How to make money on Etsy – the ultimate guide

One of the perks of the online marketplace is how versatile the landscape is. Whether you’re selling ideas, content, advice, or products, there’s a place for you to set up your stall and hawk your wares to a massive customer base.

Nowhere is this more true than on Etsy, the online marketplace for boutique sellers. As a creative person, you should be rewarded for your endeavors. Etsy provides that opportunity without you needing to heavily invest in your own workshop or mass production machines.

In this post, we’re going to go over the ins and outs of Etsy entrepreneurship. We’ll discuss Etsy as a concept and what you can sell, before going over the pros and cons and offering some tips for the hopeful Etsy success story.

Etsy is designed to be a unique marketplace where users can buy things they wouldn’t be able to find elsewhere. This is because Etsy’s sellers are making one-of-a-kind wares and directly selling them to people who visit the website.

Contrast this with Amazon, a generic marketplace where you can pick up most any product under any brand you can think of, but you can also find a lot of this stuff in retail stores and on other e-commerce websites.

Per company’s seller’s policy page, products on Etsy must fit into the following categories:

• Handmade
• Vintage*
• Craft supply

As long as you’re selling something that fits into the above categories, you should be fine to start your Etsy business. To make sure you’re doing the right thing however, let’s unpack the categories a bit more and provide some Etsy use cases.

• Handmade refers to items that have been made and or designed by you. Working with a production partner requires you to put the name of the partner in your listings, and you must use your own photography when uploading pictures to advertise your listings.

• Vintage items must be at least 20 years old. You may be required to supply extra information about your items, including where you have sourced them from, how you determined the age, who the designer is, and what kind of material or fabric it is made from.

• Craft supplies are any tools or ingredients, the primary purpose of which is to create items with, or in special occasions (decorations for birthday celebrations, for example). Craft supplies can be commercially sourced, and sellers are encouraged to describe how the supplies were made and where the materials come from.

To help you better picture Etsy success, let’s look at a few use cases for Etsy shops. This way you can begin to picture your own ideal Etsy shop and work towards it.

Bobby Hill is a 15 year old high school student with a green thumb and a precocious penchant for photography. Enthusiastic in biology at school, his proud teacher lets him store and look after his own plants in the storage rooms of the science wing.

Bobby also has a popular Instagram account, where he posts pictures of his plants’ growth progress. Students are regularly asking him for advice and propositioning him to buy his plants for gifts, for their parents, or just for themselves.

Since ‘Etsy plants’ is a very popular search term, Bobby decides to use Etsy to begin selling his plants. He already has a potential customer base from his Instagram profile, plus plenty of his own photographs as per Etsy’s requirements. Not to mention the storage space at school for his plants. After a few months, Bobby has more than enough pocket money for his hobby and a promising career as a boutique plant seller.

Daphne Moon, 41, has worked in paints and acrylics, in various different roles and for different companies, for over two decades. She’s looking to reduce her hours and spend more time renovating the apartment she recently bought, but she wants to keep up a steady income.

With Daphne’s extensive knowledge of paint production and sales, she decides to start mixing some of her own milk-based and natural paints for ethical use. After getting the ok from her employer, she starts using a working space to mix and create eco-friendly paints to sell on Etsy.

Since Etsy has a built-in customer base for craft supplies, and customers running their own boutique crafts businesses often want to use ethical materials, Daphne finds her extensive knowledge and environmentally friendly paints are a popular hit, providing her a good hobby and a nice side income she might one day be able to rely on.

76 year old retiree Jack Klompus has lived most of his life on a farming property outside the city. He has a large shed he partly built himself, and has been collecting tools for the better part of forty years. Some were useful to perform chores on the farm, others he simply found interesting when he went to farmers’ markets.

With his newfound free time in retirement, Jack buys a few books on vintage farming equipment and tools and suspects he might be sitting on a bit of a goldmine. Having worked in fields his whole life however, he doesn’t have a clue about doing things online. So Jack’s son comes to visit and tells him all about Etsy.

Etsy is a popular place to sell antiques and vintage items, and since Jack can look up the information on most of the items he has, he can supply what’s needed to entice other tool collectors. Pretty soon Jack is clearing out his shed and making a nice nest egg for himself in retirement, which he uses to spoil his grandkids and improve the homestead.

Etsy has certain policies on what they allow users to sell on their website. Make sure to check their prohibited items, services, and items violating their intellectual property policies.

Etsy also doesn’t allow reselling, which is what they call selling a handmade item you did not yourself participate in making or designing. Users can also flag items they find suspect or lack information, so be sure to fit the categories as best you can.

Etsy earnings are difficult to calculate for the individual seller, because it depends on a variety of factors:

• The amount of time you can spend on your Etsy project;
• How much starting capital you have;
• The cost of materials of what you sell;
• How successfully you market your wares;
• The quality and uniqueness of your products;
• The demand for your product, and
• Your luck as a seller

Considering all these factors, Etsy earners range from less than minimum wage, to $65,000 monthly for top earners, per Sale Samurai. The website also notes that the average successful Etsy earner can make around $45,000 per year, however this is still considering a lot of factors.

Ideally, you should write out a business plan if you are intending to take Etsy sales seriously, with cash flow and financial forecasts, especially if your product requires a lot of materials purchasing.

Lastly, while there are high earners making a full time living (and more) on Etsy, it’s not likely it will be anything more than a side hustle for you or most Etsy sellers.

Confident your unique talent and marketing savvy will carry you into a healthy little Etsy fund? There’s no reason it shouldn’t, but it’s important to know that Etsy is the right platform for you and your venture.

Let’s go over some of the advantages and disadvantages of selling on Etsy so you can make a more informed decision.

Etsy is favorable to sellers for its convenience and immediacy. Once you’ve created your account, you just need to upload your goods and they’re available to the world. If this kind of convenience suits you, Etsy might be the best choice.

• Fast: Etsy is the alternative to building a website. You can create a profile in minutes and all the hard work is done for you, giving you a familiar, attractive, and simple interface from which to sell your wares.

• Popular: roughly 7.5 million users sold goods on Etsy in 2021, and the number has seen a steady increase with a huge spike during the pandemic. When you use Etsy, you immediately have access to a huge potential customer base, many of whom are likely looking for something just like what you’re selling.

• Ethical: keeping the small business economy strong is something Etsy does. By participating in a powerful platform that provides access into the small business economy for entrepreneurs, you help to contribute to a demand for unique and artisanal products.

• Cheap: you won’t pay anything to create a shop on Etsy, and on top of that the listing fees for listing your products are very affordable. This is an ideal alternative to expensive web hosting fees and marketing tools to expand the reach of your business online the traditional way.

Advantages are always offset by potential disadvantages. We don’t mean these to deter you completely from selling on Etsy, but to bring some sober reflection into your decision.

When considering these disadvantages, ask yourself if you might have better luck on a different platform, or you could grow your business better with your own website.

• Visibility: shoppers learn about products they might like to purchase often by spotting them in a friend’s home or when they wear it out. If it’s an Etsy product, the response is often ‘I bought it on Etsy’ rather than stating the name of your shop, which they may have already forgotten. This can make it difficult to let your creativity do the work of visibility for you.

• Competition: there are millions of sellers on Etsy, and while your competition is limited mostly to the niche product you’re selling, you’re still competing with a huge seller pool. When you bring your wares to a local market stall the competition is drastically smaller, but so is the customer base.

• Marketing: putting your listings up and making great products unfortunately isn’t enough. Etsy takes care of displaying your items, but you still need to market your shop enough to bring people directly to your wares, instead of hoping they stumble across it.

• Work: crafting is a lot of work. Many Etsy sellers are working all on their own to produce their crafts, and they aren’t seeing the financial reward for the work they put in.

Basically, there are a few goods and products that mostly sell well on Etsy, which are:

• Stickers
• Jewelry
• Phone cases
• Clothing
• Candles

But generally speaking: What performs best on Etsy for you is likely to be the thing you’re most passionate about and skilled at crafting or designing. This is because success on Etsy takes time and work, and you should only commit your time and effort to something you’ll enjoy even if you’re not seeing the financial success you’d hoped for.

That said, understanding your market and competition is key when utilizing any platform, whether physical or online. So let’s go over Etsy’s repeated best sellers, to help clarify the kind of shoppers that come to Etsy in droves.

Stickers have been a mainstay in the Etsy catalog for a long time. It might sound surprising, but when you break down the reasons stickers sell it becomes much clearer:

• Unique designs
• Cheap to produce
• Versatile use
• Large quantities can be bought/made

If you have a visually artistic talent, consider using stickers as a way to showcase your art. You might find the small frame and versatile usage perfect for your art style.

Jewelry for all genders has an everlasting appeal. On every ecommerce and resale platform you’ll find jewelry, whether expensive and regal or cheap and kitschy, is a hot item. On Etsy, jewelry takes many different forms:

• Handmade
• Retouched
• Vintage
• Uniquely designed

If you have a lot of jewelry lying around or have a relative who’s amassed a collection they’re hoping to get rid of, it can be a great way to break into Etsy.

We’re all carrying around phones in our daily lives and with the similar shapes that smartphones tend to take, we want to accessorize and individualize. Etsy has a huge market for uniquely designed phone cases, and sellers can specialize in different areas:

• Purely decorative
• Extra protective
• Added features
• Personalized (design requests)

Similar to using stickers as a way to showcase your art, consider how your designs might look on the back of a phone case. Or, if you’re more handy than artistic, think about what features a phone case could benefit from, considering the different professions people engage in while still carrying their phones.

Of course, the one thing that never goes out of fashion—is fashion itself. Vintage and handmade clothing will never go out of style on Etsy, because Etsy encourages invention and fashion thrives on innovation. Etsy sellers can source clothing materials (or clothing itself) from a variety of different ways:

• Buying materials in bulk
• Selling vintage clothing
• Altering existing garments

You’ll probably know already if you want to sell clothing on Etsy, but if you’re not sure, try teaming up with someone who can take care of sourcing materials for you, or doing the designing. Sharing the workload can often make the operation more profitable.

Candles are abundant on Etsy. Wax is such a malleable material that allows for artistic freedom, even if you don’t have much experience. Beyond shapes, candle makers on Etsy can etch patterns in to candles, use different jars, experiment with scents, and much more:

• Re-use wax for zero-waste candles
• Experiment with Youtube tutorials on candle-making
• Sell or make unique candelabras

Start asking all your friends and family if they use candles, to hold onto the ones they usually discard. You’ll immediately have a good supply of wax and possibly even some usable wicks as well. Make sure you follow safety precautions and take advice from

By now you’ve probably decided whether or not you want to start selling on Etsy, but you might be wondering how you can get started without falling into common pratfalls. To help you embark on your Etsy endeavor with surefooted confidence, let’s go over a few useful tips for beginning Etsy sellers.

For those of us who describe ourselves as ‘not very visual’, it’s an unfortunate fact of online life, especially if you wish to do business: the internet is a visual space. This is especially true of Etsy, where all listings must be accompanied by an original photo (i.e. not a stock photo) and it’s another fact of online life that better photos make better sales.

If you’re not overly confident about your photography skills, here’s a few things you can try:

• Start taking a lot of photos: the best way to improve at anything is by doing it lots more than you used to. Fortunately with phones we likely always have a camera on hand, meaning there’s no excuse to not take photos. In addition to capturing memories with friends and taking photos on holidays, start practicing taking photos of items, experimenting with placement and light—anything that inspires you to think more critically about your photography.

• Take free courses: search on Youtube for ‘how to take better photos’ and you’ll find hours of free content helping you improve your photography with your phone or with a camera. If you’re really serious you can pay for a course as well, so that you’ll have assignments to complete and grades to assess your progress.

There are two things you can learn from your competitors: how they succeed, and where they fail. Even the most successful Etsy stores will be doing something that you think you can do better, and this is the whole idea with market research.

Let these questions drive you when you research your Etsy competitors:

• What are the things I like about the items I want to buy and sell?
• What don’t I like about this competitor’s photos or listing descriptions, how would I do them differently?
• What are the commenters saying about my competitors and their items?
• What makes me hesitant to buy from certain sellers?
• What irritates me about my competitors?

Most of all, how can I do things differently, so that my buyers are getting a service and product they can’t get anywhere else? This is the bedrock of a successful Etsy shop.

Optimizing your Etsy store’s SEO is going to become vital if you plan to grow your Etsy business. SEO is, put simply, how people search for and find thigns online, and you want shoppers to find your items easily.

Here’s a quick list of important SEO practices that will start you off on the right path to good SEO for your Etsy store:

1. Pick a descriptive shop title
2. Don’t overuse keywords
3. Use all of Etsy’s tags
4. Put important keywords at the beginning
5. Refresh your listings monthly
6. Practice link building

We’re not all natural-born marketers, which can make this step a tricky one. The key then is to lean into your strengths. Enjoy marketing by putting your hobbies and skills to good use.

Create a blog. If you have a penchant for writing and a passion to tell the world about your product, start up a blog telling people the history of what you sell, different types, how it’s made—anything you know and can research that others might find interesting. If you can write well, readers will sense your enthusiasm for your product and trust your shop.

Make videos. It’s time to put those film studies classes to good use! Depending on what your product is, you can create content advertising how to use it, what to do with it, and the million other uses your product might have.

Spread the word. You might not be Instagram royalty, but your friends and family members might have their own successful private or public accounts. If they’re interested in your product, there’s nothing like the publicity of those who already have a public platform. See if they wouldn’t mind featuring your items in a photo or video, or making a post directing people to your Etsy page.

If you’re running a successful Etsy store, you’re going to want to keep your finances simple. With a business banking account you can separate business and personal finances, while taking advantage of a whole host of other features perfect for the Etsy entrepreneur:

• Integrate your accounting software for automated accounting
• Use team spending cards with controllable, individual limits
• Loan deposits
• Use a simple, user-friendly app interface.

And much more! Etsy removes a lot of the complexity of self-employment, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make it even easier for yourself with a business banking account.