The Bella Wallet in Parisian Damask

Reaching your first 100 sales on Etsy is a great milestone to reach.  It can however be a tough one to reach, but with the proper knowledge it can be done.  Here are few tips from an Etsy seller that has reached and passed the 100 sale milestone.

By: blissbyheather

I know that alot of posts are written asking for advice on how to kickstart or improve sales. I thought I’d share some tips that I have used over the past 4.5 months since I started selling on etsy. Please feel free to add your own too, as I’d love to get some new ideas!

1)Spend some time on your pictures: You don’t have to be a great photographer, haha I’m not, or have an expensive camera to do it. I’ve found that white backgrounds seem to show off my products the best. I purchased 2 pieces of white bristol (or poster) board for less than $2. Now I photograph most of my items in front of, and on top of this board. I then use the free editing software that came with my camera to crop the photos, zoom in and adjust the brightness of the picture

2)Come up with a detailed description of your item: Note the dimensions of your product. If it’s difficult to tell the “true” colour of your item, mention what colours it really is.

3)”Sell your item”: Remember you can have an awesome, unique product but because you don’t have the opportunity to speak to your customers in person you you need to try and convey this message through your description. Instead of saying “small zippered bag”, you could talk about all of the numerous uses the customer could get out of your bag (change purse, makeup bag, ipod pouch, cellphone protector etc.)

4)Buy the domain name for your store. My etsy store address is http://www.blissbyheather.etsy.com but the etsy part is difficult for strangers to remember. I spent $9.99 to purchase the domain name www.blissbyheather.com and now when I run into friends or random people who ask about my purses I can now tell them an easy to remember site address. (After I purchased the site, I chose to redirect it to my etsy store)

5)Post new items in the forums once in awhile. I think that a certain portion of my sales (maybe 15-20%) have come from fellow etsy’ers. It’s helps to show off your new items once in awhile (major emphasis on once in awhile). I don’t know about anyone else, but I ignore posts from sellers who have 15 new posts in one day. It seems like a bit of overkill. On the otherhand, I’ve run into stores with incredible products, good prices that have a low number of sales and I can only imagine it’s because people don’t know about their store, or else they’d be buying it out :)

6)It’s possible to advertise without spending a dime! I have yet to spend a cent on advertising although I’m off to go order some business cards on Monday. I’m not suggesting that people go this way, but for those of you who are just starting out and don’t want to put a large initial investment into your store (as was my case), know that it is possible to not spend money, but still make sales. Ways that you can advertise include myspace, facebook, livejournal, posting on different forums etc.

Click HERE to read more.

The Etsy forums are packed full of amazing information.  Etsy Forum Rewind brings these buried posts back to life so more people from the community can benefit from the information.  Read, Learn , Apply!