Today I want to talk about four ways that you can increase your profitability this year. In case you missed the announcement, Etsy announced that they will be increasing transaction fees from 5% to 6.5% starting on April 11, 2022. And I know when the changes are announced it can be super easy to move into frustration and anxiety about the increased cost of selling on this platform, but I challenge you to take this as an opportunity.
In order to help you create an opportunity out of the situation we’re gonna talk today about how to approach the fee increase and how to increase your profitability during this time.
I took a poll in my Facebook group and a lot of people were not increasing their prices during this time. Let’s talk about that first.
I don’t want you to just absorb this cost unless you are very careful and calculated about why you are doing it and how much you’re paying yourself because you can get into a situation where you realize you’re not making enough profit and don’t know how that even happened.
Supply costs and shipping costs have increased in the last year for most sellers. Maybe you’re buying in bulk because you’ve had supply chain issue issues with your previous suppliers. If that’s the case you need to make sure you remain profitable so you have enough funds enough cash on hand for when you need to make your next supply order.
For a lot of us, our cost-of-living has gone up. Even if your grocery bill has gone up in the last few months, you need to be paying yourself more because of that.
So let’s talk today about four ways that you can improve your profitability in the next few weeks.
Increase Prices
Increasing your prices is probably the most obvious tip. A 1.5% price increase is something that most buyers will not notice. If you’re selling an item for $10, you can certainly sell it for $10.15. If you’re selling $100 item you of course can sell it for $105 and improve your profitability even more than that 1.5%.
There are a lot of Etsy sellers that tell me they are already on the top of pricing for their niche and I really want you to challenge that. Because getting sales doesn’t matter if your business isn’t profitable enough to support itself or to support you personally. So if this is how you feel, I challenge you instead to think about how you can show the value of your listings for that small price increase.
And it might be easier than you think. 1.5% is a very small percentage increase. Maybe you just need new photos taken by a photographer. Those are going to pay for themselves if that increases your conversion rate or if it increases your click through rate by even a small percentage.
Decrease Supply Costs
The next way you can increase your profitability, and this is something that people don’t always think about right away, is to decrease your supply cost. This may mean buying higher quantities from a wholesale supplier. It might mean maybe buying in higher quantities to qualify for free shipping from your suppliers if they offer that. When Etsy last changed their fees, I’ve began to order one of my supplies from a different manufacturer. I had to buy in bulk and buy hundreds more of this particular item at a time, but I saved $1.50 for each listing that I sold on a $17 item.
This might not of been something that I could’ve done at the beginning of my business when I didn’t have thousands of dollars on hand to make this big supply order, but it was something that I could do at the time. So if you are worried about being able to afford something like that I want you to look at your cash flow and make a plan for saving the money to be able to afford to decrease your supply cost however you can.
Bundle
The next thing you can do is to increase your average order value by bundling products. And remember that when you bundle products you do not have to include a discount. You bundling your products makes it easier for your customers to shop and that is benefit enough for when they’re purchasing. So use bundles to increase your average order value and that can increase your profitability of them correctly as well.
Optimize Your Ads
The last thing I want you to take a look at is your paid ads. If you are using advertising on Etsy specifically on-site ads, I want to make sure that you have a goal of what you want to achieve for your return on ad spend. If you’re someone that has been letting ads run without making a profit on them, I want you to figure out your strategy to make these profitable so that you are no longer losing money on your paid ads.
After reading these 4 methods, I want you to make a plan for how you are going to use this fee increase to increase your profitability. If you’re someone that saw this announcement and already decided to not increase your prices or take any steps to account for this, I want you to assess why you’re doing this and if that is actually what’s going to be healthy for your business in the long run. What I don’t want you to do is take a decrease in profits because you think you won’t make any more sales on Etsy if you increase your prices.
Then I want you to do is head on over to my free Facebook group and make a post that tells me which of these four methods that you are going to use and implement before April starts. I’ll see you there!
-Sarah
