I sell on Etsy, pretty much exclusively. It’s a pain in the butt because everyone is grabbing for the same traffic, each listing takes a long time to make, and of course the algorithm is a bit of a secret. Since I spent 20+ years writing software for the internet, I have a pretty good idea of how Etsy search works, but that doesn’t help much because, well, it’s fairly obvious.
Most search engines do a sort of “scoring” and your listing will show up higher if it’s scored higher, right? With Etsy, title+tags = high score for that keyword. For example: if your title is “this that” and you have a tag that says “this that” exactly, then you’ll score fairly high for “this that.” However, there’s other magic with how many people click, like, and buy your “this that,” and your review stars, how many listings you have, and other things. If you join a group that likes your stuff but doesn’t buy, you might score lower. If tons of people look at your stuff and never click, you might score lower. The funny thing is if you make your photos look good, your title/tags are relevant, and people review you well, you’ll get more sales.
I know why I’m not getting a ton of sales, I don’t have a lot of listings and my shop is a little all over the place. I make what I like, so whatever 🙂
I learned a lot from some YouTube videos and some Facebook groups (including a paid one). And in the end, what really matters is: the quality of your photos, your listing info matches your product, and you have good customer service.
