Time again for my ramblings - and I would of course like to point out that this is just me, its just what I have found and what I think. Everyone will be different and the fantastic this is what works for one person will be different for someone else. So if you dont agree then thats cool. Also feel free to share your tips too, I need to learn as much as the next guy
So for today
Dont fear change
How often do we see threads on here basically saying things have changed, everything is broken, sales are crashing
Its depressing to look in the forums sometimes.
Over the years Etsy has changed many time, of course there are things that I miss that used to be here but overall now my shop is doing better than it ever did.
Forgive me while I tell you one of my stories
I have been here for a very very long time.
When I started I put a lot of effort into learning, understanding and networking. If was working, slowly slowly but every year I was doing a little better than the one before
At around 2010 I felt I was doing really really great. I had made the front page several times and the sales that followed that were truly amazing (for me)
Then Etsy made a huge change. The search engine totally changed, we went from recency (basically to get to the front of the page you just had to renew your listings) to relevancy. Also some other tools that many of us had been using to get traffic (like chat) went away
Overnight my shop died, totally died
I did nothing about it, I didnt have the energy or the understanding to make the changes needed - I just kept on doing the same thing
and for several years my sales were dead in the water, 16 sales in the first year after the change.
If I had felt like posting in the forums I would have been crying about how broke Etsy was
Finally in the last quarter of 2013 I decided to give my store one more proper try (and if it failed I was going to close my shop). I got into the forums and teams and really tried to learn about SEO, I made some tweaks to my items and got to work listing more and more
and
In the last 3 months of 2013 I sold more than I had sold the 2 years before combined
In 2014 I sold nearly ten times that of my worst year - and more than double my previous best ever year. This year I am actually on track to do at least 50% better than last year - and if I do that will roughly be the maximum I can actually create, I might have to think of raising prices
So was Etsy broke when the changes happened??
Nope, it seems these changes ARE better for me, I just had to learn how to use them
So before you say 'Its all rubbish' try asking 'What has changed and how can I learn to use it?'
If you are here on the forums you are more proactive than most people with shops anyways - if you ask, learn and adapt then you are putting yourself ahead of many of the rest
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