To ask if anyone sells on etsy?

[CollyWombles]

Mostly for traffic than an actual AIBU. I have become a stay at home mum very recently and still want to contribute where I can. I have an Etsy shop that I set up purely because my hobby was filling my house up rather than really focusing on selling. However, I do make 2 or so sales a month.

Now I am a stay at home mum, I want to see if I can make a little bit more, basically save anything I do make for Christmas. I only make variations of one product, so listings are basically all the same. Im struggling to take decent pictures due to the house having poor natural light.

Does anyone that sells on Etsy have any advice at all? I'd really appreciate it. For info, I make and sell hanging heart shaped slates with hand painted dot mandalas on them.

Yes i do, i started off in 2016, only listed maybe three thing and only made 4 sales between then and january 2017. Then i started listing more things, sorting out my tags and photos and at the end of 2017 ended up with 800 sales.

I've grown so much that i had to open a second shop to list just my wedding items as customers were finding it confusing wading through various other items to find the wedding stuff.

For advice i would say - tags are the most important, make sure they are relevant. Titles are also important, make sure some of your tags have the same words as your title

Add all the info you can in the description - 2 lines isnt going to cut it and you always get that one customer that asks questions that may be obvious to you but not to them.

Sell outside of the UK - my sales didnt start to rocket until i offered shipping outside of the UK but make sure you state in your description that you are based in the UK and that their items can take up to 3 weeks to arrive so that you dont get panicked customers messaging you 2 days after you've posted it asking where their item was and the fact that they didnt know you were based in the UK.

Photos - try to have at least 5, good lighting and at different angles - for some reason the amount of photos has an impact on the search algorithm.

Make sure you update your shop policies, your "about" page aswell.

Make sure your prices are right, do a search on etsy for similar things to what you make and ensure you arent pricing too high or too low.

Buy a light box - you can purchase them relatively cheaply on ebay, i have a small foldable box with an LED light, made a hell of a difference to my photos.

I bought a light tent and two daylight lamps on eBay and they make a huge difference

Yep! Fairly successful Etsy seller here (although I’m in a very niche category). Selling take a LOT of time, effort and savvy. I can also only do it when child is napping. It’s near on impossible otherwise.
Best thing you can do for yourself is go on a business and finances course if you haven’t already - the most simple mistakes I made when starting out were all about accounting.

Also please please make sure you’re registering your company, declaring your income etc. It’ll save you trouble down the line.

Very little of the work I do is actually the fun part of making and selling the product. Designing product lines, photography, listing, marketing, posting packing, answering convos and admin is 95% of what I do.