Start selling handmade and vintage products to over 82 million buyers.
An Etsy shop is an online store on Etsy’s marketplace where a shop owner can sell products to Etsy’s 82 million buyers looking for handmade and vintage products. Etsy listings fall into eight major categories:
If you’re wondering what sells best on Etsy, check out the Etsy best sellers list. The best performing segments according to Etsy’s 3rd Quarter 2021 Earnings Presentation are:
Many of these are vintage items, handmade goods, or personalised items that do particularly well with Etsy shoppers. Vintage items are classified as over 20 years old, while handmade means that each is unique.
Etsy’s main competitors are Shopify, Amazon, and eBay. Each has different pros and cons, but Etsy is one of the best platforms for its niche. If your ideas align with products Etsy customers love, it can be a great platform, especially for low volume.
With over 40 million items for sale from entrepreneurs around the world, Etsy is where shoppers go in search of the unique. Etsy connects small business owners with customers who value craftsmanship, one-of-a-kind items and personal connection. When you start an Etsy shop, you join a vibrant international community of shoppers and fellow Etsy shop owners. Etsy makes it easy to open a shop and launch your business.
Do you want to open an Etsy shop but aren’t sure what to sell? You can sell three main types of products on Etsy: handmade goods, vintage items and craft supplies. But what you choose to make is really only limited by your imagination.
Overall, to pick the right name for your shop, you might refer to the following tips that Etsy recommends:
Before you actually open your Etsy shop, you'll want to take a little bit of time to choose the right business name — because after you've started, you can only change your name once. Etsy recommends using at least five photos per item (you can include a maximum of 10) so that customers can see your product from various angles and that the size of your images is at least 1,000 pixels square.
Adjust your thumbnail
Your thumbnail is the first image of your item that your customers see in your shop, via search and elsewhere on Etsy — think of it as your product’s headshot. Make sure it’s a good one.
Complete your listing details
Give your item a title that describes the product in as much detail as possible, considering your 140-character limit. You’ll also have the opportunity to provide an in-depth description, a bulleted overview of the product and additional details like the product’s category and type.
In the description section, you'll also be able to preview your listing for a Google search result, which can help you optimize for e-commerce SEO.
Packaging supplies: Depending on the products you sell in your shop, your general packaging supplies will vary. A few good basics to start with include: a scale to determine the weight of your packages, a measuring tape to gauge the dimensions of your package, and a printer, for printing postage labels and packing slips at home.
For other packaging supplies like mailing envelopes, boxes, and fillers like bubble wrap or packing peanuts, it pays to do a bit of your own research online, especially if you’re interested in eco-friendly options. Buying supplies in bulk can also help reduce your costs. Read How to Set Up a Dispatch Workstation for tips from other sellers.
Marketing materials: In addition to the supplies needed to deliver your item safely and securely, you may want to incorporate branded packaging and marketing materials, like business cards and thank-you notes. Think about the information you’d expect to receive as a buyer, as well as special details from past purchases that have resonated. For more ideas, read Leaving Your Mark With Branded Materials.
Consider offering free delivery: When you add free delivery and a US free delivery guarantee to your listings, those listings get priority US search placement in the Etsy app over items that don’t. Items that deliver for free also have a better chance to be featured wherever Etsy advertises in the US - in email marketing, social media, and television ads.
While there will always be costs to package and deliver items, you may consider ways to build those into your product pricing strategy. That will help you recover the costs and meet customer expectations. If you set up a free delivery guarantee in your shop, you can choose to adjust the prices of your items to recover postage costs using our smart pricing tool. Sellers based outside of the US can find additional strategies for updating your prices to recover postage costs.
Leveraging SEO tactics on Etsy will make your store easy to find, so it’s a surefire way of driving customers to your products. But even if you’re an SEO wizard for your website or blog, know that Etsy has its own set of SEO rules that you’ll want to nail down right off the bat.
You'll want to make sure your title is suitable for your product and keyword-friendly. Along these lines, you'll want to use as many keywords as possible in your tags, shop title, shop sections, product titles and descriptions. You should also ensure that you add tags that make sense with your title. To help you with this process, you can use a keyword tool like Marmalead or EtsyRank.