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.

It may not be in the spirit of Etsy but I knew someone who had a well established shop and her friend decided to copy her (with different items), she was getting nowhere too. 1st friend paid me privately to go to 2nd person's (who I didn't know) Etsy shop and buy some things to get her ball rolling.

Thinking back, I was also approached by a woman in Russia three years ago. She'd seen my feedback in an Etsy store and contacted me to be her first purchaser for free. I bought and she sent the items plus refunded the money. That was to get her shop started. I was a bit wtf when she first spoke to me, I thought it was a scam, but no. She just wanted to get moving & have some feedback scores.

It takes a while but I sell far more on Etsy than I do on other selling sites (which is a bit annoying as their fees are ridiculous!) Keep going, add more and update your listings frequently.

Out of curiosity, what are the fees on Etsy as a % roughly?

6.5% sales fee on total price including postage charges.
17p (at the moment due to the exchange rate) per item sold fee and also the listing fee.
4% 20p payment processing fee.
There's a 0.25% digital tax fee.
If you are enrolled in the external advertising programme that's either 15% or 12% if your turnover is over £10k a year, charged only when a sale is made via an off-site ad.
Overall I pay about 14% which includes off-site ads.

I use 20% in my calculations.

Hope someone can help with a quick question.

I have an order but just after it came through there was a request to send it to a different address than the one on file. The request also came through from some kind of Apple account rather than an ETSY user name, does this sound ok?

Do you mean the order shipping address is different to the billing address.

Or they placed an order with a shipping address then messaged you separately asking you to post it elsewhere?

If the former then it's fine.
If the latter then cancel the order, refund their money and ask them to place another order with the correct shipping address

Apple account sounds like it's a guest checkout which isn't itself a problem but Etsy won't cover you if you send it to a different address than the one the customer put on the order.

I don’t know what you mean by billing address and shipping address, there is only one address on the order.

But I then got a separate email asking me to send it to a different address.

Hey @Aprilx . I can’t answer your question but I’m just starting my Etsy shop. If you want to partner up and share experiences/research and learn from each other, just reach out.

Oh dear. The message they sent me is linked to the order, it isn’t completely stand alone. It is a “help with my order” type of message. Strange that a guest check out would put the wrong address in, more understandable if they forgot to update a change in address.

I would refund the order, saying that the address you send to must match the address on the order and ask them to put the correct address into the system then order again.

Sometimes when it's a gift they want it sending to a different person and that's fine but it should all be clear on the actual order.

I wouldn't proceed with that. It's probably fine but I wouldn't take the chance.

Meant to say you might not be covered by seller protection if you don't send to the address on the order.

Thanks for your help, I will do that (ask them to reorder).

@elfycat how can you tell the pages that people are looking at?

Under the shop manager menu on the left hand side, I select “stats” to see how many views each item is getting.

@elfycat thank you !

I thought I would give an update for anyone else starting out on ETSY. I have just had to shut my shop down as we are going away in a couple of days and so I won’t be able to fulfil orders. A bit unfortunate timing with Christmas around the corner, but I booked the holiday long before I opened the shop.

But since my first sale in early September, I made eight more sales. Also my hairdresser has put in an order but verbally not through the system. 🙂. I have now had 800 views and 500 visits. I still don’t seem to be very high up in the listings and often cannot find my own things when I search as a guest, but I guess some people must be finding them. Hopefully things will start to pick up now I have got a few on the board.