Episode 186 | STOP Selling Holiday Products on Etsy

Ready to thrive on Etsy? Then it’s time to stop selling holiday products on Etsy. If you’re a shop with less than 100 sales, then you need to remove all of the holiday products from your shop unless you’re a seasonal shop that only focuses on that one holiday. 

In this week’s episode we discuss:

[0:50] Why you shouldn’t be selling holiday products 

[1:10] Example #1 – Wee Whistle Pig 

[3:02] Example #2 – Bellwatt Designs

[4:22] Example #3 – Cozy Coorie Creations

[6:05] Example # 4 – Fun Stickery 

[7:27] Example #5 – Krypta Kitty Creations

[9:36] Common themes among all 5 shops

Why you shouldn’t be selling holiday products 

Holiday listings only have a lifespan of about four to 12 weeks. you work so hard to get traction on these listings and to drive traffic to them, and then they inevitably die out. So the fate of these holiday listings is for the traction to come to a screeching halt. Why would you try to get traction in your Etsy shop with listings that will die so quickly. 

Example #1 – Wee Whistle Pig

This first shop is called Wee Whistle Pig from Dallas, Texas. A lot of their products are focused on timely events like I stand with Texas, Protect the border, etc. Their strategy seems like they’re trying to hop on what is trending or in the news. This shop currently has 37 sales and was started in 2021. I’m also seeing that the most recent review was from 2022 so instead of trying to revive this shop, I would recommend starting a new shop instead. Instead of focusing on holidays, I would focus on a specific demographic like selling to rich Texans as we focus on customer first product second.

I would figure out how we can serve them for at least 4-7 years to drive up the lifetime value of the customer. Think about who they’re shopping for and what are their hobbies, interests, and passions that they spend money on already. I also suggest using the seven types of products framework. This isn’t about having seven different product types, it’s about having seven categories of purposes behind your listings. 

One example is the idea of a loss leader. The entire purpose of a loss leader is to get your order numbers up. A loss leader is one of the seven types, although it’s not the most important type. Let’s say that they put some of these listings into the new shop. They will need to make these optimized for mobile and desktop, add in site merchandising, Pinterest optimization and this type of customer would do well with our Facebook strategy too.

Example #2 – Bellwatt Designs

The second shop is called Bellwatt Designs. They are located in Albany, New York and 131 listings but only four sales and just one review. The shop has a lot of Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and some Christmas themed options. What we want to do is kill all of the holiday designs. I would not put holiday listings in here again until the shop has a minimum of 100 sales. The best listing in the shop in terms of design is this little bow bag. In terms of optimization, SEO needs to be redone. The listings need to be optimized for mobile and desktop. The 18 types of listing photos are missing. The pricing strategy is off in terms of the design. Think about what type of target market would appreciate this type of design. Maybe it’s dance moms or just moms of little girls in general. It might be a good idea to embrace the Mommy and Me Boutique idea. When creating the new listings do it in the right way with SEO, site merchandising, optimization for mobile and desktop, Pinterest optimization, the right listing photos, and more.

Example #3 – Cozy Coorie Creations

The third shop is Cozy Coorie Creations. It says cute stickers for all occasions. They’ve had one sale so far. It appears to be a pretty new shop. We have Christmas and we have Valentine’s Day listings. There is a total of nine listings and four of them are holiday. We want to update all of these photos, the editing. the mock up. It’s too white on white, there needs to be a lot more contrast showing these stickers in many different ways, showing the utility, showing the size and the scale. 

We don’t have proof of concept that this listing photo is going to be a winner because it hasn’t sold yet. We really only have two types of products here. I would focus on two things. One is B2B since they do have the ability to make these themselves and can probably customize.

I would also focus on personalized functional stickers.These are things that would help people save time or make money or both. Examples of this could be pantry organization stickers, stickers for teachers to use at work, it could be stickers for college students to stay organized, it could be stickers for busy, wealthy moms who have their kids in 5000 activities. Not all sticker customers are the same. We will want to redo all of the SEO, the descriptions, all of the photos. A great marketing model that I would do for a sticker shop like this, since they have such a small assortment would be a drop model where they do collections that are released weekly just to get things ramped up quickly which in turn builds up anticipation and urgency and scarcity so they sell out every time. Caveeat is you have to have a following to do that so you’ve got to show kind of some examples of what you have before you can move into that model. 

Example # 4 – Fun Stickery 

The next one is another sticker shop called Fun Stickery. One of the biggest things I would say is that we’re not good enough yet to be showing our stickers only in this way without sharing what the size and scale is. For example, the background of a mock up, it can either add value, take away value or stay neutral. If it’s staying neutral, it’s not adding value, it’s taking away the value. What the person is putting these stickers on could really help the value proposition. We have way too much Valentine’s in here and that’s because we only have 64 listings and 36 sales. The shop is significantly limiting their potential revenue by sticking with only stickers. They’re kind of funny and quirky, some of them have writing on it. Maybe the stickers just become a loss leader. That’s probably the direction I would take the shop. I think the shop has the potential to really build a brand. Sticker brands, they don’t last forever but lifestyle brands have a much longer runway.

I would get a bit more focused on who we’re targeting and focus on stickers that are relevant to a specific generation or a specific style of humor. Then I would expand into other generations. I would start with one generation that maybe has higher discretionary income right now and then I would start expanding with different aesthetics that target different generations and resonate with them in different ways. Big key is nailing the product mix first before you go out and do that. 

Example #5 – Krypta Kitty Creations

The next shop is Krypta Kitty Creations. They have 67 listings and 43 sales. I see a lot of heart patterns, Easter, Christmas digital bar wrappers, mock ups, phone wallpapers. One thing I would do with the shop killing all the holiday and not doing more of it until we really get some strong evergreen best sellers in place. I would actually take a look at the last 20 sales, I would look at what else they’re favoriting and what else they’re buying on Etsy and lean into that direction. 

We are pretty much a blank slate with only 43 sales, you’re not locked into anything at this point so just because your last 20 sales were for a specific customer doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the most profitable customer. With these mock ups as well. I want to point out. There’s way too much open background space and I think it’s because the shop owner is trying to show as much of the product itself as possible. Going forward, I’d say like 95% of the mockups, so we should change out. 

Another thing with the shop is the overlays. Overlays should add to your value proposition, which means they communicate value. The script, it’s a little bit fine, it’s a little bit hard to read, there’s a lot of green space around it, it’s not very bold. I would say this is hurting the value of this and it says relaxing images to unwind with so these are just images to look at.

It looks like there are also worksheets here. Instead, they could say a 50 page mental health workbook. The circular overlays were not the right choice here, when you’re putting a lot of words on something and they’re long words, you don’t want to use a circle because there’s gonna be a lot of space on the top and the bottom.

It also mentions convenient and quick which is not necessary. Simplify your week with my no fuss planner. That makes you seem like a very small shop. We want to be a business and say our instead of my. Then this mock up that just says my mini weekly planner doesn’t show the customer what they’re getting. That doesn’t make me feel like my life is going to be planned out very well. It would be better to show the actual product so that the customer can visualize how this will help them. What I would do with this shop, I’d want to talk with them about their last 20 sales and see what those were to see if that is even a profitable customer to target. 

Common themes among all 5 shops

Some big themes with all five shops is that they have relatively small numbers of listings, and they were trying to use holiday products to get traction but it wasn’t working. It’s a lot of starting and stopping to where a full sprint can never really take place. In my program, the Ultimate Etsy Course, I teach what I call the sprint which is really strategies to get your next 3000 to 4000 sales. You can book your free call here.

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