I think people like me hate selling on Etsy as much as buyers love shopping there.
Seriously.
It's not something I expected... but after going public about how Etsy closed down my first account for literally not reason + defended their decision to do so, it only took a quick scan of the comments section to see that many former shop owners shared my sentiment.
(my first shop only sold a single hand-made item)
Fortunately I was able to get a second account opened up using my LLC business name + tax ID, a process I outlined here.
Love them or hate them, let me be clear about one thing:
I sold on Etsy for the MONEY!
Before I bury the lead, here are my high-level stats for 2019:
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- Total Views: 113,000
- Visits: 70,100
- Orders: 1,140
- Revenue: $28,000
I have no personal allegiance to them as a company, and I hold no Etsy shares (they're a publically traded company).
That said, I do not regret the decision to open multiple shops on Etsy. I did it because their customer base is continuously growing & their "boutique" image, in my opinion, helps justify a higher price point for my products.
Etsy also ranks pretty well on search engines like Google.
In this article I'm reflecting on my 2019 Etsy sales & taking a moment to compare them to 2018.
I think it actually makes a little more sense to start in 2018, so you can see where I was almost slapped in the face with a reality check: Etsy can no longer be ignored.
Etsy Sales Review: 2018 vs 2019
I had moderate success on Etsy in December of 2017 which opened my eyes more to the opportunity, so I slowly added more and more listings throughout 2018 and had some OK profits... nothing crazy though.
What you'll notice in the charts below is that my sales absolutely EXPLODED in August, and like I mentioned, I was almost forced to accept Etsy as a top-tier marketplace to sell print on demand products on.
I didn't have any crazy trends go viral in 2019, and there was certainly more saturation on Etsy in 2019.
Given that I only manually uploaded to Etsy, I usually had around 1,000-1,100 listings live.
Most Significant Month (2018): August
In August, I was first to market with a viral hat design.
In addition to selling over $7,000 in print on demand revenue in a single day, I was also able to crack the $25,000 profit mark on the month
PS. You can read about it in my August 2018 income report.
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Most Significant Month (2019): October
Unfortunately this is when my Etsy account was closed down due to receiving too many false IP infringement claims.
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Visits (2018)
In 2018 I recorded 35,000 visits, with August being my best month with 8,480 visits.
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Visits (2019)
I had 70,100 total visits to my listings in 2019 & August was my best month with 8,651.
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Orders (2018)
As you might have guessed, August also brought in the most orders (543). On the year, I had 1,445 orders in total.
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Orders (2019)
Of my 1,140 orders on the year, May was my best month with 157 orders.
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Conversion Rate (2018)
My conversion rate on the year was 4.1% and was highest in August as well @ 6.4%.
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Conversion Rate (2019)
My average conversion rate dropped down to 1.6% on the year (4.1% in 2018), likely because I had listed so many more products for sale. My best month was October @ 2.2%.
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Revenue (2018)
I did $37,232.41 in revenue on the year & my best month was August again, where I brought in $14,985.60.
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Revenue (2019)
My revenue ended up being $28,022.47 on the year with May being my best month, bringing in $3,780.04.
Obviously, it really hurt to be suspended during Q4...
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Profit (2018)
I crunch my Etsy numbers in an ugly spreadsheet, so unfortunately I don't have a cool chart to show you like I do when I show you my Amazon numbers (via Fetcher).
Profit: $20,262.03
Profit (2019)
The biggest thing that cut into my Etsy profits in 2019 was my ad spend. After they ruined Etsy Ads & I scaled back my ad spend big time, I realized that I likely did not need to be spending nearly as much on ads.
Profit: $7,110.33
Summary
Etsy is still a worthwhile investment of your time to set up a shop & create listings on, in my opinion.
Amidst all the trouble they give their sellers, at the end of the day, if we want to be successful as e-commerce sellers... we have to follow the customers!
As long as they're shopping on Etsy, we should be there.
