To Etsy Or Not To Etsy... That Is The Question.

Hello and Happy Tuesday to all of our faithful readers! We hope you enjoyed your long 4th of July weekends!

Ruth, Gracie and I have been doing quite a bit of soul searching lately, regarding our Etsy Shop - asking ourselves: Why haven't we sold anything yet?, Are our prices too high?, Does anyone know we exist?, etc. We see other Etsy sellers posting amazing, exciting statistics about their shops - even one who has reached her 1,000th sale. While we are so happy for her and think its great, we know we could reach 1 million sales! So, what to do?

Well, I did some research today and I will share a few of the Etsy tips that I discovered and that Paper Dolls will be implementing - these are things that came up many times from multiple sources. We hope they are helpful! If you have any other tips for how to make money on Etsy, please share!

1. Be different - Make your products a reflection of yourself, find a niche and don't try to cater to everyone.
2. Your Photos Can Make or Break Your Shop - The photographs of your items should be professional and editorial - they should look artsy and show your personality.
   
3. The Art Of Listing - Your Item titles are very important - make them short and sweet but descriptive. Use all of your tags when you can. 50 - 100 items at a time is ideal on your shop - most people will only browse through 2 - 3 pages (and see 40 - 60 of your products). Relist, relist, relist - Etsy's search function shows most recently listed items first.
4. Get Involved - Become a part of the Etsy community by reading the Etsy blog and being active on the comment threads and forums - you get your questions answered and gain exposure with your peers - BONUS!
5. Use your tools! Read Etsy's Seller Handbook, Your Shop 101 and again, use the forum - almost all of your questions can be answered there.

I hope that is helpful - I just added about 20 new items to our shop this evening - take a look and leave us a comment. You have no idea how excited we get when a new comment pops up - we text each other IMMEDIATELY!