Making your first $1000 on Etsy isn’t as hard as you think! As long as you follow the correct process to ensure your products can be found through organic search, it is fully possible to make your first $1000, $10,000, and even more as an Etsy seller!

I’ll now go through some fundamentals of being successful on Etsy and also some hacks to help you get the initial momentum on your sales!

Should You Use An Existing Shop Or Open A Brand New Etsy Shop?

First, let’s go over a commonly asked question!

This will only apply to those who have previously opened an Etsy shop already - should you delete your old listings and use the same shop, or open up a brand new Etsy shop and start fresh?

It is possible to reuse the same shop. You can even change your shop name and branding completely so it looks like a brand new shop. However, I would actually recommend starting fresh with a brand new Etsy shop.

This is because you can utilize the initial boost that the Etsy platform gives to brand new shops, which can help you gain the initial momentum that you need as a new seller. This is part of the pre-launch strategy that I teach my students here, but it’s really important to plan out all your listings in advance and ensure you have everything ready to go before opening your shop!

When the Etsy algorithm can see a brand new shop that has all the relevant sections of their shop filled out, with lots of listings up from the beginning, they will see this as a legitimate shop and will give it the boost it needs.

💡 TOP TIP: It’s super important to have a great foundation for your shop from the beginning, as this is how Etsy will recognize you!

Understand SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

What Is Etsy SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and Etsy SEO refers to the process of improving the visibility of your Etsy shop and product listings in search results such as Google and Etsy search.

Understanding how Etsy SEO works is one of the best and most important strategies you can use to gain organic traffic to your Etsy shop. This includes understanding supply and demand, understanding what people are searching for, and knowing how to use relevant keywords throughout your shop.

This includes using relevant keywords within your shop name, titles, tags and descriptions so that you can rank higher in Etsy search results - as this is where most buyers begin their customer journey.

💡 TOP TIP: Make sure you are using relevant keywords to your shop because you don’t want to attract the wrong customers! If people visit your shop but are not buying anything, it will affect your conversion rate. If your conversion rate is low, Etsy is less likely to promote your products to others!

What Is The Best Etsy Researching Tool?

The bests tools I like to use to ensure I’m maximizing my shop’s SEO are EverBee and eRank. These have different functions and the combination of these two is everything you need to launch a successful Etsy shop!

EverBee is a chrome extension tool that is great for researching competitors and gathering important data from other shops or listings that are already selling on Etsy. It allows you to see insights such as the monthly sales, monthly revenue, listing age, shop age, the specific tags sellers are using and much more! To learn more about how to use EverBee, check out my tutorial here!

eRank is more for researching specific keywords and search terms to really understand the supply and demand for a specific niche. When you search for a specific keyword, you can see the average monthly searches compared to the Etsy competition (or how many listings are being sold in that category). You can also see the search trend over the different months of the year to gain a good picture of what the demand for the product is, compared to how saturated it already is on Etsy.

💡 TOP TIP: You don’t need to have a recurring monthly bill from using these tools. Instead, you can do all your researching in the first month, then cancel the subscriptions once you’re done!

You can also learn more about SEO in my Ultimate Etsy SEO Guide here!

Have Good Quality Product Listings

This one might sound obvious, but the key to doing well in the long term is to have great products that people find really valuable. This is how you will get the 5 star reviews that will attract more and more people to your shops, allowing you to earn passive income on Etsy!

So make sure you spend a lot of time creating high quality products, and also ones that are unique to the ones already being sold on Etsy. You need to find what no one else is doing in the market, and fill that gap!

💡 TOP TIP: Don’t forget to invest time into having good quality product mock-ups too! People can’t see how good your product is unless they click on your listing to begin with - so these need to stand out from the crowd.

How Many Listings Should You Have When Opening An Etsy Shop?

When you’re just starting out with selling digital products on Etsy, I would suggest 16 to 24 listings. As I mentioned earlier, you want to make sure they are all ready (including the mock-ups, keywords and product descriptions) before you open your shop on Etsy.

You should post all 16-24 listings at once upon opening your shop so it looks filled out but also so you can gain a good amount of data from it. From here you’ll be able to figure out which listings are doing well, which ones are being favorited, and how you can improve your shop. And from there, you can start creating more products that people enjoy.

💡 TOP TIP: It’s important to find what is sustainable for you in terms of adding additional listings to your shop after launching. For example, it’s better to do it once every couple of weeks rather than trying to do it everyday then quitting because you got burnt out!

Utilize Discounts Upon Opening Your Etsy Shop

When you’ve just launched your Etsy shop, it can be really helpful to offer a discount across your shop to gain those initial sales and reviews. This will let Etsy know that people are interested in your products, which will make them promote your products more and you can gain organic momentum from there!

Especially when selling digital products which have very low costs to create, you can still make money on Etsy even with a large discount on your products. For example, you can start with a 70% discount, then once you gain some momentum you can slowly reduce the discount to align with the rest of the market.

💡 TOP TIP: Utilize daily discounts to create a sense of urgency for the buyers. Buyers will see a countdown when they view your listing, such as ‘7 hours left for this discount’ which may make them more likely to buy from you. This is what a lot of Etsy sellers are doing to help them boost their sales!

However, it’s important to be mindful about using this approach as it can change the landscape of the Etsy platform in a negative way. If your keep your discounts on for a long time, other sellers in the category will see this, then they will feel like they need to drop their prices too to get more sales. At the end of the day, it will become a price war where everyone has to have low prices and no one really wins!

Learn More

Hopefully you’ve now learned that you need to get the fundamentals right in order to be successful and make your first $1000 on Etsy! Don’t forget to check out my Ultimate Etsy SEO guide here to learn how to write effective titles and tags, how to get more traffic to your shop, and how to increase your sales for profits!

You can also check out my FREE masterclass for my proven 4-step method for Etsy success here! Or, check out my full YouTube video to see me answer some commonly asked questions about selling on Etsy here!