As soon as you believe you have the fundamentals of managing your Etsy enterprise mastered, or you’re at least comfortable handling the day-to-day obligations required of you, this is when you should think about expanding or growing your enterprise. It’s usually most effective to take a gradual and constant method that involves minimal financial risk.
Based on the quantity of profit you’re consistently earning, you have a few options related to how you can expand or grow your operation. These include:
- Expanding your product line and introducing new products or new product variations (such as colors, sizes or styles) that will allow you to gain more customers
- Increasing your marketing and advertising efforts so you can attract more customers and generate more sales for your existing products
- Brainstorming new ideas for products that are unrelated to your current offerings and opening a second or even a third Etsy shop that you’ll operate simultaneously with your original one.
- Hiring one or more part-time employees if you’re maxed out on your personal resources and don’t have the time to create new products, manage your shop and fulfil orders on your own
- Quitting your “real-world” job to dedicate all your time and effort to the operation of your Etsy shop
To help maintain a steady flow of visitors to your shop and increase your chances of earning repeat business, you should refresh your shop every few months. This might mean updating all your text content and updating your product photography, tweaking the color scheme and overall visual appearance of the shop and/or revising your product offerings.
At the minimum, it may imply employing the Shop Updates characteristic of the Sell on Etsy mobile application to include additional product pictures and product way of life images to your store on a consistent basis.
Approximately every three to four months (essentially every period), meticulously assess your sales from the preceding quarter or period and determine which were your most successful products and which items were the least favored. Seriously contemplate eliminating the least favored items from your shop completely and redirecting more attention towards items that consistently garner popularity or introducing new products.
You should also contemplate introducing seasonal items or products that are exclusively available during specific occasions, such as Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, or Christmas. In conjunction with celebrated occasions, consider refreshing the overall appearance of your shop, incorporating themed graphics, pictures, and text that revolves around the upcoming holiday.
Celebrations are also an excellent opportunity to launch special sales or promotions. For instance, during the Christmas holiday season, you could offer a discount of 10 to 25 percent or provide free shipping. Perhaps an offer of “buy two and get one free” would captivate your audience. You could also assemble collections of related products and offer the bundle for a limited time at a reduced price in conjunction with a specific holiday.
Organizing sales or promotions is a rapid, effortless, and proven strategy for swiftly boosting business, under the condition that you’re presenting a favorable deal that your customers will appreciate. Be inventive when devising sales or promotions, but ensure they are not excessively perplexing.
The key to fostering the growth of your business in the long run is to comprehend that your shop should be in a state of continuous evolution and should not remain stagnant for more than a month. Ideally, you should continually update or fine-tune content, such as product listings and product photographs, even if the actual products you’re vending remain constant for an entire season or an extended duration.
Moving forward, never implement changes to your shop in a disorderly manner. Develop an organized approach or plan for updating your shop and product line, and then adhere to it. Prior to making any alteration, ascertain the reason behind it, the desired impact you wish to achieve, your goals, and the effect the changes will have on your shop’s visitors. Remember to consider your target audience and anticipate their reaction to the modifications.
7 methods to broaden your business
Here are some additional proven ways you can enhance the growth of your business when you’re prepared:
- Expand the variety of items you offer by incorporating more product listings to your shop. However, ensure that your product offerings maintain a certain coherence. For instance, if you already sell bracelets, necklaces, and earrings, contemplate adding a collection of rings. Alternatively, introduce a more high-end or premium selection of related products that are sold at a higher price point. For example, if you already sell silver jewelry, consider offering the same designs in 24k gold. Avoid offering haphazard, unrelated products that will not appeal to your core audience.
- Elevate the quality of your product photography. In addition to enhancing the visual appeal of the photos, consider adjusting your utilization of conventional product shots and lifestyle shots to better highlight each of your items.
- Consider broadening your target audience. While you continue to target your main audience, narrow down a secondary target audience and commence separate marketing and advertising efforts to reach this new or more extensive group of individuals.
- If you haven’t done so already, expand your customer base to include international customers and be willing to ship globally (assuming that what you’re selling possesses international appeal).
- Amplify the amount of money you are investing in online paid advertising and contemplate experimenting with additional advertising opportunities.
Simultaneously, enhance your presence on social media.
Take into consideration sales opportunities beyond Etsy. Once you have established a proven and robust market, contemplate participating in craft fairs, for instance, or expanding to sell your products through mainstream retail stores, boutiques, specialty shops, consignment shops, and/or other online services. However, bear in mind that retailers will need to purchase products from you at wholesale prices (typically half of your retail price), so ensure that doing so will maintain the profitability of your business. You might also contemplate broadening your online presence by launching a similar storefront on one or more of the platforms that compete with Etsy, such as Amazon Handmade, in order to potentially reach a wider audience. Alternatively, you could create your own standalone ecommerce website, which grants you the ability to fully customize every aspect of your online store.
As the requirement arises to produce your product(s) in larger quantities, develop faster or more efficient methods to save time in the creation or manufacturing process. This might involve investing in superior tools, for example. Concurrently, strive to reduce your expenses for acquiring your raw materials/supplies. For instance, procure your materials/supplies from a wholesaler or directly from the manufacturer in larger quantities to obtain a greater discount.
