The Handmade Entrepreneur—How to Sell on Etsy, or Anywhere Else: Easy Steps for Building a Real Business Around Your Crafts

Every day you wake up and eagerly visit your Etsy account (or website) to see how many sales, clicks, or "favors" it has received from shoppers, but for many, this routine only ends in disappointment. 

What if you could start your day out with an excited shout instead of a frustrated sigh? Unfortunately, selling handmade goods online is no longer as simple as throwing together a product listing and waiting for sales to roll in. There are now millions of people with handmade products and they are all eager to build a sustainable income. The Handmade Entrepreneur uses precise methods based on proven marketing techniques to set you above the competition. It teaches you how to create a genuine business you can count on rather than a bundle of shop pages and social media accounts built on a foundation of guesswork. 

What You Can Expect to Learn from This Book: 

•How to take DIY pictures that get clicks and sales 
•How to set up a shop that turns visitors into buyers in under two seconds 
•How to price your items 
•How to write titles and descriptions 
•How to brand your business with DIY techniques 
•How to rank your pages 
•How to find targeted audiences 
•How to build up your list of followers 
•Where to promote your listings 
•How to sell without selling 
•How to form relationships with people who can send you extra sales 
•How to start a "buzz" about your products 
•Which tools to incorporate into your business 

The goal of this book is to free you from having to rely on any third-party website for your sales. Yes, you can take advantage of platforms like Etsy, and you should, but websites come and go, and if all your sales come only from that website, you run into trouble every time there are algorithm changes, a saturation of sellers, or cheaper products to compete with. You are trying to generate sales, which means that you are trying to run a business, which in-turn means that you need a real business plan. Brick and motor stores don't just buy a bunch of goods, throw them in a building, and hope people will come. They plan, study their target market, pick a perfect store location, and prepare to market themselves. Just because you sell online does not mean that you can skip all of these steps. You have billions of products to compete with online and a crowd of shoppers who have an overwhelming number of options before them. You must prepare your storefront, get your products ready, know your audience, and then know how to market to them. 

Optimizing Your Shop for Sales 

Dani starts out showing you how to prepare your products with photos that attract clicks and sales. It doesn't just tell you how to do it, though. It SHOWS you. Thanks to the help of many carefully selected Etsy sellers, there are many example photos for each point. In addition to this, the author only shows you DIY photos to prove that you can do it all on your own. 
Next, Dani discusses how to optimize your shop. She goes through every aspect such as banners, profiles, descriptions, tags, and titles. You will learn how to optimize your pages so that people stay there instead of leaving instantly. This can be done by creating an inviting environment with images and content that buyers can skim through in under two seconds. If buyers can determine that your page is worth staying on in less than two seconds, you have won the battle. 

Finding Targeted Audiences and Marketing 

The issue with selling online is finding people who would be interested in your products. The book gives you several ways to locate your target audience so that you can send shoppers to your products and generate sales instead of just views and "favors." Next, you learn ways to build up a list followers, how to stay engaged with them, and how to sell to them without actually selling. Just spamming links all over the place is not effective because you irritate your audience. You must tastefully put your products in front of shoppers.