How To Get Your Very First Sale On Etsy

You spent months gathering or crafting your stock. You did your research and know there is a niche for your items, so you set up your Etsy shop and now you pulled the trigger and went live.

You wait for that first sale. And wait…and wait..and wait. So what can you do to get the ball rolling?

Who wants to wait?

If you do any kind of research about it online, the usual advice is to be patient and wait it out. It may take months, but the sales will come!

I don’t know about you, but if I put that kind of effort into getting things up and running, waiting months isn’t my idea of success. If you just sit back and wait you won’t see much for quite awhile. You just KNOW your stuff is great and should be flying off the shelf. Ok, sure, that could be true. But how can anyone know about it without a bit of work on your end?

What you should be doing instead is this…

First, market yourself and your stuff. Everywhere. Did I mention everywhere? All your social media and your email should have a link to your Etsy shop and a blurb about how much they need to go see it.

Then go back and look at your shop from the standpoint of a customer. No sales means no reviews. Zero. Nada. Would you buy from someone like that? Doubtful. A blank number on your store is bad news. What to do about it? Go to family and friends and get them to purchase something or leave a review if they already have something. ASK for them!

Email Your Friends and Family

Email everyone who likes you and tell them about your great store! Sound enthusiastic and proud to be a small business owner, it is true what they say, if you are happy you will make other people happy!

Say something like this…

Oh my gosh, I can’t believe it finally here! I just got my Etsy store up and running and could really use your help…:)

First if you have any suggestions for how to make it better, I would love to hear them! Second, if you find something you love it would SOOOO help if you could buy it and then leave a review! Reviews help other people decide to order from a store and right now I don’t have any…arggg!

I made coupon code so my peeps could help me get off the ground. Just put this in when you check out, FRIENDSANDFAMILY, and you will get 50% off your order!

Thank you so much helping to make my dream a reality!

I can hear your groan all the way from here! 50% off when you just took all that time and figured sales would be flying in. But you have to remember, sales and reviews make a huge difference! Which store would you be more comfortable buying from?

There is something so “human” about thinking that if a bunch of people have bought something already then it should be good… having at least a few sales is super important!

Customer feedback

As with sales of anything, good customer feedback is essential. So is good customer service. So if you get questions from people looking at your items, be friendly, answer their questions, offer a gift with purchase. Be proactive in your sales efforts. Just like you wouldn’t just put it behind the counter at a brick and mortar store, you would go invite people in, do the same with your Etsy store.

Getting those 5 gold stars is really not all that hard, but wicked important!

Pay To Play

The last suggestion I have is really going to shock some of you! I DEFINITELY think that you should do promoted listings. This is a feature where you pay a little bit of money each day (the minimum is $1/day) to have Etsy put you in the “ad” section of the listings.

Hear me out! If you have no sales, it will be harder to get your products seen within search. By paying just a little bit, you will be able to be on the search page in a really prominent spot…

This is my Caboodle listing on the first page of Etsy, number one position just because I paid to have it promoted. I set all my listings at $.05 maximum per click so I get about 20 views a day just from the promoted listings!

Wrapup

Well hopefully that helps giving you some good ideas about how to get those first few precious sales on Etsy! Some things that I don’t recommend… pricing everything super cheap (people question the quality), giving away your products to bloggers who approach you (they are often just scammers who want something for nothing) or giving up (you have to  be working on your store everyday to see results!