Starting an Etsy Business for Dummies

387 Pages·2017·35.857 MB·English

by  Shoup, Kate, Strine Allison, Gatski Kate

Starting an
Etsy® Business

Starting an
Etsy Business
®
3rd Edition
by Kate Shoup and Kate Gatski
Starting an Etsy® Business For Dummies®, 3rd Edition
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017946007
ISBN 978-1-119-37896-9 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-37901-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-37882-2 (ebk)
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents at a Glance
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Part 1: Getting Started with Etsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
CHAPTER 1: Handmade for Each Other: Falling in Love with Etsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
CHAPTER 2: Let’s Get This Party Started: Signing Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
CHAPTER 3: There’s No Place Like Home: Discovering Etsy’s Home Page . . . . . . . . . 29
CHAPTER 4: Account Trackula: Navigating Your Etsy Account and the
Shop Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43
CHAPTER 5: Buy and Buy: Finding and Purchasing Items on Etsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
CHAPTER 6: Safe Word: Maintaining Privacy and Safety on Etsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Part 2: If You Build It, They Will Come:
Setting Up Your Etsy Shop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81
CHAPTER 7: Sell Coverage: Understanding What You Can and
Can’t Sell on Etsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83
CHAPTER 8: Come on In! Creating an Eye-Catching Storefront . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
CHAPTER 9: Policy Academy: Setting Your Shop’s Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
CHAPTER 10: The Price Is Right! Pricing Your Pieces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Part 3: She Sells Seashells (And More):
Understanding the Etsy Selling Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
CHAPTER 11: Say Cheese! Photographing Your Wares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
CHAPTER 12: Word Up: Composing Engaging Titles and Descriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
CHAPTER 13: Selling Like Hotcakes: Listing Your Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
CHAPTER 14: Wrap It Up: Closing the Deal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
CHAPTER 15: The Ship Hits the Fan: Shipping Your Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Part 4: All Up in Your Bidness: Handling
Business Matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
CHAPTER 16: High Exposure: Marketing Your Etsy Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
CHAPTER 17: You’ve Been Served: Providing Excellent Customer Service . . . . . . . . . 231
CHAPTER 18: Business as Usual: Managing Your Etsy Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
CHAPTER 19: Growing Your Etsy Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Part 5: Commune System: Exploring the
Etsy Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
CHAPTER 20: Community Building: Joining the Etsy Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
CHAPTER 21: OMG, Did You Hear? Keeping Up with Etsy News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
CHAPTER 22: A Love-Love Relationship: Showing Your Love
for Other Etsy Sellers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
CHAPTER 23: Help! Getting It When You Need It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
Part 6: The Part of Tens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
CHAPTER 24: Ten Terrific Tips for Etsy Sellers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
CHAPTER 25: Ten Strategies for Marketing Your Etsy Shop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .339
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
About This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Foolish Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Icons Used in This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Beyond the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Where to Go from Here . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
PART 1: GETTING STARTED WITH ETSY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
Handmade for Each Other: Falling in Love
CHAPTER 1:
with Etsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Creative Crusade: Understanding Etsy’s Purpose
and Business Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
World Up: Introducing the World of Etsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Registering with Etsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Navigating the Etsy home page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Understanding your account and your shop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Discovering what’s for sale on Etsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Ensuring your safety on Etsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Storefront and Center: Setting Up Your Storefront . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Sell’s Angels: Surveying the Etsy Selling Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Takin’ Care of Business: Handling Business Matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Community Collage: Engaging in the Etsy Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
CHAPTER 2: Let’s Get This Party Started: Signing Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Sign Me Up! Becoming a Registered User . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Setting up your account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Accessing Etsy’s House Rules and reviewing its Terms of Use . . . . 20
It’s a Sign: Signing In . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
High Profile: Setting Up Your Public Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
There’s No Place Like Home: Discovering
CHAPTER 3:
Etsy’s Home Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Home Sweet Home: Etsy’s Home Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Tonight’s Head(er)liner: Exploring the Header Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Category Eight: Browsing Etsy’s Category Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
But Wait! There’s More! Exploring More Ways to Shop
from Etsy’s Home Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Viewing personalized picks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Perusing more suggestions from Etsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Table of Contents vii
The Velvet Blog: Reading Etsy Blog Posts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Campaign Promises: Tracking Etsy Campaigns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Say What? Discovering What Etsy Is . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Playing Footsie: Exploring Footer Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Sell on Etsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Join the community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Discover and shop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Get to know us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Follow Etsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
’Appy Days: Exploring the Home Page on the Etsy App . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Account Trackula: Navigating Your
CHAPTER 4:
Etsy Account and the Shop Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43
Hey You! Exploring the You Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44
Final Account-down: Managing Your Etsy Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Shop Talk: Familiarizing Yourself with the Shop Manager . . . . . . . . . . 49
Managing your listings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Accessing conversations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Handling orders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Retrieving statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Checking your Etsy finances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51
Promoting your shop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Finding a production partner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Learning more . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Changing shop settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Adding sales channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53
Buy and Buy: Finding and Purchasing Items
CHAPTER 5:
on Etsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Gimme One Reason: Understanding Why You Should
Buy on Etsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Go Fish: Using Etsy’s Search Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Transaction Oriented: Delving into Transaction Details . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
A Review to a Kill: Leaving a Review After You Buy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64
Case in Point: Filing a Case Against a Seller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Safe Word: Maintaining Privacy and Safety
CHAPTER 6:
on Etsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Oh, Behave! Adhering to Etsy’s House Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Private Party: Guarding Your Privacy on Etsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Understanding Etsy’s Privacy Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Changing your privacy settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Choosing a strong password . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
viii Starting an Etsy Business For Dummies, 3rd Edition