How to Start on Etsy for Beginners in 2021(Fast) | Opening an Etsy Shop? Watch This First!

hey guys it's sharon here with every single dollar where we talk all about business and personal finance in today's video i am going to walk you through step by step everything you need to do before you start an etsy shop and i even made a little worksheet so you guys can follow along in last week's video i shared with you that i was able to pay off two thousand dollars in debt by just selling handmade products um i have a website so i sold a lot on my website through word of mouth and i'm starting to get into etsy i've been watching lots of youtube videos and i feel like no one really gets into the details and really helps you make a really good etsy shop so i been doing lots of research on keywords seo and etsy and i've put everything together in this video and i have a little workbook to help walk you through it if this is your first time here welcome my name's sharon and on every single dollar i bring you new videos every tuesday and sometimes friday on everything from getting out of debt starting a business how to market your business and innovative ways to make money so that you can pay off your debt if you haven't subscribed yet please hit that subscribe button and if you enjoy content like this don't forget to hit that like button okay so you might want to go ahead and download the and print the workbook that i have for you down below i was super nice with this i didn't even make you sign up for an email list because honestly i don't have one i should probably work on that so no need to give me your email address or anything you guys are just welcome to download it from my my google drive so why etsy why etsy especially when i already have thousands of followers from our previous business and i have a website and honestly the main reason is they have a huge audience they have a millions of people on their website and that's millions of eyes that i can get in front of and i can like potentially sell my products too so that is the main reason i wanted to explore etsy especially wanted to explore etsy in 2020 because there are no holiday markets there are no flea markets in my town and brick and mortar shops a lot of them are only doing curbside pickup so you can't even go in and really look at products so it just seems like the perfect time to start on etsy is in the middle of a global pandemic and honestly this is the best way to start a business on a budget i talked to you last week on how i reverse engineered coming up with capital to start my little handmade side business and i think etsy is like the perfect next step for that uh you just have to pay 20 cents to put a listing up so basically it costs you 20 cents to test an idea it cost a lot more than that to get started on amazon because you have to buy so much of their product for fba at least and send it to them etsy is just a great way to sort of dip your toe in etsy's world i guess that doesn't mean that there aren't some cons to selling on etsy the main one are the fees i only pay about three and a half percent in credit card processing fees on my website and on etsy if it's purchased through one of their on-site or off-site ads it can cost almost one-third of the sale price so on a thirty dollar product i might be paying ten dollars in fees plus i have to pay for shipping another con with etsy is that there's no way to put them on my email marketing list i sort of control my email marketing on my website and through social media but these customers that i'm getting through etsy i'm not allowed to collect their email and put it on an email marketing list so there are ways to work around it like you can put a card in your package so when they get it maybe give them a little coupon code if they sign up for your email list but there's no like online way to do this another thing that i don't like about etsy is that there are a lack of fans a lot of our sales come from our social media and people following us and liking our brand and what we stand for and you don't really have that on etsy people are just there to buy the products i don't think i've ever just like sought out a specific shop to see what they've added for new products like i don't care i just kind of want what i want that's different than what you get on like your own shopify site or if i follow someone on social media probably one of the worst things about selling on etsy is the amount of copycats i'm in a lot of facebook groups with other like etsy um shop owners and every day there's someone complaining that someone's copied one of their products and that's just gonna happen like you're on a platform with other people who create all day so you just have a bunch of creators getting inspired by everything that you that other people are doing and it's just it's bound to happen so if you already own a business like setting up an etsy shop is going to be super easy for you but if you've never owned a business it can sort of be daunting you don't even like know where to start my philosophy and my best advice is to take the path of least resistance do the bare minimum just to get started because a lot of times this long list of things that you need to do to like properly open a business it can just take forever and then you end up not doing it like coming up with the perfect logo coming up with a perfect mission statement you know it just it's another obstacle for you to overcome so my thinking is i'm to just come up with like the bare minimum list of what you need to do and i've included that in the workbook you need to define your business that is something that's really important to do and we're going to actually do that later on in this video and you'll want to find or create 10 products digital products they can be physical products but you want to start with at least 10. i learned this the hard way i i learned it because i just put up like three or four products um when i started my etsy shop and the problem is like when i did get a sale on one person they only ordered one item and that's because i didn't have a variety for them to look for and i had to ask myself like if i had maybe 10 or 20 items maybe i could have increased my sale for that one customer even more if they found like other things and they made me think that maybe i should have a variety of products so like maybe some items that are 25 to 30 and some that are only 10 that might also be a nice way to increase sales and then you just want to grab all the necessary social handles like tick tock instagram facebook figure out what your name is and just grab those social handles and then you want to set up a bank account i always promote local banks because i like to support small local businesses but right now our bank is by appointment only and sometimes it's like a week before i can even get an appointment to make a wire transfer and that just really bugs me so i found a bank called aslo it's completely online and it's great for businesses um i heard about on a podcast so definitely check out aslo i'll leave a link down below and you do want to set up an email list so that like when you do make sales and you want to get people from etsy on to your email list so that you can market to them you can do that pretty easily remember i said you there's not really a fan ship on etsy so you have to think of a way to continue that relationship with your customers that's all you need to start i wouldn't even worry about other things until you get that list done because you'll be so invested in like having your 10 items that you won't talk yourself out of just going ahead and starting you know eventually worry about do you want to be an llc you know get your ein you can just worry about all that later now we need to define your business and this is something that not a lot of people give you step by steps or in all the other art and etsy shop videos and it's really really important because you know i can make an etsy shop on like i don't know tools for people who whittle wood but is there a market for that why waste all my time creating all these products that there's no market for i'm going i have a little exercise that i recently went through to help define my etsy shop and what i learned is like a lot of the listings i have aren't that there's no market for them so i will need to be redoing my etsy shop and i've i've started that process so the first thing you're going to want to do is take out the workbook first circle you are going to complete it and make a list of everything that you're interested in so i'm going to use me for an example um i really like making jewelry i enjoy t-shirts i am not like a pantsuit kind of person i consider myself a feminist i really love politics i really like to listen to podcasts i love coffee so i really like cute coffee mugs i love to read i am a reader and i love pop culture all of those things i want you to do the same for you like come up this list of things that would describe you that you're passionate about you're interested in and we're gonna put them in this first circle on the right so i'm gonna do it okay now we're gonna try to figure out if there's something in here and if there's a product that we can sell on etsy that we would be excited about and the reason i think it's really important to start with something that you're passionate about is they're going to be lulls in your business they're going to be times when you're not making a ton of money and if you're spending time on products that you aren't that passionate about or interested in you're just gonna give up so you have to really be passionate about what it is that you're doing okay so we're going to use a tool here it's called keywords everywhere and what you want to do is put in your main keyword to see if there is a a market for your product and b if there's going to be a ton of competition so i'm going to show you how to do that so when you put in your keyword search term keyword everywhere is going to put some like data right underneath that keyword bar so here the volume is 6 700 and that just gives you an idea of how many people are searching for it and then it gives you an idea of the competition and it does that by showing how much people are willing to pay for an ad for that product so you know if they're willing to pay for an ad for that product there is a market for it people are looking for it and it's probably selling on their website another thing that keywords everywhere does for you it gives you idea for other niches so if you go and scroll down on the right hand side it'll show you other search terms that people are looking for and that's how they're getting to the products that you find under the shopping tab so maybe like women's graphic t-shirts old navy t-shirts people are specifically searching for these search terms and it starts to train you on how you need to word your product titles to match how people are searching for product so then you want to niche down even more so i know for my target client they're female they're feminist because that's what i want to do i want to create a feminist etsy shop or a shop base with like feminist-based products so i'm going to think of what's trending in my target industry and ruth bader ginsburg just passed away and for feminists she is considered an icon so i put into my search term rbg because a lot of people refer to her as rbg i put an rbg t-shirt to see if people are actually searching for this and they are people are searching for this and there's not a ton of competition so what we're going to do now is we are going to take my term rbg t-shirts we're going to go into an seo an etsy seo specific tool to see what the competition looks like more specifically marmalade's really good for taking your product idea that you got from using keywords everywhere and looking at what the market is and plugging it in here to see what the competition looks like to see what other listings are doing for their photos and to see what other tags they're using because if you find a listing that's number one and it's using these specific tags well you know those tags are working for this specific product so i opened up marmalade and i put an rbg t-shirt because i want to see what comes up the one thing i don't like about marmalade is the searches and the engagement section i don't think that's accurate because it's just telling me i believe what searches look like on etsy but if you've ever searched for a product on google and under the shopping tab some of the first products that come up are from etsy shops and i don't think that this takes that into consideration so let's take a look at that you know look at rbg t-shirt if i go into shopping look first line there's an etsy shop there with an rbg t-shirt so that gives me a good indication that this is a product people are searching for but what i do like about marmalade is it lets me know a lot about the competition that i'm going to find on etsy so i'm going to scroll down and look at what other products are for rbg t-shirt if you look at this compared to like farmhouse sign that has like thousands of listings this is pretty good so i think we found a really nice niche here so if you scroll all the way down you can specifically look at the listing so that's where i know that that like that's the number one listing for my product rbg t-shirt and i can look at the tags that they're using so these are tags that i am going to want to use in my listing and now i want to go into etsy and look at a really good listing so we can analyze it dissect it and pull out what we want to put into every single listing that we do i love this listing it does a lot of really good things first of all their main keyword wooden name puzzle is the very first thing that you're going to see in their title they follow it up with like long tail keyword things and when i say long tail keyword well you know if a grandparent is looking for something for their toddler grandchild they're probably going to put in you know wooden name puzzle for a toddler wouldn't name puzzle for kid wouldn't name puzzle for a little girl they want to get specific because they want to find that specific product that like is the solution to their problem or the product that is going to help them find what they're searching for and that's all seo is it's trying to take what people what buyers are searching for and matching it up with the products that are out there but the only way google is going to be able to like help you with that is if you are doing really good job at finding those keywords and optimizing your listing for that this listing also has excellent photos not only do they have just a photo like head-on of the product but they show it from different angles and they also show the product with different people using it and that answers the where when you're looking at marketing because when someone looks at a product they want to see like where am i going to use this you know if it's a shaw where can i wear it out to so it's really nice to have like a nice aesthetic photo for things like that they can actually see their child also using this product because if a kid in the picture is using it okay my child will definitely also be engaged by it so take a lot of different photos really good pictures of your product from different angles with other people using it if at all possible another thing this shop does really well is it makes the purchasing products so easy for their clients so instead of making them specifically tell you what colors they want on their puzzle they group it into color schemes so if the earthy mom is like she's probably looking for more muted tones so if it's something like for a girly girl maybe pink and gold they break it down for you so you don't have to overthink your purchasing too much all of this is broken down in the worksheet i do a two-page sort of anatomy of a listing that you can use while you're making your own listing all right wooden name puzzle that's their main keyword is in the very first sentence of their description you always always want to do that that tells google exactly what your product is so they can help find clients for that product another thing they do is they repeat the word puzzle i think 40 times from like the reviews to the description you see the word puzzle it's repeated over and over and you need to do that for google because that's how they're going to help your customers find your product that's how you're going to make sales other keywords that they repeat over and over is for kids wooden name puzzle for a toddler christmas gift they know how they know what their customer their target customer is looking for and they know how to tell google that okay so you have your 10 products we've gone over the listings now we need to figure out how do we market how do we get people to actually find us and purchase from us and that's all that marketing is it is basically telling your customers or showing the world what it is that you sell and why they should buy it from you the next question that i have in marketing is where should you go to market so i started with just word of mouth and using my existing facebook page from my existing business and i've looked at other platforms to see what's really really popular a lot of people use like facebook marketplace i've used that and i've made a few sales on that it's not huge for me but what has been huge i've been getting in front of a lot of a lot of eyes on tick tock so i would definitely check out tic toc i would check out instagram you can even shop directly in the app it'll just take you to your etsy shop from the app and you know email twitter it really depends on where your customer is so in the next section we're going to look at branding and really define you know who your customer is what are what are their pain points and how do your products answer or help them with those pain points and then you need to figure out okay where is that customer spending their time are they on tick tock and the next question is how do you market online that question sort of encompasses a lot of different things there's this thing that i learned in this book and it was that people don't buy from companies they buy from people so i've always made sure in every business that i have that i am the face of my business so that when someone's making a purchase when they chose to have their child's birthday party in my play space it was because they were they trusted sharon they knew she would do a good job and give them a beautiful birthday party and i always take that philosophy and apply it to everything so you will see my face i don't do like those overlay youtube videos i want you to know who you're talking to and like see my face and it's the same in any business that you have another thing that's really important is to show the process of what it is that you do if you make i don't know party decor like show them show them how you make it that interests people and it like gives them the value they can sort of see the value of what it is that they're buying and people need to see that they need to see that like this someone's actual hands that are making this spending their time making this amazing product for you and it makes it seem and it is that much more special than something that you might find on amazon that's all marketing is it's basically showing what your product is how it's made and where it can take your customer and then you really have to think about who you're marketing to you can't be all things to every person so you have to get specific on who your target customer is and what kind of questions they have what kind of problems they have and make sure that your product is the answer to their problems not the answer to everyone's products because you will fail okay in the last part this video is not about branding but i wanted to kind of do a little branding cheat sheet because it is such an important part of any business even an etsy business or especially an etsy business so thinking of that target customer let's go back to my shop that i'm gonna start and i'm gonna do my rbg t-shirts and mugs and jewelry everything feminist i have to think of like what like that customer who is gonna be buying that for me okay so it's definitely gonna be someone who's you know a feminist maybe someone who reads a lot and is really educated and likes to read something like the guardian uh they consider themselves very informed about issues in the world they might be single they might not have be married with kids maybe think of like a type of lifestyle that they might live they might need a really like really beautiful home decor something that me as a mom with a little boy who throws balls all over the house i don't have put yourself in the place of your customer and think of what is relevant to their life so the next question on the the branding cheat sheet is what does their social circle look like who are they spending their time with and this is where you really start defining the aesthetic of your brand my person probably spends a lot of time with you know her girlfriends probably drinking wine no matter if you're married or single divorced you're drinking wine so i can sort of see her you know with her girlfriends drinking wine in the backyard like beautiful lights hanging up having just like someone who really appreciate experiences more so than someone who's watching haul videos on youtube but that's a thing i'm not like no judgment but that's probably not who my customer is and she's probably spending time with you know very like-minded people so when i think of that customer i always want to think what sort of things about my product would they really value so if it's someone who like maybe is single really likes jewelry having like nice coffee on the weekends she probably has like a beautiful home maybe in the city she's probably going to appreciate beautiful things so i know that my packaging needs to give her that experience because experiences are something that my customer values so i imagine like when she opens the box there's going to be tissue paper maybe it's a confetti maybe a beautiful like handwritten thank you note these are all things that i know my target customer would value and the reason i know my target customer would value is because i've gone through and answered these questions about who they are what do they do who do they spend their time with that really helps you hone in on what your business looks and feels like and that's branding okay guys that's it that's how you start an etsy shop possibilities are endless with etsy you can do stickers you can do printables you can do downloadable files you don't even have to have a physical product to start an etsy shop and it can be such a great way to have a passive income or replace your full-time job if you guys like this video don't hesitate to hit the like button and subscribe so that you're always notified when i come out with new videos every tuesday and sometimes friday thank you guys so much for watching i will see you next week bye

Channel: Every Single Dollar

Views: 35,049

Keywords: Etsy shop, etsy store, how to start an etsy shop, how to open an etsy shop, etsy store setup, how to start an etsy shop 2020, etsy shop tutorial, how to start an etsy shop step by step, etsy business, how to sell on etsy successfully, etsy shop tips, how to start on etsy, starting an etsy shop, how to make money on etsy, tips for starting on etsy, how to start an etsy shop in 2021, making your first sale on etsy, starting a business with no money, every single dollar

Id: GubHFyhK0Tc

Length: 22min 24sec (1344 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 01 2020