Etsy is a venue for buying and selling handmade, supplies, and vintage goods.
Handmade goods means handmade by the seller (reselling of another's handmade goods in not allowed). This category included handmade, hand-altered, hand-assembled ~ whether it actually be done by hand, by computers, or with the aid of tools.
Supplies - can be either handmade or non-handmade. These are crafting supplies. Non-handmade commercial supplies have to be listed under "Commercial Supplies".
Vintage means 20 years or more.
This Etsy section will include any relevant and useful information I find about Etsy, predominantly for a Etsy seller and also useful links.
POOR STOCK MANAGEMENT - if you have a lot of items to sell, you will find the management of your listings and stock a nightmare. When your items expires, there is no way for you to delete them. So you just end up with a growing list of expired items. And you don't know if that item is still on Etsy (but unsold) - which means you can sell it at another venue; OR that the expired item on Etsy has already previously been moved by you to another of your outlets. It is a nightmare, let me tell you. This area is where Etsy could learn a lot from Ebay.
Inability to find stock quickly - If you have lots of listings and you need to edit one of them, there is no way that you can find that one item other then going through pages and pages of your listing hoping you can spot that one item. Lousy stock management and can learn much from ebay (sad to say).
Expired Listings - again poor stock control. Cannot do anything to this list of expired listings except renew. But if you do not want to renew but just want to delete the item - so you can sell elsewhere and it does not get confusing over time, there is nothing you can do. You can however renew it and then delete: Active items can be deleted. But you have to pay the non-refundable listing fee to renew - so is expensive to delete this way just for stock management..
This here is a list of links to Etsy related pages that are useful and helpful, especially for selling on Etsy. I have compiled them in one place, thereby saving me and you time in trying to hunt them down from place to place.
Okay, once you have registered a seller account, it is often a bit of a dilemma as to what to do next. List straight away or set up your store properly? And then having to search around to figure out if you have covered all the basics you need for your store. This article will help you in setting up a Etsy store and all the things you will need so that your store is ready for selling.
Etsy has a much better Help and Guide section than Artfire including how to setup your store.
See Setting Up Your Etsy Store guide. This covers item by item what you need to setup your Etsy store. I will only include notes that are not mentioned in that guide, in the same order.
Bio: No HTML allowed.
Tip: if you write a long bio, take a copy (Ctrl+C) before you try saving. If there are any errors in any of the fields, the error message will come up but your long bio will disappear.
Favourite Materials: no dots (full stops) as that will throw up an error.
Example of my Etsy Bio.
Your Etsy > Shop Setup > Appearance (left column)
Banner ~ 760x100px / .jpg, .gif, .png
Shop Announcement
Keep this (optional) announcement short and simple. Useful for Vacation Notices, Sales, etc.
Alchemy Announcement
If you want to be able to take request or custom orders from your potential buyers, you can do so here. Set out your conditions or what you will be happy to take requests for. This will show up in:
Your Etsy > Request Custom Item (right column)
Example of my Etsy Alchemy Announcement
Your Etsy > Shop Setup > Shipping Options (left column)
You can set up numerous Shipping Profiles here ~ for e.g., for each weight range, you can specify shipping cost to specific countries and/or "Everywhere else". These Shipping Profiles allow you to easily apply your shipping rates to items as you list them.
I think you cannot see any of your Shipping Policies/Rates (as it will appear to buyers) till you have some active listings.
You can also create a new shipping profile when you are listing an item.
Your Etsy > Items > Featured in Shop (left column)
Your Etsy > Shop Setup > Sections (left column)
Your Etsy > Shop Setup > Policies (left column)
See useful article on setting up your Etsy Shop Policies.
Your Etsy > Shop Setup > Payment Methods (left column)
If you are accepting PayPal payments, you must enter your PayPal address here.
Link to your Google Analytics to track movements and visits to your Etsy store. (Optional)
See Etsy's Guide on Google Analytics on how to use and setup.
Quick Notes
Link your Etsy store to Facebook. Your FB will have a "myEtsy" tab that takes direct info from your Etsy store. Auto updated. Link directly to.
guided steps from there.