Since Etsy is growing in popularity all the time, there are many people who decide to use it to make extra money and even a full-time income. It is the place where millions of shoppers go every day to buy items made by actual people and not mass-produced products. If you are even slightly creative then Etsy is a great way to go instead of trying to build your own ecommerce store with all the risks involved.
However, there are a lot of rookie mistakes that get made and people end up not making much money. Luckily, those mistakes are fairly common so you just need to be aware of them. In this article, we will go over several of the most common mistakes so you can avoid making them yourself.
1 – Not understanding the costs
One of the most important aspects of the business is being able to make a profit. This should go without saying, but it is a bit complicated when you are dealing with handcrafted items. You can’t just calculate things like the materials and the cost of the Texas couriers to ship the products. You have also made sure to make enough of a profit that it meets the hourly requirements to make the product worth it.
For instance, you will need to take the cost of the materials, shipping, and the fees that Etsy imposes and then figure out how much people will pay for that by researching similar items for sale already on Etsy. if you subtract the costs from the amount you plan to charge then you have to divide them by the hours it took you to create. This number has to be enough to justify doing this otherwise you will work full-time for part-time income.
2 – Not sending traffic
There are millions of people shopping on Etsy and only a fraction of them need to buy from you for it to be very profitable. However, it isn’t always easy to attract their attention since there is a lot of established competition on the platform. If you aren’t sending traffic to your product pages then this is a mistake that a lot of new sellers make.
Try to build up a loyal following off of Etsy on social media to send to your products. If you create engaging content that people love to interact with then you will create a loyal base of fans and not just followers. They will love what you do and will be looking to buy from you instead of a faceless corporation.
3 – Not taking good pictures
Pictures will sell your product since good ones will help the customer understand what they are getting. Make sure to take pictures from several angles and with plain backdrops so it is clear what the product is and its size. The pictures don’t need to be done professionally, but they do need to look nice and inviting to work and make people want to buy.