How to get on an ETSY search result?

[Aprilx]

I opened an ETSY shop yesterday, I am not linking to it here as not looking to cross promote I am genuinely after some advice on how to feature in search results.

When I do a search as if I were a customer, my items don’t come up, even when I use the exact same words that I used in my product title, my product does not appear anywhere in the results. I have used general words that I think people would search for and I can find products with identical titles made by others, but mine are gone.

I am not sure how I will get that first sale if I cannot get onto peoples search results. Grateful for any advice.

I think you need loads and loads of items for sale. Or I think they may have their algorithm configured against you, they want you to sign up to sponsored ads.

I have some more things I could add so I will try that, although not loads. I saw something about ads but haven’t read up on it yet.

Etsy shows popular products first by default I believe, so ones with loads of purchases, reviews etc.

You can sponsor a product so you appear at the top of the list, or at least on the first page of results. Good idea to do this in the beginning to build up organic purchases and reviews.

Have a look for an Etsy SEO guide, it'll help you with wording and tricks etc

www.sellbrite.com/blog/etsy-seo/#:~:text=Etsy%20SEO%20is%20the%20process,within%20Etsy's%20own%20search%20function.

for example

Also, if there are loads of sellers selling near enough identical products, perhaps the market is too crowded to get in at this stage? Look for whatever makes your product different or where you could take it to develop it further.

You could also ask friends and family to purchase the item from your etsy shop to boost your transactions and leave positive reviews.

Are you using all the 'Tags' boxes?

I sell vintage jewelry and for a vintage brass bangle with mother of pearl I might use terms like Vintage Bangle, Mother Of Pearl, Shell bangle, Vintage Shell, Brass Bangle, Brass Shell bangle, etc.

As well as a good title without shoving every keyword into it (save those for the description and tags).

I will also say that I find if I don't list new items every week or so I have fewer visitors to my shop than if I do add something. Pace yourself with listing, not add all on one day. This is my own experience, but I have 2 shops for different things and seems true on both.

How many items are you listing straight away? I think I aimed for 35-40 in the first few days (I'm sure I read it on a 'How to' guide, and got to 75+ within a month.

Are your photos good? I take mine outside in sunshine, in a bright window, and then invested in a dirt cheap light box from Amazon (my items are small) which isn't perfect but is 80% of the way there and better than a dull day.

Thanks Sliceofcake for your ideas and the link, I will have a read through. I don’t think it is the market that is saturated, well no more than anything else on ETSY and certainly I have not seen anything identical.

At this point, I would just like to work out how to get on search results. 😅

I just listed five yesterday, I wanted to see how it went with them, but I have some more things I can add.

My photos could definitely be better, I am going to get my good camera out and update. But conversion isn’t my immediate problem as nobody has looked at them anyway as I am not coming up on search results. So far I have had no views, so that is what I am trying to work out.

If you google 'how many items to set up an Etsy shop' I see answers between 10 and 25 in the first few, including the answer from Etsy's community forums. Under this you are unlikely to be seen in searches.

I currently have 107 items listed on one shop (my main business) - 6 visitors looking at 10 pages so far today.

On the vintage shop (hobby) I have 45 items, with 5 visitors looking at 10 pages. My last sale was on the 16th May (I haven't been doing the regular listing thing I know to do - thanks for the prompt.

I think it is also worth bearing in mind it's going to be a tougher market at the moment for some products. People have less disposable income, and if you have a spare £20 will you buy a vintage bangle, or use it to cover the extra that petrol/diesel now costs? I also notice that my sales across all platforms (Etsy, ebay and Amazon) drop whenever there is bad news in the press, particularly about the cost of living.

Don't be discouraged - there are customers out there. Build your shop up steadily.

How many people are selling the same or similar things? Some have thousands so it will be a while before you get up there. People who have a track record will be higher up. There are things you can do (as well as pay for). Driving people to your page through other social media is one thing you can try.

Thank elfycat. I had the strategy of putting a few things on to see what happened, but I will rethink that and put more products up.

I will also redo some photos so that it looks better if somebody does stumble across my pages! I have had a look at light boxes on Amazon, some of my items are going to be too big for the cheap ones but there are a couple of things that will fit.

I have just searched for one of my items, when I put the UK only filter on there are 1200 results. But this is everything that comes up using those words and many things are not remotely the same as my product but there are plenty that are quite similar too. Mine turned up on page 21, it hadn’t come up previously but I had not put the UK only filter on previously.

Fill all your tags, maximum number Also all the letters in the title are filled. It also takes a while to start showing in results

It takes a bit of time.
As pp say, use all your tags.
Photos have to be good but if you're not visible in the first place that's not much good.

Promote your shop on social media.
Run a sale.
Join FB crafter groups and give lots of praise. Add your post to all the threads they have where they say show me your work etc. Give more than you get on that one. It pays off in the long run.

Get an Instagram and Twitter and all that and just keep plodding away.

I started my shop in 2018 and I'd say it was a good 6 months before things picked up.

Promoting your shop is a full time job in itself!

I know this thread is a few weeks old, but I just wanted to add that it can take a couple of days for your items to be indexed on the site, so they won't appear immediately anyway.
Definitely make use of tags and write a keyword rich description as it is used in search results. Don't spam your title with loads of random keywords, it's pointless and looks awful. Full in item specifics for things like materials and colour.
Photos need to be clear and bright. Make sure your policies are correctly filled in and abide by the consumer contract regulations. Make sure your postage is correctly set up with dispatch and delivery timescales.

Thanks for your post. Actually it was quite timely as I delisted the few items I had put up in order to get more together and take better photos following the earlier advice. I started a new PT job in the meantime and so in the last couple of days I finally took my photos in a light box from Amazon and I put fifteen items up and will get a few more up over the next week. My photos look pretty good now.

I have had 26 views and 13 visits now, mainly in last few days. I still seem to be quite far down on the searches when I look myself, but somebody must be seeing them.

I am not sure what a view is versus a visit. 😊. Guessing a view is that somebody looks at my product in a search and a visit is that they go on to look at my other things?

Any improvement?

I gave upon Etsy last year both as a buyer and seller. So many irrelevant tags I can never find what I want. I came so far down the listings I was all but invisible with genuine tags.

I am on 130 views and 86 visits, so a few a day, I have had a handful of my items being favourited by people. But no sales yet, I suspect people are wary when there is no track record, so getting that first one is important. It is not in my nature to ask friends so it will need to be a genuine sale.

In terms of searches, I only appear on them if I filter to UK only, I am hoping people do that when they search! With the filter on for some items I am on the first page or two, but I have just searched for one of my things and gave up at page 22 when I still hadn’t appeared!

Thank you for asking by the way. 🙂

Yes. Very much my experience too. Small makers are being crowded out there.

I’ve switched now to Folksy. Much lower traffic but I do make some sales. I also have a mademe account for a specific niche branding. That gets no organic traffic but is cheaper than having my own website and I can drive sales there via Facebook

I might try Folksy, I saw it mentioned somewhere a little while back.

I have made a sale!!!!!

😁😁😁

(I just hope mail strikes don’t reflect on me). 🙁

Congrats April!