There are many twists and turns as you open your Etsy shop. If I could give 5 pieces of advice to younger me, it would be these.
1. Launch early
I prepared way too many products before I launched my shop. It makes sense not to launch with only one or two products, but if you have 30–50 sitting there ready on your hard drive, trust me, that is too many!
If I were to start again, I would aim for 10 or so products. As soon as your shop goes live, you can start collecting real-time data about customer preferences and competition levels. How many sales, favourites or views is each of your listings getting? See what’s gaining early traction and lean into it.
Looking back on it, my early products were not that great and most were not purchased. Over time I refined my skills and learned customer preferences and made more sales. But my shop needed to be open for this to happen. Stop stockpiling your listings and open your shop!
2. Progress over perfection
If you are a perfectionist like me, it will be hard to stop working on your products and admit they are done. Set yourself a limit and then publish. It will never be perfect, and people may or may not like it either way.
Each time you create a digital product you will get better at it. Resist the urge to go back and redo every product that you made earlier, as you will always be improving so there is no end to this.
This isn’t to say you can’t go back a revise a product, but be mindful about it and don’t spend more time on revisions than on creating new products. As a new digital products shop, you need to keep feeding the algorithm new listings to maintain visibility.
3. Learn by doing
I spent a lot of time learning from others on YouTube. I devoured all the information I could find. I do think it helped, but at a certain point it just becomes procrastination.
When you go live with your shop, you will learn what is working for you and this contextual information is not something a YouTube guru can teach you. You need to figure it out for yourself.
So by all means educate yourself, but accept that you will never know everything and that you don’t need to in order to open your shop. You will learn a lot along the way, and this is the way we all improve.
4. Take risks
You might have heard the expression “no risk, no reward”. There are times you will need to do things that feel uncomfortable or risky. But acknowledge that this feeling can be brought on by unfamiliarity and lack of confidence in a new area. It doesn’t mean you should play it safe.
For example, it feels risky to spend money on ads, but used wisely, ads can greatly help your new shop.
If you’re curious, I have a full article on how to run Etsy ads in a new shop.
5. Be open to change
You probably went into your business with an idea or strategy. Be open to experimenting and trying new things. Listen carefully to customer feedback. It might be that there is a better way, a better product for you to sell.
This certainly happened to me. Within a couple of months it became clear that a particular type of product was doing much better than my main product. I shifted my focus more onto this product and 2 years later it is still serving me well.
This isn’t to say you should chop and change constantly. Try something long enough to see if it’s working, and analyse all the data that is coming in. Then you can make an informed decision.
Have a flexible mindset so that when when the time comes you can make a change without wasting too much time debating it. If it is a 2-way door (a decision that can be reversed), walk on through it!