Episode 184 | How to Beat 99% of Etsy Shops

Want to get ahead of 99% of the Etsy shops out there? If so, tune in as I share five strategies that took my shop from $134K my first year to $1.7M today. I share everything from the importance of having functional (not pretty) SEO and why using social media is the key to blowing up your shop. At the end of the day, Etsy is a business, and we need to learn different strategies and skills to grow it – so make sure to take these and implement them today!

In this week’s episode we discuss:

[00:18] Strategy One: Verify your product market fit

[02:02] Strategy Two: Do trend research

[02:26] Strategy Three: Have functional SEO

[03:31] Strategy Four: Focus on your fit in mockups

[04:52] Strategy Five: Blow up your shop through social media

[06:44] Want a personalized game plan for your Etsy shop? Book a free call!

Strategy One: Verify your product market fit

Market fit is one thing that so many people overthink. They are so focused on getting up as many listings as possible and they think if they throw enough spaghetti at the wall something will stick. This is often why they never see results because if the product market fit is not there, it does not matter how much marketing or money you spend on ads – you will not get sales. 

In the brand new Ultimate Etsy Course, we focus the beginning of the course on choosing profitable customer segments and serving them with profitable products. We do this by using our seven types of products framework and we verify all of your product ideas with our 10-step opportunity checklist. These are 10 questions to run your ideas through to make sure they will sell before you put time and energy into them. If you want to learn more, book a free call with us!

So where do I see product-market fit fall apart? 

1. Your product looks outdated. This might be the design, the photos, the graphics, or even the fonts. 
2. Your mockup is ill-fitting. You have to make sure that you have a trendy fit if you have a print-on-demand product.

I had a student who was selling print-on-demand and the product market fit was not quite there. We made some recommendations for some new products, she implemented them, and she went from 50 sales to over 3000 sales in four months. 

Strategy Two: Do trend research

The second way to crush 99% percent of Etsy shops is to identify trends that are not on Etsy. Most shops look to EverBee, eRank, or Sale Samurai for these ideas. But to be a market leader and scale quickly, you need to stop chasing down other people’s listings. Trend research is crucial and knowing where and how to find trends is a science. 

Strategy Three: Have functional SEO

The third way to crush 99% of Etsy shops is to have functional, not pretty, SEO. One of the biggest reasons that our 2000-plus students see incredible results and changes in their traffic as early as one week after making changes is because of this tip. 99% of Etsy sellers are prioritizing the wrong thing when it comes to SEO. 

It can get confusing because Etsy’s handbook provides some SEO recommendations that are pleasing to the eye but they are not impacting the functionality of the SEO. Most people are shopping on mobile and you are not reading the titles in the search results. For functional SEO, we want to show up in as many search results as possible by having as many unique long-tail keywords. It does not matter how your title looks to a buyer if you are not showing up under the search results.

Strategy Four: Focus on your fit in mockups

Another important piece to focus on your fit in mock-ups. Most shops are using AI mock-ups and the problem with these is not only do they not look realistic but they are also terrible at showing an attractive fit. When it comes to print-on-demand, the fit can completely make the difference between converting a customer or not. Even if the font, colors, and graphics are trendy, if the fit is not great, someone is not going to buy it.

Strategy Five: Blow up your shop through social media

The last way to beat 99% of Etsy shops is to blow up your shop through social media. Many Etsy sellers are scared to do social media because they think that driving traffic to their shop will crush their conversion rate. They think that it will make them rank lower in search results and kill their shop. This is not true and by using social media the right way, you can drive great traffic to your shop. 

If you are using social media but are not seeing a lift in traffic, then you are not doing it right. In our brand new Ultimate Etsy Course, we go into free social media strategies in depth, because it is one of the easiest ways to get traffic. I have built two seven-figure businesses with organic social media traffic. I can tell you that 99% of Etsy sellers are not doing social media right. Social media can explode your shop and whether you use TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, or YouTube – depends on your product and your customer. We go over all of this in module four of the program!

Want a personalized game plan for your Etsy shop? Book a free call!

If you would like me and my team of coaches to dive into your Etsy shop, your listings, and do a competitive analysis of your products, make sure to book a free call with us! We now have a company of over 25 people and we have taught over 2000 Etsy sellers how to scale their businesses using corporate e-commerce principles. Make sure to use these five strategies to blow up your shop today! 

Links Mentioned:

📖 Download my FREE 16-step checklist

📞 Book a call with me to discuss your Etsy Shop and hear more about how I can help you through my program, The Ultimate Etsy Course and 1:1 Coaching!

🏆 Student Results

📷 Instagram