How To Get Your First Etsy Sale in 24 Hours (or Less)

Today, I wanted to quickly share a new way that we found to test product ideas and potentially get your first sale within 24 hours.

I know that this sounds like a bold promise, but the process is fairly easy and extremely repeatable.

The Quick background:

Before I dive into this little hack, I wanted to give you a little bit of background on how we discovered it.

As I'm writing this article, we're at the beginning of Q4(October to be exact), which is the hottest part of the year for our new Etsy shop.

You might know by now that I've given myself a mission of taking this brand from doing a little over $40,000 in 2021 to well over $100,000 in the next year.

As a result, we are getting fairly aggressive with product launches and marketing efforts (You can check out our whole guide on how we will be growing here).

One of the three main ways that we're going to expand this business rapidly is by increasing the number of products.

Not only does having more products give us more opportunities to get search traffic and sales, but Etsy gives us a nice little bump every time we launch a new one, so we thought it would be smart to take advantage.

As a result, we decided to launch one product a day for the next month.

I know that this sounds like a lot, but I wanted to quickly note that not all of these products need to be completely original ideas.

If you're starting totally from scratch, it may take you a day or two to come up with a product idea, but since we already have a few we can leverage variations on products that we already know will sell.

For example, if we have a t-shirt with a saying about fishing on it and a picture of a bass, we can change the saying or the type of fish on the shirt and potentially capture an entirely new audience.

Regardless of whether you're starting from scratch or you're going to use this guide to help you create more successful variations, The method laid out below is an extremely powerful way to make the most of your time and turn that time into dollars faster.

At the end of the day, the name of the game when it comes to product creation is spending your time on products You know have a chance to sell rather than guessing.

Find Your First Product Idea

As I mentioned above, the key to this method is to create products that people are already looking for.

Thankfully, rather than guessing( as we often had to do in the past), this process is made easy by the Etsy platform itself.

If we add a few low-cost tools to the mix, we can have a very good idea of what will and won't sell before we spend even a minute creating it.

Let's dive into the method that I love to use.

Use the AutoComplete Method

The first step in our process is to simply use the built-in search feature on Etsy.com to help us come up with product ideas.

Start by typing in the main keyword for your market, such as hunting, and see the suggestions that Etsy makes for the next words that you should type in.

As you can see from the image above, Etsy will give us a variety of options for how to complete the phrase we are typing.

Since this data comes directly from people who are already searching on the Etsy platform ( the entire point of this feature is to help get people to what they're looking for faster ), it's a very safe bet that these are the exact phrases people are already typing into the platform.

Our next step is to simply select one, in this case hunting ornaments, and drill down into the product page to see if we can come up with a way to create our own.

Remember, we're not going to be copying these products exactly, we're simply using them as examples or as a jumping-off point.

If you find a design that you like or a product that gives you an idea, jot it down and brainstorm a few ways of making it your own.

My suggestion would be to repeat this process with three to five of the autocomplete phrases that Etsy offers to you for your keyword before moving on to the next step.

Find The Sales Volume

Once we have a handful of product ideas, we want to validate that they are being sold and not just searched for within the Etsy Platform

There are two different ways of doing this.

The Store Sort Method:

The first way of doing this is by clicking on the product you found in the search results and opening up the product detail page.

From here, you can click on the store name to see all of the products being sold inside that Etsy store.

Once you've arrived at the store page, you can sort by the most sold products and have an idea of where that specific product falls in terms of demand.

This method is free, it does take a bit of work, and is only a rank order of how popular that product is within that specific store.

Unfortunately, Etsy does not give you direct sales data, but this method does work for giving us a good idea of if this product is popular or not.

The Easy Way – Everbee

If you'd like a faster and more dependable way to understand whether a product is selling or not, you may want to check out an Etsy tool called Everbee.

This tool is essentially an overlay for the Etsy search results that will give you a rough idea of how many of each product that appears in the search results are being sold.

This has become my go-to tool, because not only does it make the product research process easier, it makes it substantially faster as well.

While this tool does have a paid option

(I highly suggest taking them up on that!), They do have a free version that's more than enough to get you started.

Once you've taken a look at all the different product ideas you have selected, it's time to develop your idea.

The $64,000 Etsy Roadmap

The Simple 5-Step Process We Used To Generate $64,000 In 12 Months Working Part Time On Etsy.

Yes, Send Me The Roadmap!

Develop Your Product Idea

Once you've chosen an idea, turning that into a product is a fairly straightforward process.

The first thing we'll need to do is create the design for the product.

This can be done very easily using software like Photoshop (or Canva) or if you are less technologically inclined, there are tons of great designers on websites like Fiverr.com.

One thing to keep in mind if you choose to have someone else create the design for you is that you'll want to make sure you have the right to reuse that design for your product.

When you have the product graphic designed, you'll want to go to a print-on-demand partner such as Printify to see how it looks on the actual product you plan to sell.

If you're happy with the result, it's time to create your Etsy listing

Create an Optimized Listing

Creating the best product in the world doesn't do as much good If we don't have an optimized listing created inside of Etsy.

While I don't have time here to dive into all of the ins and outs of creating the perfect Etsy listing.

I wanted to quickly break down the 4 most important sections and the things you will want to include.

Title:

The first part of your listing you'll want to pay extra attention to is the listing title itself.

Although it may be tempting to stuff the title of your product full of all of the different keywords that may lead to someone finding your listing in an Etsy search, your title must be also readable by humans.

Your title should include a few of the most important keywords that may lead someone to discover your product, but it should also very clearly describe the product in a human-readable and understandable way.

Images

The images associated with your Etsy listing or one of the most important and often overlooked parts of the creation process.

Although having a readable title is essential, the images will often be the thing that makes the difference in someone clicking on your listing over your competitors when they are combing through the Etsy search results.

In most cases, Etsy will give you up to 10 image slots and I would recommend that you fill at least five of them with a variety of different angles of the product.

The main product images can all be generated by your print-on-demand partner and used for the listing.

Additionally, it can be a good idea to create an image or two using an easy tool like Canva, to show off a specific feature or detail that your product has, that your competitors do not.

Description

The last part of the product creation process is to create your product description.

Just like with the title, it's important to include a variety of keywords that someone could use to find your product, but don't go overboard.

The most important thing in your product description is that you clearly and accurately describe exactly what they will get when they go to the product.

For example, if you are creating a hunting Christmas ornament with a specific phrase, your description should clearly say that it's a Christmas ornament featuring that phrase.

Additionally, if there are any specific details, such as The material, dimensions, weight, or any of those sorts of things, they should be very clearly included in your description as well.

Quick Recap:

One of the most common concerns I see from people who are trying to start selling on Etsy is that their concerned about where and when they'll get their first sale.

If you follow the simple method laid out above during your product selection process, it will happen faster than you ever thought possible.

To quickly recap the process, you'll first want to find your product ideas using the autocomplete method.

Once you have a few solid ideas, you'll need to use either the store sort method or a tool like Everbee to figure out if those products are selling.

From there, it's as simple as spending a few minutes, building quality listing and publishing.

After you've made your first sale, you may want to check out the simple three-step process that we are using to scale our store to six figures.

Scott Voelker

Over the years I’ve helped thousands of people TAKE ACTION to UNLOCK their true potential on building their ultimate freedom business, by developing the skills to make them resilient, confident and FUTURE PROOF. I’ve clocked my 10,000 hours over the years working in the trenches myself and helping others build and grow their brands. I know the power in TAKING ACTION better than anyone and I’ve seen people lives changed as a result of it...including my OWN!