As an Etsy seller, you might have heard a lot of talk around duplicating listings as a strategy for getting more traffic and saving you time while creating new listings. So does it work? Keep reading to learn more.
Does Etsy allow duplicate listings?
The Etsy duplicate listing policy allows multiple listings for the same product as long as you're able to fulfill those orders.
Under this policy, you can't create duplicate listings for one-of-a-kind items that can't be reproduced.
Etsy policy does ban duplicate shops. See that policy in section 1.C of Etsy's TOS here.
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should, right? So let's talk about the pros and cons of duplicating listings in your Etsy shop.
Pros to duplicating listings
There are benefits to duplicating a listing on Etsy. The biggest benefit is that it can help you saturate different keywords in your shop so you can increase your ranking in search results on the platforms.
Etsy is unique as a platform in that quantity matters in the search algorithm. Duplicate listings can help give you full product lines by creating multiple listings for the same product.
Cons to duplicate listings
The con to duplicate listings is that it is easy to confuse your buyers.
If a potential customer finds more than one of your listings in search results, they can easily get confused about if there is a difference in what they're purchasing.
And a confused visitor doesn't convert to a customer.
Duplicate listings can also make it harder for you to manage your inventory in your Etsy shop.
Mistakes to avoid when duplicating a listing
There are a handful of mistakes to avoid when duplicating a listing on Etsy. Check out the biggest mistakes here:
- Keeping your tags and titles the same on each listing. You'll want to vary keywords on each of your Etsy listings. Duplicated titles seem like spam to search engines like Etsy.
- Making too many changes to the listing. You'll want to change your tags and titles, but if you want to test which changes create a better conversion rate, change just one thing at a time with slight variations
- Not having a plan for controlling your inventory. It's easy to duplicate a listing, but remember that inventory won't track in your shop manager. You'll need to monitor inventory manually or link the listings through SKUs and use a third-party service to track inventory.
Copying listings
Copying an existing listing on Etsy is an easy way to create new listings quickly. To copy a listing, find the listing in your shop manager, click on the cogwheel as shown below, and then click “Copy Listing.”
Monitoring a duplicate listing
If you're going to use duplicate listings in your shop, make sure to have a plan for monitoring the results. Track these things to monitor the effectiveness of your strategy:
- Are your duplicated listings getting found for new keywords?
- After you duplicate a listing, do you get a lot of questions from confused buyers?
- Do you get more traffic when you create a new listing for similar products instead of duplicating a listing for the same item?
Conclusion: Etsy duplicate listings
So should you duplicate a listing on Etsy? For most sellers, it's better to create Etsy listings for new products instead.
But you can easily test this in your own shop and monitor the results to develop your long-term listing strategy.
