ETSY Selling Advice That You Should Avoid in 2023

foreign welcome back to another episode of The Rock your brand podcast and I am fired up because today we are going to be talking about something that uh well needs to be talked about and that is Etsy selling advice that should be avoided in 2023 and we're going to be answering some true or false questions and we're going to be giving our thoughts on these questions now some of these could have worked a year ago three years ago it might have been a good thought a few years ago but now what we need to do is we need to see is this advice that we're hearing is it stuff that is relevant now is it outdated uh is it still working now and we're talking about things that you're probably hearing on a regular basis depending on who you're subscribed to whether it's on YouTube or whether it's a podcast or whether it's a Blog and so what we wanted to do is come on this podcast and this this video and really go through what we're hearing and we're gonna go through a bunch of different questions and Chris I know that there's a lot of content out there before we jump into the first question that we're going to be answering and really deep diving on what would you like to say about some of the things that you're hearing and some of the I guess some of the new Sellers and what they're faced with now with all of this content that we have available at our disposal I think it's actually this this is a good time to kind of break things down because Etsy has been around for a while now and things that used to work don't work anymore and things that worked a week ago might not work anymore right and so with time in anything right like you and I have backgrounds doing a lot of different stuff we've been really involved in the e-commerce World we've seen systems move and change right SEO search engine optimization if you think about creating content for websites that process is very different than it was 10 years ago and SEO for products creating products listing products running ads whether or not you should do that all of that stuff changes why because ecosystems change and Etsy is an ecosystem so some of the things that were really good ideas two years ago are terrible ideas now and some of the things that were terrible ideas two years ago are the way to go now just because of how the system has moved and changed and so we have to constantly be conscious of the fact that these things are changing and there's a lot of things that I'm seeing Scott that that are myths that really no one should be paying attention to or they have a little grain of Truth in them and you and I have talked about some of these in the past the past right where somebody goes well Common Sense would say right okay but now let's think about what etsy's job is right Common Sense would say if I stuff all these keywords into a title then I'm definitely going to rank for all of them well Etsy might be more concerned about customer experience or like actually somebody being able to find the product and so even though it's Common Sense we have to balance what we think with what Etsy is thinking to arrive to some of those things and so a lot of this stuff changes over time we wanted to take the time to sit down and answer some of the common things you know basically just give you a true or false and then an explanation of that of some of the things that we're seeing pop up and give you our interpretation of whether they're a good idea a bad idea or just not worth pursuing does that make sense yeah no I again I think it's confusing for a lot of people and also we need to kind of break it down and see like okay what here here makes sense and also what pertains to where you are right now and I think that's what we are going to be addressing here so that's what we're going to be discussing here we've got a bunch of these to go over uh I will say this if you are listening to this on the podcast you can always head on over to our rock your brand Facebook group at brandcreators.com forward slash group and that is where all the cool kids hang out at least that's what I've been told so you can go on head on over there and uh and watch with us there or you might be on YouTube right now and that's another another uh good place for cool kids to hang out when they're watching this live stream if they're watching the podcast so all right Chris let's go ahead and uh let's let's go ahead and dive into the first question so I am going to ask you this question and I want you to give me a true or false and then from there I want you to elaborate a little bit on why it's true or false so the very first question is Etsy is too saturated and all the good niches are taken true or false false I guess the first question is what is a good Niche right and so the the most obvious lowest hanging fruit like a wedding or baby right if we use those as the the big overhead overarching things as a niche then yes those two things have a lot of competition in them right but when we're thinking about competition we're thinking about niches the thing I think Scott that most people Overlook is that we need to understand one what our number is and you and I have talked about this in the past right even a very low competition low volume Niche could be the right Niche for somebody but in the case of a high competition high volume niche if I want to make five million dollars the first year in the wedding space is that possible yes is there a lot of competition that would stop that from happening yes but the numbers are still there and so we would just have to do the work and when it comes to niches whether we're talking about Etsy Amazon building websites right the the thing I think that a lot of people Miss is it's all about the entry angle so if we want to be in the wedding Niche and we say hey wedding t-shirts are over saturated well that's one product type let's look at the other things that people need for weddings right is it a planner okay digital planners for weddings might be oversaturated is it party favors is it placemats is it whatever right and if we can find one or two products that are being underserved in that market then we can make our way into an over saturated Niche right something that you would otherwise stay away from the other side of that is once we get our foot in the door our job is to then start launching products and building our brand and our audience and by doing that as we start to launch more and more competitive products we're able to conquer even really competitive niches right the thing I would say there the caveat that I would make for that is okay um unless you're really passionate about a hyper competitive Niche like weddings is there something else that you could launch in just to make your life easier and to not even have to worry about that the answer is almost always yes if your thing is weddings and you love weddings and that's what you want to do there's absolutely a way to get into that Niche on Etsy but if it's just one of many things that you're interested in my suggestion would be yes take a look at a less competitive Niche unless you really really love the wedding stuff right so you can definitely Rank and compete in a competitive Niche it's a matter of finding the way to get your foot in the door but if you don't have to to still reach your goal then I would probably go that route does that make sense yeah no 100 and I'm gonna go with faults as well and the reason why is because like you said I actually think that it's easier to enter a more saturated competitive Niche because there's ways that we can sub Niche down so instead of us going after the entire wedding Market or baby Market we can go after a small portion of that of that audience and really just go after maybe it's invitations or maybe it is planner templates but they are for the bachelorette party or whatever right like so maybe I am going to just sub Niche and drill down versus going after the entire Niche and again like Chris said if you're passionate about something why not go after it and the thing is is with what we're doing on Etsy is we're a lot of times creating design right so we're creating designs that are unique so that makes us be able to create things that not everyone else is selling now it might be similar but it's not the exact same thing or at least it shouldn't be so when I hear uh people saying that it's over saturated and there's you know all the good niches are taken well that's just to me that's a negative mindset we have to go at this thing like if you are interested in that Niche and you feel that you can add value and you would have fun it's the other thing if you would have fun creating products for that Niche then I say go for it all right and that's that's my response to that if anyone says well yeah it's just too saturated you know all the good niches are taken I'd be like no they're really not because we have a lot of opportunity to drill down and really go into these sub niches and then we can level up and go into those other ones once we start getting established all right so let's move on to the next question that we have here or the Etsy selling advice that we should avoid in 2023 and the true and false is here that we're going to be doing so here is the second one I wanna I wanna send your way Chris okay you should choose random niches and find Trends to build your Etsy shop from so what do you think on that true or false false and we actually just got a comment Scott that said the biggest challenge I see when people open a business whether it's online or brick and mortar is that they want to be everything to everybody niching down is key and that I think is the thing that a lot of people are missing in this like Niche versus product debate right when we were just talking about niches being competitive right one of the things especially in the Etsy world that I see people saying is oh selling T-shirts is competitive t-shirts aren't a niche t-shirts are a product who is the person that is buying that t-shirt right that is your Niche if it's a fishing t-shirt fishing is the niche and if we focus on that we're much more quickly and easily able to scale our business so I would say Scott this is absolutely false can you find Trends in your space and pursue them yes should you go after random trends no why because they are Trends definitionally they are going to go away right the theoretically Scott could somebody stop being interested in fishing yes is all fishing interest going to go away in our lifetimes unless all the fish go away no right there's still going to be people who are interested in that how many people a year now are buying pet rocks how many people a year are buying Tamagotchi yeah there's still a handful of people who are like Tamagotchi enthusiasts Which Scott do you even know what a Tamagotchi is I don't I don't so I I think you were a little too old for that and your kids are a little too young for that so I don't know if you remember in the early 90s they were like it was like a little keychain video game that you had like a monster on and you had to like feed it and stuff right they were huge and then you had pogs you had all of these things right no one uses them anymore yeah you can find a handful of people buying them on eBay but they've gone away so if we're chasing a trend be it a very specific design be it a funny cultural moment right uh you know Will Smith slapping Chris Rock t-shirt or whatever right like that is going to wane over time what's not going to wane over time is interest in a niche and if we can focus on that especially a niche that we're passionate in then we're able to create a sustainable business which is really what this should be about if you're just selling on Etsy to make a couple bucks then maybe you do that but if you're looking to replace your nine to five income or you're looking for something to help offset your retirement or to help pay medical bills or whatever this is you want that sustainable long-term income the other thing with this is it's a lot less competitive to not have to chase the trend oh end your work multiplies over time right so if we spend all day creating a a trend following product when that Trend goes away we've lost that work if instead we have a niche that we are passionate about not just a random thing that we all care about but a niche that we are truly passionate about right for example we're really passionate about weddings or whatever it is then we have the ability to create Evergreen products that are going to create that sustainable revenue and we have sustainable energy in that Niche to continue creating products right so it's not something that we are going to get burned out on and it's not something where the products are going to get burned out so I would say anybody that's saying chase you know launch a product in a random Niche just throw up anything or chase a trend I would say that's bad advice and that is false yeah I'm gonna go with you on that one I mean you and I are kind of cut from the same cloth because while we think a lot alike and you know for years we've never been about that and for years people have been chasing Trends and you know print on demand isn't something brand new like people have been doing print on demand for a long time whether it's on their own website whether it's running Facebook ads to a you know a Teespring account it's been going on a very very long time and that was what people were doing is just chasing the trends and we still hear it to this day and I see it other so-called gurus out there saying basically just do your product research looking for top products that are coming that are coming up right and and they're starting to Trend and people are going to piggyback on those and then everyone's going to jump in and you'll see it once one of the gurus mentions this this shirt 150 200 people instantly go on out and start trying to launch the shirt even though they're not even in that Niche so that to me is 100 bad advice I would not follow that advice and you know yes could you jump on one of these and it could take off sure but it's probably going to go away and then guess what you're going to try to find that next that next golden ticket if you will and I don't like building a business in that way because you're not really building a business and not to mention when you have a customer that comes in that buys that one t-shirt or that one mug that you were able to get that thing to take off for a little while those people aren't ever going to probably buy from you again because it's not similar it's not related so for me personally I think that's bad advice I would not follow that advice and again that's our opinion that's what we you know that that's what we live by um and also it just makes it so much easier to now know that you can just focus on that one Niche and even if it's that one Sub sub Niche and then you're going to level up a little bit and kind of start to to Branch out like the wedding Niche like we were just talking about if we start there with bachelorette parties and we're going to make our our shop kind of start honing in on that that doesn't mean that that's all we're ever going to sell to the wedding market so yes I think that is very very bad advice and uh I would not follow that advice but again that's just my opinion Chris's opinion you can do what you want but uh to me it makes a lot more sense to build a product line from products that are going to be selling now but well into the future so Scott what are your thoughts and we just got this question uh from somebody who's joining us on YouTube right and if you guys aren't doing that you can do that anytime by subscribing to the YouTube channel anytime we go live you'll get that notification or by going to brandcreators.com forward slash group we had a question that's kind of related to this right that is if you're new can or should you do Trends just to get your first few sales what are your thoughts on that versus building a store around trends should you jump on a trend if you're new to try to get some some momentum well okay so let's let's discuss that real quick right so if we're gonna go after a trend is that Trend something that is in your Niche that you want to get started in so you have to think longer than just if that product starts to sell well you have to think about what comes next what's the next product you're going to sell that customer at least that's how I think so I'm not going to be just looking through I mean I have the same the same tools that you guys have right and the main one that I'm using is ever be and I go in there all the time and I I do I do research videos for YouTube right to help people understand how to do product research but even though I'm finding these really cool products and I would love to be able to have the sales that they have I'm also keeping myself disciplined to say but you're not going to do that because yeah if you had that one product and you're able to compete with that person that's doing really well which is going to also take work so if you see a product that's selling very well you need to understand in order to compete with them you gotta you got to get some sales out of the gate pretty quickly and a lot of times it's going to take some Etsy ads maybe some Facebook ads and things like that but my personal thought is if it's something that's trending in my Niche then yes I will definitely consider that but if I'm just starting and I'm looking at stuff that's trending I'm gonna say okay is that something that I'm going to be able to tap into but then also am I going to be able to build a brand around it after the trend kind of dies down does that make sense Chris it doesn't I think the the one area and I don't think it's a disagreement I think it's more of a clarification the one area where I would be really careful with that is for new shops right like the exact wrong time to try to chase a trend is when you are a new shop why definitionally a trend is something that a lot of people are interested in right like I don't know the actual definition but I think we can agree that you know I'm not I'm not Webster I'm A Schaefer but we can you know we can kind of make that an agreement right Trends definitionally have a lot of interest that also means there's a lot of people creating products for that Trend right if you are a new store it is harder for you to compete with the people who have the resources the sales history to crank out a bunch of products related to that Trend so the same amount of time and effort that you're going to put in as a new store to hopefully get some sales on that new trend right you could put into Evergreen products that are easier to rank for and are going to bring you sales forever I would rather see you put that time and effort there right I would rather see you make one sale a day for the next two years on a product that you put that time and investment in then 60 sales over the next month and then nothing after that does that make sense because that's the thing that people don't it's a it's it's a Time balance thing right if I have 20 20 minutes today to put up a new Etsy listing should I invest that in something that is a trend that I might make a few sales on right now or should I invest that same amount of time and energy into creating something that's going to get me sales for the next two years I would rather see you do that when you're a more established store if you have a trend and you have a fun way of bringing that into your Niche your Market that's when I would take the flyer on it right don't build your store around it don't do it when you're just getting started but if you're established you have steady sales coming in you know that you're going to be able to rank for it because you have sales history and Etsy will reward you for that then maybe take a flyer on it otherwise I would rather see you doing the Evergreen stuff does that make sense yeah 100 and you know I'm Gonna Leave You guys with this on this question and that is always always be thinking about are you going to be able to sell more to that same customer and that is huge and that might be a writer Downer because if you start to think along those lines now you have a customer that has purchased from you that might buy from you again in the future so now that people are favorite in your shop they're favoriting your items and now you put up a new listing they're going to get notified of that and now they're interested in that rather than you just saying like well I was able to jump in on a trendy product and I'm getting some sales right now but you're not going to be able to do nothing with it later so it's really a short-term mindset in my opinion Scott before we move on to the next myth one more thing on Trent are holidays Trends and should we create products for holidays true or false yeah I love that uh yeah so yes you should create holiday type products for your Niche now let me say that again for your Niche don't go after St Patrick's Day stuff in a in a completely different Niche if you're not in there right just because you see that oh well they're really selling well so I should probably do that but yes you should be planning and I actually did a full video on this on how to really do some holiday hacking and how to really plan out all of those holidays and do it 30 60 90 days ahead of time and then once you get a catalog here's the cool thing once you get a catalog of products inventory that you did for this year well guess what next year it's in there and it's ready to sell again so yes I definitely would be tapping into the holiday hacking strategy for sure all right let's go ahead and let's go to the next question here or the not even the question the next the next bit of advice that we're hearing out there all right so here it is you should stop using tags in your listings because they don't help you rank in 2023 and they don't help you get traffic so what's your thoughts on Etsy tags in your listings should you shouldn't you what do you think on that statement is that true or false do we have something stronger than false this to me and Scott we've seen this ourselves this is blatantly false are they less important as Etsy gets smarter yes are they unimportant no should you do them yes right should you spend all day worrying about getting the exact perfect tags no should you not ever touch them no you definitely should include tags on your listing it's got we've seen this with pay-per-click right running Etsy ads we weren't ranking or showing up even trying to pay to show up for some keywords went into the listing added as a tag Miracle of Miracles we started showing up right magic happened and we started showing up so whether or not it's the most powerful ranking factor or not take the 10 seconds 30 seconds maybe a minute to drop in those tags and fill it out even if it didn't rank directly for you right even if it wasn't the thing the most important thing which it's not right you have title description click through rate conversion rate all of these things that Etsy uses to determine how and when you rank for something it just is another data point and not taking the time to do it is hurting your sales I don't think I'm out of the box saying that right even if it only worked for ads it would be worth putting them in there right so I I don't know what your thoughts are on this but to me this is blatantly false yeah no again it's one of those things that if Etsy is giving us the ability to add something then we probably should add something right if they're allowing us to put tags in there we should put them in there now am I saying that you should spend a whole bunch of time getting all of the best tags and putting them in there no I mean I would put in enough time to where you're able to come up with a lot of long tail or other related types of keywords because that's really what we're doing and you always want to think about it this way at least I do is where I am putting any type of information in that listing is also being crawled by the Etsy search engine once again Etsy is a search engine for people that are searching to buy things okay it's a it's a a buyer's search engine which is amazing okay so if we are thinking about our description I mean heck we can even talk about our images images uh are also a place to where you could be found uh because you can actually add the title or the keyword in that in in where you're editing that now so there's some really cool stuff that we can do with that they're going to be searched for and found and helped with your listing so anything that we're able to write all right something into our listing we want to do it and like Chris said I wasn't sure how much weight that Etsy put into tags until I started looking at my Etsy ads as far as okay these things are starting to show that this was fi this person came from this keyword which was located in a tag so let me say that again when you go into the back end of your Etsy ads you can see the keywords that brought people there and you can also one little ninja tip here you can also turn them off if you see something that came in it was a very generic keyword and you're like I don't want to show up for that you you can turn that off by the way little ninja tip but you can also see that it will show you it came in from the title or or it came in from a tag and it'll show you exactly where it came from so when we say that yes tags are important and they do help your listing get indexed and get found then yes and I saw a question come in and it said that someone was told to leave their their tags alone for 30 60 or 90 days something like that now I am a fan of not going in there and playing too much and I do agree and I have seen this when you change your title it is definitely going to take you out of the indexing for a little while and then it'll bring you back that is definitely something so that's why you don't want to be playing around if you're not ranking uh you want to be careful with adjusting things right so get it close do your research up front plug it in and let it sit uh it's same thing as like a blog post or a YouTube video or anything like once you put it out there and it gets indexed you don't want to screw that up so don't go in there and mess around with it too much Chris what's your thoughts on that before we move on to the next one I there's not a lot of reason to go in and mess around with it um you know other than if you're getting the data back from something like Etsy ads and Scott I think I want to go to Etsy ads next just because we've touched on it a bunch of times um there there's no reason to go in and change your title and change your description and change your tags all of the time unless we see compelling data to the contrary right so if we're not getting the sales that we want out of a listing and somebody had asked about everbees uh tag analyzer right yes we're gonna go look at our competitors see what tags they're using that we aren't and potentially drop them in if we're getting a keyword that we see is converting to sales every time somebody clicks on it from Etsy ads are we going to add that to our tags yeah probably right like we'd be crazy not to and so when we have a data point then go in and change it but we don't need to be tweaking our listings and I don't think we have that on our list of things that we're hearing that's bad advice but constantly touching your listings is horrible advice regardless of of you know how old it is it's even more detrimental to new listings getting it up and letting it sit and get some Impressions is one of the most important things that you can do right and Scott the other thing on tags is we often hear and actually somebody over on YouTube had asked do we have to fill out all of the tags and my piece of General SEO advice would be always make it as long or as full as it needs to be and not longer so if you have 10 tags and those are the only ones that make sense fill out 10 tags the worst thing that's going to happen is you're going to find an extra one when you do a competitive analysis you're going to find one from pay-per-click then you have some spaces you don't even have to really worry about it right same thing I would say goes for the title do you have to fill out the full character count no stop when it stops making sense right same thing with the product description do I have to fill out the block until it gives me a red error and says you put in too many characters no fill it in with as much detail as makes sense and then go from there so I don't think you need to touch it often I don't think you need to totally totally totally fill it out and micromanage it and I don't think you need to worry about it that much but you do need to put in the things that make sense and once you do that let it sit until you have data that tells you otherwise does that make sense yeah no that's great great advice and uh that's exactly what we are doing so uh do do with it what you will all right all right so moving on let's go to the next one here Chris and I am going to this is going to be a good one so here we go Etsy SEO is the most important thing to get traffic to your Etsy products true or false Define Etsy SEO the answer is no right and it depends on how you're defining SEO writing a good product title filling out your tags getting a good product description and having a good set of images is important because it's going to be the thing that sets the foundation but going in and micromanaging it is not the thing that's going to get you sales right Scott we just talked about when we were talking about tags how it can actually be detrimental to go in and change things and so we're not we can't go in and micromanage it it's important to rank but it's not the most important thing the most important thing to me is once you get the chance in the Etsy algorithm that your product description is Well written not necessarily the thing that made you rank for the keyword right but when somebody actually gets to your listing do they buy and if we're focused on SEO right stuffing as many keywords in as possible in a human unreadable format that leads to a poor customer experience which leads to a lower conversion rate so I would say this is false with the caveat of if you're defining Etsy SEO as a good title a good description and a full set of tags then that that I would say is probably the the biggest important foundation piece in terms of once you've picked a product but going in tweaking it stuffing all your keywords in there that is false does that make sense yeah and here is what I am going to say to that it is false but it like you said it's it's kind of tricky right here's the deal what I am saying is if you are putting up a new listing you're gonna focus on your SEO title good images tags description filling in everything in the back end putting it in the right category like all of those things and that is all that you focus on that is bad advice because what really matters okay what really matters is getting sales through that listing and the more sales that you get through that listing your SEO doesn't even have to be that good I actually have seen this I've actually done uh I did a little case study with it or a little review of this one listing and it was not good and it was outranking most everyone else because everyone thinks that people are finding the listing from this one search term which is false there is so many different ways and you'll see that if you look in your analytics and you look in whether it's the beta search they have the keyword search now where you can kind of see the keywords that brought people over to your listings you also have it in Etsy ads which is another reason why we we like running Etsy ads even in the beginning because we get data back of what people are actually typing in we're not guessing and then we can start to optimize for that but SEO is important but it's not the only thing that makes that listing rank it comes down to sales and those sales are going to also come from like Chris said higher conversions what gives it a higher conversion well reviews do right because people are going to buy off of a review maybe and then also images which has part partly to do with SEO but a lot of people look at SEO as just the words there's more to it and I think that's what I wanted to say so when people are in the mindset like oh I just gotta find more tags and then I'm gonna I'm gonna magically appear on the top and I'm gonna magically get sales no that is false that is not what's going to happen because you can get on page one top of page one on day one wanna know how you run Etsy ads and you're going to get there and you're going to know real quick real quick I got traffic I didn't get any sales why is that maybe because you don't have any reviews yet or maybe because you know the the listing is poorly optimized as far as your images or you know other other factors so don't just say to yourself I just need to find those magic keywords and then everything is going to happen because it's really not you have to get sales through the listing that is like one of the most important thing to in order to rank and get traffic I think we could flip this myth on its head and make it true and I I want to walk through this with you just to see if this works Scott the the thing that people say when they say you have to focus on Etsy SEO is not the thing that people mean when they say focus on Etsy SEO right search engine optimization SEO means optimizing something to show up in a search engine right there's only so much we can do to do that that would be titles keywords whatever right but we have to also think about the goal of the search engine for Google that's to give you the piece of information for Etsy that's to give you the product that you are going to buy assuming you're the customer the person searching on Etsy right well how do they do that to First figure out if you're relevant yes they're looking at the titles and the keywords and whatever right all of the words that we tie been but then they're saying okay Chris has funny Barnyard chicken Scott has funny Barnyard chicken who sells more when I put it in front of a customer and to get even more advanced who sells more when I put it in front of a customer who has bought the stuff that Chris has bought right and so that's etsy's job and that's driven by conversion rates and sales right which isn't something we have direct control over so when people are saying that Etsy SEO is the most important thing Scott if I flip this on his head and say ranking in organic search is the most important thing to have long-term success on Etsy is that true yes yes if we can do that then yes we are going to have sales that are going to come in without even really needing to worry about your optimization as much on your SEO because it's already been done you've already been indexed you've already proven to Etsy that your product sells and people like it and then yes it becomes way easier and there's another question that we're going to answer or another piece of advice that we're going to be answering here shortly about should you still run ads you know when you are getting those sales and you are organically ranking which we'll address that here in a little bit but yes I would say it is that's the Holy Grail right like we want to show up in top of search and we want to show up for multiple multiple keywords all right and that will happen and that's the other thing I want to touch on as your listing becomes more seasoned and we mean seasoned it's it's older it's got history it's got more sales history through it you're going to also get index for more keywords all right and as that happens it starts to widen that net a little bit but if you are also going after products that don't have a lot of demand probably not going to get a lot of sales so one other little one other little thing there I wanted to bring up on that note all right so Chris I am going to answer another question or another myth we are going to bust this myth I have a myth right now that came in the chat that we need to address but I have to address this okay and that is you should not promote your listings or your shop on social media or any external channels other than internally within Etsy Etsy does not like it true or false foreign are you asking me I am asking absolutely false I thought you were just gonna tackle it because I know you're very passionate about this one so oh I'm gonna have my chance this is absolutely false with one small caveat right going back to talking about search engine optimization and needing to have a good conversion right one of the things that Etsy looks at right is whether when somebody comes to your listing do they buy and this is an example Scott of something that I mentioned uh at the beginning of this where I said there's some grains of Truth to some of these but overall it's hands down false right and so to me there is a grain of Truth in that if I go to Facebook and buy Penny clicks from Indonesia right nothing against Indonesia it's a beautiful country but they're not likely to buy stuff print on demand on Etsy right there's just not a big Etsy Etsy market for Indonesia sorry guys um then they're not going to convert which could hurt me however if I'm driving targeted traffic be that from my email list from my website from a Facebook ad that targets people who like fishing and I sell fishing stuff right that traffic does have a chance to convert and we've seen this over and over again with our own listings right the number one goal when you have a new listing on Etsy should be to get a sale via whatever means possible short of breaking terms of service right so like don't go to your mom and say hey can you buy my Etsy listing right like don't just don't do that but we should be driving traffic from as many different places as possible to try to get that first conversion why because the most important thing to Etsy is making the sale and if we can prove that that product sells then we can start to worry about the other ranking factors like conversion rate and dialing in our titles and tags and all of those kinds of things so if we're driving unqualified garbage traffic right that's when there could be a grain of Truth to that other than that Etsy loves external traffic especially if that external traffic converts because they didn't have to do anything to do it oh and by the way Scott have you ever heard of a program I know I'm getting really hyped up about this because this one drives me bonkers have you ever heard of a program called Etsy off-site ads yes I have Etsy buys external traffic to send to Etsy they have a team of marketers who spend more money on pay-per-click than I ever have in an annual you know on an annual budget they spend that every year specifically to drive external traffic from Facebook Pinterest Google all of these places to Etsy to then buy stuff on Etsy it's one of the number one things that I hear people complaining about right because they you pay a higher percentage when a sale comes from Etsy off-site ads and then those same people turn around and say well you shouldn't drive external traffic because Etsy doesn't like free traffic coming to their site and rewarding them by handing them money right like this is the thing that we have to think about so to me there is a grain of truth to this in that if I drive a million people from a website or from a place that are never going to buy my products then yes that will hurt your ability to rank why because Etsy thinks that you have a garbage listing because nobody wants to buy it if on the other hand we are driving qualified traffic from a Facebook group Facebook ads for people who are interested Google ads our email list our website right people who are interested in our stuff they're going to go buy it Scott what do we do when we launch a product a lot of times we send an email to our list and what happens we Skyrocket in the organic rankings why because Etsy goes hey 15 people came to this listing and five of them bought that's a 33.3 conversion rate that's blowing everybody else out of the water maybe we should test this in organic to see what happens does that make sense yeah yeah yeah no and guys I just want to give you guys a little bit of a heads up Chris is not yelling at you he is just very very excited I get that in the comments sometimes Chris on YouTube they you know they they basically say Scott stop yelling at me and I'm like no I'm not yelling I'm just I'm excited and I'm trying to get my point across because I'm like oh like stuff like this drives us crazy and here's the other thing I want you guys to know and why I feel this is 100 false from the from the the side of etsy does not want you to drive external traffic that was the statement that was made by this individual by the way and here is why this is completely false and Etsy basically says it and here's why if you go into your dashboard and we're approaching a holiday and it's getting crunch time to where the holidays coming to an end guess what Etsy is going to have a little thing at their banner and says hey you still got time to share your products on social media it literally says it I took a screenshot of it so I could share it in one of my trainings they literally say here is your link go share it but what this person saying is no they don't want you to do that they're going to penalize you if they see traffic coming from Facebook that's what they're saying no no no no no well Chris is saying is if you send any old traffic that's not interested in your products and it comes over and it doesn't convert as high as it would if it was good traffic yes it can hurt your conversions but what we're talking about is not the traffic we're talking about the viewers that saw it how many people purchased it all right so that's really what you need to understand here and if you have an email list that is built up of your past customers why wouldn't you send that to those people why wouldn't you send it out to social media if you have a social media group of people that are interested in fishing or whatever it is so please let's put that one to rest that one there really it's just it just kind of goosed me a little bit there I'm gonna I'm gonna try to take a deeper breath and and calm down but here's the other thing so Scott uh you and I we we did uh we did we jumped on with Miss Debbie uh back in October and we went into some of the changes and some of the updates that Etsy was making what happens when you run a sale or a promotion on Etsy what does Etsy do well generally Etsy is going to want to promote that and they're going to want to probably also because they have their own type of like retargeting and all that stuff they're going to get people to come on over to see that they send a push notification they send an email right what is email email is external traffic Etsy doesn't care if they came from Etsy search if they came from off-site ads if they came from the Etsy email or if they came from your email as long as they're buying the thing right and this is the thing where we were talking about ranking when when we debunked the the SEO is the most important thing myth right it's the traffic and the people buying so even if nobody bought Scott even if we were driving that traffic from Indonesia that was never gonna buy there's actually still a chance as long as we kept it under control that we would rank higher in the short term why because that's it going there's people interested in this we should probably put it in front of people if then when we get that chance we don't start converting that's when it becomes a problem right would I suggest anybody run ads to random people in Indonesia to promote your Etsy products no spend that same time energy and effort on somebody who might actually buy your product but if we're getting bodies to the listing that's step number one right step number two is then getting those people to convert Etsy doesn't care where they came from and actually if you save them from having to pay a marketing guy like me to run more off-site Etsy ads that makes them very happy right they don't have to take a higher percentage to pay for my inflated salary or whatever it is right they can just sit back and watch the automated sales roll in what they care about at the end of the day is that your listing makes sales when it's put in front of people and if that's the case they will put you in front of more people regardless of where those sales came from originally yeah yeah so guys if you are listening to this and you just saw that one little rant that we went on there it turned into a rant we didn't mean it to uh and that wasn't even on our on our list of things to discuss but I'm so glad that you guys brought that up please share that with anyone that you feel might be thinking that because that is absolute terrible terrible advice all right so let's go ahead and jump into the next little bit of discussion here that we have for you so let's let's talk about this one Chris you should wait until you have multiple products to launch your store your shop on Etsy true or false if you only have one product idea I might wait but if you are using the niche based approach this answer is false right as soon as you have something put it up why we've talked about this when we debunked the SEO stuff but you have to have time to rank and time to be put in front of people and if I wait until I have 10 products let's say Scott you know my my goal is to start making a sale a day in April right if I wait until April 1st because I know between now and April 1st I'm going to be able to create 10 products I'm then hoping that all of those products rank right away rather than spending the time today to create the product get it up and get it listed spend a little bit of time tomorrow creating a product getting it up and getting it listed right the sooner I have a product on Etsy be it one five ten five thousand I don't care the sooner I have the chance to get sales and perhaps more importantly up front data right if I'm turning on Etsy ads if I'm ranking or getting any Impressions on Etsy I then have a chance to get a sale and work me towards my goal if I wait until I have five products 10 products 20 products uh whatever it is right and somebody had asked us last week how many products do I need to be successful the answer is one if it sells really well right we have to get something up the other side to this is not just the the like wait and see side it's more of the momentum side if I have one product up and I start to see that I have a little bit of success with that do you even not think that that gives me a little bit more motivation to create product two or product three versus creating product one seeing it sitting there in a folder on my desktop and going yeah you know I should probably get eight more products up or nine more products up before April if I want to hit my goal yeah seeing that there's traffic right it's those little dopamine hits that you get when you play sales roulette you refresh the Etsy app or you hear that you Ching right there's a reason that that sound is built into that app to give you that dopamine hit of saying hey you did something good now go do more of it right it's their way of rewarding you for getting a sale and it gives you that little dopamine hit so if we can take those small steps towards those bigger goals we're always going to be better off hands down false if you only have one product idea and you're in a product product focused thing then yeah obviously you have to wait until the product is done if you're using the niche based approach you don't have to wait till you have every product you could create for your Niche to launch your store launch it with one get those Impressions get those early sales and get that data back and that will help you understand what other products you should be creating for those 10 products do you need new designs or do you just need more products with the same design on it if you put it up and it starts selling well then that changes how the next four or five products that you're you're coming out with are going to be produced right maybe we don't go create more designs right away I just take that same design that's already selling and put it on a pillow put it on a blanket put it on a t-shirt whatever it is that I haven't done already getting that early data getting those early sales is going to give you that dopamine hit is going to change how you set everything up just get started yeah no it that's 100 my answer as well as far as like are we going to wait no and to your point Chris it's like one product well that's only one product that you created with that one design you should be also thinking about that one design getting applied to multiple products and now what we can do is we can start launching products on a regular basis so even if you feel like you only have one right now get that thing out there get it get it indexing because it's going to take time for Etsy to start seeing okay is this product uh you know fit for this audience for this search term all of that those things happen over time and then it also allows you to start experimenting and start playing a little bit while you're adding more products but like Chris said if you don't have a niche that you're going to be serving products to where you're going to build out products for this Niche like if you're in the fishing Niche if you're in uh you know I don't know yoga whatever it is right you're going to be thinking about what are those other products and you're gonna be doing your your product research around that Niche so that's going to help you then you're just going to be launching products and it doesn't have to be oh I got to do one every day it just means you want to do them as soon as you can so you can start getting those things indexed because it will take time to get those indexed and the quicker you get them there list it you're going to be able to start getting indexed so I say don't wait get whatever you have done get it listed and get it up there because that's your greatest chance of starting to get some sales all right Chris let's move on to the next the next bit of uh discussion here and uh this one here is a good one as well so here we go you should wait to run Etsy ads until you have some sales and reviews true or false Chris false do we need explanation for that uh this one is false right like we we've talked about this your number one goal when you create an Etsy listing should be to get sales via any means possible within the terms of service right whether that's sending an email to your list whether that's posting on your Facebook page right don't post it to your personal profile post it to your Facebook page for your business because those are going to be the people who are actually interested in your Niche right it doesn't matter where we're getting that from we should be using every tool in the toolbox to get those early sales why early sales give us data early sales give us velocity and early sales give us that good Juju for SEO right we've talked about this kind of to death but the number one thing you need to rank on Etsy is sales how do you get sales without ranking you get traffic how do you get traffic Etsy ads right and it's got a lot of people ask should I look at social media ads before Etsy ads this is kind of the other set the other side of this no why because that little grain of Truth in the the myth about driving external traffic right that traffic will generally convert lower unless they're on your email list right but if we're just talking about a stereotypical Facebook ad the random person on Facebook who's clicking on your ad about phishing stuff is going to convert at a lower rate than someone who's already on Etsy typing in fishing shirt for my dad for Father's Day right yes that's how I type um you know that's always going to convert substantially higher so if our goal is to have sales a good conversion rate and traffic what does Etsy ad gets us all three of those it also gives us the bonus benefit of letting us know if we're optimized for the right keywords if we have the right tags right because Etsy adds data shows us where those visits and sales come from so if we then made a mistake in how we crafted our title or our description or we didn't put in all the right tags we're able to correct that up front and take advantage of the sales that we're getting early does that make sense yeah no 100 that's exactly what we've always said it's like if you wait to get sales it can happen but now we are relying 100 percent on organic traffic right unless you have an email list already built up well you're gonna use that obviously but I would still want to run those Etsy ads and I would not be waiting so we want to always be thinking about how do we get sales through the door and it's not just for the profit it's for the data and it's for everything else that comes along with it when you're starting to get that sales velocity we're also sending a signal in the Etsy algorithm that is going to help us rank organically so whenever I hear that it's kind of again it's it's not really a business mindset because and someone had posted in the comments and they said if you were having a grand opening for a brick and mortar store you would probably pay for a grand opening thing right and I remember uh years ago my father I used to work for his construction company we were uh you know we were opening a new location Nation not even a new a new store just a new location and we invested in you know having like people come in that were uh going to be catering you know whether it's hot dogs hamburgers whatever we had balloons that we had to buy we had uh you know actually I dressed up in the Owens Corning because we were in the insulation kind of in the window business so I always dress up going out by the road jumping up and down trying to get attention to bring people in uh so all of those things are going into bringing awareness to your products into your into your Etsy shop so it's the same thing if you have a brick and mortar if you have an online you have to get traffic and in the beginning if all you're doing is relying on SEO it's going to take a while and it might not actually happen because the people that you're competing with are getting regular sales and now you need to match their sales in order to get noticed so that's why running the at running the Etsy ads to me is critical and it's not waiting until you to you're getting sales you're actually doing them running them to get sales right and that is the mindset that needs to shift and I'm not saying you got to spend a hundred dollars a day we're talking two bucks a day five bucks a day we generally start at five dollars a day I know we're kind of crazy right five bucks a day that you know we're gonna give up one of those Frappuccinos from Starbucks you know we're gonna put that into our Etsy ads uh but we really want the data and we want to get those sales coming through the door so to me that again is is bad advice if someone is saying wait until you get some sales before you go running those Etsy ads just just wait a little bit all right hold off on those right that's going to stunt your growth actually that's going to make it so you don't grow so Scott but before we dive into the next one what is like a lot of these have a grain of truth I can't find a grain of Truth in that one other than there's a lot of people who just don't like the idea of running ads right like we've had fantastic return on investment every time we've ever run Etsy ads and if there's something that we're spending money on that's not converting you just turn it off but to me this one doesn't even have a grain of truth to it because the the two most important things when we're getting started are traffic and sales and if we can shortcut that process in any way there's no reason not to do it I I just I can't find even a tiny grain of Truth in that and if you guys can let us know in the comments because I I'm just curious where that one comes from yeah here's the thing so I think it's also because and whoever is giving the advice but it's not even just from a guru let's say it's from other sellers that are just getting started too and it's like well I didn't make any money yet so if I didn't make any money yet then I'm not going to invest in my business that's kind of how it is it's like well I'm gonna open this business and I'm not going to spend any money I'm just going to do everything for free until I make money and then I'm going to invest in my business like who does that right so I think it also could be advice that's given from other people in groups that are new that are like yeah you know what I wouldn't run any ads yet until you get some sales you know like we want them everything and we'll get into this here in a little bit but everything is generally when you're first starting the mindset is profit I want to make profit and don't get me wrong guys I want to make profit too but there's also a cost that goes into getting a business off the ground and it's a lot easier doing it this way than to buy a franchise and do all of those things and then recoup your money but we do need to do things in order to promote our business and our shop and our products to get it in front of people and then everything else kind of kind of works itself out and that's why we also when we're spending that money we're acquiring that Customer because that's what we're doing we're acquiring a customer is we are now also having the ability to sell them something in the future and that's why we always talk about building a product line for a specific Niche and for a specific customer so really really important on that one all right let's answer this next one or discuss it as uh you know at this point we're just discussing things um having discounts and promos only leads to short-term sales and could actually hurt you in the long run so what do you think on that one Chris true or false this one to me is false right the the common misperception about promotions and it can happen if we're thinking about like I don't know let me just throw back to my early employment days right Circuit City if you guys remember Circuit City right I sold TVs for them and home theater and yes you would get a big rush before the Super Bowl or whatever because they were having some sort of a promotion and yes maybe they would sell if you were TVs but overall they're actually selling more right and so the theory is oh well there's a little bit of a lull after a promotion so no one is actually going to buy it right it comes out as a net net and it actually loses US money because we promoted on that and that's not actually how the data pans out why especially with somebody like an Etsy or an Amazon why is that because one of the most important things to ranking organically is traffic and sales what's a great way of driving traffic and sales especially at a really high conversion rate giving them a little bit of a discount why because everybody likes saving money nobody doesn't like paying less than sticker for something and so if you can get people in and you can get them converted and you can get them to the listing and buying stuff from you then yes you are going to have a short-term burst in sales and sometimes right there is a little bit of a dip afterwards there's a little bit of a hangover if you will afterwards from the people who would have been buying it within that week anyway that already added it to their card or favorited it right but the long-term benefit of that is we rank higher organically because Etsy sees that we're willing to invest in the business that we're getting traffic that were converting and that we're converting at a really high rate and so what often ends up happening with this is we end up ranking higher which then what happens Scott it leads to more traffic and sales and the cycle begins again right sales and promotions absolutely have a place long term if you look at your store data you will see that they lead to more sales at least in my opinion every store I've ever looked at if you rank higher you get more sales this is a way of ranking higher short term if you take a two-week view of this then yes you may see a little bit of a sales hangover from the people who already had it in their car favored it whatever we're interested in just hadn't purchased it yet but long term you end up with a bigger benefit so Scott what are your thoughts on that do discounts and promos lead to fewer long-term sales so a short-term gain at the expense of the long term true or false yeah no I think I mean you you're definitely going to game gain in the short term but to me you're also going to gain in the long term and here's why because once we are able to get that customer even if it was at a discount we have a customer remember what I said earlier if we get the customer and we have more products that customer can buy and they might have favorited our shop they might they might have favorited an item and now we're we're going to be able to send them push notifications through Etsy we're also going to be able to send our triggered emails inside of etsy soil even if they come in and they don't buy they you know they abandon the cart then we're going to be able to send an email automatically inside of of etsy they give us that option so there's all of those things that we're able to do uh even in the long term so short term yes we're gaining and one of the main reasons is like you said Chris people love sales but the other big benefit of running these sales is you are also going to start showing up in different areas of the Etsy uh platform because they have certain areas that They are promoting for sales and if you've ever went around the holidays you'll see up in the left-hand corner on desktop you'll see there it'll say like holiday sales or holiday deals or something like that and then people will click there and they'll see what is on sale um the other thing is if you're running Etsy ads well you're going to probably convert it higher because now you're running a sale and people see that strikethrough which is always you know always attractive they're like oh the regular price was 29.99 and now it's 19.99 okay I better get this and then the other thing that the that the sale does is it also adds a little bit of urgency and scarcity and if you run a short sale we say short sales like less than seven days or seven days or less we're also going to get that countdown when we start approaching that last 24 hours which is also pretty important and if you're running Etsy ads that will definitely help you so I'm a fan of running promotions and sales and uh I think there's both short and long-term benefits but a lot of times people only cost to trade on the short term and they don't look at the long term once that once that customer is uh is coming through your system they are now your customer whether it's on your email list or whether it's someone that's favorited or followed your shop uh or even went over to your uh you know your your website if you have one or your social media and now they're part of your world so that's why I think there's a huge amount of benefit for running these these uh sales and promotions and I think there's both short and long-term benefits I think that grain of Truth in that one right if we are a product focused store and we run a sale then getting the customer isn't necessarily beneficial for us long term right so we may see that hangover last longer or you know not give us those long-term benefits that we do if we are a niche based store right so if you know it's still not to say that you're not going to rank higher if you are in a product focused store like all you do is t-shirts right but you are going to have a longer hangover and less long-term benefits from that customer list because if they buy a t-shirt from you they don't really care about the other stuff that that you have if you're a t-shirt store if you're a fishing store then getting them in as a customer people are much more likely to buy from somebody they've already bought from right and so the next time they have a fishing related thing even if they came on in on a promo guess who they're going to buy from they're going to buy from you and so Scott I think that might be where that that little grain of Truth in that myth is is that you know if you're truly a product focused garage sale type of a store you don't necessarily see the direct translation the way that you do if you're in a niche Focus store does that make sense yeah absolutely and there's actually one question that came in that we'll answer here while we're on this topic and that is would you run promotions on multiple items at a time or rotate so you always have at least one item on sale uh thank you uh well the answer is I would probably try to run them on all of your products right like why not run them on all of your products depending on what you have uh and test it you can test it on certain categories or certain products but for the most part you probably want to run it across the board now you don't have to have the same sale you might want to say well for my my t-shirts I want to offer 20 off and for I don't know my blankets I want to offer 15 or whatever right so you can do that but I would say if you're gonna do it I would do it across the board uh it makes things a little bit easier as well when you're running them but again that's just personal personal preference I mean if you're trying to sell certain items and you just want to put those on sale then just do those concentrate on those and maybe just run Etsy ads on those all right let's move on to I believe this is our last one and if you guys have any questions drop them in the comments and guys if you guys are getting value from this do me a quick favor and give us some love give us some hearts or thumbs up wherever you're watching this uh subscribe to the YouTube channel if you're there if you're on the podcast leave us a review over on iTunes that would be amazing and maybe even just drop a comment let us know what is one of your biggest takeaways from this episode all right let's go to the last one here and that is Chris you should always include shipping in your product cost true or false false uh to a point right so this is this is one where I would say if you can afford to do it and it doesn't price you out of the market completely right so by including the shipping we're not taking what everybody else is selling for 50 and selling it for 150 right then you should include shipping in a case where it's going to price you totally out of the market then I would probably do it separately what are your thoughts on that Scott should you always include shipping in the product cost true or false well honestly this actually comes into play when we are doing our product research to be quite honest with you we actually just launched a couple of products on maybe three or four that are really nice but it's like 16 or 18 dollars to ship and now for us to absorb that and build it into our price it's going to bring our price up so what we actually chose to do was find other similar products that cost less to ship right so that might not now we're still selling them but we aren't being able to include as much so what we did is we kind of broke it to where we're adding or we're building in like maybe ten dollars so we're absorbing 10 and we're only charging let's say six bucks for shipping right but I've I personally think that there's more upside and more benefits to offering free shipping uh Amazon has pretty much trained us to not want to pay for shipping right it just makes it so much better for us and when I have to go to another platform and I got to pay nine dollars for shipping I'm like you know if I went to Amazon I get it for free right so I do think that's a conversion mechanism so that's why I always try to build it into the price um for the most part and it might even come down to well you know what I don't think I'm going to sell that product because there's just not enough margin in it if I build it into my price and I don't think someone wants to pay 16 for that item um so I think it does come down to a product by product but it also comes down to a more strategic approach as far as do you want to offer free shipping and if you do then you need to build that into your price so this way here you're not absorbing all of that and then there goes all your profit so you have to look and see I think product by product but I do think there's a huge amount of upside to uh including it in your price building it into your price so that way there you can offer the free shipping to the End customer so Scott I I have one that I know we touched around the edges on and I wanted to pose this to you because my my answer here is slightly sarcastic um true or false you can't make sales without reviews oh oh yeah that's a good one uh okay so here's the deal if that was the case you'd never be able to sell you never be able to get started now is it going to be easier are you going to convert higher when you have reviews 100 so the question comes down to well what do you do to get to get sales right and to get reviews so I think it comes down to in the very beginning having a really really well optimized listing and I don't mean optimized in the standpoint of all of your keywords are writing all that stuff I think you focus a lot on your images I think you focus on your store your shop your about section your announcement section everything that you can do to make that person come through and feel as though they are buying from a reputable company even though it might be new and so I think it really does come down to that that's also where I think it's going to come down to you're going to need more views to to that to that listing then you are in the future and that's where Etsy ads will come in and you're you're really just trying to get those people that they'll buy if even if they don't get a review but then with that being said I would also lean into the people that do buy I'd be reaching out to them and saying hey hopefully everything you know arrived okay or hopefully everything you know you received was was um you know everything that you expected if you have any questions let me know like trying to be really really overly uh you know supportive so this way here they will naturally leave you a review so um I think that that is false uh you don't have to wait until you have reviews or else you wouldn't be getting any sales ever um and I'm not a fan of asking everyone you know to go buy one and then leave a review I'm not a fan of that um so I say in the very beginning it's gonna be hard uh or harder to get sales when you don't have any reviews but it's just a matter of time and that's the new to you know the newness right and then once you get reviews guess what you have a seasoned account now that's why everything just starts to to snowball in a good way when you get reviews you get sales history you know you have uh you know uh star seller ratings all of those things that's going to help you convert higher at a later date but in the beginning your conversion will definitely be less if you don't have reviews you're muted obviously this one is false if you had to have reviews to get sales no one would ever get sales right like this is let's use a little bit of common sense and I know that Common Sense can be dangerous and it's not that common but if you needed reviews to get sales period and that's kind of how this is is pushed then no one launching a new product would ever get sales right and so yes does having reviews tend to lead to more sales yes why is that because they help boost conversion rate but Etsy specifically and this is something that a lot of other marketplaces don't do Scott Etsy specifically if you ever go to a product if that seller has reviews on any other product they show you the reviews for the other products that people have purchased why is that because they know that most people aren't going to read the reviews anyway and they they just look down they see that there's a bunch of people that gave a five-star review four-star review whatever it is that gives you enough of a conversion rate boost to then be able to get sales on the new product right I would stay far far away from anyone telling you and we actually had a comment come in while we were talking about this and we've touched on this in a couple other miss that we've debunked stay far far away from have your family buy it and give you a review why is that well I haven't dug through the Etsy terms of service specifically but I guarantee you that there's something in there about manipulating their search algorithm and getting your account shut down right what is that that would be manipulating the search algorithm right that's exactly what that is and even if it's not spelled out don't ask your family to do stuff and then send them money via venmo PayPal cash app right that was something that was really popular in Amazon in like 2013 2014 right because people had this same myth that you can never sell a product unless it has a review that is something that is not just potentially dangerous to your account but it's also counterproductive why Etsy is looking at who's buying those products one of the things that is a ranking factor for them if if you pull up your Etsy account Scott and I pull mine up and we type in the same keyword the search results are not going to be the same there is some personalization that they put into this and if we send garbage traffic or people who aren't actually interested into the product and that then sends a buyer signal to Etsy and Etsy goes okay it looks like this person who's Scott's cousin who buys cat toys on Etsy normally but they bought this so I'm just going to show this to all of the people who normally buy cat toys even though this is a giraffe or whatever I don't know giraffes aren't pets but you guys get where I'm going with this right they're not related to the people who would buy this normally that actually is a negative when they start trying to rank us for keywords and show us to the right people because we then sent unqualified buyers to it we've sent a bad signal to Etsy and they don't know the difference so they're looking at that and saying let's put it in front of these people and then nobody buys guess where we end up at the bottom of the search results so stay away from that don't worry about reviews reviews will come with time the thing that leads to reviews to Scott's Point sales and good customer service if you do those two things then you will get the reviews and they will come and even two or three reviews is enough for most products to kind of be at their optimal place from a conversion rate perspective especially somewhere like Etsy where the volume is not millions of units a day right so don't I wouldn't even think about it quite honestly focus on creating products that have demand and then when someone buys that product give them a great customer experience if you do those two things the rest will take care of itself yeah and I want to just underscore and highlight that last little bit that Chris said customer support is key it's huge and on Etsy it's to me even more so uh because I mean my wife will be communicating with you know uh whatever Marlene from Ohio right like literally like communicating with these people and that's what the Etsy platform has has really the the Etsy buyers that's what they expect so really really focus on the customer side and the reviews will come uh I promise you so get those sales take care of those customers if they have any problems don't give them a hard time if they have a if they have something that didn't come through don't try to make them send it back and try to get all the you know don't make it hard right especially in the beginning when you're trying to build up your account all right so uh yeah that last part definitely want to highlight that for Chris um customer service is key it is huge especially in the beginning all right I've got one here Chris that we did not have on our list but I like this and I want to bring this up and uh someone had said another Etsy YouTube coach mentioned it is beneficial to price the product as low as you can to bring that person to the listing true or false I'm gonna jump in on this one Chris and I'm gonna say true I'm gonna give this one a true and and I'm gonna tell you why I think there's a lot of etsy sellers that are just looking at the profit in the very beginning and if we look at any small business and Chris you'd probably have the numbers stored away in your head somewhere because you're good like that uh and you know all these statistics as far as like when a business starts a brick and mortar shop how many years before they actually turn a profit it's years right and we're like oh I want I want to start my Etsy shop for bare minimum 20 cents for my listing I don't want to spend any money on Etsy ads and I want to make money right that's what it all comes down to but this advice here of pricing yourself low with you know to me breaking even let's call it or a dollar or two more in the very beginning it's kind of like a grand opening so the money that you would be making is necessarily just getting rolled right back in and you're able to then what get sales which is also going to what get a customer and that customer can buy more in the future and that customer can leave you a review that we just talked about right and so all of those things start to happen so I'm a fan of pricing that product lower than you will charge in the future and to try to do it as low as you can without losing money right I mean in some cases I would even do it and lose a couple bucks if I knew that I was going to be able to get some reviews get a customer and all of that stuff so Chris what's your thoughts on that bit of advice I gave mine I'm gonna give that's that's true in my book you might have different thoughts what's what's your thoughts on this I think the the idea is true the implication of phrasing it that way is and so I I want to run this by you Scott and I know we're just kind of doing this one off the cuff should you price your product as good as possible yes should you list that price right so the price that we type into printify or Etsy should that be a price that we then change maybe maybe not the way that I would like to see people implement this is rather than pricing it at 13 if that's what we want to sell it at right that's our Bargain Basement price I would rather see you price it at the regular retail price whatever you're going to sell it for normally and then run an Etsy sale or promotion down to that 13.99 yeah why yep because sales and promotions lead to sales right so the the entire concept behind pricing it as low as possible is that we're trying to capture that click when Etsy finally gives us the chance right and so if they see and pre there's always going to be somebody cheaper right like it's just it's kind of a law of nature but uh being an attractive option from a price perspective is going to increase increase clicks from Etsy search why is that important traffic leads to sales sales leads to traffic traffic leads to sales right it's that Etsy sales flywheeler you've heard us talk about in the past but if that's our goal which really is kind of the grain of Truth to that one right if our goal is to get as many clicks as possible whether that's when we show up on Etsy ads or in Etsy organic search the only thing that's better than a low price is a sale price why because then you get the strike through you get the countdown timer when that sale is coming to an end you get a little bit of urgency and that's something that you can actually do beyond your first product right like if this is your first product and you just want to put it at 13.99 then that's fine but if we have other products in the store and we use the Etsy sales and promotion feature the people who have bought from us the people who have favored our stuff the people who have stuff in their carts they get notified about that and then there's the built-in traffic that comes along with that so I like the idea I would change the implementation slightly to make it a promotion or a sale rather than just the straight up retail price does that make sense well yeah and to be honest with you that's kind of like I would have already thought that so I kind of already in my head was thinking we're gonna we're gonna show regular price then we're gonna give a discount as like so that's a given to me um and I'm glad that you brought that up because maybe I wasn't clear because I was just saying like yeah price it as low as you can but part of that is show the regular price show your discounted price your your launch price and then you're gonna get that sale benefit so yeah that's a given and I'm glad that you brought that up because if I wasn't clear that's exactly the way that I would want this to to run because then you're going to get the benefits of everything else um that comes with having that sale showing the strike through um getting you know promoted in other areas of etsy the countdown all of the things that come with the sale so yeah 100 so whatever you're gonna price that then whatever you can sell it for without losing money and then just create that discount and then let it roll um I'm a big fan of that I'm a big fan of that the the one uh scary thing about that and I think the the one place where some people may mess that piece of advice up and end up losing their shirt right is not taking into account Etsy fees on whatever that price is so make sure to include the Etsy fees and the product cost when you're doing that calculation so that you don't end up selling 500 at a loss of a dollar each right but beyond that little bit of basic math and I know for whatever reason that seems to just fall out of people's mind all the time when they're doing profit margin calculations but there is that fee right uh which ends up somewhere around like nine and a half percent in most cases um so just keep that in mind and that is based on the selling price so just if it's 13.99 subtract nine and a half percent right their referral fee plus the transaction it works out to around nine and a half um yeah in a and a really cool thing on that Chris is and I'll throw a little Shameless plug in here if you go to everbee they have a free calculator um even on the free plan you can use it um and so what I always do is I will just and I'll do this for our own products because everything gets allocated everything if you're putting in your regular price your discount and then it'll take all the Etsy fees it'll take the listing fees all that stuff shipping if you have it plug it all in and it'll show you what your net profit is and then you can decide now what you have available to play with um so definitely check that out if you haven't done so already there is a free version brand creators.com forward slash ever be check it out um there's my Shameless little plug for everbe which I use every single day like literally every day I wish I had a timer on that and how much I use it I mean it's either for myself uh just doing my research or Lisa will say hey can you run this over here real quick I'm kind of curious on that and then I'll run it but it's at least 10 15 times a day uh anyway uh let's go ahead we have any questions Chris that we wanted to address before we wrap up this almost hour and a half long live yeah we have we have a couple let's knock through them really fast when one sale period ends would you run another one right away or wait a while and then run a sale again the answer is depends right there's no reason you couldn't just turn around and do it you're going to get all the same benefits the the downside to that would be if you're doing that all of the time and you're perpetually on sale then you start to get viewed as like a discount or a bargain and then you do condition people to wait for a sale if you decide to stop running it so to me uh if you're going to do it back to back there's nothing wrong with that I just wouldn't do it back to back to back to back to back does that make sense like do it you know with common sense um involved there yeah well I think the other other side of it is too is you can if you did want to run a sale all the time you could just rotate how much the sale is for I mean look at Kohl's right Kohl's does it all the time you have a little sticker underneath your little card and you get to see this month I get 15 off I'm not really too excited about that and then next month did I get 30 did I get 30 oh I got 20 right so you can mix it up I do think that we are also on Etsy conditioned to see sales so we almost I think almost buyers expect it now so um yeah play with it um and I think that that's going to adjust I know right now we're experimenting with some launches that we're doing on products and we're having a very very steep launch price type discount but it's not always going to stay there it might go from 70 off to 40 off or 20 off right so I think you can still have the sale and then you can also because here's the deal the new people that are coming in next week they aren't the same people they saw it this week so we still want to get those benefits from running that so I think to each its own and I also think it depends on how much you're offering uh on that sale so that way they're like Chris said it's not always the same and you can kind of mix that up a little bit for a minimum you would provide on a sale sometimes I see five percent and it seems kind of silly yeah well here's my thoughts on that how how it's it's you know what you know what's really funny and I was doing a video that's going to air I think next week on digital products and I found a bunch more um that I wanted to highlight just to kind of show the potential but there's some people that have like a digital product for like 8.99 and they're getting five percent off it's like oh thank you I got like 90 cents or whatever it is right and so I think it depends on how much the product is so if you have a hundred dollar product and you're offering 10 off I'm like that comes out to something decent right but if it's 10 off of ten dollars not so much so I think you have to also look at what is the amount that's showing that it's getting off if it goes from 29.99 to 19.99 that's a good number right like so we want people to feel as though they are getting a discount it's not just like oh I get 12 off great you know so I would definitely say a minimum for me personally I like and depending on the item cost or the the price that we're charging I've done them I think the lowest I've ever done is 15 and I think the highest and We've ran them for 70 right so it does depend on the product and how much you're charging for it uh to to show and represent how much of a discount they're getting is it better to price your item low and then charge it in shipping to show up higher in the ranking so you're not going to show up higher in the ranking just by having a lower price product right especially if the people that come to your listing then don't convert because they realize they have to pay 700 in shipping right so the the thing we have to keep in mind here is the two most important factors are traffic and sales right the thing that's in between those two is conversion rate and so if I get 100 people and you get 100 people to your listing and I convert 10 and you convert five right Etsy is going to rank me higher than you and so high shipping at checkout at the expense of a low upfront cost is actually doing the opposite of what you want it to do because you're getting people to click through and then they see that you're charging them 700 for shipping I'm just going to use the most ridiculous example right 700 for shipping and when they come to mind they see that my product is 700 so someone who clicks on my listing knows that they're expecting to pay 700 versus one dollar and then they realize it's 701 does that make sense Scott yeah yep 100 I think you just having a low price is not going to help you get ranked what's going to help you get ranked is sales and if because you have a low price that is the case um but if you drive people there and they're going to be like oh that's why it's so cheap because they're gonna charge me all the shipping right so I think that could actually hurt you and not help you as a conversion side of things I think we would I would rather have free shipping show up than it show up at a lower price but yet I'm charging 20 for shipping so again it's just personal preference test it and see what happens um I did want to address this one real quick Chris we've gotten this before because some of our our past uh you know audience that has listened to us for years uh wanted to know about our Niche websites well basically anybody that doesn't know what that is it's basically a website a Blog that gets traffic and uh we basically monetize it well we have a few of them and uh one of them we have built for about three years now and that's also now part of our Etsy shop so we're taking that traffic we're building it up so we're still constantly doing that and that is one that's actually helping to build our email list and also help us sell our products we have uh another one that we've been working on as one of our case studies we're getting ready to sell um so that one there we're working behind the scenes to build that up but we're about ready to sell that one and then yeah we have a couple other ones that are still in the works and they are being built on a regular basis so for anyone that's wondering do we uh still like to build external web sites to drive traffic whether it's to that site or to other properties like Etsy the answer is yes 100 we're a huge fan of written content and uh and we're still doing that so just to kind of give you guys a little bit on that and then another quick question Chris and then let's wrap it up uh this from Aaron just out of curiosity how much time per week do you each of you dedicate to Etsy Now versus when you started out well just to be clear my wife is the one that started the Etsy thing and she was referred by one of my my uh ex-business Partners uh and a friend of ours um so she's doing a lot of the day-to-day um she's doing all of the design creation all of that stuff the listings uh printify all of that stuff and I would say if she's not in creation mode depending on the time of year if it's fourth quarter totally different story but if it's like regular she can probably I would say throughout the year spend probably an hour or two per day and she could be done um but because she's kind of into this design thing she actually loves it and enjoys it and it's almost like a an addiction in a sense it's kind of like years ago in her photography business is she just loves it so she could be designing for four or five hours a day um she just loves it and enjoys it so but I would say the day-to-day operations one to two hours if it's not in like fourth quarter fourth quarter you could be four or five hours um because there's just a lot of orders coming through the door so hopefully that answered that for you Erin um Chris anything else before we wrap up no I think I think that's it uh I don't I'm just scrolling through really quick to see if anybody snuck something in but I think we're good to go all right cool all right guys if you are listening to this on the podcast I want to thank you guys if you're on YouTube thank you as well Facebook uh rock your brand group love you guys and uh if you guys are not part of the group and you wanted to be part of our rock your brand group head on over to brandcreators.com forward slash group and you can join us there whether it's there or on YouTube and that's where we live stream every single Wednesday but if you're listening to this on the podcast you will get the audio version but if we share the screen and show some stuff and demo some stuff that's what we'll be doing there we are going to be doing some uh live Etsy Shop reviews some audits as we call them that's going to be coming soon so stay tuned for that so if you are on YouTube subscribe to the channel if you're on Facebook make sure that you're in the group and you're active and uh if you're on the podcast well just sit tight and uh we'll be back with another episode next week all right guys so take care take action have an awesome amazing day and we'll see you right back here on the next episode take care guys

Channel: Brand Creators

Views: 17,462

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Id: fzMB4GTGRTg

Length: 91min 14sec (5474 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 15 2023