January is always a tough month; many families overspend on the Holiday season with gifts and get-togethers. Even with the COVID threat sales in December CNBC reported that sales were down 1.9%, which for me was surprising with the inflation I felt many prices were high and would scare shoppers away.
Platforms who sell directly to consumers are soaring reselling their own underused possessions to $76.7 billion in 2019, according to Kathy Kristop this number will double to $175 billion by 2023. She told the story of Rachel Jones, a 33-year-old mother of two, who started a business of “printable” on Etsy and makes six figures. What are printables? Anything that a client will print, for example coloring pages, budget worksheets, etc. She created them for clients and the client would download and print. So simple, there are no shipping costs or production costs, only time and talent.
How do you get the most out of Etsy? According to Jones you will need to forget about following your passion, you will need discipline, strategy, and research. This is easy to say but what elements do we need to consider? Research says Kristof, you need to satisfy a consumer need, use keyword search. It starts with categories that suit your interest, like jewelry, wooden furniture, women’s clothing, candles and many more.
The example she showed was that many people look for printable calendars and day planners, if you search that on Etsy you will find 370,000 results and yours might be in the bottom and the chance of getting a sale is close to zero. In her case she created planners for specific niche like for teachers, for organic gardeners. Jones said “…look for a decent amount of search traffic and low competition. If the competition is too stiff or the search volume is too low, you go back to the drawing board”. Jones uses a tool called ERank which is designed to boost search engine performance in Etsy.
