people to the link in your bio. And what happens when you put up a new post? You change the link in your bio for that post. If someone sees your previous post too late, they’re directed to the wrong link. But with Pinterest, you don’t have this problem.
I will warn you, you’re not very likely to go viral any time soon with Pinterest. Pinterest is a long game that takes a lot of consistency. And you probably won’t be the best at creating engaging pinterest posts in the beginning, but as with anything, you’ll get better with time and experience.
In my opinion, this is well worth it. Free traffic is free traffic. And it only takes a couple minutes to create a new Pinterest post.
This is the program I use to make Pinterest posts. Some of you may recognize it. But for those of you who don’t, this is Canva. It’s a great tool for creating social media posts, YouTube thumbnails, and even designs for print on demand products, but that’s a topic for another day.
As you can see, I’m creating an example Pinterest post to show you just how easy it is. Canva has a huge variety of elements and fonts to choose from, which makes it very easy to create an engaging Pinterest post that stands out.
You could just post a picture of your product and post it on Pinterest, but this is a way to help your posts stand out, as Pinterest shows your potential customer a lot of different content all at once, so it helps to stand out to get their attention.
Make sure you’re including relevant keywords or search terms throughout your Pinterest post details. Just like I explained earlier regarding Etsy’s search engine optimization, Pinterest is a search engine, so the process is pretty similar.
You look for relevant things your customers are searching for on Pinterest, and you apply those search terms to your Pinterest SEO.
TikTok is another platform many sellers have seen success on. If you have a really interesting product you think has the potential to go viral, and you’re willing to learn, or already know, how to make engaging TikTok posts, this can be a very profitable method for you.
If you’re doing Print On Demand, Placeit.net has a lot of great mockup videos, especially for t-shirts, that fit the TikTok aspect ratio. It’s a very easy-to-use platform. All you have to do is upload your design, tweak the positioning until it looks like it does on the actual product, and after about 30 seconds, you have a professional looking video of your product being used.
However, while you can get a ton of free traffic and go viral, TikTok is probably the hardest platform to get traffic from. So I would only recommend using it to promote products that you feel have the potential to go viral. TikTok is specifically designed to keep users on the platform for long periods of time.
As you can tell, all of these social media platforms have their pros and cons, and none of them are better than the other. It just depends on what works best for you, and what you’re willing to do. I personally use Facebook and Pinterest, but maybe TikTok and Instagram work the best for you personally. There’s only one way to find out, and that’s to try it for yourself.
Finally, the last item on today’s list is
This is a business, and businesses take time to build. They take a lot of up front work that you likely won’t benefit from immediately. You’ll go through a lot of trial and error, but that’s what makes you grow. Mistakes are how you learn. That’s why you should value your mistakes and see them as lessons as an entrepreneur. That’s why it’s the people that never give up that become successful. They’re a very small portion of the world, and you can be one of them. It has nothing to do with luck. It’s about making that decision and sticking to it. Be relentless!
If you’re here, chances are, you’re in the early stage of your Etsy business, and you’re getting little to no results. And you’re probably wondering whether or not Etsy is worth it. However, I promise you, this is 100% normal. With anything in life, you're not going to be good at it in the beginning. But now it's time to make a change. There are a list of ways you can solve this problem, and be on your way to increasing your shops exposure and converting customers!
Optimize Your Listings
Search Engine Optimization, also known as 'SEO', is the process of tweaking your product listings strategically, so more customers can find your products in the Etsy search engine. For the best results, you want to show up for as many closely related search terms as possible. And there are many ways you can greatly improve your search engine optimization over the competition.
First, you’ll want to come to the search bar on etsy, and pretend you’re a customer looking for your product.
If your product is a t-shirt with the phrase “All I Care About Is Coffee And Maybe 3 People”, then you could start to type “coffee t-shirt” and “gift for coffee lover” and other things people in your niche would actually search for. Before you finish typing these phrases out completely, you want to pay attention to what searches etsy is recommending you. This is because these are things people are searching for the most. And this is how you can optimize your listing with high traffic search terms. Best case scenario, is you find a search term with high traffic and low competition as well. This makes it a lot easier to rank higher, because you’re not competing with as many shops.
Now that you have your search terms, and you’ve typed or written them down somewhere, you can begin optimizing your listing with these search terms.
Going back to my earlier example, if you’re selling a shirt that says “All I Care About Is Coffee And Maybe 3 People”, don’t type that phrase in the title. Chances are, nobody is actually searching for that phrase. And you have limited space in your title text box. Use that space as best as you can to maximize its effectiveness.
If I was selling this t-shirt, I would title it something like “Coffee T-Shirt Funny Gift For Coffee Lover Shirt For Coffee Lover Funny Coffee T Shirt Funny Coffee Gift Coffee TShirt Funny Coffee Shirt”
This way you’re mixing keywords together to save space. With this title you’re showing up in results for all of the following search terms:
- Coffee T-Shirt
- Coffee T-Shirt Funny
- Coffee T-Shirt Funny Gift
- Funny Gift For Coffee Lover
- Gift For Coffee Lover
- For Coffee Lover
- Coffee Lover
- Coffee Lover Shirt
- Shirt For Coffee Lover
- Coffee Lover Funny
- Funny Coffee T Shirt
- Coffee T Shirt Funny
- Funny Coffee Gift
- Coffee TShirt
- Coffee TShirt Funny
- TShirt Funny Coffee
- Funny Coffee Shirt
Etsy has a maximum of 140 characters, and we managed to get all of those key words just in the title.
If you tried to fit all of these search terms separately, it would be over 300 characters!
Next, you want to form a description using search terms, preferably some that didn’t make it into your title, to maximize the amount of searches you show up in even more. Make sure it actually sounds natural, of course. If you just spam your description with tags, that will get your Etsy account shut down.
An example of a description I would create using these search terms is:
“This funny coffee tee makes a great gift for coffee lovers. This design is sure to put a smile on someone’s face!”
This description uses relevant keywords and phrases, while also appealing to your target customer emotionally. Which is an important factor when selling online.
And of course, you want to put more relevant search terms in the tags section of your listing details. You should also fill out all of your relevant attributes. This will also help your target customer find your listings easier. Many people skip over this step, and you will now have an edge over those people.
Now, onto the next step on our list.
Many new sellers use social media to promote their shop and their products, but they tend to go about it the wrong way. They create an Instagram page, with their shop name, and post a bunch of strictly promotional content.
While that may work for some people, it’s far more effective to create a fan page, on a platform like Instagram or Facebook, that your audience will love. They’re a lot more likely to follow fan pages than a page that’s just there to sell them something.
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| Fan Page For Bulldog Lovers On Facebook |
This method will require you to stay consistent. Social media algorithms tend to reward long-term consistency, so post at least every 1-3 days until your fan page has gained a sizable following. Then, occasionally create a post showing off your product. Make it exciting, so they’ll go “I need that!”. It also helps to create a temporary sale, and/or let people know there’s limited stock.
If you know a trucker who can relate to this, this makes a great gift for them!
*CURRENTLY ON SALE UNTIL MM/DD/YYYY*
(Or until stock runs out!)
When you create a fan-page like this, you’ve gathered your target audience in one spot for free. You no longer need to pay for ads every time you launch a product promotion, because you had the patience to gather your target audience in one spot in the form of a fan page community.
If you don’t want to start an instagram fan page, or you want to increase your exposure even more, Pinterest is another great platform to take advantage of.
Now, while Instagram and Facebook can definitely generate conversions, it can be a bit harder with these platforms. Because if you think about it, the audience on Instagram and Facebook are there because they’re looking at funny pictures or keeping up with what their friends are doing that day.
They’re typically not searching for something to buy.
And on Pinterest, it’s the opposite. The Pinterest audience is specifically looking for new ideas, gifts, clothing, and more. When you post on Pinterest, people can just click a button to visit your product page link right on your post.
Instagram doesn’t give you this ability unless you use paid ads. Instead, you have to direct people to the link in your bio. And what happens when you put up a new post? You change the link in your bio for that post. If someone sees your previous post too late, they’re directed to the wrong link. But with Pinterest, you don’t have this problem.
I will warn you, you’re not very likely to go viral any time soon with Pinterest. Pinterest is a long game that takes a lot of consistency. And you probably won’t be the best at creating engaging pinterest posts in the beginning, but as with anything, you’ll get better with time and experience.
In my opinion, this is well worth it. Free traffic is free traffic. And it only takes a couple minutes to create a new Pinterest post.
This is the program I use to make Pinterest posts. Some of you may recognize it. But for those of you who don’t, this is Canva. It’s a great tool for creating social media posts, YouTube thumbnails, and even designs for print on demand products, but that’s a topic for another day.
As you can see, I’m creating an example Pinterest post to show you just how easy it is. Canva has a huge variety of elements and fonts to choose from, which makes it very easy to create an engaging Pinterest post that stands out.
You could just post a picture of your product and post it on Pinterest, but this is a way to help your posts stand out, as Pinterest shows your potential customer a lot of different content all at once, so it helps to stand out to get their attention.
Make sure you’re including relevant keywords or search terms throughout your Pinterest post details. Just like I explained earlier regarding Etsy’s search engine optimization, Pinterest is a search engine, so the process is pretty similar.
You look for relevant things your customers are searching for on Pinterest, and you apply those search terms to your Pinterest SEO.
TikTok is another platform many sellers have seen success on. If you have a really interesting product you think has the potential to go viral, and you’re willing to learn, or already know, how to make engaging TikTok posts, this can be a very profitable method for you.
If you’re doing Print On Demand, Placeit.net has a lot of great mockup videos, especially for t-shirts, that fit the TikTok aspect ratio. It’s a very easy-to-use platform. All you have to do is upload your design, tweak the positioning until it looks like it does on the actual product, and after about 30 seconds, you have a professional looking video of your product being used.
However, while you can get a ton of free traffic and go viral, TikTok is probably the hardest platform to get traffic from. So I would only recommend using it to promote products that you feel have the potential to go viral. TikTok is specifically designed to keep users on the platform for long periods of time.
As you can tell, all of these social media platforms have their pros and cons, and none of them are better than the other. It just depends on what works best for you, and what you’re willing to do. I personally use Facebook and Pinterest, but maybe TikTok and Instagram work the best for you personally. There’s only one way to find out, and that’s to try it for yourself.
Finally, the last item on today’s list is
This is a business, and businesses take time to build. They take a lot of up front work that you likely won’t benefit from immediately. You’ll go through a lot of trial and error, but that’s what makes you grow. Mistakes are how you learn. That’s why you should value your mistakes and see them as lessons as an entrepreneur. That’s why it’s the people that never give up that become successful. They’re a very small portion of the world, and you can be one of them. It has nothing to do with luck. It’s about making that decision and sticking to it. Be relentless!
