If you happen to be an entrepreneur as well as being “crafty”, Etsy is a great place to start your business. Etsy is known as an online marketplace where you can sell handmade goods and crafts or vintage items. Anything from jewelry to children’s clothing and everything in between. Even if you have your own website already selling your product I would open up an Etsy shop as well because of the amount of traffic the site brings in. If you don’t have a website set up yet for the items you are interested in selling then Etsy is a great way to get started. The actual set up process is very easy, even for those who are not-so web savvy. Etsy is an easy way to start up a business with very low start up costs. Basically you will spend whatever the costs of your materials are to make your items. Setting up the shop is free, once you start listing items you will have fees to pay to Etsy per item listed and then a percentage of each item sold. Here are some tips on getting started.
- Decide the type of items you want to sell. It can be a variety of products as long as there is a theme behind it all. Vintage items that are not handmade can be sold on Etsy as well if you are interested in opening a shop but lacking in the creativity department. Pick something you are going to enjoy doing.
- Check with your state regulations to see what the requirements are for licensing in your state.
- Make at least twenty or so of the items you are going to sell before opening up the shop in order to have your site full of products.
- Choose a name to use for your Etsy store. Don’t choose the first thing that comes to mind, ask others for advice and choose something that you can stick with in the long run if you begin to expand the business.
- Sign up for Etsy and register your business with them. You must have a Paypal account in order to run a business so if you don’t already have one, set that up as well.
- Think about what your store policies will be regarding returns, etc. Fill out your entire profile information with all of this information as well.
- Make a list of the items you have to sell and write a description for each item along with the price you would like to sell it for. Photograph each item.
- Post all your items you have to sell along with a good description and photograph. After you have the shop set up start on making some new items to begin posting once these items begin to sell.
- Make sure you use keywords and tags when listing your items in order to make them easily found by search.
- Be sure to ship your items quickly after they are purchased. Wrapping them in a unique way or adding some kind of special touch is a sure way to be remembered.
- The great thing about running a business on Etsy is that it already generates a lot of traffic to the site and if someone searches for your items it will show them. To generate more traffic and interest in your product you may want to consider donating a product to a blogger for a review and giveaway.
- For more information check out Etsy’s Seller Handbook, Selling 101 and their forum where you can ask questions.
