How to sell leather on Etsy? For most people, Etsy is the best place to sell your leather crafts. With competitive pricing points and will not leave your bank accounts dry, many leather craftsmen and women have found Etsy to be a great place to sell their works. This article will tell you more about selling leather on Etsy, the steps you need to do, and the factors you can consider before setting up a shop in Etsy.
Factors Affecting How to Sell Leather on Etsy
Same as any other business, there are factors that you should consider before setting up a shop in Etsy. Although I mentioned earlier that many artists have found Etsy a great marketplace to sell their leather crafts and other products, you should still know the factors to consider before opening an Etsy store.
Choosing the Types of Products in Your Shop
First, you should consider the types of products you are going to sell in your Etsy shop. Remember that what might sell well for a leather craftsman might not be the best product you should sell online, and vice-versa. Always check if your products would sell well by seeing the market trends.
It would be best to try selling a few items before expanding into newer products as time goes by. It is always the worst idea to open up shop with hundreds of different products without any security. Your Etsy store would be a hit.
Of course, I know the importance of thinking positively. Still, you must be realistic here: starting with a few items would mean you do not have to spend a lot of money opening your Etsy shop. That means you will easily get your return on investment in a short time.
Analyzing and Understanding Your Target Market
It is also important that you have a general idea of what your target market is. Knowing what your target market wants would help you think of products you can sell on your Etsy site to generate sales and revenue on your end.
You can start by checking the popular Etsy stores in your area. Check which products they are selling to their customers and if your target market aligns with theirs. Once you find out what products are popular with your target market, that would help you understand creating a list of items you can sell on your Etsy store that will generate income and revenue on your end.
However, this does not mean that you can directly copy the other sellers’ products and sell them on your Etsy page as your own. This counts as downright imitation, and this will not do you any good. You will be seen as an Etsy seller without any creativity or originality in their products. Remember that being original is always the key to success.
Budgeting Your Finances on How to Sell Leather on Etsy
It goes without saying that every business should have financing before they can even start selling. Even if you are creating items on pre-order, you still need to have the finances to buy the materials, tools, equipment, and other fees you have to pay while setting up shop. Etsy also charges some sort of fees even though selling on Etsy, in general, is free.
Specifically, Etsy charges a listing fee, a transaction fee, and a small payment processing fee. The listing fee is reasonable and allows you to post an item for four months until it gets sold. Once you sell an item, Etsy will charge a 5% transaction fee on the sale price, including the shipping.
With these in mind, you must secure budgeting that will cover everything you need to pay and purchase for setting up shop on Etsy. You cannot start with an inadequate budget, or it will cause problems both short and long term.
Tips You Must Remember on How to Sell Leather on Etsy
Now that we have talked about some of the factors you must consider before selling your leather goods on Etsy, we can talk about the different helpful tips and tricks that leather craftsmen in Etsy have been using for great results.
However, I have to put up a disclaimer here: these tips and tricks are not one-size-fits-all solutions. You must try to adjust according to your specific needs and requirements to work effectively on your Etsy store.
Showcasing Your Goods Attractively
One of the known disadvantages of Etsy shops over physical stores is that buyers will not check the items themselves. They will not know how the leather feels like, whether it feels too light or heavy to touch, and so on.
Always attractively showcase your goods. Thus, you must present your goods in a way that would entice your prospective buyers once they scroll on Etsy. For example, most people think of luxury when they hear leather, so it would be the best way for you to showcase it in a way similar to how luxury boutiques would present their products to their customers.
You can find inspiration for those by checking these brands’ online stores. A quick check on Prada, Chanel, or Louis Vuitton’s online shops would give you an idea of how the products are photographed, styled, and made to look enticing to the customers.
You do not need to hire A-list photographers to produce stunning photos. Suppose you have a decent camera, like a DSLR, or your smartphone camera (since most smartphones have insane camera specs these days). In that case, you can take a photo of your product and then edit it slightly to look more pleasing and attractive to the eye.
A helpful tip: do not be too heavy-handed on the editing to the point that it looks different from the actual product. You can tweak the lighting and the photo’s saturation to fit your taste, but not so much that it affects how the item would look in reality. Customers would feel deceived, and not only would it get you fewer buyers, but you can also get reported to Etsy for improper advertising.
Writing the Best Descriptions Using Proper Keywords
Having stunning photos is only one-half of the picture. Etsy is a huge marketplace, with thousands of sellers selling different products and services to its customers. Having descriptions that do not help your items’ selling ability is something you should avoid. Hence, do your research and use the best keywords to prop your listings up to the top of search results.
Why is this important? It is because, as mentioned earlier, Etsy is huge. A lot of sellers are also selling what you have in your store. Therefore, you must gain the attention of your prospective buyers the moment they search for “leather wallets” on Etsy.
Some people think that running ads within the platform would help you generate sales. However, that is not really the case. While running ads are certainly helpful in boosting brand awareness and generating sales, you should not entirely depend on it for your store’s success.
Thus, creating great captions that are detailed and uses keywords that are sure to hit the algorithm right into the gut would help you boost your sales. Also, when you put the appropriate product descriptions on your product listings, it would inform the customer of everything they must know before buying your item.
Searching for keywords to use is not that hard. You can try using Google Trends, free for all, or a free version of an SEO keyword generator such as Semrush or Surfer SEO. Suppose you are not confident in your searching skills. In that case, you can hire someone knowledgeable in SEO keyword research to find those words you can use in creating product descriptions and shop content.
Hire Professionals For Your Etsy Shop
This tip works a lot on many Etsy sellers, leathercraft, and other types of products and services. Of course, not everyone here knows how to take good photos, write compelling captions and product descriptions, manage the shop, and many others. If you are not confident in your skills, you can always hire people who can do that for you. This works the best because they know what to do.
With the technological advancements in e-commerce and technology, you can hire other people from other countries through remote working arrangements. You can hire someone to manage your Etsy shop, write product descriptions for you, take photos of your products, and post them on your Etsy shop while working in the comfort of their homes.
You can find those on many freelancing platforms such as Fiverr and Upwork. These platforms are known to house many amazing individuals who can work wonders for your Etsy shop. You can screen them through interviews and find the best people to work for your shop. By forming a team of professionals for your Etsy shop, you can focus on the most important part of your shop — to create and perfect your craft.
Use SEO To Your Advantage
SEO, or search engine optimization, plays a huge role in working and succeeding in e-commerce platforms such as Etsy. This is important because when you search on Google about “leather belts Etsy,” the ones appearing on the top of the search results are either the most popular ones or the ones that have utilized SEO to their advantage and managed to get one of the coveted spots on the first page of search results.
Reaching the top of the search engines is very important. It helps you generate more sales, and the audience gets to know more about your shop, your brand, and what you are selling in your Etsy shop. You can hire an SEO specialist who can help you with these things, either through remote working arrangements or if you know someone close to you.
This includes optimizing listing titles and product descriptions of your items in the shop. With proper SEO skills, you can see yourself conquering one of those spots on the top page for search engines without having to pay for ads that can be expensive in the long run. After all, ads can also cause people not to buy in your shop because they got annoyed with your ads plastered all over the platform.
Take Advantage of Tagging
Among many e-commerce platforms, Etsy has this system where they can add tags on their product listings so that when users click on a certain tag, it will lead them to a list of products related to their preferences, based on the tags.
You can use this to your advantage by putting appropriate tags on your product listings. This would help you direct your products to the target audience. It is advised that you use three to four tags that are popular already, then create at least three to four specific tags that will direct your buyers to your products. Etsy has a limit of 13 tags per product listing, so you should use all of those 13 tags to direct your buyers to your store.
Make Use of Clicks for Etsy Boosts
Etsy sellers enjoy more boosts in the algorithm when they engage with their customers well. This system is called Etsy Listing Quality. This specific feature rewards the sellers who engage well with their customers with some boost from the algorithm. That means even if the customer did not buy something from you, it would still help you with the algorithm because it boosted your page up a notch.
In turn, this feature would help sellers boost their product listings to the top of the search results by helping other customers and interacting with them well.
Conclusion
Selling on Etsy is a good thing if you know what you are doing well. Since many craftsmen have benefited from selling on Etsy, you can take advantage of its seller-friendly platform features to generate income by selling your leather goods. With these tips that I gave you, I hope this will give you the sign to open up shop in Etsy and earn more of that passion coin.
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