You started your Etsy shop and added a few listings, but now what? How long does it take to make your first sale on Etsy? Let’s talk about how long you can expect to wait for your first sale.
Setting realistic expectations
It’s normal for Etsy sellers to wait 3-6 months for their first sale. But that doesn’t mean it’s necessary to wait for that long.
I started my first Etsy shop in 2013 and didn’t get my first sale for 3 months. I started my second shop in 2016 and knew a lot more about what I was doing. I got my first sale in less than a month.
Before you start your shop, set a goal for how quickly you want to get your first sale and make a plan for hitting that goal. I’m going to help you with that plan in the rest of this article!
Factors that affect your timeline
There are two main factors that affect how quickly you get your first sale on Etsy. The first is how much traffic you can send to your Etsy shop yourself. The second is how quickly you can get organic traffic from Etsy.
Social media traffic:
If I was going to start my shop all over again, I wouldn’t be quite so precious about keeping my shop to myself. I was afraid to share with friends and family, because I thought I would be embarrassed if it didn’t work. In reality, my friends and family have been my biggest supporters in the last decade. I would have gotten my first sale a lot quicker if I would have shared my business and asked my friends and family to share as well.
Organic traffic:
Etsy has over 90 million buyers on their platform. So one of the best things about being an Etsy seller is getting Etsy to send you consistent traffic. You do this through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and full product lines. Click here to watch my free masterclass that talks more about how to do this.
Optimizing your Etsy shop for conversions
After you start getting traffic from either Etsy or social media, you’ll want to make sure you’re optimizing your listings for conversions. A normal conversion rate on Etsy is between 1-3%. Click here to learn more about conversion rates and the factors that affect them.
Mistakes most new sellers make
So now you know how long it takes to make your first sale on Etsy. Before you go, let me share a few of the top mistakes sellers make when trying to get their first sale.
- Listing only a few items: Etsy is about quality AND quantity. You’ll need full product lines to start getting traffic.
- Using “good enough” photos: Getting your shop visitors to know, like, and trust you enough to purchase starts with photos that look professional.
- Using single word tags: Buyers don’t search with single word keyword phrases and you shouldn’t be using them in your tags either.
- Changing your titles and tags too often: Etsy can take up to 60-90 days to test your listings in the search algorithm. Don’t change your tags and titles too often!
- Waiting for the sale: There is no such thing as passive income so make sure that you aren’t sitting around waiting for those first few sales to come in. Take some action, Etsy seller!
