Three questions every Etsy Seller asks (and what you should ask instead)

Are you asking the right questions about your Etsy business?

Today we’re going to find out the top three questions that I get from Etsy Sellers every week and what you should be asking instead.  Because the top three questions that I get are not actually questions that help you get more sales on Etsy. So I want to make sure that you are asking what you need to ask and thinking about what you need to think about in order to actually improve your business.

Question 1: What do you sell?

The first question that I get the most regularly is, “What do you sell?”

This is not the right question for a few reasons. 

1. There is a buyer for everything on Etsy. So you need to make some thing that you really love for people that you really care about. Making only what you think you will sell doesn’t lead to success.

2. If you are selling what you see other sellers making only because they’re having success with what they’re making you aren’t seeing the behind-the-scenes in their business. You could recreate every single one of my products and not have the same success that I’ve had because of my SEO strategy, the marketing that I’ve done, and the email list I’ve built.

3. If you do this, you’re always chasing success. You’re not leading and creating the trends. I have shops that if I launch a new product it’s sure to be in their shop within a few months. I even have shops who will copy and paste my titles in an effort to recreate my SEO. But I’m never worried about this because they are never going to get more sales than me. They’re always going to be chasing me. You don’t want to create that same scenario in your business. You want to be making the trends and on the leading edge of the trends, not following them months behind and getting the tail end of sales for these trends. And it’s not as hard as it sounds, but asking what other sellers make is not the way to do this.

Question 2: How is my competition pricing?

The second question that sellers ask is how is my competition pricing. And the reason I don’t want you asking this is because you do not need to compete on price in order to get a lot of sales on Etsy.

There is a price point for every product. There are plenty of sellers who sell items for much much cheaper than what I do on Etsy. But those aren’t the same customers that I get. The people that are attracted to my shop or not looking for cheap. They’re looking for quality. And this exist in every market on Etsy from shirts to candles to jewelry and everything in between.

There are always customers that one will want cheap. Always customers that will want expensive and luxury. And there are always customers in the middle. So don’t look to your competition for determining your price. You need to look at your cost and what type of buyer you’re trying to attract.

Question 3: How can I get more followers on social?

The third question that I get is, “How can I get more followers?”

This is usually from sellers who are looking to increase their sales from social media. But followers don’t make you money. Sales do. So if you’re not converting your current audience having more followers is not going to make a difference for you.

Instead you need to learn how to convert followers that you already have and continue to grow organically with followers who really care about you and your business.

What you should ask instead

This is a question that every single seller should be asking themselves. And that is, “What do I love to make?”

This question reveals some really valuable insight into how and why you want to run your business. There are a lot of different reasons for that. The biggest is that when you’re selling something you don’t love, you are so much more likely to give up on Etsy.

You are not going have smooth sailing in any business. So when you’re making some thing that you don’t love for an audience that you don’t care about you are going to have a harder time when you hit the dips in sales or the hard parts in your business.

When you really care about what you’re doing you’re motivated to continue because you believe in what you’re doing and you believe in helping the people that you’re making your product for.

When you care about what you’re making and who you’re making it for, you also have a lot easier time continuing to advance your products and your product lines. You automatically have a better idea of what your buyers want, what they need, what they’re looking for. When you’re making products for an audience that you don’t know a lot about just because they’re popular, you’re not in tune with that market and you’re not able to easily make more products that they are looking for.  That slows your business growth way down.

Once you ask yourself this question, then you’re going price that product line to profit and show your customers that your listings are valuable in order to drive sales.

Need help with that? Join me in my free masterclass here that teaches you my system for getting daily sales on Etsy.

-Sarah