Etsy Tips - List Often, by Jane Hamill

An occasional feature from Jane Hamill, who shares her experiences with selling on Etsy, and how she uses it to its best advantage.






Keeping your visibility on Etsy is important. You want your items to appear regularly on the recent items lists and in your favourites' and circles' activity pages. Obviously you can't make enough of your craft to be able to be constantly listing new things but you should have an aim.

That aim is to list one item per day.

I know what you're going to say; there's no way you can make enough of your high-quality handmade items to be able to list one a day without burning yourself out! Yes, I agree - the only way I was able to do this right from the beginning was because I had a huge backlog of stock that I was moving from my own webshop across to Etsy. I moved one per day whilst I still continued to make beads and jewellery, creating a further queue of items.

I'm also lucky that my chosen art, lampworked glass beads, enables me to create at least one high-quality saleable focal or set per torch session. In fact there are usually more than that and when my health allows, I have one torching session, three days per week.

If you're creating bigger items that take a great deal more time to make, the one-per-day rule is tricky to stick to, if not impossible.

The best advice I can give is to at least *aim* for one-per-day. Sometimes you might find yourself with a few items to list, so don't be tempted to do so all at once, eke them out over the next few days, one a day.

Etsy recently introduced the "Draft listings" option, where you can type up your description, upload pictures, set your tags (try to use all the slots for pictures and all of your 14 allocated tags where you can!) and then save it as a draft to activate at a later date. This means you can set aside some time at the computer to get all the listing done and once and all you have to do for the next few days is to activate each one.

And of course, whilst you're working through this queue you will also be making new things to add to the end of it... and so on...

Remember also, renewed items count as a newly-listed item. Obviously we're hoping that you will sell your work before its listing expires but if it doesn't you can at least use it to your advantage :) Don't renew your items all at once; again, eke them out.

Once you have built up some momentum with this you'll find it easier over time to approach, if not reach, listing one item per day - good luck! :)