How to Get Your First 100 Sales (on Etsy)

so I started my Etsy Shop about a year and a half ago and since then I managed to get 3 000 sales and over 40 000 in Revenue but before I could get to that point I had to get my first hundred sales first and to be honest the first 100 sales were by far the hardest you can think of an Etsy Shop like pushing a really big heavy Boulder in the beginning when it's standing still you're gonna need to put in a lot of work just to push it a little bit but as you keep pushing it's going to start building momentum to the point where it starts rolling by itself so yeah most people struggle with these first 100 sales because it requires so much effort to get to but if you can get past this point it's going to get easier and easier to the point where you don't have to work for every single sale anymore today I'm going to be sharing all the things that really help me get my first 100 sales and Beyond and if I was starting all over again today this is exactly what I do so let's move right into step one which is getting your first 10 sales so this might seem obvious but before you get to 100 sales you need to get your first 10 sales first and the reason I'm focusing on the first 10 sales is because I think it's way different than the 90 that comes after that when I put myself in the shoes of a customer if I see a store that has zero sales it gives me a completely different impression than when I see a store that has 10 or 15 sales when I think about it I think the main reason for this is that nobody wants to be somebody's first time for example imagine you're getting a tattoo or even just a haircut would you want to be somebody's first client probably not right most people are looking for somebody that has at least some kind of experience so if you're stuck at this point where you have zero to ten sales I really recommend doing what I did which is asking friends and family so yeah after I launched my sticker shop on Etsy I asked my real life friends and family if they'd like to buy some and I think it was actually a really good experience because it helped me practice selling in the beginning especially if you're starting a business for the very first time it's really good just to get some experience selling you'll learn the basic stuff like how to describe your product to a customer how to talk about the benefits or the features or how they could use it I think it's really good just to get some real life experience which is something you can later translate onto your Etsy shop online and another reason to start with friends and family is it can help you validate your idea when you start with family and friends you're in a safe environment where you can ask for honest feedback you can ask them what their honest opinion on your product is like good or bad and I just want to say that you have to be a little bit careful here because we're gonna I want to be nice to you like they might sugarcoat the truth just a little bit so it's really important to ask the right questions like if you're starting a candle shop you don't want to go up to your mom and be like Mom do you like this candle that I made like of course she's going to say yes right but if you ask your mom questions like hey Mom when was the last time you bought a candle did you buy a candle for yourself or was it a gift or what are the things you look for when you're buying a candle like is it the smell is it the jar is it only the price like if you're asking those types of questions and you're really listening to people's answers you can get some really useful insights that might be applicable to your own store and another thing I want to touch on is just because you're asking your friends and family that doesn't mean that they have to say yes like you're not entitled to sales just because they're friends and family try not to get mad if they don't want to buy your product like it's their money they don't have to give it to you right and you have to remember what this is for like you're trying to validate the market if you're having a hard time selling your product to people who actually know you you might have an even harder time selling to people who are actually strangers so that's something to think about for sure okay so now hopefully you managed to get your first 10 sales it's time to move on to the remaining 90 which brings us to step two which is making sure your shop doesn't look abandoned people get a little wary if they see a shop might not be active like if a store doesn't look active they might be worried that if they actually do place an order they might never get it as you grow and you start to get steady sales you'll also start to get steady reviews and those reviews are proved to potential customers that your store is active but in the meantime before you get to that point you want to make sure that there's no doubt in your customers mind that you're an active shop and that if they make an order you're gonna ship it out right away the first way to do that is to have an active social media account like an Instagram or Tick Tock or whatever for some customers it's actually going to be the first thing that they check so if you're on Instagram you always want to make sure that you're adding new posts and new stories just so customers can see that you're open for business another thing that you can do to make your store seem more active is to keep adding new listings I see a lot of people asking why they aren't getting any sales and when I take a look at their shops I'll see that they have like a very low number of sales like zero to five and they only have one or two listings like imagine going to a candle shop and they only sell one type of candle if you're trying to be a serious business you really need a catalog of products for customers to choose from like I'm not saying you need hundreds of listings right off the bat but I think a good place to start is around 10 which is what I did and I think that's what Etsy recommends on their site as well so I recommend starting there so hopefully by now the ball is rolling a little bit for your shop and you're getting some sales from strangers the next step is to get reviews I think an argument can be made that reviews are actually more important than sales when you're first starting out before people want to spend their hard-earned money they want to see proof that other people have spent their money and have been happy with the results so you really need to encourage reviews and the first way to do that is review Raffles so I actually don't know if review Raffles are technically allowed under etsy's policies like if you read here under extortion there's a section here that has examples of things that Etsy doesn't allow a seller offers a buyer additional Goods services or compensation in exchange for a positive review but yeah to me I'm not a lawyer or anything like that it says positive review there and I was actually including people that gave me any type of review so I'm not sure if what I actually did was extortion but it's something you might want to look into if you're thinking of doing this pretty much what I did was include a card in every order that said if they left a review they'd be entered into a raffle where they could win store credit and I actually got a lot of reviews this way and I think it's a really effective way way of building up your reviews because say somebody leaves a review and then they win the store credit it's very likely that after they use the store credit to buy more things they're going to leave even more reviews for the products that they bought but yeah this is not something I do anymore but in the beginning I felt like it really helped the next thing you can do to encourage reviews is to give freebies it's a little sad to say but I think the majority of etsy customers these days are expecting something free with their order and I think the reason shops do this is because it really helps them get good reviews if you're lucky and the cost of your goods is low like if you're making stickers like me like it doesn't cost much to give away free stickers at all but say your cost of goods are higher like you're making wood products or something like that it might still make sense to give something small away for free like I said earlier reviews are more important than sales and I think it's okay especially in the beginning to make a little less money if you're building those reviews and you're building your reputation another thing you can do to encourage reviews is to go the extra mile when putting your orders together I would really highly recommend packaging your order with care and attention would somebody buys something from you and to get your package in the mail that's really the first impression that they're getting from your company and it's really important that you make it a positive one so yeah pick up some nice packaging materials and try to make it a good experience to open up your product another thing you can do is to add personal touches like handwritten notes and things like that this is something that's not super scalable but it's something that I still do today which is just to write a little thank you note to every customer that I get and I think it's just a good way to remind the customers that you're an actual person right like you're a person that actually cares about your customers but yeah all of these things might seem small but they really add up to a lot they really add up to a good customer experience and good customer experience eventually lead to good reviews moving on to step four is to focus on the product you're a product that you're making to sell is really more important than everything else if you have a good product I really believe that eventually the sales will come and if you have a bad product I think it's going to be a struggle no matter what you do so say a customer is searching for candles and your product shows up right beside a competitors your store is new say it has 20 sales and maybe five reviews and a competitor has a thousand sales and like 200 reviews you need to give that customer a reason to buy your product over competitors even though your store is newer and less established and it really all comes down the product so yeah it goes all the way to the first point and listening to feedback like what are the vectors that make one candle better than another maybe it's the fragrances maybe it's the jars maybe it's the price right can you improve on any of those things maybe you can improve by having a really unique smells like maybe it's cotton candy or something and that person is looking for a sweet smelling candle or maybe somebody's looking for a really nice jar because they want to display it but no matter what it is you really need to do something that's better than the competition because if you're not like say the products are exactly the same why wouldn't the customer just Shop with a more established door right but yeah one thing that I always try to keep in mind when thinking about my product is the value like what value am I providing to my customers businesses are all about making money right and money is just a way to exchange value so you really have to think about the value that you're providing in exchange for that money to make it a fair trade you really don't want to be taking somebody's money and then giving them less value in return like that's not going to result in a long-term business but yeah I think the toughest thing about starting a business and getting those first 100 sales is that most people expect progress to go up in a straight line but it really he doesn't it's really more of an exponential curve because the beginning is so difficult like after your first 100 sales you'll find your next 100 to be way easier and that's the same with your first thousand sales and your next thousand sales but yeah in the beginning you'll work really hard but you won't see the results that you want because your expected results don't match your actual results I've seen some charts around the internet that explain this and they call it the value of disappointment so yeah if you're in this Valley of disappointment don't give up like just keep trying keep experimenting and keep improving until you find something that works if you like this video you might like the one that I made on seo seo is another really important aspect of your business because it helps your products get found in the first place if you're checking your analytics and your stats and you're not getting many visits to your store it could be because your SEO is not properly optimized if you're interested in the video I'll link it up right over here but yeah that's it for the video guys thanks so much for watching I hope you found it useful and I'll see you in the next one bye

Channel: Tim Koa

Views: 409,612

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Id: eoKAp8yz5g4

Length: 8min 54sec (534 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 24 2022