Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, in this short class, I will share with
you some tips that every reseller should not be forced selling
on the platform. I've been selling on Etsy
for over three years now, and I made over
$150,000 in sales. We have all of my stores. So I think a lot of experience
along the way. If you're just about
to get started, be sure to check out the steps as I covered a lot of topics including SEO in here,
seeing the class.
2. 1. Etsy is Not Your Website - Follow Their Rules: Hi. So the first step is x is not your website and you have
to respect the rules, meaning that if you're going
to sell on a marketplace, the website is not yours. So obviously you will have to respect the rules
of the platform. So you'll go on etsy.com. You will scroll all
the way to the bottom. And in here you will click
on policies on this. And here we have
the seller step. Here when we have multiple tabs. Now, the most important ones are obviously the intellectual
property policy, handmade policies. So we know exactly what you can sell if you're going to sell handmade items and
prohibited items policy. But usually the problem is the intellectual
property policy. So even if you're going
to click on it and if you want to read it or not,
it is common sense. So you're not allowed to sell something that
doesn't belong to you. So if you're going to
sell a t-shirt, e.g. we have our design that
has a brand banned. Some characters from
some movies or whatever. You're not allowed
to sell any of this. Now, a lot of people are setting copyrighted
material on Etsy, and that's because
it sells well, but you're running on a timer, meaning that eventually
you will get copyright strikes and your
account will be banned. And you're, you won't be able
to sell anymore on Etsy. So if you think that's worth it, you can do it, but you
shouldn't do this. It's not worth it. It's a great opportunity
for everyone. And you shouldn't
break the rule. So if I just go in here and
I type this nice shirt, e.g. I. Will find a bunch of products that have
copyrighted material. So lots of on 280 K. So
that is a lot obviously, but you shouldn't do this. They will eventually
get removed. They will upload these again. They will make a lot of sales. Their shop will get
closed, and that's it. You shouldn't sell
copyrighted material. So you're, you will risk
your business 100 per cent. I've been selling on
Etsy for three years. I started in the beginning to
sell copyrighted material. I had no idea what I was doing, and I had issues
with Disney designs. So I tried to upload some Disney designs
on some T-shirts. After a few months, I got a copyright strike. Your store won't get closed
after one copyright strike. But if you get multiple copyright strikes
in a short amount of time, the account will get
closed permanently. So do not risk your store. It is not worth it. And something
else that is important. Once you open your
Etsy store and you start having all the
followers and sales. Make sure that you
create your own website. Eventually, you add
that website to your Etsy store so you can drive the traffic
in there as well. So if something happens in
the future with your store, you can have a backup in there. Also add some social media pages that will help you
with this as well.
3. 2. Starting Out & Your Competition: Tip number two, starting
out and your competition. So before going
into any business, you should always check
your competition. This means that if e.g. we are going to sell
t-shirts, we should check. So let's say that I'm searching
for Father's Day t-shirt. Let's say Father's Day shirt. So we have to check our competition and see
exactly what they are doing. We will have to
check their prices. You have to see what the average prices by scrolling through these
listings in here. So you can have an idea. So we can see a lot of price
is $20 is 151-217-2914. On average. We can say that the average price
is somewhere around, I don't know, $15,
something like that. So you need to
price accordingly. Check your competition, see exactly their prices,
their products picture, what pictures they are using, what mockups they are using, their products title,
the description. So you have to check everything. I can just go on
this listing e.g. I. Can check how they
added their titles, how they did SEO exactly. Then I can just go into
their description. I have to check how they wrote it and what they wrote in here. So welcome to our story. Are they add the sizes? Please note washing
instructions. And in how many days they
will dispatch the order. So be sure to check your competition and see
exactly what they are doing. It is very important, very important
before starting out. So everyone should do this, no matter what you are selling,
check your competition. We showed that you
price accordingly. The pictures of your
products must be good. Description, title, and
that's pretty much it. Also take their store,
go inside the store, see exactly what they are doing. So you can just see the FAQ, how it is structured, the cover, the description, everything in here,
the shop categories, the products
categories, everything. So these mockups in here are
not professional at all. I recommend using
something professional, but the story is doing this
and it has a lot of listings. So that's why it's
doing really good. And yeah, you have an idea, check your competition,
whatever it looks nice, make sure that you
try to achieve the same or something similar
to that level of quality. So that's pretty much it when it comes to starting out
and your competition. And also something important
when you're starting out, you will need adds in
order to grow your store. You can make sales without
ads, without advertising, but make sure that you
have some budget for ads, at least $10 per day
for at least one month. So you can test
things out and see exactly what sells
and what doesn't.
4. 3. SEO & Overthinking: Tip number three, SEO
and overthinking. So after you will
open your store, you will try to do your best
to increase your sales. Obviously, you will
search for a lot of videos on SEO
and how this works. Seo is simple. I will explain it to you
in a very practical way. So you don't have
to overthink this. And you will try to do this and that in order to achieve
great results and so on. So SEO revolves around
keywords. What are keywords? Exactly what we are
typing in the search bar. If I type Halloween shirt, we have two keywords
in here, right? Halloween shirt. Okay,
So these are keywords. Now in your product. Let's just search for
Halloween shirt, e.g. and I will just
pick one of them. And you can see the title
of the product in here. So now we have two
types of keywords. We have short tail keywords, which are keyword is made
of two words, like this, fall short and long
tail keywords, which are made out of free
or multiple words like this. So this is a long-tail keyword. Now, why do you need to know? You need to use both in order
to get the best results. So you can see how this
specific store did SEO me here. So they tried to mention as
many keywords as possible in order to get as much traffic as possible within
that specific niche. So I need to add all
these keywords that are related to your
specific product. And how do you do that? Well, there are free
tools that you can use. The most popular one
is Iran, not com. You can just go on this website. You go into tools in here
and select keyword tool. And in the search bar, you will input the keywords that are relevant
to your design. So e.g. in here we
have grip it real, that's what the shirt says. So we have repeated real shirt. Just search for this. And we will have some stats for
this specific listing. The stats are low, but I searched for a very
specific design. So it is okay, the competition is low.
There is some traffic. Now. I will just go and you can just check here if you want
most popular tags, you can use this instantly
in your listening. But you can just
go on the bottom, sort these by daily views. And we have the top one
which has 97.4 views a day, which is a lot, which is
this exact same design. And you can see exactly
what tags they used. These are the tags underneath the title and the title, right? So you can just copy them or
use them in your listing. And you will achieve
good results when it comes to this part, when it comes to tags and the specific keywords
using the title. But if you do only this and you're not
advertising or anything, you won't get traffic
to your listing. You might be lucky
and get some traffic like one day to 123 daily views. But that is not a lot. You need to do something to increase the
traffic to your store. And the only way to do that in the beginning is by running ads. So you need adds in order
to grow your store. So just because you did this and you are not
finding your product in the top listings
on the first page. This won't help you out. You can do that easily. So you need traffic. Traffic is the most
important factor when it comes to
listing to make, to make your specific product
rank on the first page. So you cannot achieve
that only by doing this. Just so you know. So this is simple. Seo or the keywords
will help you out. Because the customers will find your product when they
will input these keywords, but they won't find it
if you don't run ads. If you run at, your
product will be found when you type
this specific keywords. So keep in mind, use the
keywords that are best for your specific product at as many as possible
in the title. You can check your competition from Iran, copy them from here. Also include the tags as well, which are pretty much the same keywords in the title you should
include in the tax. That's a basic rule. And then start running ads. And once you do that,
you will see if that specific product that you
have has potential or not. So it's simple. Traffic is the most important factor when
it comes to SEO. Then orders will help
you out as well. Favorites will help
you out as well. But traffic is king. It doesn't matter if
you have a website on Google and you try
to rank it on Google, traffic is what will
make that website rank. As long as the
keywords are in there. Traffic is king.
5. 4. Don't Emotionally Attach Yourself to a Product: Tip number four, don't emotionally attach
yourself to a product. So let's say that
you want to set a specific product and you're trying your best to make sales. You probably started ads. You spend like $100 on ads, e.g. and you made no sales at all. You shouldn't bother with
that product anymore. So if you spend a
lot of money on it and you try your
best to make sales. That product won't sell. It's simple as that, and you are wasting your
time and money on it. There's plenty of
fish in the sea. You can sell a lot of products
on Etsy that will sell, well, just give up on that specific product
that is not sending anymore. So you can just focus your
energy on something else, and that's what you should do. So I can just inputting
here something, let's say input
Father's Day shirt. And I want to go, let's
say on the 8th beach. And I will select
something random in here. Let's say that we have a
product like this and we made no sales aren't even this even though this one
makes auto sales. But I'm just giving it, I'm just giving an example. This specific product is not making any sales. You
shouldn't focus on it. Usually, if you spend
like $10 on ads on a specific product and
you make no sales for it. Usually, that means that that specific product
won't do any good. So you should stop wasting
money on a product. If you spend $10 or more and
you made no sales at all, you should stop advertising that product. That's
how simple it is. If a product is good and has the potential of
becoming a best seller, it will make sales within your first few dollars
that you spent. So if you spend $10,
you might know sales, just stop wasting your time and energy on their
product and move on.
6. 5. Find The Right Supplier: Tip number five, find
the right supplier. So if you're going to sell
a product on Etsy, e.g. and you want to buy stock from a supplier. You
want to buy e.g. 100 units of something and you
want to sell them on Etsy, make sure to search for multiple suppliers.
Why am I saying this? Because some suppliers will
give you a better price. Some suppliers will give you the option to negotiate
if you buy a lot, and this matters a lot to you, you'll lose a lot of money
if you're just going for the best option or the
most popular option out there in the market. Just because everyone says so. And you will find out that
you will lose money actually because there is a
better option out there. So I'll just give
you the example. In my case, I sold
t-shirts, Right? The company that I used in my first year was
this one principle. And this was a short, this is the most popular shirts
that is being sold on it. And look at the price. This
is a price without shipping. Keep in mind. Now, I found another company that offers the same T-shirt, pretty much the same
printing quality, and look at the price here. So this company has
multiple suppliers. So we can just choose
whatever we want from here. We have multiple options. But look at the price. So
it's $8.5 plus shipping. The difference is huge, so it is more than $4. So it is the exact same shirt. Just so you know,
it is more than $4. Imagine that you
make 5,000 sales. Multiply that by four. It's more than four, but
let's multiply it by four. You're losing 20,000, $20,000 by using this supplier
instead of this one. So that's why I'm saying that this is
extremely important. You will lose a lot of
money in the long run if you're going blind
lane to enter this, always search for
multiple options. Choose the best option. And this will help you a lot.
7. 6. Respect Your Customers: Tip number six, respect
to our customers. I just opened the
demonstration here. So we will just
assume a situation so you know exactly how to
act in this situation. There will be times when your customers would
leave bad reviews. Pretty much for no reason. I had this happen with
one of my digital stores. I sold the design to
a specific customer and they couldn't
download the design. This is an IT issue,
a server issue. It happens once in a while. And what you can do is just send them that
design via e-mail. So there's the option. There will be times when
these customers won't contact you at all and they will
just leave a bad review. And that's pretty much
what they will do. In this situation. You can just contact
that specific customer, ask them what went
wrong, helped them out. And after you help them out, be sure to type a
message like this. So I already made a template. So you can just
make a coupon code and give them a coupon
code afterwards. So I wrote to thank
you for your purchase. I hope everything works out well for you in
the end as a gift, here is a sample cent
off coupon code. You input a coupon code that
you make in your store. You can use this coupon code on any of your future orders. Have a wonderful week. So in this situation, they will feel probably
guilty in the end, and they will buy from
you in the future, there is a chance to do so. Some of them won't
sum of the world, but it is your duty as
a business owner and to act professional.
Always do this. When an issue like
this will arise. Just proceed with caution
and be professional because they will pretty much tell this to their
friends and so on. And where the word
of mouth is king. And it is, it is always
best to be professional. So you're just going to
marketing, sales and discounts. Create a promo code, and you will make your coupon in here for this specific
situation, e.g. you will make it for a
longer period of time. So they can use this
whenever they want. E.g. in here your input, the coupon code that you want. You will make it select the specific products that you want to apply this
coupon code to. And only the specific
customers that have this coupon code will be
able to get the discount. So that's how you proceed. In this situation. Always respond to your customers
no matter what they ask, do not ignore your customers. Because this matters a lot. You must keep your
reputation and have a five-star average
rating for your store. This will increase your sales obviously because it
gives credibility. So keep in mind, always respect
your customers and as our on-time and
treat them well.
8. 7. Prepare in Advance for Holidays: Tip number seven, prepare
in advance for holidays. So when it comes to
preparing for a holiday, let's say that in
a month from now, we will have Halloween, right? If you have Halloween
designs in your store, you should already make
a sale for your store, let's say at 10% off sale, but always make sure that
you're getting the same profit. So we all know that these
cells are just for aesthetics. That's how marketing works. But in the end, we
make the same profit so we adjust the prices. You will also have to
change your announcement. So I can just click
on Edit shop in here and change this to, let's say, 10% of
Halloween sale. You can grab anything
at a discount. So it can just type something
simple. It doesn't matter. Just make the announcement
because everyone that follows your specific
store will be announced, will get a message or
notification for it. So they will know
that you have a sale. Also, the new customers
that will get into your store will see this,
that you have a sale. So always do it is
at least one month before the actual holiday
and star marketing. So you're going to
see ads in here. You will go to manage your
budget at least $10 a day. You will have to select
at least $10 a day. Manage advertised
listings in here. And you will select the products that fit the specific
holiday that is coming next. So one month prior to a holiday, you should always
start marketing. You should make a
sale for your store. So at 10% off sale, whatever, whatever period
you want to cover. So you'll go into marketing,
sales and discounts. Ran a sale percentage
of you input here, 10% or whatever
percent you want, but just make sure that you
make the same profit, right? So you don't want
to run a 10% off sale without adjusting
your prices, make sure you have the
same profit margin, increase your prices, and then apply the discount.
You can do that. Select the duration of the sale, the sale name, and
select the products, and that's pretty much it. But just make sure that you prefer it preparing in advance. Because this will
help you with SEO. You will get traffic
prior to the holiday. By running Getty ads, you will increase the ranking of the product because
you'll get traffic before the actual holiday and
you will also make sales for organic traffic
and also for ads. So this will help you both ways.
9. 8. Income Variation: Tip number eight,
income variation. You should note that the
best time of the year to make sales are the
last three months, the last quarter, which are October, November, and December. We have a lot of good
holidays in here. And we have Christmas, which is the most important one. So if you just scroll
in this article, you will see this chart. And you will see that
in the last quarter there is always a
spike in sales. Then it drops, spike, it drops, a spiky drops again. So it is totally
normal if you're making a lot of sales in the last quarter and you're making way lower
sales for the year. But there is a way
to counter this. You must add products that
fit each specific holiday. So e.g. if we sold T-shirts, you must have, like this store has t-shirts for every
occasion throughout the year. So we have t-shirts that are in Evergreen niches like pregnancy because it happens all the time. Have birthday shirts, summer. Here we have the holidays,
Valentine's Day, St. Patrick, Easter,
fourth of July, and so on. So it is best to add
products or designs or t-shirts or whatever
you're selling for each specific holiday. So you have a chance of making sales throughout
the year as well. And not only in
the last quarter, this is the best way to do it.
10. 9. Never Stop The Ball Rolling: Tip number nine, never
stopped the ball rolling. Once you start to
already store and you start making sales, be sure to always keep
improving your store. So if you have like 50 products or 100 products and you're
making sales, you're pleased. I understand. But you must keep in mind that if you have a best seller that is doing well
right now, e.g. that best seller might not
sell well in the future. So the sales will decline. If you have a new
design, it will peak. And at some point that design
won't sell well anymore. So you have to add another
best seller to make up for it. So you have to add
more products. That's why I always
recommend adding more products your
store on a daily basis, or at least be consistent and add something
new every week. That is really important
for your store because your store will
get massive in a year. You can look at this store, e.g. it has 800 designs. So that is 800
products. Same thing. That is a lot. That's why you should add as
many products as possible. If it is easy for
you to add those, if you're making
handmade products, e.g. I. Totally understand. You can add like one product a week or two products per week, new products, I mean,
that's totally okay. But if you have an easy
business model like this one, always work on your
store and grow your store at a few a day. And you will have a
huge store over time. So this my recommendation, always work on your store and always keep improving
your store.
11. 10. Shipping: Tip number ten and the last one we want to talk about shipping. Now, it is very
important that you do not overcharge for shipping. Your customers are
used to paying the same shipping price
for the same product type. So if they buy a t-shirt, they are used to paying four
to $5 for the shipping, not overcharge it when I ask $1 for shipping,
That's too much. So always stick with the average shipping prices.
Check your competition. So e.g. this t-shirt, it should be like
$4 and it is $4. This is the average shipping
price for t-shirts, e.g. for hoodies, it is $9. So always do this, stick with the average
shipping prices. Our customers are used to those. If you charge more,
you might lose a sale. So do not do that if you want to increase your
product's price, but don't increase
the shipping price. Something else. You can also do free shipping if you want. You can include
the shipping price in the product price
and make up for it. That works. It is a common practice. So you have this option as well. So these were my ten tips. Please keep them in mind
and they will be useful to. Also, if you want to check
any other AP courses, you can check my profile and you will see a
print-on-demand course, as well as a digital
download scores. If you want to sell print on
demand or designs on Etsy, I wish you the best of luck.
Mihai C., Plan before acting.
