Tuesday, June 28, 2011

After 1month of shop opening - Ways to increase traffic on Etsy?

I have set up my online shop (http://www.etsy.com/shop/Yoju) for over a month and a half now, and I am still receiving very low volume  in sales the month of June so far. As per my last posting, I've made a 13 sales on my first month of opening my shop in May. The sales came from friends or friends of friends which knew about my shop from me advertising on my FB page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ssin-Designs-by-Yoju/187436394640137?ref=ts).  

After reading all the suggestions on how to increase traffic (hence gain sales) from different forums/discussion boards, this is what I have done for the past month:


  • Signed up for Google's analytics page which helps you track your stats ie. Number of page visits, average time on the site etc.  The instructions were very straightforward and this is a very good way of tracking your shop traffic. http://www.google.com/analytics/
  • Participated in BNRs - BNR stands for buy and replace. There are teams that specifically run BNRs almost everyday.
  • Created one Treasury - people at Etsy loves this and I would need to make more of these treasuries.
  • Emailed 5 shops in Vancouver to see if there are any interests in displaying my jewelry in their shops- received no response from them, figured the best plan to actually go to these shops when i get to Vancouver to see if there are any sales potential
  • Bought 4 showcases on Etsy which costs 7USD per showing per day- don't think it helped much as the number of views on my page hasn't increased by too much
  • Created a page on Facebook
  • Joined teams on Etsy and participated in Forums, asked team members for critiques about my shop and get suggestions on how to advertise my shop. I think this is a big help to learn on how to improve your shop and also a good way to increase your shop exposure.
  • Participated in three Giveaway contests from bloggers who volunteers to host giveaways on their blog - I think this did increase my shop traffic but didn't help on sales
  • Updated this Blog
  • Renew items everyday as they would show up in the main page when items are renewed(costs 0.2USD per renewal but I read its more effective than buying a showcase ad on Etsy) 
  • Signed up for Heartsy
  • Signed up for Google Adword- wanted to test this app out, I found that this app freezes a lot and its rather expensive. I've set up my advertising for a week with max click per page per day as 7USD. This actually doesn't make up too many views given that some websites they charge 1USD per click.
I really really hope that I would get more sales in July, I really don't know what else I can do at the moment but just be patient and persistent.