How To Start & Run A Successful Etsy Business- LIVE with Jami King

hey everybody welcome to today's live Q&A I'm here with Jamie King welcome Jamie and Jamie is gonna be walking us through everything and anything about Etsy and I know that this is kind of a hot topic in the group sometimes whether or not to sell on Etsy and so it's gonna be a really great conversation and I'm super excited to hear from you Jamie yeah I'm so so excited to be here so thank you guys for having me I hope that you are excited about learning a little bit about Etsy or at least curious so because I've got a lot of info for you today so if you're tuning in live just say hello in the comments let us know where you're tuning in from and hopefully we can say hi back we've got a couple waves so far um but just right off the bat Jamie if you want to kind of give us a rundown of who you are what you do where you come from that kind of stuff yeah I'd love to so if you guys don't know me yet and I imagine most of you don't my name is Jamie King I am from Virginia in the US and I started out as a handmade seller myself in 2016 so I'm a mom of two boys one is a toddler and one is a preteen they are a handful that love them and a goldendoodle puppy so life is very chaotic in the King household I am a huge marketing nerd and I just love to share the tested strategies that I've learned from my own handmade business what's helped me grow and just a little backstory on me and my own Etsy shop I started on Etsy in April of 2016 and I had a goal to go full time with it and I was able to make that happen within eight months I replaced my corporate salary and was making over $5,000 a month and by November of that same year I made over $12,000 that month so I know you've probably heard a lot of horror stories about Etsy but trust me when I say the sky's the limit and so I'm gonna share some info about why you want to be on at see how to get started and how to improve your sales today so I'm really excited what were you selling I sold painted wood signs and so they very much have a hand lettered look but I just used a so I absolutely love scripty pretty fonts and I am a hobby and Lederer myself I was telling Becca before we got started I often don't practice because my two kids if I pull up my tombow markers or my iPad they want to play with the markers play with the iPad or they will lose them I actually my iPad pencil is missing it this very moment so it's somewhere in the house I just don't know where so I can relate to a lot of you guys who really want to get going with hand lettering but maybe don't practice quite as much as you should but that being said there's totally a market for things that are hand lettered or look hand lettered exactly that yeah yeah there are so many pretty fonts out there that I would not let you know your the point you're at right now stop you from getting started even if you feel like maybe your hand lettering is not there because that's how I was I looked at the look I just didn't quite yet have the talent yet so I used stencils and I painted on wood signs and it was really successful for me because I know people love that look my signs were very rustic looking but also very pretty and feminine with the crisp white scripty font so people are definitely into that style for sure so how long ago did you say that that was that was April of 2016 so gosh like two and a half years ago I wonder now if I mean I've noticed a huge uptick in people who are interested in hand lettering and all the handmade hand lettered font stuff I just wonder if and I know that this is gonna this is part of the controversial topic that we're gonna talk about but if the competition is way bigger on Etsy now than it was and I know that a lot of people think that that's kind of a deterrent to going on anymore or the people there are so many people on there that you feel like you have to lower your price to compete so can you talk a little bit about that yeah I would love to so there are a lot of horror stories out there about Etsy for sure one of them being that it's too competitive and I'll agree it is super competitive there are over fifty million active listings on Etsy as of this year and there's probably more by now since I've gotten that stats and just as a comparison in 2016 when I got started there were 35 million so it's definitely grown a ton in all niches there everybody's like oh my knee is so ever saturated so so true but the thing you want to remember is that it's his customer base is growing as well as of 2017 they had over 47 million visitors per month and that number just keeps growing and growing and you'll find it even grows higher in the fourth quarter of the year where we're at now as people start to really do their holiday shopping so myth number one is that it's too competitive so I shouldn't get started I think that's a complete myth because it is competitive but because there are so many shoppers on Etsy you still have the opportunity to seal up sales you may have to get a little more creative and find specific niches for you but you'll still see you'll still be able to see sales for instance one if I had it like like in business when you are trying to learn online marketing and stuff they tell you that if you have competition it's actually a really good thing it means there's a market for what you're selling so I think it's kind of you kind of just got to turn that thinking on its head and think of it the other way and also remember that although there are a lot of people shopping on Etsy for handmade signs there are still so many people who don't even realize that that's a thing I'll give you if you tell your if you tell somebody that you meet you know a stranger they say what do you do and you're like oh I do hand lettered signs they're like what's that what does that mean or like I do calligraphy and they're like good calligraphy or thinking on that as well yeah for sure Etsy recently did a nationwide I believe it was just in the u.s. I could be wrong but I believe is in the US nationwide commercials here in the US when they did that crafty show a couple weeks back I cannot remember what it's called but so they're actually marketing and they're trying to grow their customer base which is something they haven't really done in the past they spend a ton of money on Facebook and Instagram ads so they are pushing people to Etsy and so that an awesome thing for sure so another myth I wanted to touch on is that everyone on Etsy under charges they undercut each other they're selling you know stuff at a price point that's not profitable so if I come on there and so my things at a correct price that's profitable for me I'm not going to get any sales and that's a complete myth too and there's a reason for that is because it's something called perceived value so when we're shopping we want a good deal but we also want to buy something we thinks gonna be worth spending our money on and so if you go on Etsy and you find a wood sign and it's seven bucks and then you find a wood sign that's similar that's maybe 25 bucks you're gonna really wonder well what's wrong with that seven dollar one why is it so cheap and so many people on Etsy are looking for quality they're looking to support businesses that they feel like they know like and trust businesses that have taken the time to put a professional look out there and so you're gonna find that people on Etsy shoppers on Etsy just like anywhere they're buying at all price points and so I always tell people price where you're profitable don't price where you feel like you should be because if you're not profitable it's an expensive hobby so I definitely think that that's a horror story that everybody's like oh I can't be on Etsy because I'd have to price my items so cheap you do not have to do anything you know price your items where you feel like it's it's gonna be worth it for you you may find you're getting less sales but at least the selling that you're doing you're you're actually turning a profit that's for me most important profits are you know the most important thing for any business I think yeah and then you wouldn't you prefer to only have to make one item at fourteen dollars then two items at seven like why are you why are you able trying to get so much volume when they could just be selling less items for a higher price point to the people who appreciate it and that doesn't just go for Eddie that goes for everything yeah and I see Sarah in the comments the show Kelsey said the show is called making it yes that is it I knew something short that's that show that Etsy put their commercials in yeah and Sarah said pricing is a huge you for me and to me pricing is one of those things that you can't dwell on like you've just kind of got to put your stuff out there at the prices that are comfortable for you and you can't be looking at what other people are doing you just have to put the very best version of your thing out there for sure all right so do you want me to just kind of dive in it's a little bit about what Etsy is and why people want to sell there because I feel like we've kind of covered those two main things that may be stopping people from selling there so I hope you guys feel a little more confident about it but I think I think those are the the main showstoppers for people so we got those out of the way and now we could just I'm gonna dive right in awesome I'm gonna I'm gonna start telling you like telling you guys that may not be familiar about Etsy what it is so it's a global marketplace of handmade items vintage items and craft supplies is what it is it's a website where you can a set up shop online and just start selling your handmade items like I was saying a minute ago there's over 50 million active products on there with over 47 million visitors per month so the cool thing about getting started with Etsy is that it has a pre-built audience for you and why would you want to sell there that's a question I get all the time like maybe you have heard this horror stories or maybe you just don't know anything about it so the main reason that I say sellin Etsy is because you have nothing to lose other than a little bit of time and that's just because it does there are some fees when you list an item it's 20 cents an item that's the only thing that you pay up front so every different product you put on there would be 20 cents but if you know a fellow Etsy seller you can get a link for 40 free listings and that's what I recommend doing and then that's eight bucks and then you're good to go there so if you guys want to get the link to get started ask each other like just ask you know and the happy of a crafter group and I know there's gotta be some Etsy sellers that will share their link you can have mine if you want but I'd rather you guys support each other so that's basically the biggest thing is you've got nothing to lose you don't even have money to lose just a little bit time the other reason that you want to sell on Etsy is that it makes it very easy to start selling worldwide you know you can get your shop set up within a day if you started your own website or if you even if you started your own Facebook page or wherever else you might want to sell you're not gonna be able to tap into a global marketplace right away like you would on Etsy so for me just the ability to go be in front of such a large worldwide audience is huge the next reason you'd want to sell an Etsy is it's very user friendly so to get started it's honestly they have tons of guides like helpful little tool tips to walk you through setting up your shop and creating your listings we have a lot of you know members and say I have a membership community for handmade sellers called the handmade journey Academy a lot of our members are not tech savvy but they're able to get going with that see relatively easy it's definitely easier than setting up your own website would say Shopify or something and when I say user-friendly a lot of people are like no it's not there's this thing called SEO SEO is not user friendly I'll agree with you there but even that can be fairly easy to learn and it's not something that you need to dive in to get started Jamie can you just can you just touch on what SEO is real quick because someone had already asked that in the comments perfect I'm gonna actually touch on SEO here in just a second I'm gonna talk about the pillars of great Etsy shop and SEO is one of those pillars so I'm gonna make sure that I cover that because that's definitely like most people are like SEO what is that so I'm definitely gonna cover that yeah cuz I think that's a great topic um the last reason that I have actually have two more so two more reasons why you want to solid Etsy I mentioned a minute ago you've got that ready-made audience so if you've never tried to sell online you have to have an audience to sell like if you have to have people to talk to and if you have a Facebook page maybe you're realizing nobody's seen your posts if you are on a cigarette maybe you're seeing the same thing that you post and maybe two people comment and one of them is your mom and your best friend so starting out is really tough if you don't have an audience to sell to and that's one of the main reasons you want to get on Etsy is because you have that ready-made audience of people looking to buy handmade items so for me you know that's kind of a no-brainer is you need an audience Etsy has one for you and then the last one it's a great jumping-off point so a lot of people are like well I don't want to give Etsy the extra fees you know I've heard it's expensive to sell on Etsy you don't have to be on Etsy forever Etsy can be a place to start your online sales and then while you're on Etsy you can focus on growing your social media following you can focus on growing an email list and then you've got that audience to sell to and you may not need Etsy going forward you may be able to able to either sell through social media or a standalone website without Etsy so I hope that's a kind of a path that everyone wants to follow is that maybe in the future you won't need Etsy but it's such a great jumping off point for sure it's such a great place to get started because you don't have to focus solely on growing that audience you can focus on taking good photos and SEO which we'll talk about here in a minute and just making great products so you that audience gross is either gonna take you a lot of time and money so Etsy kind of does that for you and I think that's a really good point and just for people who are listening that might not kind of have put those pieces together yet if you think about people like Laura Hooper or Ashe Busch who sells all of her handmade pointed penholders they've all started with Etsy shops as well and then their audiences grew and they were able to start selling on their own websites too so your concern yeah so if you're concerned about needing your own website right off the bat or not having a big enough audience to sell to you that's definitely a really good pointing to think about for sure you don't need to be on Etsy forever now it may not be a bad idea to keep your Etsy around to kind of keep growing your email list and again in front of new people but you can definitely phase out of Etsy where maybe you just have a couple listings on there so it's kind of a choose-your-own-adventure path but I think Etsy's a great place to start out because it takes away a lot of that overwhelm of creating your own audience all right so that's why I hope all of you will consider Etsy I think it's a great place to start like I said I've been very successful there I would not have been able to start my own handmade business had it not been for Etsy because I worked full-time when I got started and I had leave my son at that time was too and so I had my hands full I had an hour and a half commute every day and if it hadn't been for Etsy and giving me that kind of path to follow to get my items online I probably honestly would never have gotten started so I hope all of you will consider it now and at least give it a shot all right so now I'm gonna speak to the pillars of a great Etsy shop so what you need to get started and what you need to improve if you're already on Etsy so Samia there are a couple things that are gonna be really important the first is getting found on Etsy and so the main way that you get found on Etsy to get your listing seen is through SEO and I know SEO is a confusing topic so I mean I kind of dive into this just for a minute if you want more information I've got a lot of info over on my blog at handmade journey comm but SEO stands for search engine optimization and SEO basically is the work that you do to get found in the EXCI search results so most shoppers when they go to Etsy they are looking for listings by typing a phrase into the search box so maybe you're looking for a chair cushion for your dining room table and you're good at seeing you type and chair cushion if you have worked on your SEO for your listings that are chair cushions and you have that phrase chair cushion in there then you have a chance of appearing for that search phrase now where are you up here like how high up that can get really tricky but that's just the basics of how it works and when you're trying to get found on Etsy you definitely want to invest the time in SEO I think this is the trickiest topic for people and it's a topic that I focus on the most I adjust in an Etsy SEO master class last week because Etsy made some changes to their SEO so I wanted to kind of bring everybody up to speed on that so if you want more info on that you can definitely check out my website but SEO again super important to getting founds the next way that you can get found is that you can share your shop outside of Etsy so I always tell people that you want to market your business on social media and what I recommend is picking one social media platform to focus on a lot of people they try and get on Pinterest Facebook Instagram an email list all at one time and then they're not doing any of them very well so what I recommend is pick one social media platform really get to know what that platform what works for you there and make sure that you are sharing your product in your business there you want to focus on connecting with your customers so for you guys that do hand lettering like videos of you doing your hand lettering I could watch this all day I don't know about you but I love those hyperlapse videos where people are doing their hand lettering so there's lots of ways to share your business and your art on social media that can be a great way outside of Etsy to bring people into your your listings and then and other ways to get found is Etsy does offer ad space inside of Etsy you pay a little bit extra for it and that can help get your listings found as well they're called Etsy promoted listings I absolutely recommend those for sure so that's how you get found on Etsy which is kind of that first pillar because if you can't get found then nobody is gonna see your stuff and you're not gonna make any sales so getting found is definitely super important so Jamie where did you say it was the best place for people to go if they want to learn more about SEO yes yes I got so excited I skipped over that there are two websites that I highly recommend if you're struggling with SEO and one of those is gonna be marmalade calm and the other is going to be e rank org those two websites they're tools to help you find Kiwi keywords that are gonna fit your listings they also kind of help you figure out the format for your SEO they are definitely both invaluable tools and Eirik has a free app free version that is really well so it works really well has a lot of good tools in it those have a paid version and marmalade I believe you can sign up for a one-week trial I want to say but it can be really valuable to tool to so I would definitely check out this is us and so right when you're just getting started and you like say this is somebody's first I'm even hearing the term SEO before you get into using those tools and stuff are there any good places to just learn more about it and what they should and shouldn't be doing and maybe your website is one of those mean yes absolutely so over at handmade journey.com I have a lot of articles about SEO if you click on start here at the top of my blog there's a it breaks all the articles down by sections there are at least five articles all devoted to SEO there's one that like is like SC SEO basics then there's one that explains why it's so complicated because that's the question I get a lot why in the heck does it have to be so complicated and just how to format your titles or tags all that good stuff there's also at the bottom of each of those posts there's an Etsy SEO checklist that may help you if you're already on that scene you're struggling to figure out SEO gotcha yeah and Krista said I rank is asking for a password you do have to create an account because it links directly with both Marmalade and I rank link directly with your Etsy shop and so they're gonna pull all the data in from your shop to help you give a give you a lot of stats and direction as you're working with them so you do have to create an account [Music] let's see I was just checking out Sara said the thing with Etsy audience is the struggle is people don't find your stuff because they have to scroll through a lot of pages and so that's where Etsy SEO really comes into play for sure getting found is by putting proper SEO in place and the thing to remember about people shopping online like if I'm looking for that chair cushion I mentioned earlier I may start out by typing a very broad vague phrase like chair cushion where there may be a ton of listings but as I'm shopping and looking through Etsy I'm gonna start narrowing down what I'm looking for so maybe as I'm shopping I realized I went around to your cushion and so then I changed my phrase to round chair cushion well then there's gonna be less listings for that because it's more specific then as I'm looking at these round chair cushions I'm like oh I want a blue round chair cushion and so maybe I type that in and that as I'm looking I want I know I want like damask fabric so I'm typing blue damask round chair cushion it sounds a little unbelievable but this is how I shop as I get closer to making a purchase and have a better idea of what I'm looking for I'm starting to type in longer phrases to really see just what I'm looking for and so the specific phrases are what you want in your SEO and those are the phrases that help lead to sales because you're competing with less products and the people are more likely to buy so that was a little more in depth than I planned on going but hopefully that makes sense on how you can get found on Etsy with a little bit of research into SEO okay cool all right so getting found very important for sure the next area that you want to focus on is you want to get clicks so once people find your listings and they see it in the search results you want them to click and take a closer look the way to do that is you want an amazing first photo um the first photo is just like it cannot be understated how important taking that first photo was and no product photography is tough I used to be a wedding and portrait photographer and even I still really struggle with product photography I know you've had some people in the past come talk to you guys about photography I know my good friend Amy Eaton talk to you guys recently about flat lace so I'm not gonna talk about photography but just know that it is super important with Etsy or wherever you're selling online definitely invest time into good photos for sure and then the next way to get clicks is those relevant keywords so when you're working on your SEO you're putting keywords in your titles and in other places inside your listing you want to make sure you're putting keywords that actually describe your item because you want to appear in the right search results if you are selling you know like a painted wood sign that you've time calligraphy on for instance you would not want to put like you know like something completely or I'm trying to think of something irrelevant now CARICOM yeah chair cushion for instance you wouldn't want to put that in there or even something that's a little bit of stretch because people aren't gonna buy it if that's not what they're looking for so getting people to click over to your listings is super important and then from there the last pillar I want to talk about is getting sales and I think this info applies to wherever you're selling but especially to Etsy to get a sale you need people to feel confident in what they're purchasing and so you want to make sure you have all the info that they need to make that decision inside your descriptions so you want to tell people the size of the item how you made it you want to tell people where they can use it who would be a good gift for the kind of shipping you use all that info should be in your description so that people feel very confident that this is the right item for them you also want to have reasonable shipping prices that's a big one as he's been talking about lately I know in the past some people on Etsy they're like oh I can't price my item as high as I want to so I'll just charge higher shipping you don't want to do that it's a turn-off for people so you want to keep your shipping as reasonable as you can while still being profitable and reasonable processing times I know a lot of you guys you may be kind of in two camps with your hand lettering items you may be making each item you know making it to order or making items in advance to sell or you may be kind of mass producing your items you make it once and then maybe you're printing it you know like maybe you're making prints of your original work or you're actually putting your artwork on something else like a t-shirt so however you're doing it you want to keep your processing time how long it takes you to send that product out as reasonable as possible and does that sound right that people are kind of in both of those games with yeah okay cool I wanted to just kind of dig a little deeper on the shipping topic so what's the best practice to figure out what your shipping costs should be like you actually make product bring into the post-office see how much it would cost to ship somewhere that's a great question so what you want to do is you want to get a rough idea of how much your item ways and I think if you plan on doing any kind of shipping you probably want to invest in a scale so that you can weigh your items at home and that way you don't have to I mean you could definitely run to the post office and they'll be glad to give you an estimate but for me it's easy especially if I'm making a lot of different types of things just to have a little scale you can even use like a kitchen food scale a lot of people have those or they're like 5 to 10 bucks it at Walmart but yeah get a scale so you can get an idea of how much your item lays and then I like this is this website it's called the postal calc and it's just the USPS website if you're in the US and I would imagine hopefully most countries have one let's see just trying to figure out what it is it's post care about you PS comso post-16 and you can put in the item site like the weight you can put in a rough box estimate if you don't have boxes or envelopes yet just put in something that's slightly bigger than your item and then what I do is I figure out like the furthest I'm gonna ship and I put that a zip code for that in so for me I'm on the East Coast I was just putting mine r21 Owen because I know that's a ZIP code in California it's the only ones that could I have memorized other than my own but that way you can get an idea of like what it's gonna cost to ship from here to California or you can look and see what its gonna be to ship to somewhere close if you are in the US or Canada Etsy has a calculator that they will actually calculate the shipping for you so I have to do is put in your product weight in the dimensions of your packaging and they'll figure out the shipping for you which is really handy if you're in other countries unfortunately they don't have that so you would have to figure out what shipping would be and actually manually put that in but yes shipping is definitely kind of a trial and error thing where you want to figure out as much and like use that calculator and figure out in advance like get a rough idea but then once you start selling you'll get an idea as well and we had one question submitted beforehand it is trying to find it on here from yeah Maria suggestions for international artists looking to sell over Etsy is that even possible so kind of half the question is shipping but half the question is whether or not that's even a possibility it I will say it depends because every country has different postal setups and some are definitely more evolved than others and like you know for instance if you are in the UK you probably have you know fairly quick shipping times like the US and a variety of other countries in Europe but you know she Maria mentioned she's in Pakistan unfortunately I don't know anything about the postal system there and so what I recommend doing is going down to your local post office and just ask some questions like say hey if I ship to the US how long in general would that take or if your postal system has a website like that's a good resource - I will admit International shipping is scary for a lot of people especially if you're new and it's overwhelming but if you can just find someone that can help you um answer some questions for you that's what I would do the other thing is if you can find someone from your country that also is already on Etsy that's a great thing there's a filter on Etsy that you can like if you search for you know jewelry it's something very vague you can actually filter by the country that the sellers are in and so I just you know if like for Maria I would find someone else selling in Pakistan and just send them a message on Etsy and just ask some questions people are generally really helpful especially if they know you're not a direct competitor I think we may not want to saw somebody that helps somebody that's selling the exact same thing that we do but people are really helpful and so I can't provide a lot of info on like what shipping is like you know in each individual country but there are some good resources out there and it promises you start doing research and gain that knowledge it can be a lot less scary but it's definitely possible it just depends like I have a good friend who is in Ecuador and she cannot she is on Etsy she cannot ship from Ecuador because it's just way too pricy like people would never like I want to say it's like 40 bucks or higher and shipping would take potentially months and it's just because Ecuador doesn't have a postal system in place that's really conducive for international shipping unfortunately what she does is she will mail she'll either mail all a bunch of her products to a friend in the US who then sends out her orders for her or she will have she worked in a place that had a lot of tourists coming she would find a tourist to actually take her products back in their suitcase she made small things back to the US and then that way you know they could then mail them to her friend and so you can kind of get creative unfortunately most people probably don't have a friend you know that would be willing to do that for them but it's definitely like be creative and just explore all your options don't assume it's not possible because they're you know where there's a will there's a way for sure okay that was a really good question because I know International shipping is scary for a lot of people but as you find out more it's it's so doable all right and then the last piece I had and that can help you get sales is photos that show a variety of perspectives of your item and when I say perspectives the thing with online sales is we cannot pick up an item and hold it in our hand and see it I've got a crystal here if I see a photo of this online and I just see one photo maybe at the top of it I may not be likely to buy it because this thing has all kinds of different angles and people may want to see it close up or further back or they may want to see it the scale of it they may want to see it setting in someone's hand so they can see the size so when you are listing your products on Etsy definitely show a variety of angles show a close-up photo show a photo that does show scale whether you're holding your item or it's beside an item that people know the size of like a ruler or something like that so good photos cannot say enough about them but you've really got to put yourself in the shoes of the buyer and understand that people are hesitant to buy online especially from an Etsy shop that they may not know of yet and so anything you can do to help them feel more comfortable making that purchase any kind of different info or perspectives you can refine is gonna help for sure alright I was gonna check over on the Facebook group cuz I wanted to make sure so it looks like Ally said how do you unleash your not under charging for shipping so definitely doing that research if you are in the u.s. they make it easy like I said because they're gonna calculate the shipping for you and then just trial and error some people and Etsy are now doing free shipping because that's he's encouraging it and if you want to make sure you're not under charging there that you would just want to really make sure you're doing that research and you can make your prices higher if needed if you do want to offer discounted or free shipping it's a good question Laurel said do you charge actual postage or do you add in any handling charges I used to actually charge a handling charge because it helps me cover like anything any items I needed to reship because they got lost I could do that for my customer because I'd been charging a handling charge but now actually there's there's this thing called an Etsy algorithm I don't want to get into that too much today because it's such a big topic but it helps determine where your items rank on Etsy and they need it just because there are so many items there's ever excite over 50 million active on Etsy right now and so the algorithm helps determine where when what order those listings appear like if someone searches that chair cushing and there's you know 50,000 listings how do they figure out which ones appear on the first page and thence from there so it's the algorithm one piece one small piece of that is the shipping price so they are giving items that offer lower shipping a slight boost so if you sell hand lettered cards for instance most cards are going to be able to be shipped fairly inexpensively so if you charge $10 for shipping for a card and most of your competitors are charging $4 that's going to mean that you may ranked below a lot of those people that are charging less so for that reason I do not charge a handling charge anymore I would just if you need to make sure you're profitable you may want to just raise the price of your item instead so that was a good question okay cool I think hopefully I've answered all the questions that would have been asked so far and if you guys have questions for me definitely drop them in there's so much that I could talk about when it comes to Etsy I just know so many of you are not on Etsy yet so I didn't want to overwhelm you I do have for all of you guys that are watching this I have a predictions guide a handmade seller predictions guide and I'll be honest I created this at the beginning of 2018 and it was a prediction of things that may be coming this year well now we are almost at the end of 2018 so it's gonna sound a little less relevant but I can guarantee you the ayat then throw in there so really helpful so if you want to check out my predictions guide if you want some more info from me that'll also get you on my email list so I can keep sending you good tips for selling online you can definitely grab that and it is over at handmade journey comm slash 2018 of predictions so and I know Becky you have that link so yeah except on this awesome so yeah if you guys want to grab that definitely do and that will give you some more info let's see okay dee asked a good question do you have to have a business license to use at sea you do not because business licenses are generally issued by your city or county that's not something they check for I do think it would be a good idea but it's not something you have to have right away so if you get on Etsy I would try and get one within like the first couple of weeks for sure but it's you're really gonna depend on your city or county whether they want you to have one before you even attempt to sell so definitely give your local office a call and they can talk to you all about business licenses Martha asked very good question and I want to make sure type there were a couple other questions asked in advance too I'm gonna touch on but she said if you have to summarize the top five things to do before joining Etsy what would that be uh so in five things that's a lot I would definitely figure out kind of what nice you want to get started in um you may not know and when I say Miche the things remember on Etsy is Etsy shops are kind of like boutiques you really want to focus in on you know a few areas you don't want to try and sell everything under the Sun so you want to figure out what you might want to sell like that's the biggest one and at first you can definitely be more broad with that you know you could try a little bit of everything and then as you figure out what sells you could narrow it down but yes you figure out what you want to sell and definitely perfect your craft like that would be the first thing then the second thing is gonna be at really practice taking photos of your items because the photos again are so very important and so when you do decide to start listing on Etsy you do want to try and get as good of a photo on there as possible now that doesn't mean you need to be awesome at first my first photos on Etsy we're absolutely horrible I took my wooden signs and for some reason I laid them out side and gravel and took the photo and they looked they looked horrible so and I was a photographer and I knew better it still did it so just remember you can always improve things as you go but definitely try and get your photos as good as possible um I'm trying to think off the top of my head what else you might want to do I probably I'd probably say pricing pricing yeah I think should be that's a good one again pricing is something you can adjust as you go you can even start out a little bit lower if you wants just to kind of gain some momentum um but you definitely want to be profitable especially as you know as you get going because you don't want it to be an expensive hobby you want to be able to make you know some money on what you're doing so that you're not just working and not getting anywhere so it yeah pricing is a great one to research the shipping would be a great thing to research you have an idea go ahead and you know figure out where you would want to what kind of packaging you'd want to use for small flat things bubble envelopes bubble mailers work really good I have one right here actually so I get these on Amazon they're very inexpensive you can buy them in sets of like 25 I kind of have switched gears with my own handmade business I make earring macrame earrings and macrame wall stuff now so I use a lot of these bubble mailers Amazon Prime is a great places to get bubble mailers and boxes um I started out trying to buy them on like what box websites like Uline comm then I realized the shipping was so high that often Amazon Prime beat their prices by far so just research that uh what is that for things uh I can't think of a fifth thing a fifth thing off the top of my head hopefully some of the other things that I've had says if you want to watch the replay that may give you some you know some other info about what you might want to work on before you get going on Etsy but I do want to just stress that you just want to get going a lot of people um I'm a recovering perfectionist and I'll admit that in the past I used to have to feel like I had all my ducks in a row before I got started and I realized I often never got started because I never had all the things worked out perfectly and so what I suggest is just jumping in and trying it because you can improve things as you go and just letting go of that perfection because you're never gonna get things perfect there's always gonna be something you can improve but there's time you know like if you looked at my original listings the photos were crap the descriptions were crap I totally under priced myself I didn't know what I was doing in shipping and so my packaging didn't look the best but I still made sales and it got me going and I learned as I went so do not feel like you can't get started just because you don't have all these things figured out um you can definitely learn as you go for sure everybody's gonna start somewhere and if you wait for that perfection you'll never get started and it sounds like when you're getting started you didn't have a resource like your website to help you come up with all these answers I know I there wasn't as much info out there and actually I started my first icy shop back in 2003 I want to say when my you know my youngest son was like a year old and I had taken off work to be with him for those first couple months and I was like hey I'll start in a tea shop there were no resources back in 2003 and so I had no clue what I was doing I got in way over my head I got overwhelmed and I quit within just a few weeks I put my stuff on there no like I just expected like feel the dreams everybody would just show up and come by but unfortunately they didn't and I was I don't know what to do so I quit and so when I started my shop uh two years ago I realized okay there are people doing well on Etsy if they're doing well I can figure it out and so I just got started and I dove into research and I you know I there were some there was some info out there and you know I just kept experimenting and trying things and I figured out what worked and that first year I was doing so well I was like this if I was too good not to share and so that's when I started my blog just to help other handmade sellers and I have a free Facebook group that you guys are all welcome to join there's a link over at handmade journey and now that's what I focus on is helping handmade sellers so I hope that you guys will take the time to do a little research and just give it a shot cuz it's definitely can be so worth it yeah it really sounds like you kind of have to take the people who are saying all the negative things about Etsy with a grain of salt because they probably have done they probably haven't done a ton of research and figured out what works yet and I think a lot of people just think if they have a really good product and they put it on Etsy it'll magically sell but there are all these other factors you have to come up with and you have to think about and Jamie's website has answers to a lot of those so I've got it up on the train right now awesome thank you and I figure if anybody has other questions you're now in our Facebook group so I'm sure you'll be a valuable resource yes for sure for sure I'll have to watch out for Etsy posts for sure yeah the that is very true about you or you're saying about taking all the horror stories with a grain of salt because there are so many people let's start a business and don't put in a lot of effort and they don't see results but for me anything worth doing is gonna take effort so it's like just like learning calligraphy or hand lettering you have to put in the practice and that's the same with that so you have to try it and you just have to dive in and you have to learn you have to be committed to it or it's not gonna work so I know that a lot of you guys are already committed if you are planning on opening a business with your calligraphy so I hope that you will commit to learning new things and keeping an open mind because the possibilities are there I have many people in the handmade journey Academy that are selling full-time on Etsy like that's their full-time income and several people like that's their entire family's full-time income which it was for me my husband worked in my handmade business with me before I really got going helping other sellers like we ran our shop in it provided a full-time income for a family of four so so so much as possible Tammi can you just talk a little bit about your programs and how you teach other people and stuff like that before we hop off yeah I would love to so hey me journey comm is my website like you know up on the screen that is what I started with and it's got a ton of like blog posts and info some freebies on there there's an SEO guide SEO checklist so that's definitely where you can learn a lot from me and then I have a free at Facebook group that's also linked up at the top of that website and there's over 17,000 people in the group now so that is can be a great place for you to talk with other sellers I sometimes will do like Facebook lives kind of like this one where I do free trainings in the group and then I do have a learning community for handmade sellers called the handmade journey Academy and that is my pride and joy because that's where I can really help handmade sellers and actually make a big difference in their business I offer support encouragement and all kinds of training in there and um yeah it is a monthly paid membership and we have over 500 members it's an awesome community because everybody is so passionate about growing their handmade businesses and they're so supportive of each other so if you assign up for my prediction guide I'll send you some information about the Academy and give you guys a chance to join if you're interested but yeah I would love it if you guys could check out my website and you know if you have questions after this I'm gonna kind of keep an eye on this post so I can see if anybody does have any other questions but you can also reach out to me through the website yeah um well thanks so much Jamie this was really helpful yeah welcome yeah and so like you said I'm sure there'll be some more questions coming up on here and this will go up on YouTube after as well and I'm sure that people will have comments and questions I think people found it really helpful just from the commenting already so thanks again so much for coming yeah thank you guys for having me it has been awesome and I apologize for drinking water like crazy I got a cold this week but anyway uh my goal was to make it through without losing my voice and not coughing all over you guys so it was a success yeah alright thank you so much Becca and everybody thank you for being here and I will talk to you later great bye hi

Channel: The Happy Ever Crafter

Views: 55,677

Keywords: etsy, how to run an etsy shop, using etsy, how to start an etsy shop, how to use etsy, selling on etsy, more sales on etsy, handlettering, sell handmade products on etsy, online business, starting an etsy business, tips for selling on etsy, the happy ever crafter, handmade

Id: UY5ZGCd9Z88

Length: 47min 47sec (2867 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 19 2018