It's near impossible to get noticed on Etsy, and
the market is super flooded with people trying to sell the same products! Have 20 listings in
my store and spent two weeks on them. In three months, I've had two views! I've been in print
on demand for two plus years, I have 500 designs, and I barely make any money! So, you know, I get
comments like that every day on this channel. And I find it really interesting because about a
month or so ago I found a product niche that I wanted to test out on Etsy using print-on-demand
products, so I created a brand new Etsy store. And over a week I slowly added in 25 print-on-demand
products using designs that I created with Canva and Midjourney. And a day later, the store had
its first sale. And since then I've been slowly adding in more products for testing and as I have
the sales have also organically grown. In fact, I checked my sales today and saw that in the
past week this test store has done about $200 worth of sales with a profit margin of about 25
to 40 percent depending on the product that's been sold. And just to clarify, the store is brand new.
It has no social media presence or social proof. It has no store reviews. And it does not sell
custom products. The store is working entirely passively on autopilot! So that got me thinking.
Why is it that I set up a little test store and within weeks, it became a passive income source
that I can now grow, whereas others spend two years uploading 500 designs and are lucky to make
even just one sale? It's an interesting question, right? So I wanted to make a video to share with
you the seven things that I did that I think made a pretty big difference. One: I optimize listings
for the new listing impression algorithm. So if I had to guess, I think that the most common
question that I get asked is this: "Sarah, how can I get people to actually view my items on
Etsy? They just get lost in a sea of products!" It's a good question. So you have to understand
that there are two main sources of traffic on Etsy. The first is very simple it's search
traffic. It's when you search for an item and Etsy shows you results. And then the second, arguably
more important form of traffic, is the recommended items. It's when you come to, say, your home page,
and Etsy shows you items that they think that you might like. And over time for many people this has
become the primary way that they buy products on Etsy. And it's no surprise because it's how most
big websites work these days. Take YouTube. Yes, you can come to YouTube and do a search for a
video topic that you want to watch, but that's not how most people do it. Most people just come
to their home page and watch whatever video that YouTube recommends to them. Well, what websites
like YouTube and Etsy will do is they will give new videos and new products Test Impressions on
showcase pages like the home page. Basically, when you upload a product to Etsy, they will
show it to a small number of people on say, their home page and see if anybody clicks on it.
And then like Ddomino's if someone does click on it, they'll then show it on more home pages,
which will then get more clicks, and so on. Etsy makes money by having more products and
more stores succeed which is why they designed their algorithm to give all stores including new
stores a chance. So it was this algorithm that I took advantage of to bring in the customers to
my store. However, there is definitely some luck involved with it. Because you think about it, if
you create say a dog t-shirt, but Etsy goes out and puts it on the home page of someone that likes
cats, then that person will never click on your item, and this traffic source might fizzle out.
Sadly we can't control who Etsy tests our product in front of, however we can increase the chances
that Etsy will test our products in front of the right people by giving Etsy as much information
about it as possible. Which means then that you need to be very descriptive with say, your title,
your description and your tags. But it also means filling out as much information as you can,
such as filling out the product attributes. That way for example if someone likes items in
the hippie niche and your item is in that style, Etsy can put it in front of someone who has
a history of buying items like that. Two: I focused on quality not quantity. Another key
to keep in mind that if you want to make money quickly, is that you have to be efficient with
your time. Which is why I find it very strange when people just add in hundreds of items into
their stores, just because. I think for example of the viewer from earlier who'd spent two years
uploading 500 designs and getting no traction. Look I can't see their store so I can only make
guesses, but my guess is that their designs were probably low quality and that they weren't
interesting enough that if somebody saw it, that they would want to click on it. That's also
why I find it so odd anytime someone asks me: "Sarah, why do you spend so much time to talking
about creating products and designs to sell, and you don't talk about traffic?" Because the answer
to that of course, as I've hopefully explained in this video, is that if you have great designs,
that therefore equals great traffic. As you can see, when Etsy puts your new product in front of
a test group of people on say their home page, they cannot see anything about your store. They
can't see how many reviews you've had how many sales you've had the only thing that they can see
is your product picture. People are only clicking on designs purely by how they look. And if you
get a click from those test impressions, Etsy will then put your product in front of more people,
which will result in more clicks, which over time more sales. Which is exactly why I spend so
much time talking about this and why I would never recommend focusing on uploading a specific number
of products like I know a lot of people do. And by the way if you're watching this and you would like
to learn how I create and design products that entice customers to click on them and buy them,
you should be sure to download my free ebook which I will have a link to in the video description
below. By the way people have been reading my ebook and they have been reviewing it on Goodreads
which I absolutely appreciate so thank you so much for everyone that's done so! Three: I used myself
as a yardstick to create clickable products. Okay I can imagine a bunch of people are saying: "All
right Sarah, you say it's a waste of time to just add in bad designs that are not clickable. But how
am I supposed to know if my design is good or if it's bad?!" After all what makes art good or bad
it is entirely subjective and that is absolutely true. Which is exactly why I love to use myself
as a yardstick. To do that, pick a niche that you yourself are a customer in. So like me, do
you love dogs and like to buy dog merchandise? Great! Create designs around that. Or are you
instead passionate about hiking and camping and like to buy merchandise themed around that? Great!
Create designs for that niche instead. By doing that you you can always ask yourself an important
question while designing it: "Okay, if I saw this design on another product being recommended to me
would I want to click on it if I saw this design as a t-shirt on Etsy, would I click it and open
it up?" If so great upload it. If you wouldn't, don't bother. Four: I didn't copy others - I
created designs that filled a gap in the market. So in addition to using yourself as a yardstick,
another really easy way to create a great design is to focus on niches and sub niches which don't
have a lot of good options already. Case in point let's leave Etsy for a moment and actually hop on
over to another website, Redbubble. I once had a viewer who left a comment sharing their Redbubble
store with me telling me that within a few days of opening their store that they had made money
which was pretty cool. So I decided to check out and open their store and when I did, I quickly
realized that all of their sales had likely come from just two designs that they had created. And
one of them was this a photo of a rocky beach that customers really like to buy as a bath mat. So out
of curiosity at the time, I went to Redbubble and did a search for other bath mats featuring beach
photos. And I quickly noticed a pattern. Everyone else had uploaded photos of standard cliché white
sandy beaches. And nobody else, except the store, had uploaded any photos of rocky beaches. Which
was a great opportunity because while it's true that probably 90% of people prefer white sandy
beaches, there is a small percentage of people their prefer rocky beaches. As there were no other
options, any decent photo that had been uploaded would have been considered an amazing product to
these customers, which is why focusing on niches like that is so much easier in my opinion. So
on to my next tip but before I do, a quick word from today's sponsor. Me! Yes, there are so many
shady sponsors on YouTube these days that for now, I have decided to sponsor my own videos. So I'm
sponsoring it to let you know that if you would like to create your own Etsy print on demand
store but you don't know how you should be sure to check out my course the Ecomm Clubhouse.
It shows you how to set up an Etsy store, how to come up with product ideas, and even how to
optimize Etsy listings. If you'd like to see if my video course is right for you I'll have a link
to it in the video description but for now, back to the video. Five: I focused on mid-tier pricing
to take advantage of price anchoring. So another question I get asked often is this: "Sarah, how
am I supposed to make any money on Etsy after product costs and Etsy fees?!" And I'm honestly
a bit confused when people ask me these questions to be honest because there are so many free Etsy
profit calculators out there like this one here from Craftybase, which you can use to check to see
what the profit margin will be for your product if you set it at a particular price. That way you
can make sure that you're making a profit on your product rather than making a loss. Now of course
I'm sure some people are going to reply with: "Oh Sarah, have you seen the prices that people
are pricing their items for on Etsy? People are selling their t-shirts for less than ten dollars.
Sarah, if I sold my t-shirts for a list of ten dollars on Etsy, I would make no money! It's
impossible to make a profit." And I always think well gee here is a crazy idea, maybe don't try to
compete to have the lowest price possible! Because frankly you don't have to, and I believe you
shouldn't thanks to the psychological phenomena of price anchoring. See here's the really strange
thing when you start to think about it, pricing is entirely subjective. If I ask 10 different
people what a t-shirt is worth chances are I'll get a range of different answers because no one
honestly really knows what a t-shirt is worth. We just make up a price, and the way that we usually
do that is with price anchoring. Price anchoring is a psychological phenomena where we use other
products prices to help us decide what another product's price should be worth and most people
decide it should be somewhere in the middle. An interesting study with beer showed this in action.
In the study a restaurant put two beers on the menu a premium beer for two dollars and fifty
cents and a cheap beer for a dollar eighty. Well, eighty percent of people would choose the premium
beer, not a cheap beer. In phase two of the study a restaurant listed three beers on the menu -
a premium beer for two dollars and fifty cents, a standard beer for a dollar eighty, and a super
cheap beer for a dollar sixty. And now, eighty percent of people chose the $1.80 beer. And then
in phase three of the study they offered three beers - a super premium beer for three dollars and
forty cents, a standard beer for two dollars and fifty cents, and a cheap beer for a dollar sixty.
And guess what? Eighty percent of people chose the $2.50 beer! And so when you try to compete for
the lowest possible price on Etsy, not only are you losing money per sale, but you're potentially
hurting your sales too. People are skeptical of the lowest price product, but they also don't want
to be ripped off by the highest priced product, which is why most people will want to purchase
a product that's priced somewhere in the middle. Six: I showed my products being used by a real
person. So here is the thing, in addition to Etsy wanting to see that people are interested in
clicking on your item, they also do want to see that some of those people are going to go on to
buy it. Again it's like dominoes. You get one sale and Etsy goes oh, people like this, and they start
showing it to more people. And so your sales go up and you make more money. As a new store you're
obviously at a disadvantage because you don't have social proof and you don't have reviews yet,
so you need to take advantage of every opportunity that you have to increase your conversions which
is why I make sure to include lifestyle photos of my products actually being used by a real person,
because studies have shown that something we all intuitively know and that is that when we see a
photo of a product being used by a real person, it makes us far more likely to act actually buy
it. And it's a question I'm actually often asked: "Sarah, how can I get photos of my products being
used in a lifestyle context? And well, my favorite app to do this is absolutely Placeit. Placeit has
two different types of accounts, they've got a paid account and they've got a free account that
gets you access to thousands of photos. You just upload your design and then Placeit will literally
place it onto a product! Seven: I created my own luck by being persistent. So as I said earlier,
when you're creating a new Etsy store, there is definitely some luck involved. Because as I said,
when you create a new listing and it gets test impressions on say a random person's home page,
you have no control over who Etsy chose to put it in front of. And so sometimes you just get unlucky
because Etsy puts it in front of the wrong person, they don't click on it, and then they stop
giving it impressions. And so because of that, it is especially important to be persistent. Take
for example example that person that added in just 20 items into this store, got no traction,
and then gave up. Well as I said at the start of this video, for the first week I didn't get
a sale either. It wasn't until I'd added in my 25th item that I got a sale within my store. And
so just imagine then if this person had also added another 5 products too. Perhaps it would have
been their 25th product that would have won the Etsy lottery and been matched with the right
customer, and now like me Etsy's algorithm would have more data on who the right customer is, they
could then use that to pair their other products with the right customers, and so that store could
also have potentially become a passive income source to ready to be scaled up. But of course
we'll never know, but perhaps we would have known, if they had been persistent! So then did you
learn something new? If so please subscribe. And if you're interested in learning more about
print on demand be sure to watch my video 10 things to do before you start a print-on-demand
store I'll see you over in the next video
