This post contains affiliate links which means if you purchase a product following the link, a portion of the sale goes to support this blog at no additional cost to you. See my disclosure policy to learn more.

So you decided to create an Etsy shop but you don’t know how to create your listings to get the best results.

When creating your Etsy shop you’ll want to have at least 10 - 20 listings ready to go. Etsy recommends at least 10, but really the more you have, the more customers have to choose from and can get a taste for your style and types of products.

While setting up an Etsy listing is not hard, there are a lot of fields that need to be completed to create your listing. So we will tackle them one by one in the post below.

Photos

Your first listing photo is the first thing any potential customer will ever see, so you want to make it eye-catching. Make sure that the lighting is bright, the focus is on the product, and that you can really see what your item is all about.

Especially in the first photo, you don’t want too many additional items in the picture, so that the focus can be on the product. In your subsequent photos you can include additional views of the item, you can focus on certain details, and include your item next to a known object for scale purposes. You also may want to show your item in use.

If you are selling an item that has instructions for use or washing like an editable download or a clothing item, you may want to include graphics that provide these instructions. You may also want to include at least 1 graphic with Pinterest dimensions so it is easier to pin your listing later.

Title

For your product title you ant to be very specific and granular when describing your product. Instead of Silver Necklace you can write Silver Flower Necklace with Green Crystals. Instead of Unicorn Party Invitation you can write Pastel Watercolor Unicorn Party Invitation - Editable - Instant Download.

The more keywords you can comfortably fit into your title, the better. You want the person looking for a product just like yours to be able to find it. So yes, your unicorn invite will come up for that generic search, but it will also come up for instant download invitation or watercolor unicorn.

The more specific words you use, the less competition you will have to be seen in search when someone is looking for your exact product.

Categories

The next section is the about this listing, but that’s pretty self explanatory. Next you want to select your category. As you start typing what your item is, Etsy will suggest categories to put it in. For example if you start typing party it might suggest party favor, party invitation, party games, and more. You should select the one that best fits your item.

When choosing descriptions or categories or keywords, its always about what is the best fit and most specific. You don’t want to only come up in big generic searches like party invitation because your item might get lost in the mix. It might be appropriate for more searches, but it will be harder to find since so many items will fit that term.

Instead the more specific you are, the less competition you will have for that term and the more likely you are to show up and be the item that the person is looking for.

Next are several more items about the characteristics and use of the product. Make sure you answer as many of these as are appropriate.

Description

Your description box is the place you can really sell your item to your potential customer You want to front load the most important info about your product as many customers may not read the full description. On the the product page only the first few lines of the description are visible unless you click to learn more.

It’s also important to note that while Etsy currently does not use your product description to assist with search, Google may do so. So if your item shows up in Google search it would include a snippet of your description and it can help your item being found there.

Therefore, it’s good to have a good, rich, readable description of your product. Do not keyword dump in there. You should also answer any questions your customer may have about your product. You can always add more later as questions come in.

Section

As you add more and more items to your shop, sections becomes more and more important. This will make it easier for customers viewing your shop to find what they want. Make your section titles as clear as possible.

Cutesy titles might be fun for you, but if a customer doesn’t know what it is, they are not going to click through. Make your section titles clear and succinct.

Keywords

Here is one of the most important sections of your Etsy listing. This is where you tell Etsy what words and phrases people might use to find your item. You want your best keywords to be put in the title, and then you want to have your titles and tags match exactly so your listing is consistent. (NOTE: your tags don’t need to be in the same order as your titles.)

One reason that titles and tags end up being different is you have more characters to use in the title than you do in the tags.

The solution? Break it up. Instead of saying… Sterling Silver Celtic Cross …say… Sterling Cross / Silver Celtic Cross … and so on.

You have 20 characters per tag, so take advantage of that and match them all up.

You also want to be careful not to waste tags with redundancy. You don’t want to do Silver Celtic Cross and Celtic Cross since you are just repeating a portion of the tag. You can however do Silver Celtic Cross and then Celtic Cross Necklace.

Once you have used tags to match with your title you can you additional keywords for your remaining tags. If you need help figuring out tags use Etsy and Pinterest search. Both platforms have the auto-suggest feature which can help you figure out what search terms people are using related to your item.

Related Post: THE TOP 21 DIGITAL DOWNLOADS TO SELL ON ETSY

Price and Quantity

Lastly you set up your price and quantity. Your price is how you value your item. For physical products you need to account for cost of materials, your time, shipping, and factor in any other overhead.

For digital products you just factor in your overhead and your time. Note that you don’t need to recoup your time with one sale of a digital product as it can be sold over and over again.

For quantity, you either select the actual quantity you have for physical products or select a number for digital products. I like to choose the same number for all of my digital products as it helps me easily see which products are or are not selling.

If you are selling a digital product, your last step will be to upload the actual product.

It’s important to regularly go back and check on your item listings. If they are not selling well, see if a change in picture or keywords will help. If something is selling well, see if you can create related products and add them to your shop.

If you still need more help setting up your Etsy Printables business, I highly recommend checking out the E-Printables Course by Cody and Julie of Gold City Ventures where they’ll teach you how to create any type of printable using several different types of design software. Then they teach you all about starting and marketing your business.

Ready to open your shop? Use my seller referral link and we’ll both get 40 free listings (worth 8 dollars).

Cheers,

Emily